The Truth Telling Project

At A Glance

Contact: 

Melinda Salazar

Location: 

Chicago, Illinois

Primary Issue Area:

  • Land & Water
  • Living Economies
  • Climate Change & Energy
  • Food

Active since:

2014

Core volunteers:

20

  • Truth Telling Project 2021 Team Retreat
  • Upcoming course on Transitional Justice
  • Genocide and Human Rights Research Conference From Roots to Reparations to Trust Building
  • Reparations is the Midpoint between Truth and Reconciliation

Our Purpose

The Truth Telling Project supports and implements grassroots, community-centered truth-telling and reparations processes for Black liberation to amplify the voices of and work in solidarity with the traditionally silenced and disenfranchised to ensure the sustainability of healed BIPOC futures in  response to state-sanctioned, direct and indirect violence.  We use Reparative Justice methods to share stories, facilitate healing, teach courses, support activists on the ground, and seek justice.  We are presently redesigning our programmatic strategies of Activism, Education, Policy and Repair to highlight the inextricable links between truth telling and reparations as we have learned through all our programmatic initiatives since the murder of Michael Brown, Jr. that individuals harmed by police brutality cannot heal without reparative actions taken for themselves, their families and their communities.  Reparations for chattel slavery cannot occur without truth-seeking and truth-telling about this nation's  foundation, the construction of systemic racism and its present conditions.  We believe these conditions (5 UN Conditions for Reparations) must redress harms in order for this nation to heal, forgive, reconcile and thrive.  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.