2024 Program:
Disability Rights
Thursday November 21
Too often, people of color face bias and barriers when trying to access vital healthcare services. Racial disparities in the healthcare sector are deep and persistent, reflecting systemic inequities. Individuals are often blamed for their own health outcomes and burdened with navigating a complex and unjust healthcare system. How can communities most impacted by healthcare disparities (especially people of color and low-income communities) organize and advocate for the services they need and deserve? This session will provide the space to explore different community organizing approaches that: explicitly addresses racial systemic inequities people face when seeking vital quality healthcare; centers the leadership needs of directly-impacted people of color and marginalized communities, and, focuses on building grassroots collective power to challenge and transform existing health care institutions and policies in order to make them more accessible, affordable, and equitable. We'll explore grassroots organizing initiatives in the healthcare sector and invite participants to share experiences, strategies, and insights.
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.
Friday November 22
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.