2024 Program:
Narrative Shift
Thursday November 21
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.
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.
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.
Government agencies typically design programs for people in need. But what happens when we design programs with people in need?
For the City of Boulder, a new direct cash assistance program, Elevate Boulder, offered an opportunity to engage community members as collaborative decision-makers. The result so far has been a dignified, trusted program with greater power to transform the lives of program participants, and transform other city processes.
In this session, participants will hear about how the city centered the Elevate Boulder decision making process in the lived experience of community members; and established goals for a dignified, equitable process.
Participants will also engage in small groups to explore how the same elements of success could be applied to other kinds of city policies and processes. We will also explore how we can measure trust and transformative impacts to keep doing what works best for the people we serve.
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.
Frame-breaking narratives shape-shift our collective landscape, offering clues about the value of our past in service of tomorrow. "Rooted: Cultivating Black Wealth in Place" is more than a wealth-building strategy and potential policy innovation. Rooted is an invitation to think and act differently, to step boldly into a new story designed to signal a new way forward, toward a St. Louis where every neighborhood is a chosen place to live, raise children, and grow old.
Join us for a film screening and panel discussion; hear from participants, activation partners, and journalists actively shaping stories of possibility and transformation. Get familiar with "Rooted: Cultivating Black Wealth in Place" by stepping into Invest STL’s innovative approach to narrative reframing and storytelling.
Meet neighborhood residents participating in Rooted through the content and meet the content creators through the panel and Q&A. Invest STL is not only embarking on a three-year journey with participants in the initiative but also developing and producing a storytelling partnership with Missouri School of Journalism professors Ron Stodghill and Alicia Haywood to span the breadth of the initiative.
They will be joined by Invest STL's Narrative + Communications Partner, Michael Pagano, to discuss these emerging stories, what we are hearing, how we are listening, and where we might be heading.
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.
Native Americans are often invisible in our public discussion of America and even more so in any discussion of Muslims in the United States. As a group, Native Americans broadly make up 1.8% of the US general population. As such, they are often overlooked, invisible, and underrepresented in public conversations and decision-making. Muslims, the most ethnically diverse faith community in the nation, broadly make up an estimated 1.1% of the US general population. Among Muslims in the United States, Native Americans make up just 1-2%.
Native American and Indigenous Muslim Stories: Reclaiming the Narrative (NAIMS), the first comprehensive study of its kind, is centered around spreading awareness of the lived experiences of Native American and Indigenous Muslims in the United States. It includes the first-ever photo narrative project to center the lived experiences of Native American and Indigenous Muslims in the United States. We explored identity, ways to navigate multiple marginalized communities, and intersectionality.
The complexity and richness of such identities, like being Native, Black, and Muslim in the US, will take the audiences to a conversation beyond race and racism 101. Religion, ethnicity, race, belonging, and creating a society that fits all of us will be the center of this conversation. By centering their voices and images, this form of storytelling opens up the possibilities of new ways of understanding, disrupts dominant narratives about Native American and Indigenous Muslims, and helps audiences contemplate broader themes of identity and what it means to be an American today.
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.
Narrative organizing is more than altering words; it's about shifting power dynamics and constructing systems that empower communities. This session proposes exploring DIY narrative research methods to advance racial justice through narrative organizing. We'll delve into the fundamental question: Whose narrative matters?
In this session, we’ll teach you how narrative research recognizes narrative power and generates research outcomes to build the common good. Recognizing that research is labor, we'll explore the importance of providing stipends and adopting trauma-aware approaches in both group and individual interviews.
Approaching research projects can be overwhelming, so we’ll share our tips on how to design research projects with accountability in mind, select research participants and advisory boards, conduct interviews, and identify deep narratives. To assist in the latter, we’ll also launch the Narrative Index—a reference set of helpful and harmful narratives common to narrative organizing for racial justice, like interdependence and independence.
This session will emphasize the significance of relationship-building and trust in DIY research. While practical skills like selecting advisory boards are valuable, true impact often lies in the micro-interactions that shape our landscaping and analysis work. Acknowledging this, we'll offer insights into fostering genuine connections that drive meaningful change.
Participants will leave equipped with a practical toolkit and a deeper understanding of how DIY narrative research can contribute to their power-building goals through narrative organizing. Join us for a session full of learning how to do the work of identifying narratives and reshaping the future of our communities towards justice.
We all come from people who have made a way out of no way. Let us reflect on what we have accomplished collectively in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Whether we’re Black or white, Latine or Asian, Indigenous or newcomer, we and our ancestors have faced insurmountable odds before and continue to make change so that our families and communities are vibrant and whole.
In this workshop, we will focus on two research-backed elements of effective race-forward messaging that counters the huge obstacle of cynicism and inspires people to action: “Vision” and “Victories.” We will discuss how to incorporate these into our messaging and why they strengthen the stories we tell and the campaigns we run.
Books have long been an instrument for narrative change in movements, helping shift conversations and awareness to more positive aspects of society as well as providing context and guidance to combat the systemic issues impeding racial and social change. Titles from "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" to "Borderlands" to "The Sum of Us" have been utilized and referenced in organizing spaces to gain a firmer grasp of the unity between communities, the impact of Western imperialism, and how civil rights continue to be attacked.
Rinku Sen, executive director at Narrative Initiative, and Minal Hajratwala, founder of Unicorn Authors Club, will lead this panel discussion and intersperse their presentation with interactive questions and writing prompts on the importance of books as tools for organizing. The panelists will discuss how they see their work as writers and engaging with organizers/writers to help understand the need for narrative shifts.
The discussion will explore how and what books have provided lessons on organizing by blending historical analysis with personal stories to center diaspora stories. Sen and Hajratwala will also share how their respective experiences led to a partnership on publishing interventions programming.
This session will include writing prompts to engage attendees on how they can frame their writing/work into a resource for narrative and social change.
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.
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.
Discover practical strategies to embed racial equity in local government through the power of data in this interactive breakout session. Drawing from Boulder's Equity Data Initiative, attendees will gain insights into crafting data-focused racial equity plans, conducting departmental equity assessments, and employing job aids for data-driven decision-making.
Engage in small group discussions to explore the effectiveness of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs measured through surveys and feedback. Dive into assessing institutional practices to foster practical application of racial equity principles within departments.
Explore the concept of decolonizing data, emphasizing community involvement in data collection, analysis, and ownership to enhance equity outcomes and foster a sense of belonging. This session will inspire participants to leverage data as a tool for transformative change, fostering environments of inclusivity and equity within governmental institutions.
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.
The norm of the Western Canon privileges the white, cis-gendered male experience while it marginalizes and dehumanizes everyone else. Through storytelling and examples of professional productions on stage, podcast, and screen, we will interrogate and explore how we can deconstruct these biases and find opportunities to re-center multi-identity artists in new cultural models.
In this session, we will unpack our history’s inequitable practices in cultural arts and present ideas that challenge socialized assumptions. We will lift up real-life examples and what we learned from pushing back and taking ownership of art in the image of our diverse world. We will leave the session having stretched our radical imagination and created visionary fiction that inspires our work forward.
Every neighborhood can be a pathway to opportunity and prosperity for the people who call it home, but race often determines the ease of that pathway. Purpose Built Communities and the Purpose Built Network partner with local residents to execute a holistic model for equitable neighborhood revitalization in communities around the country experiencing the effects of historic and chronic race-based disinvestment.
Part of the success of our work depends on a new narrative. In 2020, we engaged the FrameWorks Institute to help us unpack the story being told versus what story we should be telling to affirm people, place, and race. Those efforts birthed the "Where We Thrive narrative project," which launched in 2023 and gives advocates more complete and considerate language for talking about the beauty of Black and Brown neighborhoods while highlighting the historic and ongoing harms through policy and practice.
Session participants will:
1) Learn about best practices for a collaborative research process;
2) Receive practical recommendations and strategies for telling affirming stories about neighbors and neighborhoods and communicating with dignity; and
3) Learn about how to best engage residents and local partners in shared narrative change efforts.
Participants will have an opportunity to apply these lessons to their own work and ask questions for shared learning.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
“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.
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.
We will be sharing two stories of coalitions working alongside agency staff to achieve significant wins for communities facing the brunt of the housing and displacement crises. We will devote a substantial portion of the breakout to questions and an active conversation about the lessons learned in both cities. In Seattle, organizers were able to leverage the update to the City’s Comprehensive plan in 2015 to win $16 million in funding for community-led anti-displacement projects.
Speakers will share stories from the initial formation of the Equitable Development Initiative, how a few rogue planners shifted the conversation, and how a one-time allocation grew to $25 million in annual funding from progressive revenue. In NYC, organizers built power by raising awareness about racialized displacement and inequality in land use decision-making. This led to passing new land use reporting requirements and creating a comprehensive data tool. The tool analyzes changes in lived environments and demographics across time, geography, and race.
Speakers will share stories about the organizing strategy that led to the passage of Local Law 78. They will also discuss how collaboration with key members of the Departments of City Planning and Housing and Preservation resulted in a robust new data tool for building community power.
An effective, long-standing tradition of midwifery steeply declined after 1910, when the Flexner Report recommended that women deliver their babies in hospitals and midwifery be abolished, making the case that all medical practitioners should have standardized training. But because medical education was rife with racial inequities, this transition away from midwifery had a particular adverse effect on Black mothers and babies. Join Jamaa Birth Village founder Okunsola M. Amadou as she presents a historical overview, shares the organization’s work of training people to serve as midwives and doulas, transforming Black Maternal Health in St. Louis and Missouri over the course of 10 years.
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.
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.
Organized in the format of a panel discussion and presenting mini case studies, this session will discuss terms like "Narrative Justice," "proximate leader," "intermediary," "philanthropy," and others. Practitioners, activists, and organizations are invited to consider the power of language in influencing audiences to embrace change toward greater racial and ethnic justice.
Panelists include leaders in the field of seeding social innovation around the globe and social chnge communications professionals advancing systems transformation through messaging. Collectively, they will discuss how we can evolve language in service of the vision of change by centering the voices of leaders from Black and brown communities.
This discussion aims to provide a framework and opportunity to identify key language themes, phrases, or words. These insights will be useful for audience members interested in driving narrative change in their own organizations and communities, particularly around racial justice.
What is possible when you have your basic needs met? What choices would you make? What art would you make? Care, creativity, and community action are integral to a healthy society, yet many of the people doing that important work live with financial instability. What if we could change that?
Through videos, self-reflection, and discussion, we’ll define the guaranteed income movement and ground it in the US context of Black women’s organizing movements. We’ll hear stories from people whose lives have been impacted by guaranteed income, and we’ll pull out themes from their voices as we think about our own money stories as a part of our economic and racial justice organizing work. We’ll talk about the narratives that underlie guaranteed income, because it’s more than a check.
And finally, we will place guaranteed income within the larger context of the solidarity economy, which teaches us to dispel harmful beliefs about the US social safety net and poverty and instead radically imagine a world where everyone deserves investment, financial security, and care.
Intended to provoke curiosity and to provide compelling stories that move from personal accountability to systemic injustice, Everyone Is Essential will equip participants with an understanding and/or deepen their understanding of a real policy solution that we can fight for right now.
What is home? A deeper exploration than where we are simply "from," this session invites participants to make connections between home, homeland, and belonging. In spaces never meant for us, how do we reclaim our feeling of home as a memory or a place? Meenakshi Verma-Agrawal and Christopher Tse will utilize small group work and storytelling to facilitate questions like: “Is home something we are creating or something we left behind?” “Is home safety, struggle, or both?” and “Can any of us truly be home on stolen land?”
The BIPOC experience of home has always been and continues to be informed by systemic violence and the demands of the empire. For those of us born into colonial projects with darker skin and coarser hair, we’ve checked the box as "Other" within the USA or Canada. Our mother tongues will always be too foreign, our food too pungent, our ambition too overzealous. Every child of a non-white diaspora knows what it feels like to have their ethnicity perpetually prefixed to their nationality; it is a permanent hyphen.
In a time of mass displacement and forced migration from conflict, capitalism, and climate crisis, these conversations are only more urgent. This session is for everyone who has struggled to find their place in the hyphen, for those longing for home, and for those committed to reimagining home for themselves.
In 2022, Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality (AACRE) launched a major strategic effort to build narrative power that reinforces shared progressive values across Asian American communities and empowers action toward an inclusive vision of healing and justice.
AACRE launched a narrative strategy lab in partnership with the Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy and Asian American Futures to define a set of guiding aspirational narratives for AACRE’s work. Then, they engaged over 40 artist-activists (“artivists”) to launch a multi-sensory, immersive installation in San Francisco Chinatown in partnership with Edge on the Square. They hope to engage older teens and young adults across the AA diaspora to embrace values of activism, justice, and racial solidarity as they come to understand how these values are embedded in AA cultures and have informed AA history.
This understanding can counter negative stereotypes (i.e., that AA people are passive in the face of injustice, that AA communities are isolated and insular) and prompt young people toward new depths of reflection, collaboration, and civic action. This session will offer an introduction to arts-based narrative strategy. Then, we will share how others can advance a culture-based narrative strategy across a broad network, with interactive arts activities exploring the strategies AACRE has developed.
In August 2014, the shooting of Mike Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, MO, and the subsequent lack of indictment for his killer, brought attention to police brutality and militarization against Black communities in the U.S. This sparked widespread protests with "Black Lives Matter" becoming a rallying cry.
Palestinian American activist Bassem Masri, involved in the protests, drew parallels between the state's response in Ferguson and tactics used against Palestinians, like tear gas and militarized force. During this time, Israel was also assaulting Gaza, resulting in thousands of Palestinian deaths.
Solidarity between the Black and Palestinian liberation movements grew, with Palestinians offering advice and support to Ferguson protesters. This solidarity was visible in Ferguson, with Palestinian flags flown and Palestinians organizing a solidarity contingent to Ferguson in October.
These events in 2014 reignited joint efforts between Black and Palestinian liberation movements. This solidarity aimed to challenge oppressive systems globally and locally, emphasizing the need to confront racism, militarization, and injustice both abroad and within the United States.
In the past decade, this solidarity has only flourished. Two organizers from St. Louis who organized during the Ferguson uprisings, one Black and one Palestinian, will lead a conversation reflecting on a decade of renewed solidarity.