2024 Program: Breakout Block 2

Equity in education requires stepping out of the box and into the community. Block by block, up, down, and all around their neighborhoods, Neighborhood Reading Captains are fostering a love of literacy in St. Louis.

Systemic racism has negatively impacted trust in institutions and has erected barriers in accessing accurate information for communities of color. In an effort to revise the narrative, Reader Readers is striving to shift power back to community members who were already actively hitting the pavement, books in tow, reading and handing out books in clinic waiting rooms, laundry mats, and barber shops through the Reading Captains program, modeled from Free Library of Philadelphia’s initiative as a part of their Read by 4th Campaign.

As trained and compensated members of the community, Ready Readers Reading Captains have engaged with over 500 children and families and distributed over 2,400 books throughout two targeted neighborhoods in just the first six months of pilot programming.

Ready for expansion into our next neighborhood, we encourage conference participants to join us as we reflect on the journey and elevate the voices of our Reading Captains and their experiences promoting literacy. Join us for a joy-filled panel conversation about how to leverage the collective power of those working to improve their own communities.

At the end, walk away with a community asset mapping tool, ready and confident to jumpstart your own community initiative—block by block!

MoJustice was founded by a formerly incarcerated person to serve as the unifying entity to do what has never been done before: building a statewide prison advocacy movement in Missouri. Our goal is to bring together stakeholders including individuals impacted by the criminal punishment system, concerned community members, litigators, and experts.

Our mission is to educate, empower, and unite these community members, transforming them into a powerful advocacy base. Through collaborative efforts, we strive to drive meaningful reforms within the Missouri prison system, addressing the systemic injustices, inhumane conditions, and absence of accountability.

I firmly believe that collective amplification and collective action are essential in building a statewide base of effective and sustained prison advocacy.

In this breakout session, we will discuss the strategy, obstacles, and collaborations in building this advocacy movement and the dire conditions in Missouri prisons that necessitate such a huge undertaking.

Muslim communities have been at the forefront of many organizing conversations this year, however the progressive movement has yet to understand Islamophobia as a structural phenomenon just like other racial justice issues, that is oftentimes connected to other forms of racism and xenophobia. Recognizing that systemic and institutionalized Islamophobia impacts all marginalized communities through increased state repression, makes it even more imperative to challenge it in our collective social justice fights.

Despite the last two plus decades of the targeting of Muslims in the War on Terror, Islamophobia has often been addressed and challenged as interpersonal violence, which has served to obscure and absolve the state of the institutional violence against Muslims that it has implemented, sustained, and perpetuated. Discounting At the same time, the proliferation and exponential increase of Islamophobia across the globe by other states has largely gone uncontested. In order to expand the conversation on combating Islamophobia, this workshop will engage participants in activities including how we can collectively articulate and define of this system of oppression, discussions on how Islamophobia is impacting Muslims domestically and across the the globe, deconstructing problematic and demonizing narratives of Islam and Muslims, and how to create community accountability campaigns to confront Islamophobia beyond its most obvious iterations, including how it is weaponized against other communities. This includes activities that highlight the industries that are complicit in and that profit from Islamophobia and/or complicit in affirming violence against Muslims and how to confront these forces.

This interactive workshop is designed to equip you with the tools and knowledge to effectively advocate for change through meme-making and digital organizing. Here's what you can expect:

🔍 Narrative Shift Case Studies: Explore real-world examples of narrative shifts that have sparked change and learn how to apply these strategies to your own advocacy efforts.

🎯 Creating SMART Goals: Develop clear, actionable goals for your digital organizing campaigns using the SMART goal framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).

🎨 Hands-On Graphic Design Tutorial: Master the art of meme-making with a step-by-step tutorial using Canva, a user-friendly graphic design platform. From selecting powerful imagery to crafting compelling messages, you'll learn how to create memes that resonate and inspire action.

💡 Prepare to Share New Content: Leave the workshop with fresh, impactful content ready to be shared across your social media platforms. Whether you're raising awareness about social issues or mobilizing your community for change, you'll have the tools to amplify your message effectively.

Extremist anti-public education forces that have used attacks on race and gender to erode trust in public schools over the past few years are shifting toward an even more destructive end game: universal voucher legislation that directs billions in public funds to private schools, predominantly for the benefit of affluent families.

Today, in nine states, virtually every school-aged student is eligible to receive public money to spend as they choose—whether on tuition at a private school, tutors or piano lessons, sports programs, religious instruction, or homeschooling. Many more states are in danger of adopting these policies in 2024.

This dramatic expansion of vouchers threatens to undermine state budgets, defund public schools, blur the lines between church and state, and increase segregation. The extremist forces promoting universal vouchers may have unlimited funds, but the pro-public education forces have people power and popular support. Vouchers have appeared on the ballot 15 times over the past two decades, and in each case, the public has voted against them.

In this session, hear from HEAL Together community partners in Florida, Tennessee, and other states about how voucher legislation is impacting their public schools, and the strategies and tools that diverse communities can use to organize majority public support to block, limit, and repeal these policies.

Join us for a powerful and insightful panel discussion featuring Cal and Michael Brown Sr. from Chosen for Change and activists from the 2014 Ferguson Uprising. This panel will delve into the personal journeys of these activists, exploring the pivotal moments that sparked their activism, the impact it has had on their lives, and the progress made over the past 10 years.

The panel will engage the audience through a Q&A session, encouraging discussion on the ongoing challenges in dismantling systemic racism and supporting activists seeking racial justice. Don't miss this compelling panel discussion that offers a unique opportunity to hear from key figures in the Ferguson Uprising and gain valuable insights into the personal journeys, challenges, and victories of a decade of activism. Join us as we reflect on the past and look toward the future in the ongoing fight for racial justice.

In 2001, Boeing received $60 million in tax breaks to move its headquarters to Chicago. In return, Boeing was required to create 500 jobs in downtown Chicago, a promise it failed to keep. Meanwhile, Chicagoans were struggling to access basic services.

In 2012, Chicago fired 172 librarians and shortened library hours to save $3 million. Chicago closed half of its 12 public mental health clinics to save $2.2 million. That same year, Chicago gave $1.3 million to Boeing to reimburse them for real estate taxes.

Dissenters will provide a training on how communities can replicate the success of their 2022 “Boeing Arms Genocide” campaign, which resulted in Boeing moving its headquarters out of Chicago and denied Boeing $2 million in tax subsidies.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus Center will draw practical connections between the military budget and our everyday lives. For example, under the 1033 program, the Pentagon transfers surplus weapons to police departments across the country. This exacerbates violence against Black, Brown, and marginalized communities.

Military funding siphons funds away from social programs. A $100 billion cut to military spending could provide universal childcare ($70 billion), house every unhoused person ($7.4 billion), and provide universal school meals ($5.2 billion).

Together, we'll explore how U.S. foreign policy feeds racism at home and abroad and how U.S.-based campaigns can intersect with anti-militarism work.

Acudetox is a 5-point auricular acupuncture treatment created by activists, physicians, the Young Lords, and Black Panthers in New York in the 70's in response to the heroin and methadone epidemic. This treatment utilizes 5 points on the ear that create a release in the blockage of Chi associated with trauma. It has been used to relieve numerous sources of suffering including, various kinds of addiction.

Beyond these focused outcomes, and accompanied by an immersive sensory experience, Acudetox can open a window into relaxation, clarity, improved sleep, and the release of grief and tension that can last for days. It can serve as simple regular practice for the management of day-to-day impact of trauma in the body.

This session will introduce this easy and relaxing experience as provided by Dr. LJ Punch and the acudetox specialists who are part of Power4STL, represented trained and insured practitioners of auricular acupuncture. This practice includes other sources of healing, such as the burning of cleansing materials such as palo santo, the provision of herbal detox tea, the visual escape of Himalayan salt lamps, and the healing frequencies of a carefully crafted soundscape.

This session will allow participants to sit, exhale, rest, breathe, and reset to be in a better position to access the resources of the conference and to simply let chi flow. An approximate space of 8x4 ft is required for each participant, and a time window of 90 minutes is best.

Together, we will expand our knowledge and accountability to the experiences of Black trans people. Between examples from our history, real-time examples and issues, engaging conversations, and self-reflection activities, we will re-establish our role(s) in movements for racial and gender justice.

This session is about the protection, support, and thriving of people who are immeasurably impacted by historic and systemic violence. "Aliveness" is the category for this space, and we will collectively re-imagine what is needed to create holistic care for Black trans people. This session is not a naïve utopian dream nor a space for hollow performativism; it is a praxis of Radical Imagination and an intentional space for us to live into a better, safer world. All participants are welcome—regardless of their identities, scope of work, or prerequisite knowledge—as long as they are invested in fostering a community where Black trans people are liberated.

Session Objectives:
-Participants will learn about eight dimensions of aliveness and relate those dimensions to Black trans communities.
-Participants will engage in activities to set one goal for Black trans aliveness.
-Participants will develop an accountability system to sustain their role(s) in Black trans aliveness.

Since October 7, 2023, philanthropy has responded to the genocide in Palestine in shameful ways—continuing to raise money for illegal settlements, cutting funding for Palestinian-related activism, surveilling activists, weaponizing anti-Semitism to shut down criticism of Israel, and more.

There has also been unprecedented donor organizing, to support Palestinian movements in Palestine and in the US, while building with funders internationally. Grassroots International, Solidaire Network, and Women Donors Network have been on the forefront of organizing on this issue, and invite participants to strategize with us on how to disrupt entrenched philanthropic behavior in an interactive workshop to identify solutions together.

We will explore:
-What are the lessons we learned as a public foundation and donor networks as we raised funds and organized donors?
-How can funders and activists work more closely to address the harm caused by philanthropy, and accompany movements for Palestinian liberation?
-How do we integrate solidarity with Palestine into our work on racial justice and democracy?
-Can we nurture and grow internationalism in U.S. philanthropy through work on Palestine?
-What would you like to see in future strategies for mobilizing funding, donor organizing, working with frontline organizations, and integrating Palestine work into various sectors in philanthropy and activism?

Communities working with municipal agencies to advance a project are likely to encounter inequitable processes that can stunt the success of these projects. Equitable Cities has worked with government agencies from the federal to the local level and across sectors. Over time, we have developed a framework that centers equity in all our work.

Providing an opportunity to practice this approach, Equitable Cities will facilitate a role-playing activity to simulate a community planning process involving a local government agency. Prior to the activity, EC will briefly introduce their equity approach and framework.

Groups of no more than eight participants will choose between 3–4 scenarios, then attempt to reach a resolution on a community project plan using self-selected roles associated with their chosen scenario. Each role will also be assigned its own values, goals, and limitations to create a realistic discourse, with one of the required roles being a local municipal representative.

Following the activity, participants will share their resolutions with the full group, highlighting their process and how they overcame limitations.

The goal is for participants to navigate their scenario by applying aspects of the equity framework while allowing them to see their issue through some additional perspectives they are likely to encounter. Many participants have likely taken part in this process already and will be able to share past experiences with their group. Those who have not had this opportunity will be able to use this space to practice approaches that center equity in community projects.

Discover practical strategies to embed racial equity in local government through the power of data in this interactive breakout session. Drawing from Boulder's Equity Data Initiative, attendees will gain insights into crafting data-focused racial equity plans, conducting departmental equity assessments, and employing job aids for data-driven decision-making.

Engage in small group discussions to explore the effectiveness of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs measured through surveys and feedback. Dive into assessing institutional practices to foster practical application of racial equity principles within departments.

Explore the concept of decolonizing data, emphasizing community involvement in data collection, analysis, and ownership to enhance equity outcomes and foster a sense of belonging. This session will inspire participants to leverage data as a tool for transformative change, fostering environments of inclusivity and equity within governmental institutions.

Advancing racial justice is challenging, particularly in the midst of attacks on DEI, antagonistic Supreme Court decisions, and intensifying political divisions. This session is an opportunity to share experiences with other capacity builders and use the Systems Thinking Iceberg to explore factors that enable progress, even in this climate. We will explore:

A) Visions for racial justice work: what are you and the people you work with trying to achieve? We begin here because if we don’t know where we're going, any road will get us there! We will create space for you to share your dreams and goals with other participants.

B) Examples of where you’re making progress, holding ground, or losing ground as you work toward those visions. We know that progress toward racial justice isn’t a straight, upward-trending line. Even in the best of times, progress is uneven, and ground can be lost if we aren’t proactive in protecting our gains. We will create space for you to share highlights from how you are making progress, holding ground, and/or losing ground in your work.

C) Systems thinking tools to identify leverage points for enabling progress. We will introduce the Systems Thinking Iceberg and use it to explore examples of progress and determine where we can strengthen our approaches.

This session will serve as an opportunity for participants to learn about DOT priorities in advancing equity as it relates to project delivery and wealth creation. Participants will have the opportunity to hear how DOT is leveraging billions of dollars of infrastructure funding to advance wealth creation in communities across the nation. Participants will also have an opportunity to engage with DOT leadership, allowing for a mutual exchange of information for the betterment of delivering federally funded projects that begin and end with equity considerations.

The California Endowment plays an influential role within the field of philanthropy, taking bold stances to advance health and racial justice through grassroots power building of those most impacted. In the spring of 2018, foundation staff brought to executive leadership’s attention the need to activate its leadership by becoming explicit about the direct connection between U.S. structural racism, racial capitalism, and persistent poor health and life outcomes, particularly for Black, Native, and other people of color. Doing so would address the historical harms and power imbalances inherent in philanthropy and negatively impacting grantee partners and their communities. This call was especially true for grantees who were on the frontlines of movement work organizing those most impacted to advance meaningful change.

In 2018, the Endowment began its journey to build organizational anti-racist culture. The first phase of Advancing Racial Equity (A.R.E.) ushered in organization-wide commitment and learnings and increasing staff understanding of anti-Blackness and systemic racism as the driver of poor health and life outcomes. In 2020 the foundation recruited the inaugural director who led the development of "The Five Elements to a Thriving Anti-Racist Health Foundation," a set of mutually reinforcing, interdependent capacities for transforming culture and operationalizing ant-racist practice.

Presenters will share the foundation’s journey and how it has embodied democratic participation by directly engaging staff at all levels of the organization. Core to this plan is the development of a Somatic Abolitionism practice to build embodied fortitude to metabolize the historical and deeply oppressive system of white body supremacy. The work to become an anti-racist health foundation is hard but necessary. We must become the transformation we need to see in the sector and share power and truly walk in trust with our partners in the broader movement building ecosystem. This interrogation is active, constant, and necessary to fully live into values and have clarity about the foundation’s proper role as a philanthropic leader.

In 2014, a police officer killed Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, MO. A global uprising followed, sparked by the region-wide uprising’s intensity and the compelling passion of local leaders demanding change. In 2016, Forward Through Ferguson (FTF), a social-impact 501(c) (3), was established to ensure that the legacy of the Ferguson Uprising remains in the collective consciousness and political strategy of the St. Louis region.

The Ferguson Commission recommended 189 actions, including creating a sustained, community-led fund to catalyze racial equity, community healing, and justice in the region. In 2019, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Missouri Foundation for Health, and Deaconess Foundation answered the call to launch a pilot version of this fund with FTF. Through this investment, the 2020–23 pilot enabled antiracist, trust-based grantmaking infrastructure to set the foundation for new practices of Justice philanthropy. The call for such a fund acknowledged the powerful systems-wide impact potential the philanthropic sector has to advance racial equity.

More and more philanthropic organizational leaders see this, but they struggle with the "how." This session will focus on tools and lessons of how FTF’s Build Racial Equity Capacity (BREC) team has worked with philanthropic leaders, including: organizational racial equity capacity assessments, education to build capacity, the philanthropy-specific Racial Equity Roundtable cohort model, and key lessons from the pilot fund.

Activities will engage key components of BREC’s approach: building a network of radically collaborative leaders to grapple with next practices, and infusing racial equity principles and processes into organizational transformation plans.

The National Equity Atlas is a first-of-its-kind data and policy tool for the community leaders and policymakers who are working to build a new economy that is equitable, resilient, and prosperous. It is a comprehensive resource for data to track, measure, and make the case for racial equity and inclusive prosperity in America’s regions, states, and nationwide.

The Atlas contains data on demographic change, racial and economic inclusion, and the potential economic gains from racial equity for the largest 100 cities, 430 large counties, the largest 150 regions, all 50 states, and the United States as a whole.

In this session, participants will learn about the National Equity Atlas’ approach to data equity and research justice in developing analyses and working with community-based organizations to advance equitable policies. Participants will hear about examples of research done in partnership with community organizers that utilize a research justice framework. Presenters will provide a demonstration of the National Equity Atlas and how users can access and leverage disaggregated data.

The session also includes a hands-on activity for participants to engage with the resource and collaborate with each other. By the end of the session, participants will learn how to use the Atlas as a tool for finding disaggregated data and local strategies to support their work.

Every neighborhood can be a pathway to opportunity and prosperity for the people who call it home, but race often determines the ease of that pathway. Purpose Built Communities and the Purpose Built Network partner with local residents to execute a holistic model for equitable neighborhood revitalization in communities around the country experiencing the effects of historic and chronic race-based disinvestment.

Part of the success of our work depends on a new narrative. In 2020, we engaged the FrameWorks Institute to help us unpack the story being told versus what story we should be telling to affirm people, place, and race. Those efforts birthed the "Where We Thrive narrative project," which launched in 2023 and gives advocates more complete and considerate language for talking about the beauty of Black and Brown neighborhoods while highlighting the historic and ongoing harms through policy and practice.

Session participants will:
1) Learn about best practices for a collaborative research process;
2) Receive practical recommendations and strategies for telling affirming stories about neighbors and neighborhoods and communicating with dignity; and
3) Learn about how to best engage residents and local partners in shared narrative change efforts.

Participants will have an opportunity to apply these lessons to their own work and ask questions for shared learning.

Whether it is expressing solidarity with human rights in Palestine, amplifying the demands of queer and trans community members, or making connections between immigrant, climate, and racial justice movements, constructing narratives is a challenging process generally, but even more so during times of crisis and conflict.

How do organizations move through internal disagreements around values and political analysis? What happens when groups don't have solid partnerships with communities that they wish to be in solidarity with?

Solidarity Is at Building Movement Project and Transgender Law Center have supported many groups that have struggled to uplift solidarity narratives due to a misalignment of values, political differences, or community criticism.

During this session, we will bring our expertise, lessons learned, and resources to participants. The session will use an interactive approach that includes brief presentations, scenario workshopping, reflection questions, and peer exchange. Additionally, participants will receive tools, guides, and resources to strengthen their capacity to develop strategic solidarity narratives and practices within their organizations.

A powerful strategic communication tool is the opinion editorial. Opinion editorials run opposite the editorial page in printed publications, and in the opinion section on online platforms. These pieces inform local, state, and federal officials on a host of topics and can influence how policymakers and the public view a given issue.

Opinion pieces are also a phenomenal way to advance one's message and change the narrative on a host of topics. To build capacity, organizers and advocates should know how to write and publish their thought leadership, and this workshop will show you how.

Learn from experts who write, edit, and pitch opinion essays regularly. In 2023, Spotlight PR LLC edited, wrote, and pitched for publication more than 55 opinion essays. We know what works and can show you how to write in your own voice and share that voice with the world.

Love within the U.S. context is often defined in overly individualistic, anemic, and depoliticized ways. It is discussed almost exclusively in the context of romance and its familial dimensions. Why? What of love and its role in social transformation?

Grounded in Black liberation theology and Black feminist thought, this session will interrogate the Westernized construction of love. It will analyze the ways in which the everyday notion of love operates as a tool of oppression and perpetuates white supremacist ideology to shape our social realities, desirability, and diminish our possibilities for social transformation.

Instead, this session will offer us all an opportunity to interrogate what love is, how we have been socialized by it, and how it shapes our capacity to lead change and hold each other with loving accountability within the moment. Ultimately, this session is about reconceptualizing love in ways that help us resist erasure and dehumanization, and defining it in ways that help us heal.

We will explore a Critical Theory of Love framework to interrogate our own social justice practices to ensure that we are not perpetuating oppression, but instead helping ourselves and others discover their power and heal. If love is going to be the transformative intervention we need in this moment, then love must be operationalized in ways that ensure our individual and collective healing and wholeness.

Too often, philanthropy gets in the way and old habits die hard. The importance of funding narrative power building in support of liberation and racial equity is critical—but how?

In this session, participants are invited to join the Weissberg Foundation for a panel discussion with Black and Indigenous movement organizers using narrative strategy as a tool for liberation. Speakers include:
- Savannah Romero (Eastern Shoshone), the co-founder of BLIS Collective
- Joe Tolbert, Jr., the Executive Director of Waymakers Collective
- hermelinda cortes, the Executive Director of ReFrame

We’ll discuss the importance of narrative strategy in the Reparations and LandBack movements, their vision for a just world, and how the work of organizers reaches both within and across communities to offer a collective vision of a path forward.

Throughout the panel, learn from speakers as they draw from their experiences working on issues at both state and national levels, the power of challenging narratives that support oppressive systems, and the work we still have to do to build solidarity across communities.

Lastly, we’ll discuss how philanthropy has created barriers to this work but how the field can shift and find better ways to support narrative power building for collective liberation.

The norm of the Western Canon privileges the white, cis-gendered male experience while it marginalizes and dehumanizes everyone else. Through storytelling and examples of professional productions on stage, podcast, and screen, we will interrogate and explore how we can deconstruct these biases and find opportunities to re-center multi-identity artists in new cultural models.

In this session, we will unpack our history’s inequitable practices in cultural arts and present ideas that challenge socialized assumptions. We will lift up real-life examples and what we learned from pushing back and taking ownership of art in the image of our diverse world. We will leave the session having stretched our radical imagination and created visionary fiction that inspires our work forward.