Reparations Interfaith Coalition

Upcoming Events

May 16 and 17, 2026: Sacred Reckonings Training — Massachusetts

Join us for a 5-session, multi-faith training and guided exploration of the Sacred Reckonings: White Settler-Colonizer Faith Groups Doing the Work of Reparations workbook. In this series you will practice key tools and exercises with real-time feedback, and join a supportive network of other faith and community leaders who are entering the Sacred Reckonings process.

We recommend that folks attend in teams of three to five per group (i.e. synagogue, church, congregation, group) . Attending as the only person from your spiritual home will require that you, alone, share this out to your community.

This training is designed as a multi-faith experience. Sacred Reckonings’s website/ language is mostly geared toward Christian faiths and we understand this might be a concern for Jewish and other faith groups. If you have questions or worries about how this learning experience might mesh with your group, please be in touch. Learn more about Sacred Reckonings at sacredreckonings.com.

For more details and registration please go to bit.ly/srma2026.

For questions, contact Rev. Edwin Johnson (edwin@ecmteam.us) or Rev. Dan Smith (revdanielasmith@gmail.com).

Past Events

2026

Feb 17, 2026--White Work and Reparative Genealogy: An Evening with Dr. Mary Watkins

(Recording)
Clinical psychologist and scholar Mary Watkins, discussed her book White Work and Reparative Genealogy: Reckoning with Ancestral Debt as a Path to Racial Reparations. The book explores how white-identifying people can reckon with ancestral histories of colonialism and racial violence and engage in practices of repair that move beyond guilt toward solidarity and justice. Mary Watkins is a clinical psychologist, professor, and writer, and co-creator of the MA/PhD program in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Ecopsychologies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is the author and co-author of numerous works on liberation psychology, colonialism, and social repair.

2025

December 3, 2025--Sacred Reckonings: Exploring a Reparatory Eco-Map (Recording)

Reparations Interfaith Coalition and Episcopal City Mission introduced interested folks to the work of Sacred Reckonings and their Reparatory Eco-Map. Sacred Reckonings engages settler-colonizer communities of faith and conscience in reparations through a lens of liberation for all. Their central work, the Reparatory Eco Map, guides congregations through Truth Telling, Solidarity, Followership, Political Solidarity, Spiritual Practices, and Wealth Surrender. This framework, created by a pro-queer multi-faith and multiracial group of organizers, offers a multidimensional model of repair that helps organizers and individuals formulate questions for deeper action and relationship.

Our presenters, Rev. Dana Neuhauser, an ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church, Rev. Sara Green, a Unitarian Universalist minister and Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, a pastor in the United Church of Christ, introduced us to historical harms, starting with the Doctrine of Discovery and ending with current events in Minnesota. They also led us through the Reparatory Eco-Map and answered questions from the audience.

October 15, 2025---Block And Build: Reparations As Resistance

(Recording)

Now, more than ever, our country needs to reckon with its past and envision a new future. What we don’t repair, we repeat…or worse. Fascism is what can happen when a society founded on white supremacy fails to do this necessary reparative work.

Working for reparations is healing work. It is work that white supremacy has opposed since the reparations movement began. We can expect the current fascist regime to fight it even more forcefully, because the work of reparations exposes the powers that keep us divided.

Join us for a conversation on how we do the critical work of repair in a time of fascist threat. We will be joined by reparations activists Nicole Carty, Executive Director of the national youth-led Get Free reparations movement; David Gardinier, Founding Member of the Fund for Reparations Now! (white fundraising arm of the National African American Reparations Commission); and local reparations leader Kathleen Anderson, female co-chair of the New England chapter of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) and member of the MA Reparations Task Force.

Tuesday, March 25, 2025--Reclaiming Space a Reparative Action (Recording here.)

Reparations Interfaith Coalition hosted a discussion on how local communities can respond to the United Nations' and the National African American Reparations Commission's calls to acknowledge historical harms against African Americans and take actions towards repair. We learned how individuals can help reclaim public spaces and honor Black history. Brookline, MA residents Anna Greenwald and Deborah Brown and Live Klawiter as well as Cambridge, MA resident Paula Paris described the actions they took with their communities to reclaim public spaces that once commemorated enslavers but now honor the memories of Florida Ruffin Ridley (Brookline) and Darby Vasall (Cambridge). These stories unearthed hidden histories and inspired us, as reparationists to truth-tell, advocate for and succeed in reclaiming public spaces.

Thursday, February 20, 2025--Decolonizing the History Curricula in Our Schools: A Crucial Step in Achieving Reparations

The Reparations Interfaith Coalition, The Mystic Valley NAACP, and The Black Response Cambridge, and hosted a hybrid roundtable discussion The event was part of the third annual Foundry Festival in East Cambridge.

This was an extraordinary educational event with 17-year-old Jateja Spriggs, Chair of the Governor's Youth Council moderating three amazing experts on reparations -- UMass Boston Professors Jemadari Kamara and Lawrence Blum and Harvard Professor Donald Yacovone.

Tuesday, Jan 28th, 2025--Boston in the Shadow of Slavery (Recording)

An Evening with Jacqueline Jones, author of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in History, for No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era. Over 140 people joined us via Zoom to discuss Ms. Jones's book, which presents a searing portrait of Black labor and white hypocrisy in 19th Century Boston. Jacqueline Jones is an award winning scholar, an MacArthur fellow and three time Pulitzer finalist. She is a former professor of history at Brandeis University and is the current Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women's History Emerita, University of Texas at Austin. If you would like to watch the recording of this event, click this link and then enter the password: ric0128!

2024

Dec 1, 7 and 8, 2024--Spirit of Reparations Film Series

Acts of Reparations, Dec 1, 2024-- Jamaica Plain Unitarian Universalist Church

Acts of Reparations, Dec 7, 2024--Northampton Unitarian Universalist Church

The Cost of Inheritance, Dec. 8, 2024--All Souls Church, Greenfield

December 3, 2024--Reparations: Deepening our Relationships

Online, December 3, 2024: A gathering to ground and grow our relationships around reparations. Together, we reflected on recent learning and actions in small groups. We built accountability with ourselves and each other. We previewed Reparation Interfaith Coalition's plans and actions for 2025

November 21, 2024--Reparations for What?

Hybrid event with a panel featured Kyera Singleton at the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Nov 21, 2024

October 13, 2024--Guided Tour of the Royall House and Slave Quarters

Medford, MA--Oct 13. More info about the Royall House can be found at royallhouse.org/visit/

September 30, 2024--Re-imagining Early Black Boston

Nicole Aljoe, Professor of African Studies and English at Northeastern University, and Savita Maharaj, a Ph.D. student at Brandeis University explored the theme of Re-imaging Early Black Boston. These scholars discussed their work on the Boston Black History digital project. This event included inspirational multi-media access points to build knowledge and understanding of the vibrant, beautiful Black community in early Boston. Please check out the incredible Early Early Black Boston Digital Almanac that highlights this work.

2023

December 3, 2023--Call to Repair: Justice, Healing and Reparations in Massachusetts:

This event was a Interfaith/ethical organizations reparations gathering bringing together organizations, communities and congregations across Massachusetts to learn and discuss how the reparations movement is progressing locally and how we can move it forward. At this event, national and local Black leaders in the reparations movement spoke to our shared sense that reparations are not a transaction but rather a spiritual and ethical practice. This event was open to all those interested in building their understanding of and work towards reparations. This event was part of a national Sacred Reparative Season launched by the Grassroots Reparations Campaign. Check it out here!

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