#427 Together We Heal: Advancing Racial Healing and Transformation in Chicago

Together We Heal (TWH) launches a journey aimed at building racial healing across Chicago. The goal is for every Chicagoan to do their part to foster racial healing, learning, and restoration in every neighborhood across our City. The initiative seeks to promote civic unity by encouraging Chicagoans to connect across lines of difference and support a collective conversation about our truth and our promise as a City. Mayor Lightfoot’s new Office of Equity and Racial Justice is leading this initiative with support from the American Jewish Committee, Chicago Community Trust, Equity Advisory Council, Racial Equity Rapid Response Team, Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Chicago, and YWCA Metropolitan Chicago.

What is racial healing? According to Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation [TRHT], racial healing recognizes the need to acknowledge and tell the truth about past wrongs created by individual and systemic racism and address the present consequences. Before transforming systems and structures, we must first transform ourselves. To heal is to restore to wholeness; to repair damage; and to set right.

Together We Heal challenges you to:

• ORGANIZE a healing event with friends, neighbors, colleagues, family members, congregations, or anyone in your network.
• SHARE your experience with your fellow Chicagoans by completing the TWH Submission Form that allows you to detail your event and leave a message of healing for your City.
• EXPLORE how the journey unfolds by checking on the TWH Healing Map that will report the efforts that happened all across the City.
• CELEBRATE with us at the end of January as we close out this leg of the journey and map out a course for our future.

ASL This event will not have an American Sign Language interpreter.