By: Cameron Cassar
“Now is the time to build these mechanisms, to connect them to each other and learn from each other and become a transforming power”, said Reverend Nelson Johnson, a survivor of the 1979 Greensboro massacre perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan. Rev. Johnson and his wife Joyce went on to establish in 2004 the first-ever US-based truth and reconciliation commission, inspired in similar institutions in South Africa, Peru, and other countries.
His words resonated with many who were in the audience on the Learning from Experience: Truth & Reconciliation Processes in the US webinar, hosted by the Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation (MHCR). This event was convened to support local truth and reconciliation processes, in a bottom-up process of transformation that could work in tandem with nationwide initiatives, legislative or from the new administration.
MHCR is a member of the US Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Movement, whose plan is to work with the Biden-Harris transition team to help establish a US Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation within their first 100 days in office, and support several legislators in the House and Congress who have proposed similar initiatives on racial justice, reparations, and treatment of indigenous peoples.
The speakers at the Learning from Experience event have all played pivotal roles in past US-based truth-seeking and truth-telling processes. These speakers included the aforementioned Reverend Nelson Johnson and his wife Joyce Johnson who helped launch the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Esther Anne, who was instrumental to create the Maine-Wabanaki Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission, David Ragland, a co-founder of the Truth Telling Project in Ferguson, MO, Christina Cowger & Catherine Read from the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture and lastly Dr. Gail Christopher, co-chair of the US TRHT Movement. The panel was moderated by MHCR Research Affiliate Eduardo Gonzalez, who drew out the experience of each speaker, relating their expertise to current challenges faced in the US and what needs to be done in setting up a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Commission.
Eduardo González encouraged the participants to think of 2020 as a year when, in spite of a global catastrophe and a national wave of hate, social movements showed resilience and creativity, launching truth and reconciliation processes around the country, to give voice to communities harmed by structural racism and envision profound transformation. He invited the presenters to share recommendations to the local activists and policymakers committed to building new truth and reconciliation processes.
Rev. Nelson and Joyce Johnson spawn from a generation that defied both racism and class oppression, organizing union workers in the textile mills of Greensboro, and paid a heavy price when, on November 3, 1979, the Klan gunned down five young activists. They are survivors but, at the same time, politically engaged actors in their community, and emphasized the importance of building solid alliances at the grassroots, reaching out to civil society associations, academia, the media, the business community, and the actual city institutions, even knowing how hard it is for them to engage in reform.
Esther Anne, Wabanaki, from the land where the sun rises, presented the experience of the child welfare system in Maine, which historically operated harming the Wabanaki community, as more indigenous children end up disproportionately in the system. She explained that engaging native people to consider truth-telling as an actual right was a challenge, given cultural understandings of rights and obligations. To ensure that families and survivors shared their stories took time and patient work building trust, reaching out to elders, and ensuring cultural interpretation of concepts and processes. She noted that White people in the state were very attracted to the notion of reconciliation but less comfortable with the truth, but she valued that the process engaged White people, anyway.
David Ragland co-chaired, together with current Congresswoman-elect Cori Bush, the Truth-Telling Project, created after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The Project has obtained the testimonies of families of Black people killed by the police. The radicality of truth-telling is that “it gives people voices who didn’t have voices before” and in that regard, it decolonizes the public sphere, and challenges the construct of racism and economy
In the words of Dr. Gail Christopher, “We have to grapple with the fact that this country was built off this ideology of dehumanization.” There are many lessons that we can take from the speakers who were on the panel but the main lesson that we should all take from this event is that exorcising your demons from the past is not an easy task but it is a necessary task in order to move towards a path of healing. The US has a dark history of racial inequality that has yet to be addressed and always seems to find its way back into the fabric of our society. We can’t continue to let these issues go unaddressed because these are people’s lives at stake.
Truth commissions can work and have worked in the past and we would be remiss to not take this opportunity to try and heal from our deep wounds of racial trauma. In the words of Rev. Nelson Johnson, “There is enormous opportunity in front of us because society is destabilized, we can’t go back to how things were before...there will always be efforts to divide people amongst ourselves but we need to bring ourselves together.” Learning from Experiences: Truth & Reconciliation Processes in the US is not the light at the end of the tunnel but it is a step in the right direction towards building a more just and inclusive country that values everyone no matter their skin color. MHCR is so proud to be at the forefront of initiatives such as these which will have lasting ramifications on how our society moves forward.
To see the full webinar recording, click here