Our Vision
We envision a world that is accountable for past harms including slavery, colonialism, genocide, and other material and moral abuses. These past harms create the present conditions in which we live and impact our future. We envision a world where reconciliation is possible because racism is no more.
Our Mission
We uplift faith-based, healing and ethically centered frameworks that demand accountability to the history and current world created by slavery. We aim to create a culture of reparations that emerges from spiritual practice, transformative education and action.
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The Campaign
The Grassroots Reparations Campaign is a program of The Truth Telling Project. We work with those who have been doing reparations work for decades before us. We partner with faith-based and ethically oriented social justice organizations: the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America’s (N'COBRA), Fellowship of Reconciliation Atlanta , Community of Living Traditions , Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility,) Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, Center for Jubilee, Reconciliation and Healing, Racial Justice Rising, Coming to the Table and Coming to the Table RVA.
Our Values
- Pan Africanism
- Political Autonomy
- Collective Struggle and Accountability
- Indigeneity
- Intersectionality
- Black Feminism
- Decoloniality
- Human Dignity
- Peace
- Internationalism
Success
Success looks like the creation of a culture of accountability and repair, where faith and ethically centered communities have committed, en masse, to making their organizations and communities accountable - ReparationsChurches; ReparationSangha etc., by adopting #RepararationSundays and Saturdays etc as a part of their spiritual practice. This grassroots campaign hopes to mobilize America’s faithful and Social Justice movements to demand reparations for Blacks in America.
Our Story
In 2017, the Truth Telling Project, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth and Fellowship of Reconciliation began thinking about reparations as a way to accomplish racial healing and justice. This effort was led by Senior Bayard Rustin Fellow, Dr. David Ragland, International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) International Coordinator the Reverend Lucas Johnson, and Chrissi Jackson, Co-founder and former Co-Director of the Truth Telling Project. The campaign was titled, “FOR National Grassroots Truth and Reparations Campaign,” and with the Truth Telling Project we emphasized the need to speak and hear the truth about the original sins of genocide, slavery, and post-slavery forms of systemic racism. Arguing that reparations is the midpoint between truth and reconciliation, we have engaged in interfaith consciousness raising about the need for reparations. We have reached out to leaders of faith organizations, healing organizations, and social justice organizations. As well as critical reflection and consciousness-raising, our end goal is for white-dominated organizations to form reparative relationships with Black-led grassroots organizations that will define what reparations looks like for them.
What We Believe
The Grassroots Reparations Campaign envisions a world that is accountable for past harms including slavery, colonialism, genocide, and other material and moral abuses. We uplift faith-based, healing and ethically centered frameworks that demand accountability to the history and current world created by slavery. We aim to create a culture of reparations that emerges from spiritual practice, transformative education and action. The Five Dimensions of Reparations identified by the United Nations in the document, “The Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Gross Human Rights Violations” guides our work.