2024 Program: Breakout Block 3
Friday November 22
Isolation is an unseen and under-discussed tool of control used to perpetuate mass incarceration. For the 1 in 2 Black women with an incarcerated loved one, that isolation has widespread political impact.
Learn how Essie Justice Group is using the power of isolation-breaking as part of a Black Feminist organizing model to drive social change. This workshop will bring attendees in on the disproportionate harms of incarceration to Black women, uncover the radical power of connection, and uplift key insights, tactics, and strategies attendees can leverage in movement-building work.
You will hear from Essie Justice Group organizers about how women with incarcerated loved ones are caregivers and the strategic backbones of their families, rooted in lived experience, ancestral strategies, and the leadership development that results from graduating from Essie Justice Group’s Healing to Advocacy Program: advocating for self, advocating for family, and advocating for community.
Despite a deep, significant, and long-standing commitment to liberal and progressive causes in the U.S., at the current moment this historical role of Jewish philanthropy is in grave danger. Conservative mega-donors, Israel | Palestine, the power of whiteness, relative affluence, and increasing antisemitism have combined to shift major Jewish institutions, foundations, and donors to the right in recent years (and months since Oct. 7). Put another way: The progressive movement needs Jews, and Jews need the progressive movement – and the right-ward lurch of Jewish philanthropy is putting both in jeopardy. Join New Jewish Philanthropy Project for a panel conversation grappling with this clear and present threat to progressive and Black and brown-led movements for justice in the U.S. Nothing is off the table as we talk Israel | Palestine, antisemitism, and strengthening American Jewish commitment to inclusive, multiracial democracy and the people and movements who will get us there.
This conversation is meant to be an aspirational moment grounded in forecasting, to discuss the nexus of climate migration, and what we will see in cities, towns and legislation unless we begin to thoughtfully think about the future from a climate migration perspective. It is meant to be equal parts visioning and connection to concrete reality through the specific experiences and insights of audience members and the panelist.
Climate migration is often framed in terms that are fear-based, but there is an opportunity to think about the central value of culture—both those we identify with, and that which we want to create—in how we confront the reality of climate migration and its relationship with race and politics at all levels.
Through the panelists sharing a framework for dreaming forward, and audience member participation in small group work, this breakout session is meant to be a time of generative discussion, planning and visioning.
We see this as a starting point for collaboration, networking, information sharing and collective dreaming, to seed a collective approach to climate migration that is based on dignity, not fear.
Do you fund or build organizational capacity for racial justice? If you facilitate or fund learning, strategy development, healing, team building, coaching, organizational change, and more to advance racial justice, this session is for you.
In this generative peer exchange, we’ll build community and share ideas about engaging tough issues, including:
*Embodying racial justice in organizational operations and programming
*Countering the attacks on equity and inclusion, and retrenchment on racial justice commitments
*Power dynamics between BIPOC groups
*Accountable whiteness
*Building and redistributing power to develop a racially just and liberatory culture
This session will include community building, peer exchanges, and space for emerging ideas. We will reflect on power and break into peer-exchange groups to explore specific questions, including: what does accountability look like? How can we be advocates for capacity building work that embodies racial justice? What is our responsibility in this post-election time to contribute to the movement for racial justice?
Facilitators are from the Deep Equity Practitioners Network (DEPn), a network focused on creating spaces for learning and strengthening the racial justice capacity building field. Founded at Facing Race 2018, when Race Forward organized a pre-conference session for capacity builders where participants lifted up shared values, a vision of liberated organizations and communities, DEPn is working to build a space to explore different approaches to building organizational capacity, ways to build power that advances racial justice in and through organizations, and ways to influence the ecosystem that supports capacity building work.
Two community coalitions share how they shift local community power by embedding racial equity values into collective decision-making structures. They will discuss the structures for equitable governance and community engagement that allow their work to be led by and accountable to communities of color.
They will share the tools they use to ensure their community development and health equity policy priorities emerge from and are vetted by communities of color and address the root causes of the injustices baked into our housing and land systems. Some tools shared will include power mapping, root cause analysis, and policy prioritization, as well as models for collective governance that leverage the many resources, experiences, and knowledge from partners.
A conversation will be facilitated about the inside/outside strategies these coalitions use to work with allied institutions. This will explore how they maintain their coalition’s commitment to systems change and community decision-making while collaborating with partners who have varying degrees of commitment to racial equity.
The presenters will investigate the common themes and obstacles that emerge across places and points of deviation, while encouraging participants to consider how similar efforts might look in their own communities. The session will be designed for participants to engage in conversations about deepening racial equity analysis and practices in their own place-based and systems change work and decision-making processes.
Participants will leave with a set of tools and practices around community ownership, coalition building, and collective governance structures to bring back to their own communities.
Neighborhood Leadership Fellows (NLF) is an advanced 9-month fellowship aimed at increasing and amplifying the voices of residents from the St. Louis Promise Zone (North St. Louis City and parts of North County) in civic decision-making spaces in order to produce more equitable regional policies for strong neighborhoods.
Developed by the University of Missouri—St. Louis, University of Missouri Extension, and the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership in collaboration with community leaders, NLF supports current and future leadership in the STL Promise Zone region—an area that is 88.8% Black according to the 2020 census—for those who want to make change at the systems level.
By equipping individuals to access the halls of power via seats on boards, commissions, and elected office, NLF addresses policy inequities and pushes towards systemic change, ultimately building a more racially just future. Fellows work together during and after the program to create policy opportunities and planning documents that address regional inequities.
Panelists will be NLF Alumni and will speak to measurable outcomes achieved locally and statewide as a result of their collaboration with other alumni and the role of lived experiences in leadership and community voice that led to their individual and collective success.
For the interactive portion of the session, presenters will lead small group dialogues on increasing resident leadership in audience communities to achieve a more equitable and racially just future. Groups will have the opportunity to share key takeaways.
In this moment, the rise of authoritarianism and increased attacks on democracy call for Black-led movements to have sustainable long-term strategies that include defensive tactics that protect Black communities, and offensive strategies that address the root causes of economic disparities. The urgency in confronting criminalization, gentrification and exploitation of Black communities often leads funders to focus on supporting short-term, “winnable” reformist campaigns, which limits grassroots organizing and community power building.
This session will offer a deep dive into the power of investing in transformative community-led organizations working at the intersection of racial and economic justice in Detroit, Michigan. In this session, you will hear from Black community organizers and their philanthropic partner on effective ways to fund community organizations to win, and how to prioritize the needs of Black movements while centering impacted voices in strategy and solutions.
Housing, employment, criminalization, land rights, and racial justice are just a few areas that make up this crucial intersectional work. This session will highlight recent successes in Detroit, home to the nation’s largest Black-majority city, as a case study for this discussion.
Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, Detroit Justice Center and Detroit Peoples Platform will discuss with attendees innovative ways to support and implement successful campaigns for economic security and stability in Black communities. This session is open to funders and organizations who support or want to engage in organizing, power building, and supporting strategic campaigns in Black communities.
This session will invite participants to share their current definitions of and orientation to community healing and healing justice. The workshop will analyze the current climate of racial justice and de-carceral movement work and explore the various cultural nuances of healing to explore how healing justice practice can be leveraged across cultures and communities. Using the St. Louis-based InPower Institute’s Black Healers Collective as a case study, we will invite participants to share how healing justice frameworks can be effectively applied.
Participants will be invited to identify the ways in which they already practice healing work, and dream up strategies to build and sustain community-led approaches to care and crisis intervention in the midst of co-optation by state and corporate entities, relationship ruptures, and deep burnout. Leveraging somatic models and practices such as sites of shaping, we will identify the deep needs and strengths that must be highlighted at individual, interpersonal, local, and organizational levels to recover and move forward in our local work toward racial justice and non-carceral approaches toward safety and accountability. The workshop will end with experiential healing and embodiment practices that participants can bring back to their communities and teams.
We will be sharing two stories of coalitions working alongside agency staff to achieve significant wins for communities facing the brunt of the housing and displacement crises. We will devote a substantial portion of the breakout to questions and an active conversation about the lessons learned in both cities. In Seattle, organizers were able to leverage the update to the City’s Comprehensive plan in 2015 to win $16 million in funding for community-led anti-displacement projects.
Speakers will share stories from the initial formation of the Equitable Development Initiative, how a few rogue planners shifted the conversation, and how a one-time allocation grew to $25 million in annual funding from progressive revenue. In NYC, organizers built power by raising awareness about racialized displacement and inequality in land use decision-making. This led to passing new land use reporting requirements and creating a comprehensive data tool. The tool analyzes changes in lived environments and demographics across time, geography, and race.
Speakers will share stories about the organizing strategy that led to the passage of Local Law 78. They will also discuss how collaboration with key members of the Departments of City Planning and Housing and Preservation resulted in a robust new data tool for building community power.
An effective, long-standing tradition of midwifery steeply declined after 1910, when the Flexner Report recommended that women deliver their babies in hospitals and midwifery be abolished, making the case that all medical practitioners should have standardized training. But because medical education was rife with racial inequities, this transition away from midwifery had a particular adverse effect on Black mothers and babies. Join Jamaa Birth Village founder Okunsola M. Amadou as she presents a historical overview, shares the organization’s work of training people to serve as midwives and doulas, transforming Black Maternal Health in St. Louis and Missouri over the course of 10 years.
Anti-Palestinian racism is at an all time high but many can not recognize it when they see it. Learn the ways that Anti-Palestinian Racism manifests in our institutions and is normalized structurally between institutions impacting not only Palestinians, but also Arabs, Muslims, and others. In order to effectively dismantle racism, it’s important to recognize it, but then work towards intentionally dismantling it. This breakout session will go over roots in Islamophobia and the unique ways anti-Palestinian racism manifests and what people in Government (including all institutions) and in the public can work together to dismantle it. Learn lessons from local organizers in NJ who are organizing to build power for inclusive communities for everyone.
"Transforming Local Government through Equity-Centered Coaching" will focus on the ways the Department of Race & Equity at the City of San Diego has implemented an equity-centered coaching program. A portion of this session will be dedicated to sharing the system that was created to shift the organization’s thinking about equity in departmental decisions on policy, budget, and programming.
Participants will then be broken out into small groups to engage in an experiential activity that will help demonstrate the importance of coaching and the skills needed to effectively coach department leaders. Lastly, session attendees will walk away with ideas on how they might begin to set up a coaching program in their organization or government entity. This will include some tools that can be replicated in their own institution.
In this impactful breakout session, we will delve into the complex issue of systemic racism within the context of homelessness, with a focus on centering the voices and experiences of those with lived experience.
Through interactive discussions, and personal reflections, participants will explore the root causes of racial inequities in homelessness and the importance of centering lived experience in creating effective solutions. We will examine the intersectionality of race, homelessness, and systemic oppression, recognizing that individuals experiencing homelessness often face multiple forms of discrimination.
By centering the voices of those with lived experience, we can gain valuable insights into the unique challenges faced by marginalized communities and develop more inclusive and equitable approaches to solving homelessness and creating an adaptable system.
This workshop will provide government racial equity officers, policymakers, and administrators with practical tools and strategies to advance racial equity within government agencies by integrating restorative practices into the local government landscape.
Restorative Practices is an indigenous power-sharing framework that can improve authentic communication, acknowledge the harms of institutional racism, develop equitable staff and community engagement, and strengthen institutional accountability—critical components of racial equity work. Restorative practices offer a framework to build community and institutional capacity to achieve a more equitable future.
In this interactive workshop, participants will:
1. Comprehensively understand restorative practices, including their principles, values, and applications within government settings;
2. Identify specific areas within their government agencies where restorative practices can promote racial equity and address systemic injustices;
3. Learn strategies for fostering inclusive and supportive environments within government agencies, emphasizing collaboration, empathy, and power-shifting;
4. Work collaboratively to create actionable plans for implementing restorative practices within their respective government departments, including identifying key stakeholders, setting goals, and establishing metrics for success;
5. Discuss common challenges and resistance to implementing restorative practices within government settings and develop strategies for overcoming them; and
6. Assess the effects of restorative practices on advancing racial equity within their agencies, including collecting feedback, measuring outcomes, and making necessary adjustments.
By incorporating these principles into government policies and procedures, participants will learn how to create more inclusive and equitable environments that prioritize the needs of marginalized communities. Join us!
Centering equity in public policy is critical to the economic growth and development of healthy, welcoming, resilient communities, where all residents can thrive. This workshop will support public administrators with key takeaways on social equity as a core value of service and alignment in day-to-day operations, policies, budgets, and other essential decision-making processes. Using Dallas’ first comprehensive Racial Equity Plan as a case study, this session will:
Outline big-picture approaches of leading equity in local government; describe practical ways to support understanding around the collective positive impact and need for equity in city government; identify key components to drive equity in your organization; offer real applications on how to use a variety of tools and strategies to advance social equity. Join us to learn more about how to advance equity through policies, procedures and practices as we highlight successes, lessons learned, and next steps to close disparities in Dallas, Texas.
Help shape the future of California’s new Racial Equity Commission. In this interactive session, participants will learn about this new body and share wisdom and experience to help advance racial equity in government.
Participants will learn about the multi-year advocacy efforts to establish the Commission, get an update on progress so far, and provide guidance as the Commission seeks to develop a racial equity framework for the state. As this work is underway, we seek guidance from you—racial equity practitioners across the nation—so we can capture the best ideas, tools, strategies, and resources and bring them back as we move this work forward.
In 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom established the state’s first Racial Equity Commission via Executive Order N-16-22, after two years of tireless advocacy from the independent Coalition for the California Racial Equity Coalition (C-REC)—consisting of grassroots organizations, racial justice and equity-focused nonprofits, and community advocates.
The Executive Order outlines the Commission’s roles and responsibilities, which include developing a framework, best practices, technical assistance, and resources to address the legacy of institutional and systemic racism in California’s government policies and programs.
Presenters include:
1) Dr. Larissa Estes, inaugural Executive Director of the Commission
2) Julia Caplan, Executive Director of State of Equity, which has provided racial equity capacity building to over 50 California state government entities through the Capitol Collaborative on Race and Equity
3) Maria Barakat of the Greenlining Institute, who co-leads the grassroots coalition C-REC
Local government staff actively seek resources to help advance their internal and external racial equity efforts, such as resources on conducting equity-related assessments, engaging and empowering community members, and equitably allocating resources, among others. To meet this need, the Urban Institute’s Office of Race and Equity Research (ORER) launched the Equity Resource Navigator: an open-access, user-centric tool for local government officials to find resources to help them embed equity into different areas of their work. Ongoing discussions with our GARE colleagues have also informed the development of a Racial Equity Continuum that grounds this work in several stages and focus areas for practitioners to contextualize where they are along their racial equity journeys, as well as to help them define resources and supports needed to advance. In this interactive workshop, ORER will introduce the Navigator and connect local practitioners and other stakeholders to a wide range of resources meant to facilitate and advance racial equity efforts. We will first contextualize this work using insights and stories we have heard from localities that drove the need for the Navigator. Then, we’ll demo the Navigator and introduce some use cases for resources in the Navigator before moving to small groups to discuss potential applications of tools in practitioners’ daily work, as well as to have a broader discussion on equity work at the local level, gaps and opportunities in the field, and ways in which Urban can support this work. This session is for local practitioners and other organizations seeking resources to support their teams as they conduct racial equity work. We hope this workshop further contextualizes participants’ understandings of their community’s racial equity work and presents useful and actionable resources that practitioners can take away and share with their teams.
Narratives, stories, and messages not only shift people’s hearts and minds, they also shape institutions and policies. As it turns out, they also influence elections.
Narratives rooted in racist, transphobic, and sexist beliefs were at the core of Trump’s second win. These narratives also helped dismantle key equity policies, such as Affirmative Action and Roe s. Wade.
There is good reason to believe that the LGBTQIA+ community will be one of the nation’s most vulnerable groups in the next few years. This election cycle was filled with homophobic and transphobic narratives that undermined the community’s dignity and humanity, with trans people of color being impacted in a disproportionate way. In our analysis, these narratives deploy a binary construction of gender to police and control peoples’ bodies, and are deeply rooted in fascism and authoritarianism. A true multiracial democratic society must foster our collective freedoms, including those of queer, trans, and non-binary people.
This session will offer narrative tools that can be applied to many issue areas and topics, using narratives centered on queer and trans folks both as case studies and ways of surfacing narrative strategies that advance gender and racial equity.
In this session, attendees will:
- Learn to use tools and analysis that can be used to develop narrative and messaging strategies for equity within their organizations and communities.
- Engage in deep analysis of the core narratives at the root of homophobia and transphobia while outlining their connections to fascism, racism, and other systems of oppression.
- Practice crafting narratives that recognize and advance the dignity, humanity, and liberation of LGBTQIA+ communities.
A clear narrative strategy rooted in our values of equity, love, and justice will be key not just to our survival but also to our collective liberation.
Organized in the format of a panel discussion and presenting mini case studies, this session will discuss terms like "Narrative Justice," "proximate leader," "intermediary," "philanthropy," and others. Practitioners, activists, and organizations are invited to consider the power of language in influencing audiences to embrace change toward greater racial and ethnic justice.
Panelists include leaders in the field of seeding social innovation around the globe and social chnge communications professionals advancing systems transformation through messaging. Collectively, they will discuss how we can evolve language in service of the vision of change by centering the voices of leaders from Black and brown communities.
This discussion aims to provide a framework and opportunity to identify key language themes, phrases, or words. These insights will be useful for audience members interested in driving narrative change in their own organizations and communities, particularly around racial justice.
What is possible when you have your basic needs met? What choices would you make? What art would you make? Care, creativity, and community action are integral to a healthy society, yet many of the people doing that important work live with financial instability. What if we could change that?
Through videos, self-reflection, and discussion, we’ll define the guaranteed income movement and ground it in the US context of Black women’s organizing movements. We’ll hear stories from people whose lives have been impacted by guaranteed income, and we’ll pull out themes from their voices as we think about our own money stories as a part of our economic and racial justice organizing work. We’ll talk about the narratives that underlie guaranteed income, because it’s more than a check.
And finally, we will place guaranteed income within the larger context of the solidarity economy, which teaches us to dispel harmful beliefs about the US social safety net and poverty and instead radically imagine a world where everyone deserves investment, financial security, and care.
Intended to provoke curiosity and to provide compelling stories that move from personal accountability to systemic injustice, Everyone Is Essential will equip participants with an understanding and/or deepen their understanding of a real policy solution that we can fight for right now.
What is home? A deeper exploration than where we are simply "from," this session invites participants to make connections between home, homeland, and belonging. In spaces never meant for us, how do we reclaim our feeling of home as a memory or a place? Meenakshi Verma-Agrawal and Christopher Tse will utilize small group work and storytelling to facilitate questions like: “Is home something we are creating or something we left behind?” “Is home safety, struggle, or both?” and “Can any of us truly be home on stolen land?”
The BIPOC experience of home has always been and continues to be informed by systemic violence and the demands of the empire. For those of us born into colonial projects with darker skin and coarser hair, we’ve checked the box as "Other" within the USA or Canada. Our mother tongues will always be too foreign, our food too pungent, our ambition too overzealous. Every child of a non-white diaspora knows what it feels like to have their ethnicity perpetually prefixed to their nationality; it is a permanent hyphen.
In a time of mass displacement and forced migration from conflict, capitalism, and climate crisis, these conversations are only more urgent. This session is for everyone who has struggled to find their place in the hyphen, for those longing for home, and for those committed to reimagining home for themselves.
In 2022, Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality (AACRE) launched a major strategic effort to build narrative power that reinforces shared progressive values across Asian American communities and empowers action toward an inclusive vision of healing and justice.
AACRE launched a narrative strategy lab in partnership with the Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy and Asian American Futures to define a set of guiding aspirational narratives for AACRE’s work. Then, they engaged over 40 artist-activists (“artivists”) to launch a multi-sensory, immersive installation in San Francisco Chinatown in partnership with Edge on the Square. They hope to engage older teens and young adults across the AA diaspora to embrace values of activism, justice, and racial solidarity as they come to understand how these values are embedded in AA cultures and have informed AA history.
This understanding can counter negative stereotypes (i.e., that AA people are passive in the face of injustice, that AA communities are isolated and insular) and prompt young people toward new depths of reflection, collaboration, and civic action. This session will offer an introduction to arts-based narrative strategy. Then, we will share how others can advance a culture-based narrative strategy across a broad network, with interactive arts activities exploring the strategies AACRE has developed.
Antisemitism has become an increasingly prevalent force in American society, where it is regularly weaponized to further social division, isolation, intolerance, and hatred and frequently succeeds at undermining progressive movements for equality. Generally perceived as a "Jewish problem," many Americans fail to take antisemitism seriously as a threat to both American democracy and racial justice efforts.
This hands-on, interactive workshop—facilitated by two veteran racial justice organizers—will guide participants through an exploration of what’s missing from our public discourse on antisemitism, anti-racism, and inclusive democracy, what’s changed in the organizing landscape since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, and what the moment now requires of us.
Participants will be given tools to help identify when antisemitism is being weaponized against progressive movements. We will also workshop strategies for sustaining multiracial, multifaith coalitions and for more effective justice-oriented advocacy and organizing in the face of targeted attacks. This session is intentionally designed to help participants—both Jewish and non-Jewish—thoughtfully navigate these very challenging waters.
In August 2014, the shooting of Mike Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, MO, and the subsequent lack of indictment for his killer, brought attention to police brutality and militarization against Black communities in the U.S. This sparked widespread protests with "Black Lives Matter" becoming a rallying cry.
Palestinian American activist Bassem Masri, involved in the protests, drew parallels between the state's response in Ferguson and tactics used against Palestinians, like tear gas and militarized force. During this time, Israel was also assaulting Gaza, resulting in thousands of Palestinian deaths.
Solidarity between the Black and Palestinian liberation movements grew, with Palestinians offering advice and support to Ferguson protesters. This solidarity was visible in Ferguson, with Palestinian flags flown and Palestinians organizing a solidarity contingent to Ferguson in October.
These events in 2014 reignited joint efforts between Black and Palestinian liberation movements. This solidarity aimed to challenge oppressive systems globally and locally, emphasizing the need to confront racism, militarization, and injustice both abroad and within the United States.
In the past decade, this solidarity has only flourished. Two organizers from St. Louis who organized during the Ferguson uprisings, one Black and one Palestinian, will lead a conversation reflecting on a decade of renewed solidarity.
This breakout session, titled “Energizing Justice,” proposes an innovative approach to dismantling systemic racism by integrating the concept of energy justice into racial equity efforts. Set against the backdrop of New York City's vibrant history of activism and the transformative power of people in Black, Latinx, and People of Color communities, our session will explore how clean energy initiatives can catalyze community empowerment and systemic change.
“Energizing Justice” is a 90-minute interactive workshop designed to help attendees understand how the transition to renewable energy—a powerful tool—can advance racial justice. The session will combine a panel discussion featuring activists and experts in renewable energy and racial equity, hands-on art projects, and group activities to foster a participatory and solutions-oriented environment.
Have you ever wondered how the world of gender diversity across humanity has been reduced to only "two genders"? This workshop is an introduction to the past and present connections between race, colonialism, and the gender binary.
Participants will interactively explore how the gender binary operates through white supremacy, and how it was constructed to support exclusive notions of “civilized” manhood and womanhood. Participants will discuss, reflect on, and learn about sex and gender through the lens of race and imperialism, analyzing how racial hierarchies have evolved over time through gender norms.
We'll also build tools and shared language to discuss gender identity and expression through a Black feminist lens. Through a race-explicit lens, participants will learn and discuss:
-How racial hierarchies have evolved over time through gender violence
-The stories of transgender and gender non-conforming African/Indigenous people who resisted colonialism and the gender binary, beginning at least 400 before the Stonewall riots
-Educating and agitating to dismantle these systems through a Black queer feminist lens
Eliminating transphobia from our world requires examining not only bigotry, but also, the political and economic interests of wealthy and powerful people. By the end of this workshop, participants will have a better understanding of how the gender binary functions systemically to maintain white, wealthy, cisgender men and women at the top of a human hierarchy. This workshop will be facilitated by Justice Gaines and Malcolm Shanks.