2024 Program:
Healing
Thursday November 21
What is the role of civic trauma in our political reality? And how can this frame offer us a way to build new coalitions that catalyze the power we have to win and govern in unapologetically progressive ways?
This workshop will start with the concept of civic trauma, how we measure and map its impact, and how it offers a frame to unite communities across different histories. Participants will then dive into two projects that build civic healing to activate community power in elections and governance:
-The first, a voter guide co-created by over 1000 residents who debated hundreds of ideas to center the election narrative on what mattered most to them.
- The second, a community-led budgeting process launched in the midst of the uprisings to disrupt the public discourse pitting residents against each other.
In illustrating these case studies, participants will engage with real-life examples that offer countless adaptations to fuel progressive change and build wider frames of belonging in civic systems. Built and implemented in Chicago, these examples offer lessons that apply to electoral and issued-based organizing in both widely progressive and deeply divided communities across the country.
This breakout session will be structured into two parts. First, the current JIC Co-Chairs will present a history of the Just Imperative Committee. This will include the overview of the committee and its objective, as well as key challenges, wins, and learning lessons from the three year-long detailed Truth, Accountability, Repair, and Healing Process (TARH). For instance, the Foundation now has two dedicated staff members in the newly created equity office. We will present from our reparative action steps should our proposal move forward. This part of the session will close by highlighting the work that lies ahead for the committee. Second, the session will have an interactive component where session participants will have an opportunity to reflect on their own organizations’ internal equity and inclusion journey. This part of the session will include small group discussion guided by a reflection guide and an opportunity for participants to share their organizational experiences and to learn from the experiences of others. By the end of the session, we hope that participants have learned about MacArthur Foundation’s recent equity and inclusion journey; had an opportunity to reflect on, and share, their organizational experiences; and have learned from the equity and inclusion journeys of other organizations.
As our country undergoes major political shifts, it’s essential to focus on hyperlocal strategies that promote financial and social equity for ourselves and our communities. This session explores how to build solidarity economies and unity to address the racial wealth gap.
Through presentations, discussions, and interactive activities, speakers will share data and community-informed approaches to advancing hyperlocal economies for Black, Indigenous, Latine, and Asian American communities.
Miguel Algarin will outline the work of Living Cities' Closing the Gaps Cohort, demonstrating how partnerships with city governments and community organizations are helping local leaders leverage needs assessments, data, and technical assistance to advance wealth building pathways via home and business ownership. Miguel will discuss several strategies including shared ownership, community land trusts, local business incubation, and other innovative approaches we aim to support in our cities.
Kellee Coleman, from the City of Austin, will share her experiences engaging residents to shape local programs and policies, including efforts to boost homeownership and business ownership for BIPOC communities in Austin and her work building successful connections between local community organizations and city government.
Participants will walk away with an expanded toolkit of ways to collaborate with residents to name and address challenges in their respective communities, as well as a case study from the City of Austin about how they are leveraging community feedback to expand BIPOC homeownership. Join us to learn practical solutions for a more equitable housing landscape, where all individuals have the opportunity to thrive and build intergenerational wealth.
Join us for an engaging workshop where we’ll introduce the "Health Equity Narrative House," a powerful narrative change tool designed to foster a healthier, fairer, and more just society. Inspired by bell hooks’ words, “Choosing love, we also choose to live in community, and that means that we do not have to change by ourselves. We can change together,” this workshop will explore how collective efforts can drive meaningful change.
In September 2023, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) launched the Health Equity Narrative Lab (HEN Lab) with 29 diverse participants, including practitioners, strategists, organizers, artists, and funders. Together, they identified the narrative barriers to health equity and co-created the “Health Equity Narrative House.” This framework highlights the interconnected nature of these barriers and the need for a unified strategy to overcome them.
Throughout the HEN Lab, it became clear that a strong, cohesive movement for health equity is essential. This movement must be driven by clear goals and visions from those actively involved. Transforming narratives requires a multifaceted approach: building power, using art and stories, sharing content widely, and continuously welcoming new members into the movement.
We are excited to share the Health Equity Narrative House with you. This tool will be invaluable for advocates, storytellers, and strategists, helping to unify and amplify the voices dedicated to health equity. Join us to learn how you can contribute to and benefit from this transformative narrative framework.
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.
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.
This workshop will demonstrate how descendants of enslaved Afrobobe people have reclaimed their heritage by reconnecting to their roots in one of the smallest countries in Africa named Equatorial Guinea. It is the only Spanish speaking country in Africa. A map will be laid out as the presenter steps through the events that removed Africans from their island and forced to five particular countries across the world. Despite language barriers, descendants within the diaspora have reconnected with family and their native villages in addition those who remain spread across other lands that became home.
Although small in size, the Afrobobe people have proven time and time again that they are mighty in power by building resilience despite the many ways and forms that white supremacy and colonization attempts to carry out centuries old plans, efforts and narratives designed to wipe out the Afrobobo Tribe, ancestral memories, spiritual values and its language off planet earth. Tools and projects created by diasporans to preserve their culture and how it inspires and ignites unity amongst their society and tribe will be shared. Resisting the plan for “No Return” is a wild dream come true – our collective unity is making a powerful story and changing the narrative!
Afrobobe descendants is a living and breathing intergenerational framework that keeps the rites of passage and dream alive in enriching, empowering and sustainable ways through film, magazines, podcast, poetry, art and fashion. We are the wild dream come true, sho'nuff for our ancestors!
“White Women Cry and Call Me Angry” is neither a call out of white women nor a call in. It is about the author’s ability to name what happened to her during the decade she spent fighting for racial justice in the DC philanthropic sector. It is about her ability to find community with others who have had similar experiences, regardless of where they work. It is another step toward healing.
This 90-minute session will explore racism in the workplace—interpersonal, institutional, and structural. We will also do a deep dive on three of the book’s most important themes—weathering, mental health, and pleasure. Weathering describes the accelerated aging of Black women’s bodies due to racism related stress. Mental health implications of that stress will also be discussed as well. Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic” as a way to undergird our discussion of the theme of pleasure.
In the second half of the conversation, we will discuss the writing and self-publishing journey; the role of Black women in the author’s decision to publish; and the need for more stories by Black women and other women of color. We will close by talking about the response to the book; how books influence narratives and can lead to spaces for collective discernment and healing; and what’s next for the author as a facilitator of healing spaces. The author will share a short sizzle reel of the film adaptation of the book, which is currently in production.
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.
Friday November 22
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.