2024 Program:
Movement-Building for Racial Justice and Social Justice
Thursday November 21
Public school systems across the country have long been a battlefield for competing visions of society. Recent attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and LGBTQ+ people in schools are part of a well-funded, long-term effort to discredit, dismantle and privatize public education and with it, the very notion of public goods. Extremists and their wealthy backers want to destroy public schools because, if they are thriving and equitable, this challenges white supremacy and elite power.
Public School Strong (PSS) is a national campaign that builds power starting locally, so that every student – regardless of zip code, race, gender, or ethnicity – can have equitable access to quality, fully funded public schools. Initially developed by HEAL Together North Carolina in the spring of 2023, PSS has expanded to have participants from all 50 states and statewide organizing committees in more than a dozen states. This interactive session is designed for individuals, grassroots groups and allied organizations to explore this model and how to plug in.
According to state and federal law enforcement officials, May 25th 2020 was the inception of the largest, most organized, and best funded criminal syndicate in America’s history. Tens of thousands of co-conspirators. Rampant violence across the nation. Millions of dollars stolen. Property destroyed. All over the span of four years.
According to police and prosecutors, you’re likely a part of this criminal syndicate to commit violence, racketeering, and intimidation. Court documents suggest that if you have attended a rally, concert, meeting, or protest in support of racial, gender, reproductive, migrant, or climate justice since the death of George Floyd in May 2020, you could be a co-conspirator. If you contributed your talent, your money, or even provided food in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, you could be a co-conspirator.
Law enforcement in at least 12 states, as well as the FBI, are advancing a dangerous legal framework that weaponizes the First Amendment against social movements. It asserts that dissent is the enemy of the state. Association is now conspiracy.
And the problem is getting worse. State legislatures and Congress are advancing bills that increase the use of surveillance, criminalization, and punishment built from the Global War on Terror and War on Drugs to topple decentralized movement formations. We’ll go inside the authoritarian playbook to target and destroy the engine of our democracy and explore what social movements, philanthropy, and government officials must do to stop it.
Preemption is currently being used and abused to disrupt advances in racial justice, health equity, voting, and countless other issues that deeply impact the ability to build power for communities of color. We saw this clearly in Jackson, Mississippi, where the state legislature passed House Bill 1020, mandating the appointment of special judges and prosecutors by Mississippi state officials in majority-Black Hinds County, which includes the City of Jackson.
HB 1020 also permits Capitol Police to take effective control of policing responsibilities in an area of Jackson, increasing the police presence in Black communities. With its enactment, it shifts authority over the county’s criminal justice system away from democratically elected judges and prosecutors elected by Black voters. It also starves revenue from the city by diverting 18% of the tax revenue that should go to Jackson city but will now go to the state to fund the new judiciary arm.
The blatant power grab and preemptive attack by the majority-White legislature in a Black city like Jackson, MS, is spreading across the country. White and right-wing conservative states are attacking our voting rights, education and curriculum, efforts to advance police abolition, living wage ordinances, and the bodily autonomy and healthcare of trans and gender-expansive youth.
Our communities are feeling the brunt of these state attacks. This panel will discuss the impact of state power grabs at the local level and the strategies to combat them, from narrative shifts needed to organizing strategies to protect local victories and community self-determination.
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
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.
This session examines the intersections of the American legal, economic, and religious institutions of racialized rape (arranged and aimed primarily against Black women, girls, boys, and in some cases men), pedophilia, human sex trafficking, and enslavement. This experiential and interactive course content, delivered in an explicit and provocative fashion, examines the ways in which pedophilia and rape were infused into White legal, moral, political, economic, and governmental systems, and highlights the emergence of Black rage and anger as the result of White terror. One focal point is amplifying and elevating anti-Blackness as the underlying principle for these institutions and operations, rather than focusing on enslaved Black persons – as free Black persons, free Indians (as they were referred to in laws) were terrorized in many ways that are defined within the same contexts.
This session explores the teaching and reinforcing of Whiteness and anti-Blackness to White, Indigenous, and Black people, and others, during this period and beyond. It also explores the ways in which White solidarity and White benefits (mentally, emotionally, and spiritually) indoctrinated, enabled, and incentivized White people to normalize complicity in anti-Black terror and subjugation. This session examines deeply the premise of anti-Blackness/anti-Black racism as psychopathic and sociopathic.
Since Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock and a resurgent labor movement, our movements continue to expand and grow stronger, but we need to keep sharpening our tactics to build and win lasting power. Organizers are finding creative ways to build governing power that brings BIPOC communities on the frontlines of injustice into direct participation with administrative agencies to shape and implement just, effective public policies. Co-governance between communities and public agencies can help ensure the sustainability of campaign wins, deepen democracy and equity and create transformative policies and more effective governance. However, it can be challenging to build trust and alignment, collaborate across institutions, build capacity and sustain co-governance through ever-changing conditions within government and communities.
In this workshop, we'll share an overview of co-governance strategies between BIPOC communities (anchored by power-building organizations) and local and state government agencies. We will explore lessons learned and hear from Tenants Transforming Greater St. Louis about their organizing to enforce building code protections for tenants while building tenant power. We'll also break out into small groups to enable participants to workshop co-governance scenarios including situations from their own work they want to workshop with others.
Step into the world of artivism with Creative Reaction Lab's youth artists as they lead an interactive workshop, sharing their passion for creative change-making. In this session, participants will engage with the artists, exploring how to visually convey content around inequity and other social issues.
The artists will guide participants through the creative process, empowering them to become decision-makers in using art as a form of activism. In addition to showcasing their work, these talented individuals will share their experiences creating art and engaging in artivism.
Participants will have the opportunity to learn from the artists, gaining insight into their creative process and the impact of their work. The workshop encourages dialogue and collaboration, fostering a deeper understanding of the role of art in addressing social issues.
Join us to witness the passion and dedication of these young artists as they use their talents to drive meaningful change. Be inspired by their stories and learn how you can use art as a tool for advocacy and empowerment. Together, we can create a more just and equitable society through art and activism.
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.
As most organizers and advocates know, books such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow can play a major role in changing the national discussion about urgent social issues. A well-written book that makes a compelling argument can be an essential tool to inject transformative ideas into the popular discourse. At The New Press, we’ve found that movement leaders can be best positioned to share a unique vision for a just future.
The New Press’s senior editors will illustrate how a book can help leverage change. Participants will gain practical knowledge about how to move through the stages of book publishing, including: developing a book concept; preparing a cogent, well-informed proposal; drafting a manuscript; publicizing the book; and collaborating with organizations to amplify the book’s impact.
We will share relevant resources, key examples, and case studies, and participants will have an opportunity to practice in small groups and have their questions answered by veteran editors. The New Press is uniquely positioned as a non-profit publisher in the public interest to seek out authors committed to social change, and to develop works of non-fiction that set forth new, paradigm-shifting ideas.
Our catalog includes works from Noam Chomsky and Lisa Delpit, and more recent contributions to conversations in criminal justice and education reform, including Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie’s No More Police: A Case for Abolition and Monique Couvson’s Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Race and Democracy work at the Horizons Project seeks to employ futures thinking frameworks to advance racial justice. Futures thinking frameworks and analytical tools have proven valuable in helping leaders, organizations, policymakers, and activists make more strategic decisions about policies, priorities, strategic plans, outcomes, and goals. However, we have not seen these tools equally applied to the challenge of organizing to build collective power for advancing racial justice.
The Horizons Project applies futures thinkings frameworks and analytical tools for the specific purpose of advancing racial justice. In addition, our futures thinking frameworks specifically engage the narrative competencies required to advance racial justice. For example, how should leaders engage in conversations that have deep resonances in demonstrative realities of racial injustice? Conversely, how should organizers and activists push against racial stereotypes embedded within organizational decision-making? What skills are needed to re-shape racial narratives?
What practices should leaders adopt to transform their institutional culture and prioritize racial justice within their organizations? How might these leaders imagine racial justice within their organizations and spheres of influence? How might organizers and activists advance institution’s capacity to reshape public services for better racial equity outcomes?
This session will be a dialogue between Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Co-Executive Director of Highlander Research & Education Center, and Prachi Patankar, Writer and Organizer with Savera.
Savera's campaign is founded on a simple belief: that building a true multiracial democracy requires multiracial, interfaith coalitions that stand united against supremacist politics of all kinds. Within Indian-American communities, for example, the Hindu supremacist movement has grown in size over the past couple of decades and has since increasingly converged on an alliance with the white nationalist far-right, developing a politics that advances and supports the rise of fascism in India but also harms all of us here in the U.S. Hindu supremacist groups not only oppose the struggle for protections against caste discrimination and Islamophobia, but they have also offered non-white support to campaigns against affirmative action, spread anti-Muslim rhetoric and a pervasive anti-Blackness, and fractured coalitions among communities of color.
This is a moderated conversation between Ash-Lee and Prachi about the steps needed to build a true multiracial democracy in the U.S. Placing these issues within the global rise of authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, and racial and ethnic nationalism, this session offers possibilities for interconnected strategies that place our struggles in transnational and local contexts. They will share their analysis from their work in building intra- and inter-community unity against supremacist movements and how to evolve new strategies to take on the far-right in a multiracial society.
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.
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 kaleidoscope is a tube of mirrors reflecting colored glass pieces, with the angle of the mirrors shaping what we see. Drawing inspiration from Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu, who transforms images from magazines that fail to represent her culture into powerful art that creates presence from absence, this workshop invites you to create a collage that addresses and challenges your own sense of invisibility. Together, we’ll explore how to assert visibility, take control of your place in media narratives, and dismantle imposed hierarchies to make room for your authentic story. Join us in this creative journey to discover how you can commit to being seen and redefine the space you occupy in the world.
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.
Friday November 22
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.