Our Projects

Reckoning with histories. Reclaiming narratives. Shaping a shared future. Reimagining sacred cities. Words squarely surrounding a drawing by Sheri Skele / Big Nagala

Liberated Land Use

Liberated Land Use is a Pro-Black and Indigenous online learning series about our local land use planning. We'll come together for shared learning in story-based sessions rooted in history that will build our own individual and our community capacity.

Join us this February - June 2025.

Rio Holaday's graphic recording of the Justice InDeed launch event

Justice InDeed

Justice InDeed is a collaborative project dedicated to exposing and responding to the fact that the deeds to thousands of homes in Washtenaw County contain “racially restrictive covenants” – or provisions prohibiting Black people and other minorities from living there.

FutureRoot is serving as thought partners to co-design and apply a structure to volunteer transcriptions. We come alongside the research group in identifying and recruiting community members for the transcription sessions.  FutureRoot advances anti-racism, community, and change goals through an approach that is itself anti-racist, trauma-informed, harm-reductive, and community-driven. We aid the group in uplifting the importance of race and class personal power analysis, especially clarity around each group member’s own beliefs and values and how they show up in these sessions and the project overall, guiding individuals and the collective away from dominant-culture norms, strategies, and values and towards liberatory practices. 

BWCC logo

Black Washtenaw County Collaboratory

We are part of the Black Washtenaw County Collaboratory — a public history research project with this mission: 

“We believe that greater knowledge of the history of anti-Black racism in Washtenaw County and of Black communities’ resistance to it in Washtenaw County is essential to combat injustice in the present and to imagine and support better futures for all. “ 


The Collaboratory’s mission and way of being align with our community engagement work and we’re proud to take part in this project.

CLC members at a celebration event

Catherine Street Development

FutureRoot lead a community-driven planning and engagement process for the Ann Arbor Housing Commission site at 121 E. Catherine St. 

Forming a Community Leadership Council of current and previous Black neighborhood residents with roots in the community to provide insight into the needs and challenges facing the community. 

Reckoning with the past harms that lead to the displacement and divestment of Black-owned businesses and neighbors.

Remembering by honoring the history of the surrounding Black neighborhood and business district that thrived in and around the site in previous recent past.

Leading a Just Transition Strategy expanding our vision of what’s possible and thinking intergnerationally about the impact we can have. Reimagining a vision for Catherine Street and beyond.

Centering Justice logo a podcast about how we transform the future together by NEW

Centering Justice

Centering Justice (CJ) is a virtual space to find and share inspiration for racial justice and liberation.

Join Yodit and leaders of color for monthly virtual conversations that inspire and move you from awareness to action.

Move the Needle logo for election 2024

Move the Needle

On Sundays during the 2024 election season, Jessica co-hosted a virtual weekly series: Move The Needle - Tools for White Women, Femmes & Thems Voting Blue in Red Communities

The series focused on encouraging and equipping listeners with useful tools to have their own respectful and persuasive conversations in battleground communities.