2020 Program Topic:
Environmental Justice

This year, climate chaos of hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and heatwaves have rolled throughout the country, compounding with overlapping crises of COVID-19 pandemic, economic collapse, and chronic racial inequality. These crises have cast a light on deep inequality -- low-income communities and communities of color are most impacted by these crises because of historic discrimination and disinvestment. Solutions to the acute crises of our moment, and the long-term climate crisis must center racial and economic justice. The Green New Deal proposes a roadmap to address these intersecting crises. A bold, equitable economic recovery could pave the way by creating millions of good green jobs. But equity in our policy solutions is not guaranteed – we must fight for it.

Communities of color have been organizing for environmental justice against the twin threats of pollution and racism for decades. Today allies across environmental, labor, racial justice, and youth movements are banding together to advance a vision for what is needed for communities to thrive in the face of catastrophe. From local and regional policy victories won by powerful coalitions, to a plan for a national economic recovery, the climate justice movement is embedding racial equity into climate solutions. In this workshop learn how multi-sectoral coalitions at the state and national level are designing equitable climate policy, building power, and winning. Bring your experience and challenges you face in organizing for climate justice policy, to contribute to shared learning and visioning on how a Green New Deal can repair historic inequities and uplift all communities.

For hundreds of years, the people of the African Diaspora have lit paths towards liberation across the Western Hemisphere, lighting the way for each other with spiritual and cultural power. Black people birthed new traditions rooted in the art and religious practices brought from the continent, informed by new environments, and fashioned against the evils of slavery, colonization and systemic racism. Today, in the legacy of that repression, the resistance continues on all fronts. Black artists and writers lead the cultural charge to innovate and hew new freedom, new futures in our imaginations as well as on the streets.

Authors, song writers, vocalists, priestesses and witches, our three panelists will discuss the words, songs and spirits that have come forth in the art and their freedom work. Each a cultural icon of Black feminist creativity in their own right, their ground-breaking conversation will explore histories, personal and collective, survey some of the contents in their current tool kit and offer future visions. In this moderated plenary, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, Michaela Harrison and adrienne maree brown will delve into the spiritual technologies of music and magic that they create to bring protection, healing and justice to the earth, their communities and themselves. Racial Justice Reads founder, Rosana “RC” Cruz will moderate, to proffer questions and support the panelists as they weave their magic.

The dominating narrative highlights figment deficits of our bodily autonomy, thriving community, and collective solidarity. The personal and collective freedom of our bodies and communities, and the availability of resources to further that freedom, is notably tied to patterns of racial injustices. As BIPOC navigate interpersonal and systemic oppressions related to racism, misogynoir, erasure and gentrification hesitancy builds in our bodies and communities to be audacious, vocal, and visible in our dissent and collective edification. We uplift that BIPOC bodies, communities and historically occupied land, has, must, and can interdependently craft the components of our revolution by releasing what seeks to harm us and resourcing that which is our medicine.

The archetype of synergetic somatics is as rhythmic and collective as a Saturday morning episode of "Soul Train"; we use rhythm to group, strategize, unify, and move regardless of the white supremacist gaze and norm. Using simple elements of physical movement, rhythm, and sound participants will co-conspire to identify where and how the greatest wounds are collectively experienced. Participants will be supported in embodying the pathways to explicitly name and curate strategies aligned with the movement building concepts of medicine, resourcing, and resonance for BIPOC liberation. While rotating through Medicine, Resourcing, and Resonance stations participants will co-design and report their remedy to our collective wounds by responding to three pre-determined prompts. At the conclusion of the session all program participants will have embodied replicable and adaptable components of the synergetic somatic design to recreate in their own movement building practices.

This session will examine community organizing and advocacy strategies in Atlanta and Seattle to defend the right to energy in the face of utility shutoffs during wildfires and the pandemic, and advance a renewable energy future in the long term. Atlanta and Seattle are two of the cities taking part in the national effort called 100% Equitable and Renewable Cities Initiative that puts community-based organizations at the center of policy planning for renewable energy to confront the climate crisis.

Workshop attendees will engage in a participatory, art-making workshop that explores the reimagining of the narrative around climate change. Through amplifying conversations that center frontline communities that have been leading movements towards both environmental and racial justice, #ClimateWoke aims to change the story about climate justice by centering low-income, communities of color, and migrants most impacted by climate change. Our fight for climate justice is intersectional and centers the leadership of communities on the frontlines. #ClimateWoke means more than being woke to our current environmental and climate crises. It also means being aware of who holds the solutions and how allies can take the lead from frontline communities, often undocumented & migrant communities and communities of color. Real change can only happen when people acknowledge climate change policies and storytelling need to be enacted with social, racial, and environmental justice at the center.

The Center for Cultural Power The Center for Cultural Power inspires artists and culture makers to imagine a world where power is distributed equitably and we live in harmony with nature. The Center for Cultural Power is creating a thriving ecosystem for artists and culture makers -- who are dismantling systems of oppression and are dedicated to transformational creative practices The Center incubates, organizes, activates, and amplifies artists who want to put efforts towards the climate crisis and be catalysts of change. We also collaborate with movement-building organizations to better engage and activate with artists and artists leadership.