Makani Themba
Makani Themba is an author, an organizer, a mama and Chief Strategist at Higher Ground Change Strategies based in Jackson, MS. A social justice innovator and pioneer in the fields of change communications and community-centered policy development, Makani has spent more than 30 years supporting grassroots organizations, coalitions, and philanthropic institutions in developing high impact change initiatives.
She has authored numerous publications on race, class, media, policy advocacy, and public health including Making Policy, Making Change: How Communities Are Taking the Law into Their Own Hands, and Fair Game: A Strategy Guide for Racial Justice Communications in the Obama Era (under The Praxis Project). She is a co-author of Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention, and Talking the Walk: Communications Guide for Racial Justice (with Hunter Cutting). Her latest book, Our Beautiful Next: Quantum Leaps to Liberation, will be out in spring 2027 on AK Press.
Presentations from Facing Race 2026
Our Beautiful Next: Quantum Leaps to Liberation
Makani Themba
The real battleground for social change is our collective imagination—and the world we seek is closer than we think.
What does it take to build a world rooted in collective joy and thriving—and why, when we have the knowledge and expertise to feed people, house people, and heal people, don't we? Makani Themba's answer begins with power: how it works, how it shapes what we believe is possible, and how controlling our imagination is the primary tool of those who benefit from things staying the same.
Our Beautiful Next is an invitation to step into our full power as changemakers and deepen our understanding of how change actually happens. Drawing on ancestral wisdom, personal narratives, poetry, practical tools, and science, Themba challenges long-held notions about transformative change—what it looks like, what it requires of us, and what it means to build the kind of power that makes it possible.
Part of the Emergent Strategy Series, with a foreword by series editor adrienne maree brown.
Presentations from Facing Race 2024
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.