2024 Program:
Sectoral Change
Thursday November 21
Since 2021, there have been a deluge of executive actions, legislation, court challenges, and other direct attacks on equity writ large with a special emphasis on racial equity via anti-CRT and DEI laws. Almost every state in the nation has at least seen a bill introduced. Most of these hostile statutes are more rhetorical than relevant and do not preclude real-world racial equity programs.
Similarly, even negative Court rulings have made clear that the vast majority of race-informed institutional strategies are legally sound. Yet, these legal attacks have had their intended effects, with political pressure and threats creating significant obstacles for racial equity work in many jurisdictions
During this breakout session, participants will hear from legal experts who are supporting racial equity practitioners in government. You will learn what initiatives and efforts these laws do and do not impact from a legal perspective, how to engage your general counsel, and what resources are available in the field to navigate this complicated landscape.
Participants in this breakout session will hear and walk through real-world examples of legal messaging, strategy, and interventions to protect and sustain racial equity work in government.
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.
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.
Friday November 22
This conversation is meant to be an aspirational moment grounded in forecasting, to discuss the nexus of climate migration, and what we will see in cities, towns and legislation unless we begin to thoughtfully think about the future from a climate migration perspective. It is meant to be equal parts visioning and connection to concrete reality through the specific experiences and insights of audience members and the panelist.
Climate migration is often framed in terms that are fear-based, but there is an opportunity to think about the central value of culture—both those we identify with, and that which we want to create—in how we confront the reality of climate migration and its relationship with race and politics at all levels.
Through the panelists sharing a framework for dreaming forward, and audience member participation in small group work, this breakout session is meant to be a time of generative discussion, planning and visioning.
We see this as a starting point for collaboration, networking, information sharing and collective dreaming, to seed a collective approach to climate migration that is based on dignity, not fear.
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.
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