a vehicle for material, relational, and spiritual healing and repair
Together we create a thriving, lush Philadelphia through the sacred power of reparations.
Right Now: We can all see the wheels falling off the cart. — How fortunate for us.
Our formal and informal institutions, our connections with all our relations on all levels and in all domains, and the manner in which we hold our relationships to ourselves, are all showing the limits of their legitimacy, viability, and moral acceptability. This moment offers a clear and urgent invitation for hopeful and creative responses. We are called to do the work of imagining and manifesting better ways of being with ourselves, each other, and the world.
What we are up to.
In this QuakerSpeak video Rob and Lucy share some of the core frames for how they think of reparations.
Reparations,
a compass
& a roadmap
As an approach, a goal, an ideal, and an ethos, reparations has proven its value in guiding understanding and action towards healing and repair. It addresses the levels of individual, group, and systems, and speaks to the domains of material resources, relationship, and Spirit
reparationWorks:
a vehicle
repWorks is a think/do tank, a laboratory, a resource, and an enthusiastic node of the contemporary reparationist hive mind. We support individuals and organizations in their journey toward healing and repair. We have witnessed time and time again how embracing reparationist thought and action can unbind blocked energy in systems and release people to consider their own treasures (material, spiritual, and embodied) as resources for deeper change. Together with our clients and collaborators, we explore how, right now, with our own resources and initiative, we each hold the power to move toward Beloved community.
What might reparations look like right now ?
It could look like
A Quaker meeting focusing on anti-racism for years, then budgeting $500,000 toward reparations, the first manifestation of which is hosting legal clinics to secure Black wealth in a majority Black neighborhood.
A citywide campaign hosted by a mayor’s commission to engage faith communities in considering their own complicity with slavery and its afterlives and investing their time, money and talent in make repair and generate justice locally for the historical harms they participated in.
A city taking down a statue of a confederate icon and melting it down to be transformed by the community into a form the community discerns together.
A white-led organization that promotes Black culture developing new insight into its patterns of relationship with its Black partners, and as a consequence of this reflection practices investing in Spirit, spending its privilege, and sharing power in order to be a more trustworthy and capable anti-racist co-conspirator for the Black community that the organization serves.
Working with us
We support our partners and co-conspirators to:
See & Imagine.
Discovery, Sense Making, Diagnosis, Visioning
What is obscured from me that I need to recognize/uncover?
How are rupture & harm and connection & healing present in my landscape of relationships? Where are there negative patterns that I can interrupt, and positive patterns that I can cultivate?
If I manage to live my values, what would the world look like and where would my place be in it?
We guide our clients to investigate their current context of thought, relationship, and action. We draw on our toolbox of sense making methods to surface values and gauge the alignment of those values with actions and outcomes. Together we apply a reparationist lens to illuminate patterns of rupture and harm, and move toward repair and healing. We help them identify strengths and areas for growth, and guide them to sharpen their vision of what is possible and desirable for them.
Consider & Act.
Strategy, Design, Implementation
Where are points for intervention that address areas of greatest risk, harm, and unrealized potential for repair?
What are strategies for addressing the most vexing challenges and promising opportunities?
What is a roadmap for overall growth over time?
When we engage in reparations activities, what can we do to build thoughtfulness and accountability into our process?
Drawing on a reparationist exploration of your challenges, assets, and opportunities, we support clients to identify strategies to drive reparationist oriented change aligned with their vision, values, and context. We guide them in developing roadmaps and action plans, as well as applying human centered design and creative problem solving methods to develop and test specific interventions and solutions.
Learn & Grow.
Building Knowledge and Skills
What are the conceptual frames and skills we will need to move more deeply into living the values of the organization?
As a leader, what challenges and opportunities are the most important in my movement toward healing and repair?
How do mindfulness and embodiment contribute or impede our group’s reparationist practice, and how can we strengthen those skills?
How might we jumpstart a conversation about deeper change within our organization/community?
repWorks supports learning and skill building via:
Coaching for Individuals and Teams
Training and Educational Experiences for Groups
Keynote Presentations
repWorks crafts and facilitates developmental experiences to build the capacity of individuals and organizations for principled, pragmatic, and effective reparationist thought and action. We listen deeply to our clients' concerns, hopes, and goals to offer them learning opportunities tailored to their context and needs.
Contact/Support
Feel free to contact us with any inquiries or questions.
If you’d like to support our work, you can do so through Zelle by making a payment to reparationWorks@gmail.com. We are incorporated as an LLC, so it won’t be tax deductible, but any contribution makes a difference and supports our work building a reparations ecosystem in Philadelphia.
Email
reparationWorks@gmail.com