Centering Racial Healing
In 2020, discomfort and transition have become the norm. It has also been the year in which many in the mainstream have finally recognized that institutional racism exists.
For the past 20 years, Woods Fund Chicago has supported work that seeks to eradicate systemic and structural racism. We have long understood the importance of not only recognizing the existence of racism but also centering work that bluntly tackles it head on. We know that as a country we must not only acknowledge and understand how racism is enmeshed in the fabric of our society, but we must also develop a comfort in the discomfort of discussing racism — of truth telling — to move towards reconciliation and to transform our institutions and our country.
Modeled after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, the Kellogg Foundation created the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation program. TRHT is a comprehensive, national, and community-based process to plan for and bring about transformational and sustainable change, and to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism. In 2017, the Kellogg Foundation announced its implementation of the TRHT framework in fourteen cities. At that time, then Woods Fund Chicago President Grace Hou, Woods Fund Chicago board member Ric Estrada and Field Foundation President Angelique Power advocated for Chicago to be included. Thus, began the journey of THRT Greater Chicago.
For the past three years, TRHT Greater Chicago has been housed at the Woods Fund Chicago. Initially we not only provided the back office support, but also implemented the TRHT program. In 2019, Jose Rico and Pilar Audain were brought on board to flesh out and expand the program. And boy did they ever! Jose and Pilar focused their efforts in the grassroots, rebuilding trust in communities of color and prioritizing the training of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and non-Black people of color to become paid racial healing practitioners. They held healing circles in communities struggling with violence and in communities that have been historically disinvested in. They infused the TRHT program with Indigenous and African cultural and healing elements, focusing the program back to its roots. They insisted that folks of color should first heal together.
Jose and Pilar’s intentionality and focus paid off. Three years ago, TRHT had 48 trained practitioners. Today, over 300 individuals of color are trained healing practitioners, with 100 being young people of color. They have transformed the program to include a workforce development model by pushing 90% of TRHT’s revenue to these practitioners, professionalizing the racial healing practitioner skillset, and towards small businesses of color (95% of TRHT’s vendors are small businesses owned by people of color). TRHT Greater Chicago now delivers over 50 racial healing circles a month – at the community level, at the organizational level and in the halls of local government. We have been a partner and strategic ally throughout TRHT Greater Chicago’s development because we know the importance of centering racial healing in our work and in organizing. We believe in TRHT’s practice of talking about racism head-on, confronting how it exists and manifests in our individual practices, in our communities, in our organizations and in the polices that govern us. It is through this truth-telling in which our city can become one that is truly equitable for all.
And so, it is bittersweet that we are in the process of transferring TRHT to another home. Under the dynamic leadership of Jose and Pilar, the program has outgrown Woods Fund! We want to make sure that this critical program is fully supported so that it can achieve the next level in its development. We are so proud of all the impact TRHT has been able to achieve in such a brief time, and we will continue to support its transformative work. In the new year, look out for an announcement from TRHT Greater Chicago’s growing Solidarity Heals Movement once they settle into their new home.