2024 Program:
Organizational Change
Thursday November 21
This breakout session will be structured into two parts. First, the current JIC Co-Chairs will present a history of the Just Imperative Committee. This will include the overview of the committee and its objective, as well as key challenges, wins, and learning lessons from the three year-long detailed Truth, Accountability, Repair, and Healing Process (TARH). For instance, the Foundation now has two dedicated staff members in the newly created equity office. We will present from our reparative action steps should our proposal move forward. This part of the session will close by highlighting the work that lies ahead for the committee. Second, the session will have an interactive component where session participants will have an opportunity to reflect on their own organizations’ internal equity and inclusion journey. This part of the session will include small group discussion guided by a reflection guide and an opportunity for participants to share their organizational experiences and to learn from the experiences of others. By the end of the session, we hope that participants have learned about MacArthur Foundation’s recent equity and inclusion journey; had an opportunity to reflect on, and share, their organizational experiences; and have learned from the equity and inclusion journeys of other organizations.
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.
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.
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.
We will explore the critical role of psychological safety in enabling everyone – especially those most marginalized – to thrive. Through personal reflection and group discussion, we'll identify what psychological safety looks like and name institutional barriers to achieving it.
In particular, we'll discuss the influence of white supremacy culture as an impediment to psychological safety. We will define white supremacy culture and its implications. As Tema Okun tells us, “White supremacy culture trains us all to internalize attitudes and behaviors that do not serve any of us.”
We will explore these common attitudes and behaviors (e.g., perfectionism, either/or thinking, defensiveness) – how they show up in organizational culture and how we can interrupt them. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of these terms and will feel more empowered to build a more psychologically safe environment in their own institutional context.
Together, we will expand our knowledge and accountability to the experiences of Black trans people. Between examples from our history, real-time examples and issues, engaging conversations, and self-reflection activities, we will re-establish our role(s) in movements for racial and gender justice.
This session is about the protection, support, and thriving of people who are immeasurably impacted by historic and systemic violence. "Aliveness" is the category for this space, and we will collectively re-imagine what is needed to create holistic care for Black trans people. This session is not a naïve utopian dream nor a space for hollow performativism; it is a praxis of Radical Imagination and an intentional space for us to live into a better, safer world. All participants are welcome—regardless of their identities, scope of work, or prerequisite knowledge—as long as they are invested in fostering a community where Black trans people are liberated.
Session Objectives:
-Participants will learn about eight dimensions of aliveness and relate those dimensions to Black trans communities.
-Participants will engage in activities to set one goal for Black trans aliveness.
-Participants will develop an accountability system to sustain their role(s) in Black trans aliveness.
The California Endowment plays an influential role within the field of philanthropy, taking bold stances to advance health and racial justice through grassroots power building of those most impacted. In the spring of 2018, foundation staff brought to executive leadership’s attention the need to activate its leadership by becoming explicit about the direct connection between U.S. structural racism, racial capitalism, and persistent poor health and life outcomes, particularly for Black, Native, and other people of color. Doing so would address the historical harms and power imbalances inherent in philanthropy and negatively impacting grantee partners and their communities. This call was especially true for grantees who were on the frontlines of movement work organizing those most impacted to advance meaningful change.
In 2018, the Endowment began its journey to build organizational anti-racist culture. The first phase of Advancing Racial Equity (A.R.E.) ushered in organization-wide commitment and learnings and increasing staff understanding of anti-Blackness and systemic racism as the driver of poor health and life outcomes. In 2020 the foundation recruited the inaugural director who led the development of "The Five Elements to a Thriving Anti-Racist Health Foundation," a set of mutually reinforcing, interdependent capacities for transforming culture and operationalizing ant-racist practice.
Presenters will share the foundation’s journey and how it has embodied democratic participation by directly engaging staff at all levels of the organization. Core to this plan is the development of a Somatic Abolitionism practice to build embodied fortitude to metabolize the historical and deeply oppressive system of white body supremacy. The work to become an anti-racist health foundation is hard but necessary. We must become the transformation we need to see in the sector and share power and truly walk in trust with our partners in the broader movement building ecosystem. This interrogation is active, constant, and necessary to fully live into values and have clarity about the foundation’s proper role as a philanthropic leader.
Communities working with municipal agencies to advance a project are likely to encounter inequitable processes that can stunt the success of these projects. Equitable Cities has worked with government agencies from the federal to the local level and across sectors. Over time, we have developed a framework that centers equity in all our work.
Providing an opportunity to practice this approach, Equitable Cities will facilitate a role-playing activity to simulate a community planning process involving a local government agency. Prior to the activity, EC will briefly introduce their equity approach and framework.
Groups of no more than eight participants will choose between 3–4 scenarios, then attempt to reach a resolution on a community project plan using self-selected roles associated with their chosen scenario. Each role will also be assigned its own values, goals, and limitations to create a realistic discourse, with one of the required roles being a local municipal representative.
Following the activity, participants will share their resolutions with the full group, highlighting their process and how they overcame limitations.
The goal is for participants to navigate their scenario by applying aspects of the equity framework while allowing them to see their issue through some additional perspectives they are likely to encounter. Many participants have likely taken part in this process already and will be able to share past experiences with their group. Those who have not had this opportunity will be able to use this space to practice approaches that center equity in community projects.
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.
Advancing racial justice is challenging, particularly in the midst of attacks on DEI, antagonistic Supreme Court decisions, and intensifying political divisions. This session is an opportunity to share experiences with other capacity builders and use the Systems Thinking Iceberg to explore factors that enable progress, even in this climate. We will explore:
A) Visions for racial justice work: what are you and the people you work with trying to achieve? We begin here because if we don’t know where we're going, any road will get us there! We will create space for you to share your dreams and goals with other participants.
B) Examples of where you’re making progress, holding ground, or losing ground as you work toward those visions. We know that progress toward racial justice isn’t a straight, upward-trending line. Even in the best of times, progress is uneven, and ground can be lost if we aren’t proactive in protecting our gains. We will create space for you to share highlights from how you are making progress, holding ground, and/or losing ground in your work.
C) Systems thinking tools to identify leverage points for enabling progress. We will introduce the Systems Thinking Iceberg and use it to explore examples of progress and determine where we can strengthen our approaches.
In 2014, a police officer killed Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, MO. A global uprising followed, sparked by the region-wide uprising’s intensity and the compelling passion of local leaders demanding change. In 2016, Forward Through Ferguson (FTF), a social-impact 501(c) (3), was established to ensure that the legacy of the Ferguson Uprising remains in the collective consciousness and political strategy of the St. Louis region.
The Ferguson Commission recommended 189 actions, including creating a sustained, community-led fund to catalyze racial equity, community healing, and justice in the region. In 2019, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Missouri Foundation for Health, and Deaconess Foundation answered the call to launch a pilot version of this fund with FTF. Through this investment, the 2020–23 pilot enabled antiracist, trust-based grantmaking infrastructure to set the foundation for new practices of Justice philanthropy. The call for such a fund acknowledged the powerful systems-wide impact potential the philanthropic sector has to advance racial equity.
More and more philanthropic organizational leaders see this, but they struggle with the "how." This session will focus on tools and lessons of how FTF’s Build Racial Equity Capacity (BREC) team has worked with philanthropic leaders, including: organizational racial equity capacity assessments, education to build capacity, the philanthropy-specific Racial Equity Roundtable cohort model, and key lessons from the pilot fund.
Activities will engage key components of BREC’s approach: building a network of radically collaborative leaders to grapple with next practices, and infusing racial equity principles and processes into organizational transformation plans.
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?
“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
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, NLF alumni 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.
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 workshop will provide government racial equity officers, policymakers, and administrators with practical tools and strategies to advance racial equity within government agencies by integrating restorative practices into the local government landscape.
Restorative Practices is an indigenous power-sharing framework that can improve authentic communication, acknowledge the harms of institutional racism, develop equitable staff and community engagement, and strengthen institutional accountability—critical components of racial equity work. Restorative practices offer a framework to build community and institutional capacity to achieve a more equitable future.
In this interactive workshop, participants will:
1. Comprehensively understand restorative practices, including their principles, values, and applications within government settings;
2. Identify specific areas within their government agencies where restorative practices can promote racial equity and address systemic injustices;
3. Learn strategies for fostering inclusive and supportive environments within government agencies, emphasizing collaboration, empathy, and power-shifting;
4. Work collaboratively to create actionable plans for implementing restorative practices within their respective government departments, including identifying key stakeholders, setting goals, and establishing metrics for success;
5. Discuss common challenges and resistance to implementing restorative practices within government settings and develop strategies for overcoming them; and
6. Assess the effects of restorative practices on advancing racial equity within their agencies, including collecting feedback, measuring outcomes, and making necessary adjustments.
By incorporating these principles into government policies and procedures, participants will learn how to create more inclusive and equitable environments that prioritize the needs of marginalized communities. Join us!
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
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.
Anti-Palestinian racism is at an all time high but many can not recognize it when they see it. Learn the ways that Anti-Palestinian Racism manifests in our institutions and is normalized structurally between institutions impacting not only Palestinians, but also Arabs, Muslims, and others. In order to effectively dismantle racism, it’s important to recognize it, but then work towards intentionally dismantling it. This breakout session will go over roots in Islamophobia and the unique ways anti-Palestinian racism manifests and what people in Government (including all institutions) and in the public can work together to dismantle it. Learn lessons from local organizers in NJ who are organizing to build power for inclusive communities for everyone.
Centering equity in public policy is critical to the economic growth and development of healthy, welcoming, resilient communities, where all residents can thrive. This workshop will support public administrators with key takeaways on social equity as a core value of service and alignment in day-to-day operations, policies, budgets, and other essential decision-making processes. Using Dallas’ first comprehensive Racial Equity Plan as a case study, this session will:
Outline big-picture approaches of leading equity in local government; describe practical ways to support understanding around the collective positive impact and need for equity in city government; identify key components to drive equity in your organization; offer real applications on how to use a variety of tools and strategies to advance social equity. Join us to learn more about how to advance equity through policies, procedures and practices as we highlight successes, lessons learned, and next steps to close disparities in Dallas, Texas.
Local government staff actively seek resources to help advance their internal and external racial equity efforts, such as resources on conducting equity-related assessments, engaging and empowering community members, and equitably allocating resources, among others. To meet this need, the Urban Institute’s Office of Race and Equity Research (ORER) launched the Equity Resource Navigator: an open-access, user-centric tool for local government officials to find resources to help them embed equity into different areas of their work. Ongoing discussions with our GARE colleagues have also informed the development of a Racial Equity Continuum that grounds this work in several stages and focus areas for practitioners to contextualize where they are along their racial equity journeys, as well as to help them define resources and supports needed to advance. In this interactive workshop, ORER will introduce the Navigator and connect local practitioners and other stakeholders to a wide range of resources meant to facilitate and advance racial equity efforts. We will first contextualize this work using insights and stories we have heard from localities that drove the need for the Navigator. Then, we’ll demo the Navigator and introduce some use cases for resources in the Navigator before moving to small groups to discuss potential applications of tools in practitioners’ daily work, as well as to have a broader discussion on equity work at the local level, gaps and opportunities in the field, and ways in which Urban can support this work. This session is for local practitioners and other organizations seeking resources to support their teams as they conduct racial equity work. We hope this workshop further contextualizes participants’ understandings of their community’s racial equity work and presents useful and actionable resources that practitioners can take away and share with their teams.
"Transforming Local Government through Equity-Centered Coaching" will focus on the ways the Department of Race & Equity at the City of San Diego has implemented an equity-centered coaching program. A portion of this session will be dedicated to sharing the system that was created to shift the organization’s thinking about equity in departmental decisions on policy, budget, and programming.
Participants will then be broken out into small groups to engage in an experiential activity that will help demonstrate the importance of coaching and the skills needed to effectively coach department leaders. Lastly, session attendees will walk away with ideas on how they might begin to set up a coaching program in their organization or government entity. This will include some tools that can be replicated in their own institution.
In this impactful breakout session, we will delve into the complex issue of systemic racism within the context of homelessness, with a focus on centering the voices and experiences of those with lived experience.
Through interactive discussions, and personal reflections, participants will explore the root causes of racial inequities in homelessness and the importance of centering lived experience in creating effective solutions. We will examine the intersectionality of race, homelessness, and systemic oppression, recognizing that individuals experiencing homelessness often face multiple forms of discrimination.
By centering the voices of those with lived experience, we can gain valuable insights into the unique challenges faced by marginalized communities and develop more inclusive and equitable approaches to solving homelessness and creating an adaptable system.