Rooted Forward

Race shapes the blocks people walk past each day. It shapes the deeds, the appraisal forms, the bulldozed lots.

We build our tours from our research findings and present them in the Rooted Forward app. Walk the route and listen as you go.

Our goal is to build awareness, and we count the tours accessed. This way, we can best assess how our research reaches the community.

Getting the message out has been most effective through direct community outreach. We meet people where they already are, including at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago and neighborhood farmers’ markets.

Being present in those areas allows us to introduce the tour app so someone standing in the neighborhood can walk it that afternoon or be introduced to it and view it at a later point.

We sit down with people who live in the neighborhoods we study and listen to what they have experienced.

A census table can show that a block lost half of its households, but it cannot explain what that felt like or what the people who still live there think should happen next. Those conversations help us determine what to research and what changes to request from the city.

Our goal is to support bills that would help repair some of the long-term damage caused by disinvestment in Black and Brown neighborhoods. Right now, all of the bills we are working on are in Chicago.

We focus on bills that have already been written and introduced but are stuck in committee without a vote. We explain what each bill would do in simple terms, collect signatures, and give those signatures directly to the committee.