2024 Program:
Innovations in Racial Justice

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.

From Atlanta to Palestine, organizers are facing unprecedented attacks on the right to protest, including repressive laws designed to silence dissent across issue areas. In this session, you’ll hear from:

- Kamau Franklin, the Founder and Executive Director of Community Movement Builders, which has been leading the fight to StopCopCity since its construction was announced.
-Julia Bacha, the director of the documentary "Boycott" and the Creative Director at Just Vision, an organization that fills s a media gap on Israel-Palestine through independent storytelling.

Presenters will share media clips and other compelling visual materials to illustrate this issue and efforts to push back. For years, lawfare tactics have been used to silence organizers for racial justice and Palestinian advocacy across the U.S. and beyond.

For Palestinian advocacy, the trend is especially sharp in local legislatures, where 36 states have laws on the books that aim to silence those boycotting Israel based on its human rights record. Similarly, StopCopCity organizers are facing legislation that penalizes essential organizing methods, criminalizing everything from the use of burner phones to charitable bail funds, impacting the ecosystem of who can protest, dissent, and organize for their communities.

With these laws spreading quickly across the US, the speakers will share about techniques used to push back and the importance of cross-movement / intersectional organizing in these efforts.

We invite Facing Race attendees to join us for a session exploring the creation process and lessons learned from the Reparations Grantmaking Blueprint, a tool designed by reparations movement leaders to guide a donor collaborative in investing in the reparations movement in a strategic, effective, and equity-centered manner. This will include:

- Grounding the session in the three key roles that philanthropy can play in catalyzing the reparations movement and a culture of repair
- Discussing our approach to movement-led strategy development, including reflections from movement leaders that are part of the Blueprint Steering Committee
- Engaging with the draft Blueprint, including some of the strategic milestones, activities, and tradeoffs that emerged in the process
- Discussing and reflecting on opportunities for participants to advance collaborative/movement-led strategy development and/or the reparations movement from their institutional contexts.

Our hope is that session participants feel more prepared action to change grantmaking strategy development practices in their own institutions, in the form of:

- Identifying specific and creative ideas about how they can implement similar frameworks in their institutions (e.g., particular program areas, potential partners, etc.)
- Analyzing their field’s landscape to clarify how and where collaboration will be valuable
- Understanding opportunities to deepen their institutions’ engagement with reparations and racial repair

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.