ABOUT
US
The Truth Telling Project is committed to implementing and sustaining grassroots, community-centered truth-telling processes to amplify the voices of the traditionally silenced and disenfranchised in response to state-sanctioned, direct and indirect violence.
We are a diverse community of organizers, activists, artists, writers, teachers, practitioners and scholars. Our board represents a cross-section of individuals who are committed to structural change, truth telling, healing trauma, and repair. Our networks include Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities from rural and urban locales. We share in common a vision for a just, equitable, and sustainable society free of state-sanctioned violence and systemic racism.
Join the Movement
Our Team
Dr. David Ragland is a writer, scholar, and activist with a focus on racial justice, reparations and abolition. He is the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director for Culture, Organizing, and Reparations at the Truth Telling Project, as well as a special advisor to Congresswoman Cori Bush and a number of progressive political candidates throughout the U.S.
Dr. David Ragland
Dr. Melinda Salazar is a first generation U.S. American whose ancestors are Colombian/Muisca/Ukrainian. She serves as the Co-Executive Director of The Truth Telling Project. A professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Elementary & Secondary Education, and a Participatory Action Practitioner, her interests fall in the intersections of feminist peace scholarship, Indigeneity, and rural community sustainability.
Dr. Melinda Salazar
Joshua Scarborough is an Operations Associate and organizer with The Truth Telling Project. After moving to Harrisburg, PA, he worked with the Democratic Coordinated Campaign, for candidates like Vishal Bajpai for City Council, and with abolitionist organizations like the Harrisburg Abolitionist Table and the Movement Of Immigrant Leaders of Pennsylvania.
Joshua Scarborough
Jennifer Craig is Communications Lead and an Operations Associate with The Truth Telling Project, and she co-leads and organizes for TTP’s premiere program, the Grassroots Reparations Campaign. She is a campaign consultant who advises candidates for public office and social justice advocacy teams nationwide.
Jennifer Craig
Rachel Davis is an Operations Associate and organizer with The Truth Telling Project. She is also an anti-racist activist/organizer who has organized in North Carolina’s Wake, Orange, Chatham, and Alamance Counties against police brutality and white supremacy. When she’s not working or participating in activism, she enjoys foraging, hiking, traveling, art, and local folklore.
Rachel Davis
Patt Gunn is the Policy Fellow for the Truth Telling Project. She is a native of Savannah, Georgia and a Gullah Geechee woman who is on a mission of truth telling, reconciliation, healing, and repairing damages from the atrocious deeds of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade in this 21st century to People of Color throughout the African Diaspora and the Caribbean Basin.
Patt Gunn
Lucy Duncan is the Truth and Reparations Education Fellow. She currently co-chairs the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission on Faith-Based and Interfaith Affairs focusing on a campaign to invite 100 white majority congregations into sincere reparations work. She is a member of Green Street Friends Meeting (PhYM) and serves on their reparations committee.
Lucy Duncan
Our Advisory Council
Aaron Dorsey, Program and Policy Analyst at National Education Association
Jodie Geddes, an international speaker
on restorative justice, author, and
advocate for racial healing and justice
?Thalia Carroll-Cachimuel, an Indigenous history curriculum contributor for Teaching Tolerance and advocate for Indigenous and Latinx human rights
Cris Toffolo, Founding Advisory
Member of The Truth Telling Project
and current Treasurer
Kian Furnace, MPA, Public Administrator and Program Manager
Woullard Lett, Male Co-chair, New
England chapter of N’COBRA
Dr. Arthur Romano, Scholar-practitioner and Assistant Professor at GMU’s School for Peace and Conflict Resolution
Max Hess, of Atlanta Fellowship of Reconciliation
Yolanda Fountain, Democratic County Committeewoman in Ferguson, Missouri, who was the first female African American mayor of Jennings, Missouri
Our History
What We Do
The Truth Telling Project (TTP) works to help people understand the deep-seated institutional racism that allows for police violence to occur and the pervasive impact that violence has on families and their communities. We ultimately encourage empathy and anti-racist learning among allied communities, and we lead people to The Movement for Black Lives and other racial justice organizations as supporters.
Our Story
TTP was founded in August 2014 by community activists in the St. Louis area following the shooting of 18 year-old Michael Brown, Jr., the protests that followed, and the anger it generated throughout the community. We engage in the truth telling of stories that galvanize thoughtful, empathetic and educated allies for Black communities and communities of color. By encouraging “witnesses” to listen to and reflect on voices “from the margins,” our hope is that more and more people become active participants in ending the structural and militarized violence in the U.S.
Our Partners
Our Funding Sources
We are a collaborative working group funded by donations from our supporters and grants from philanthropic organizations.
Our fiscal sponsor is NorthEastern Illinois University.