Time: Saturday, 10:45-12:15

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Description

Corporations have amassed never-intended rights, powers, and authority. Given the increasingly sacrosanct speech rights of corporations, judicial hostility to campaign finance restrictions and the concentration of corporate media ownership, the connection between corporate economic power and political power has become dangerously close. The exercise of corporate prerogatives and the centralization of wealth through the exercise of corporate prerogatives threaten democratic accountability and distort our democracy. What is the proper role of corporations in a modern democracy? What are the implications of ever-expanding corporate space for people? This session will explore these questions while envisioning a realignment of corporate space in the United States.

Panelist Bios
john powell (Haas Center, U.C. Berkeley)

Panelists: Gita Gulati-Partee and Maggie Potapchuk

Time: Saturday, 10:45-12:15

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Description

Countless social change agents start and lead nonprofit organizations with the intention of making the world more just and equitable. But then they discover that it is hard to change a system while trying to succeed in it at the same time. Despite our best intentions, many of us find ourselves participating in the “nonprofit industrial complex,” which is steeped in white culture and supremacy, without a road map for how to break out of this dynamic. In this highly participatory session, racially mixed small groups will construct visions for nonprofit organizations that embody and advance racial equity. We’ll then break into race caucuses to assess and analyze current institutional policies, practices, and cultural norms. What are the ways, consciously and unconsciously, that we perpetuate racism and white privilege in and through our nonprofit organizations – and what are the replicable ways we resist and interrupt these dynamics? We’ll close the session with a fishbowl dialogue to uncover catalyzing strategies and actions that will pave the road to our desired transformation.

Panelist Bios
Gita Gulati-Partee (OpenSource Leadership Strategies)
Maggie Potapchuk (MP Associates)
 

Panelists: Dushaw Hockett, Cheryl Staats, Angela Stuesse

Time: Friday, 4:00-5:30

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Description

By the dawn of 2042, humans have adopted new ways of being with each other with respect to race and the broader issue of difference. These advances in intergroup relations are traced back to work from 2011 that explored how the brain in all its complexity could be harnessed to create spaces for intentional relationship building across real and perceived differences. This session invites participants into a discussion about this new vision for intergroup relations work and introduces online and offline aspects of a resource center designed to help people navigate these differences and build a deeper sense of community.

Panelist Bios

Dushaw Hockett (SPACES)
Cheryl Staats (Kirwan Institute)
Angela Stuesse (Univ. of South Florida)

Panelists: Steve Menendian, Nikol Bowen

Time: Friday, 4:00-5:30

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Description

Given dramatic demographic changes in the United States – including broad global trends of globalizations and immigration, but also heightened patterns of residential segregation by race and class – how might we achieve the vision announced in Brown of an integrated education for American students? What are the stakes if we don’t? How do the organization of school by municipal districts and the charter school movement create challenges and opportunities? The session is designed to impart information and create a dialogue about innovative approaches to educational policy. The 20th century style of integration, court ordered, voluntary, or busing has been sharply circumscribed by Supreme Court decisions in recent years, and is an outmoded form of integration that relies on single indicators to generate equitable outcomes. The panel will discuss an array of cutting edge innovations that have produced both sustainable integrated schools and successful educational outcomes.

Panelist Bios

Stephen Menendian (Kirwan Institute)
Nikol Bowen (Ohio University)
 

Panelists: Julie Ajinkya

Time: Saturday, 10:45-12:15

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Description

What are the challenges and opportunities diversity brings? Is the American Dream still relevant and attainable to a more economically polarized nation? Is this a key moment to revisit how we define and practice civic participation? And how do we move away from a zero sum paradigm to building opportunity for all? These are the questions that communities are asking themselves as our country becomes more diverse. Progress 2050, a project of the Center for American Progress, and PolicyLink, have been holding roundtable discussions in communities across the country to discus the opportunities and challenges diversity bring in an effort to find a common vision for 2050 that is squarely focused on the opportunity of diversity. In this session participants will have the opportunity to hear about some of the key themes emerging from these discussions and about innovative policy models that are working for all. The panel will also talk about the efforts to bring together a positive vision for the next few decades and chart a path to get there.

Panelist Bios

Julie Ajinkya (Center for American Progress)