QCFT actions on the Report on Systemic Racism in Mecklenburg County May 24, 2022

In February 2022, QC Family Tree, in partnership with the Coalition for Truth and Reconciliation, wrote a Community Conversation Guide to be used alongside the report on Systemic Racism in Mecklenburg County Government written by the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. Since then, QC Family Tree has trained facilitators to lead community conversations. In March and April of this year, 13 trained facilitators have led more than 20 conversations that have engaged more than150 people across Mecklenburg County.

These Community Conversations have offered an opportunity for participants to engage the materials and to begin taking steps toward repair. Some conversation groups have chosen to meet multiple times in order to take a deeper dive into each sector of the report, meeting to thoroughly discuss systemic racism within our county’s policing, politics, education, and infrastructure/health systems. Other groups are coming together to devise plans for collective action.

QC Family Tree encouraged these groups to send letters of feedback to Mecklenburg County Commissioners. We provided a letter template to facilitators as a resource. One conversation group, consisting of thirty participants, co-wrote a collective letter. You can find the letter linked here.

As a supplement, QC Family Tree offered walking history tours of Uptown Charlotte which explored particular places and events shaped by systemic racism in our city’s history. Approximately 75 people have participated in the walking history tours. QC Family Tree continues to offer groups the opportunity to schedule a walking history tour using this link.

This summer, QC Family Tree is offering several opportunities to further this work.

• Summer Salons are guided conversations that aim to get us out of entrenched habits of thinking about social problems and into new ways of understanding and acting. Small groups can contact QC Family Tree to schedule facilitation.
• We are planning a Forum in June, a half day gathering to workshop practical ideas for repairing the harm that systemic racism has caused.
• Funeral for the Empire is an artistic cultural intervention that will help participants to grieve what we have lost to life in Empire and to imagine a more joy filled way forward.
• The August Teach-In on Church Complicity, Bible, and Reparation is a theological seminar on the topic of reparations in a Christian context.
• Helms and Greg Jarrell will each be preaching at Caldwell Presbyterian as a part of the church’s Anti-Racism preaching series in July and August.

QC Family Tree is a nonprofit organization that does cultural organizing in Charlotte and beyond. As cultural workers, our staff rely on people supporting our programs in order to sustain the organization. If you are interested in QC Family Tree facilitation, please consider how you might be able to support the organization financially. Our suggested minimum contribution is $250 per event. If that amount creates a hardship for you, please contact us and we will work with you to find a way to do this work together.

Details about the upcoming events are coming soon. Follow us on social media @qcfamilytree, stay tuned to updates on our linktree https://linktr.ee/qcfamilytree, and sign up to receive updates about this work here.