Grassroots Reparations Campaign
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 current conditions in which we live and impact our future. We seek to create a world where reconciliation is possible because racism is no more.
Our Mission
We uplift faith-based and ethically-centered frameworks that demand accountability for the history and current world conditions that slavery, colonialism, genocide, and other material and moral abuses created. We have set out to create a culture of reparations that emerges from spiritual practice, transformative education, and action.
Our Values
Pan Africanism | Political Autonomy| Collective Struggle and Accountability | Indigeneity | Intersectionality | Black Feminism Feminism | Decoloniality | Human Dignity | Peace | Internationalism
“Reparations is a spiritual practice. Reparations is the midpoint between truth and reconciliation.” –Dr. David Ragland and Dr. Melinda Salazar, Co-Founders of The Truth Telling Project
The Campaign
The Grassroots Reparations Campaign is a program of The Truth Telling Project that launched in 2019. Working from the outset with those who have been doing reparations work for decades before us, we are partnered with the following faith-based and ethically-oriented social justice organizations: the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (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 Virginia. We are committed to inviting a broad coalition of faith-based institutions, faith communities, and ethically-centered organizations to be part of an awakening to direct or indirect complicity in upholding systems of white supremacy. With other Black-led organizations, we invite ethically-centered organizations and congregations from various religious traditions to atone for and/or heal from participation in white supremacist culture, practices, and policies.
“Reparationists are the abolitionists of our time.” –Woullard Lett, Grassroots Reparations Campaign Partner and Male Co-Chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA)
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 Reverend Lucas Johnson, and Chrissi Jackson, Co-founder and former Co-Director of the Truth Telling Project. Together they created the “FOR National Grassroots Truth and Reparations Campaign,” a program that, with the Truth Telling Project, emphasized the need to speak and hear the truth about the original sins of genocide, slavery, and post-slavery forms of systemic racism. The Grassroots Reparations Campaign, which is who we are today, incepted in 2019. Arguing that reparations is the midpoint between truth and reconciliation, we engage in interfaith consciousness raising about the need for reparations and have built a coalition of leaders from congregations, faith-based organizations, and ethically centered organizations. Our ultimate goal, in addition to encouraging critical reflection, is for white-dominated organizations to form reparative relationships with Black-led grassroots organizations that will define what reparations looks like for them.
Reparations requires a culture in which accountability for past harm is a prominent feature in the society. Our approach draws on the ten injury areas described by the National Association of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) and the framing by the United Nations Development Program where reparations comes in the form of compensation, healing, education, restitution, and guarantees of non-repeat. We support the passing of H.R. 40 yet also understand that reparations must be championed from the grassroots if we are to go beyond commissions studying reparations. We believe that congregations and ethically centered organizations are well situated to participate in fostering reparations as a spiritual/ethical/civic practice. Our campaign utilizes a Reparations Sabbath/Saturday and Sunday program as a pathway for communities to cultivate such a practice.
Click here for a Toolkit containing our history, our principles, and strategies for hosting a Reparations Sabbath, Saturday, or Sunday event. Click here for a secondary Toolkit + Guide for holding your own DIY (“Do It Yourself”) Reparations Teach-in in preparation for Reparations Sabbath/Saturday and Sunday.
