Thursday Conference Opening

Description: Right now the American Dream is under siege. Tens of millions of willing workers can’t find jobs. Millions of homeowners have lost their homes to foreclosure and millions more are underwater. Instead of investing in our shared future, politicians are giving tax breaks to the rich and then slashing vital services families depend on. Rather than expanding protections for the middle class during these difficult economic times, they’re trying to gut workers’ rights. But a new movement is rising all across America to fight back.

session leaders:Van Jones

Plenary Talk by **

Description: **

session leaders:**

Session I - Friday 10:30am - 12:00pm

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Description: Have you ever been stopped in your tracks by a participant’s comment in a meeting about racial justice work? You ask yourself, “What’s the best way to handle this?! Should I answer the question? Get the person to talk more? Get the group to handle the issue? Something else entirely?” In this workshop, we will practice skills and tools to respond effectively, including: (1) interventions to deal with hot button issues and challenging situations in meetings about racial justice work; and (2) principles and guidelines to inform when to use process tools and when to introduce racial justice concepts to address challenging situations.

session leaders:Cynthia Silva Parker, Senior Associate, IISC; Curtis Ogden, Senior Associate, IISC; Melinda Weekes, Senior Associate, IISC

Session I - Friday 10:30am - 12:00pm

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Description: Neighborhoods and community conditions have a significant impact on the development of children. Healthy environments, safe neighborhoods and educational opportunities are a few of the critical resources essential to helping children thrive. This panel explores a collaborative research initiative focused on understanding access to opportunity for children. The initiative will involve the creation a children's opportunity mapping tool for the nation's largest 100 metropolitan areas. Participants in this panel will learn about new tools being created to help advocates and researchers understand and address barriers to opportunity for children.

session leaders: Dolores Acevedo-Garcia (Brandeis Univ.), Erin Hardy (Brandeis Univ.), Nancy McArdle (Independent Consultant) , Jason Reece (Kirwan Institute)

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Session I - Friday 10:30am - 12:00pm

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Description: The School-to-Prison Pipeline is a system of laws, policies, and practices that pushes students out of schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The pipeline was designed to be, and functions as, a mechanism to perpetuate a racial caste system.  Over the last decade, students, parents, and advocates have employed legal and organizing strategies focused primarily on eliminating “zero-tolerance” disciplinary policies, reforming high-stakes testing, modifying school policing, and decreasing the numbers of referrals to juvenile and criminal courts for in-school misconduct.   

We view these measures as necessary but insufficient.  The pipeline will be ended, in our view, only through a thorough overhaul of schools and courts. By 2042, the students now being pushed out of the schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems will be leading the movement for social, economic, and racial justice.  Education and juvenile justice advocates and organizers need to come together to think big – to move beyond proposals for policy reform and to grapple with the historical determinants that have brought us a public education system that increasingly performs the work of maintaining corporate power.

session leaders: Jason Langberg (Legal Aid of North Carolina), Barbara Fedders (Univ. of North Carolina School of Law)

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Session I - Friday 10:30am - 12:00pm

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Description: Looking ahead 30 years, we can imagine  a future in which significant advances have been made to achieve racial justice.  What might those advances be? What role has philanthropy played in getting us there?  What kind of strategic partnerships might be formed with funders in alliance with racial justice efforts?  Where should leadership originate? How might philanthropy engage with the broad field of organizations, leaders and networks to help build powerful campaigns that could win changes in structural racism? A panel of racial justice funders will explore these and other questions and invite conference participants to share their perspectives as well.  This session intends to create the outline of a plan that might deepen the impact of philanthropy in achieving racial justice.

session leaders: Meg Gage (Proteus Fund)

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Session I - Friday 10:30am - 12:00pm

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Description We argue that racism functions ideologically to rationalize for those of European descent a cultural desire to expand their power and control over people of color in the United States and elsewhere. In addition, we argue that even if racism were eliminated there would arise another systemic mechanism that would allow for the maintenance and expansion of European-American power and control unless the culture, at its core, is transformed. This workshop will address the following questions: (1) What might a transformed European-American culture be like? (2) What steps must we take to transform European-American culture in order to take a giant step closer to racial justice by 2041? (3) What do white people have to gain from this transformation?

session leaders: Paul Madden (Community Change Inc.), Susan Naimark ((Community Change Inc.)

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Session I - Friday 10:30am - 12:00pm

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Description: The year is 2042, and the U.S. has successfully acknowledged and addressed its legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, immigration reform, and structural/institutional racism. America had come to the realization that the only way to solve its most pressing issues was with an understanding that all Americans, regardless of their race/ethnicity/religious beliefs/ sexual orientation or gender, have a shared fate. And while there are undoubtedly still pockets of die- hard racist individuals, their impact on society at large has been neutralized by safeguards designed to ensure that our public/private institutions are no longer purveyors of policies/practices that sustain racial/ethnic inequities. This session introduces participants to what these safeguards entail, utilizing one of the core tools in AECF's Race Matters Toolkit: racial equity impact analysis. The session will demonstrate that given the right analyses, intentionality and commitment, public/private structures and institutions can be changed to close gaps and raise the standards for all racial/ethnic groups.

session leaders: Delia Carmen, Race Matters Institute, Voices for America’s Children; Paula Dressel, Just Partners Inc.

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Session I - Friday 10:30am - 12:00pm

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Description: In 2042, the biological concept of race will be considered an archaic and discredited scientific theory.  Scientists treat race as a social grouping, not a natural classification fixed at the molecular level.  Race still matters in 2042-not because it is written in our genes but because it is written in our institutions, cultures, and psyches.  What strategies can scientists, scholars, and activists use to achieve a new vision of race in science and biotechnology that recognizes its political origins, meaning, and consequences?

session leaders: Dorothy Roberts (Northwestern Univ. Law School), Osagie Obasogie (UC-Hastings School of Law), Christian Sundquist (Albany Law School)Lisa Ikemoto, (University of California-Davis School of Law)

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Plenary Talk by Vandana Shiva

Description: Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader, ecofeminist, activist and thinker. Director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology, she is the author of many books including Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace (South End Press, 2005), Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization (South End Press, 2001), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997), Monocultures of the Mind (Zed, 1993), The Violence of the Green Revolution (Zed, 1992), and Staying Alive (St. Martin’s Press, 1989)

session leaders:Vandana Shiva

Session II - Friday 2:15am - 3:45pm

Description: In this "future lab," participants will have the chance to create a vision on one of the most urgent disparities our democracy is facing, and then make a plan for achieving it.  In this fun and interactive session, participants will work in small and large groups, and use their analytic, narrative and artistic talents. They will build from tools that current-day communities are using to mobilize grass-roots and institutional involvement on racial equity and educational achievement. They will have a chance to build a specific "road map" that gets us from 2012 to 2042, and discuss the implications of what they create.

session leaders:Fran Frazier, Everyday Democracy; Alex Garcia, Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools; Martha McCoy, Everyday Democracy; Valeriano Ramos, Everyday Democracy)

Session II - Friday 2:15am - 3:45pm

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Description: This session will outline a bold vision of racially and socioeconomically diverse urban neighborhoods that challenges the usual narrative of "us v. them" in discussions about gentrification.  In 2042, as session presenters will describe, local policy supports the maintenance of affordable housing even as market forces increase housing prices. Small businesses that cater to low-income customers or specific ethnic groups are provided with training in marketing to adapt to a new customer base and tax breaks to encourage their growth. Community groups work together to ease racial and class tensions between neighbors. Schools reflect the diversity of the neighborhood and cater to the needs of all students. This session will explore this vision of stable and diverse urban neighborhoods. session leaders will describe the policies needed to reach this vision and offer examples of successful communities in 2012 that gave rise to such communities in 2042.

session leaders: Saba Bireda (PRRAC), Lance Freeman (Author of There Goes the 'Hood), Michael Wilkos (Columbus Foundation)

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Session II - Friday 2:15am - 3:45pm

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Description: What would higher education look like if it were structured to place at the center the project of rebuilding communities have experienced disinvestment?  Structured around the idea of full participation, this panel explores this question through the lens of educational access for people with criminal justice involvement.  It will address the “merit” they bring to educational settings, what it takes to enable them to succeed (and how providing settings enabling their success enhances educational access and success), the kinds of leadership they exercise, their relationship to their communities and to change, and our re-vision of merit that their inclusion enables.

session leaders: Michelle Fine, City University of New York; Vivian Nixon, College and Community Fellowship; Susan Sturm, Columbia Law School; Cheryl Wilkins, Columbia University School of Social Work

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Session II - Friday 2:15am - 3:45pm

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Description: How do we bring together the knowledge, expertise, and resources of child welfare, along with healthcare, the judicial,  the employment, and educational systems within a community, to collectively address the need to improve the well being outcomes for children, in the context of family, and the context of community? This session will bring together representatives from a range of systems that shape child well being, including a child welfare agency, the judiciary, and mental health. Participants will offer their respective visions on how they might work with the other systems to insure the best well-being outcomes for the children within their community.

session leaders Bios:Carol Mizoguchi, Eric Fenner, Casey Family Programs; Anita Fineday, Casey Family Programs; Nancy Freeman, Institute of Mental Hygiene; Judge Louis Trosch, 26th Judicial District, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina

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Session II - Friday 2:15am - 3:45pm

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Description: This is not a workshop in the traditional sense. This is a voyage and an opportunity for us all to travel with one another in debunking the myths and rewriting our collective story as it relates to racial identity and the subsequent values that we attach to them. At the end of this journey, we find that we have built a nation that does not rely on false assumptions or crooked images to uphold economic, political and cultural institutions that manufacture inequity. This voyage is a way for us to propel ourselves into the future and in so doing, develop prescriptions for our collective “Paths to Freedom.”  The struggle for freedom begins by ending race as a social construct. It uses this journey to attack systemic oppression in what is now known as the United States, and then reproduces the model to end structural oppression worldwide. The markers of this true post-racial society will be mapped out by session participants. We will focus on such questions as: (1) What are our individual and collective paths to freedom? (2) How do we move on those paths from race as a social construct to a society that is truly ‘post-racial’?

session leaders: Crystal Hayes (YWCA of the Greater Triangle, Raleigh, NC)


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Session II - Friday 2:15am - 3:45pm

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Description: As cultural artifact and catalyst for change, art functions as a mirror that reflects a society’s hopes, fears, discontentedness and fantasies.  For this session, the vision of a racially progressive future is one where artistic expression is unencumbered by the often prescriptive limitations of majority/minority racial paradigms.  The “art” that emerges in this future reveals a multitude of voices, representations, and stories that reflect the diversity of the population.  Art here is broadly conceptualized to include music, dance, literature, visual art, etc.  This is an interactive session that will engage the following questions: many cultural movements have emerged as responses to oppressive dominant or majoritarian racial ideologies and cultural expressions.  What are the possibilities of cultural production in a milieu unfettered by a majority/minority racial politics?  What are the new or reconstituted challenges?

session leaders: Tayo Clyburn, The Ohio State University ; Guisela Latorre, The Ohio State University; Tara Polansky, Independent Artist

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Session II - Friday 2:15am - 3:45pm

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Description: The landscape of Metropolitan Detroit is changing. The presence of the automotive industry is diminishing, white flight has left the city deserted, hundreds of schools are being closed, and the achievement gap is widening. But there is hope. Detroit has become the place and space to begin anew, a place to challenge the conventional ways of doing things. We are becoming a city of innovation, reimagining how we understand work, education, and community in a way that results in equity for all. We are developing new spaces for education that value the integration of justice and equity, that do not shy away from our diversity of social identities. This youth facilitated workshop will flip the script and begin to challenge the conventional ways of approaching education, allowing young people to act out their vision for future classrooms. With the integration of youth-made digital media and popular education methodologies, youth facilitators will demonstrate the possibilities of youth teaching about justice as experts of their own lives and charting their own course for education.

session leaders: Theresa Tran

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Session II - Friday 2:15am - 3:45pm

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Description: With a learning community approach, workshop participants will explore key components of structural racism analysis, discuss its value and limitations in the work of social change (Part I) and collaborate in small teams to apply a structural racism lens in designing social change initiatives of various types (Part II)

session leaders: Curtis Ogden, Senior Associate, IISC; Melinda Weekes, Senior Associate, IISC; Andrew Grant-Thomas, Kirwan Institute; Eric Stiens, Kirwan Institute; Cynthia Silva Parker, Senior Associate, IISC

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Session III - Friday 4:00pm - 5:30pm

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Description: With a learning community approach, workshop participants will explore key components of structural racism analysis, discuss its value and limitations in the work of social change (Part I) and collaborate in small teams to apply a structural racism lens in designing social change initiatives of various types (Part II).

session leaders: Curtis Ogden, Senior Associate, IISC; Melinda Weekes, Senior Associate, IISC; Andrew Grant-Thomas, Kirwan Institute; Eric Stiens, Kirwan Institute; Cynthia Silva Parker, Senior Associate, IISC

Session III - Friday 4:00pm - 5:30pm

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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. 

session leaders Bios: Stephen Menendian (Kirwan Institute), Nikol Bowen (Ohio University)




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Session III - Friday 4:00pm - 5:30pm

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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.

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




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Session III - Friday 4:00pm - 5:30pm

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Description: The Future of Detroit: Re-Imagining Opportunity The media might lead you to believe that the words Detroit and opportunity don’t belong on the same page, much less the same sentence. But while the Motor City grapples with more than its fair share of challenges, the next chapter has yet to be written. In this session, a framework for revitalizing Detroit will provide the basis for small and large group discussions, giving participants an opportunity to re-imagine the city’s future, and create a vision and strategies that place equity at the core. This highly interactive session will also reveal the benefits and challenges involved in building consensus around a shared vision, even among a presumably like-minded audience. Further, the session will engage participants in conversations that have implications for a wide range of communities.

session leaders: Jane Morgan and Ponsella Hardaway

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Session III - Friday 4:00pm - 5:30pm

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Description: A long-standing cleft in our society is becoming more obvious: the racial wealth gap. We are also witnessing the greatest stripping of wealth among communities of color in modern American history. The dramatic drop of wealth among communities of color is the result of historic inequities in public policy, regulations and practice. This persistent legacy of our nation’s past drains families’ capacity to give the next generation a solid start. The nation cannot continue to lead if its fastest growing populations fail to access the opportunities associated with gaining middle class status.

In this dynamic, roundtable discussion lead by Maya Rockymoore, and four members of the Experts of Color Network, a national network of the leading minds on asset building from the African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American communities will outline a vision of what it would take tear down unfair barriers to economic security and narrow the racial wealth gap for the next generation.

session leaders




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Session III - Friday 4:00pm - 5:30pm

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Description: With a renewed sense of urgency, bands of citizens are increasingly taking up the cause to address what appears to be an erosion of democracy in every major system in this country. To better understand this systemic erosion in the Food System, this session will deconstruct the ill-fated social, cultural, economic and political frameworks that bring us to 2012. Through a process that identifies resources, allies, research, and principles, as well as challengers and detractors, participants will experience a new vision of a fair, just and healthy food system. Participants will encounter the fullness of a "People's food system" that values every sector, and every person, in the undustry - from "Field/Farm to fork."

Traveling through time, from 2042 back to 2012, participants will glimpse the passion, commitment, sacrifice, community building, and struggle that will be necessary to achieve real change in the food system while examining issues of race, class, and privilege. 30-, 20-, 10-, and 5-year benchmarks along the journey to a sustainable food system will be addressed

session leaders:Charlotte Williams (Center for New Community), Ms. LaDonna Redmond, Senior Program Associate at Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy





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Poetry: Visioning the Future

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Description: This session will be curated by Scott Woods, president of Poetry Slam, Inc and an accomplished poet, author, musician, and DJ. Come watch and listen as multiple local poets perform some poems, talk about their creative process, and muse aloud and argue about the role of art in general (and poetry in particular) in visioning the future. Each time slot will feature different poems and poets, so feel free to come to both!

session leaders: Scott Woods

Lynn Manning: A Man in Motion

Description: Lynn Manning is a man in motion. He’s an award winning poet, playwright, actor, and former World Champion of blind judo. He has had upwards of a dozen plays produced. His autobiographical, solo play, WEIGHTS, received three NAACP Theater awards in 2001, including Best actor for Lynn. He has since performed WEIGHTS from London to Off Broadway, and from Edinburgh to The Adelaide Fringe. An audio CD version, WEIGHTS(ONE BLIND MAN’S JOURNEY) was released by Bridge Multimedia in 2005. Buses will be available starting at 7:15 - 7:50

session leaders:Lynn Manning

Session IV - Saturday 9:00am - 10:30pm

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Description: It's May of 2042, and an urban school district in a Midwestern U.S. city is preparing for high school graduation ceremonies. Each of the district's seven high schools will hand out record numbers of diplomas. Data summaries for each school published in the region's daily newspaper indicate that graduation and completion rates, matriculation rates to a four-year college, and student/family satisfaction with their educational attainment don't correlate with race, class, socio-economic status, or home language of students enrolled in any of the schools. The article suggests that while the nature of supports given to each of these graduates has not been identical, none of them was more likely to have completed high school prepared for a promising future than any of the others. This session is intended to get your creative juices flowing to envision an educational system that would actually produce a set of conditions like these. Among other things, we'll consider: a profile of the Class of 2042; a profile of faculty and staff; a profile of the system; and community connections.

session leaders:Cynthia Silva Parker, Senior Associate, IISC; Curtis Ogden, Senior Associate, IISC; Chinyelu Martin, Senior Director, National Equity Project; Hugh Vasquez, Senior Associate, National Equity Project

Session IV - Saturday 9:00am - 10:30pm

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Description: What are challenges to civic engagement in Detroit as it plans for a very different future? How do we develop authentic citizen leadership? How does civic engagement play out differently in different regions of the country? What does a blueprint for transformative action, conceptualized and implemented by African American leaders, look like? What is the role of public officials and funders in citizen engagement around racial equity, sustainability, and regional health? Join an engaging, interactive session led by African American women instrumental to driving change across the country as we discuss these questions and more.

session leaders: Christy Rogers (Kirwan Institute), Ponsella Hardaway (MOSES Detroit), Cherie Collins (Consultant, Northwest Area Foundation’s African American Leadership Forum), Angela Stanley (Kirwan Institute)

Session IV - Saturday 9:00am - 10:30pm

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Description: Through a narrative multimedia presentation, including video/audio and Powerpoint elements, this session introduces audience members to people in five very different communities inspired by a long-range vision of racial and cultural integration and inclusive shared prosperity. In each place, people put their forward-looking aspirations into practice on the ground, often after overcoming significant resistance and long-standing patterns of segregation, exclusion and inequality. Our presentation brings viewers inside neighborhoods, schools and government institutions to see what a vision of integration and prosperity looks like in progress. The presentation, produced by the documentation project, One Nation Indivisible, showcases efforts in the following places: (1) Eden Prairie/Greater Minneapolis (school integration, local and state-level efforts); (2) Framingham, Massachusetts (two-way bilingual school/welcoming immigrants); (3) Philadelphia (government access for English language learners/systemic city-government based immigrant integration); (4) Omaha, Nebraska (ambitious urban-suburban school desegregation effort, including tax-sharing); (5) Salt Lake City, Utah (efforts to retrain teaching force to respond inclusively/constructively in this increasingly diverse school district).

session leaders: Susan Eaton & Gina Chirichigno, co-directors, One Nation Indivisible,

Session IV - Saturday 9:00am - 10:30pm

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Description: Today’s mainstream media industry (film, television, stage) are seriously lacking when it comes to portraying the true racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity that is America.  That shortfall has real consequences. Change is afoot, however.  There are a number of movements and organizations, inside and outside of “the Industry,” that have launched significant efforts to correct this misrepresentation.  Join Lynn and Carlos, industry artists and activists, as they visit 2042, a time by which the visions of these campaigns for change have been fully realized.

session leaders: Lynn Manning, Poet and Playwright; Carlos Manuel Aguilar, Screenwriter, Director, and Filmmaker

Session IV - Saturday 9:00am - 10:30pm

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Description: From politics to health to culture, there is a strong relationship between racial and gender equity ; between increased opportunity for people of color and the status of women. As we move towards 2042, a vibrant and burgeoning reproductive justice movement that is led by women of color is playing a key role in expanding rights at this intersection. In this session, we will discuss the gender “blind spot” that often exists within efforts for racial equity; the way conservatives are using race and gender together as a wedge to advance policy that limits the rights of women and people of color; and a vision for a future where social justice movements are strengthened by adopting a stronger racial and gender justice lens.

session leaders: Vanessa Daniel, Groundswell Fund; Kierra Johnson, Choice USA; Miriam Yeung, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum

Session IV - Saturday 9:00am - 10:30pm

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Description: Informed by many years of working in racial justice, a domestic violence advocate and AIDS/LGBT activist will share their learning from their work bringing together people who are separated by identity and economic power and who are often in competition for resources. Together they have been seeking a new way of working that invites the shared power that is possible when people organize around the deeper purpose of their work in the world and, from this foundation, move forward together. What about these moments of possibility and 'power together' can be carried forward to future racial justice work?  In this workshop, participants will source our own experiences in racial justice work and explore through conversation: What else could be possible in the future if our racial justice conversations were infused with grace and compassion while being rigorous about the work?  

session leaders: Kelly McGowan, Upstream; Tuesday Ryan-Hart, Confluence, Unlimited

Session IV - Saturday 9:00am - 10:30pm

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Description: The United States will likely face continued challenges related to national security in the future. But, how can we chart a vision that will change the ways that our country – policymakers, community members, media – can respond to those challenges? What can we learn from the post September 11th environment which has been riddled with xenophobic rhetoric in the political realm, failed policy measures, and the targeting of a swath of individuals based simply on appearance, religious affiliation and national origin? This session will explore what we should be doing now in terms of community building, policy changes, and political engagement in order to create an America for all of us.

session leaders: Deepa Iyer (SAALT), Farhana Khera (Muslim Advocates), Sameera Hafiz (Rights Working Group), James Rucker (Color of Change)

Session IV - Saturday 9:00am - 10:30pm

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Description: This interactive session will focus on the overrepresentation of African American and American Indian children and the disparate treatment of all children and families of color within child welfare systems across the country.  The session will include a brief presentation of national and Texas data reflecting disproportionality and disparities in child welfare and other systems, an exploration of why people are poor, and a description of steps already underway to address these inequities.  The presenters will offer their vision of what 30 years of work towards success will look like.  The session will conclude with a brainstorming session among participants about how to address inequities in other family-serving systems and a call to action.

session leaders: Tanya Rollins (Texas Child Protective Services), Jon Olson (Texas Child Protective Services)

Session V - Saturday 10:45am - 12:15pm

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Description: Few research centers and think tanks in the United States are dedicated to research and policy analysis at the intersections of race, class, gender and other markers of difference. Join us for a discussion with leading racial justice researchers and policy analysts to discuss how to authentically lift up the lived experiences of communities of color to create inclusive public policies; the challenge of providing a counternarrative or policy solutions that fall outside of those discussed inside the Beltway; and opportunities for collaboration across communities of practice to build a more equitable society. Participants will also offer specific examples of the tangible improvements they would expect to see in 20 or 30 years if the kinds of intersectional analyses they support take firm root.

session leaders: Nicole Mason (Women of Color Policy Network), Miho Kim (the Data Center), Dominique Apallon (the Applied Research Center), Aisha Moodie Mills (Center for American Progress)

Session V - Saturday 10:45am - 12:15pm

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Description: Long-term change requires a bold commitment to shifting public discourse. Successful campaigns on racial justice inspire and mobilize a wide range of audiences. Research on public opinion and media coverage in 2011 reveals opportunities for building alliances and connections across constituencies for racial justice, economic opportunity, immigration, and gender and sexuality issues. The Opportunity Agenda will present research on the role of race in public discourse on these issues, and the ways shared values and perceptions present new opportunities to bring together advocates. The workshop will focus on ways advocates can incorporate this intersectional research into concrete actions for shifting public discourse and strengthening alliances.

session leaders: Juhu Thukral, Julie Rowe (Opportunity Agenda)

Session V - Saturday 10:45am - 12:15pm

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Description: Within higher education this country has seen three eras of change in the epoch commencing with the desegregation of post-secondary education:  (1) the Affirmative Action Era; (2) the Diversity and Multiculturalism Era ; and (3) the Diversity and Inclusion Era. In the year 2042, a new Era of Access, Equality, and Justice in institutions of higher education has been realized!  We are celebrating a quarter century of our work as founders of Reaching Excellence in Academic Communities of Higher-Education (REACH).  REACH serves as our methodological vehicle for actively imagining the solutions to the previous three eras. We use the fictional organization-REACH-to proffer a paradigm of post-secondary educational pluralism for 2040 and beyond. Features include:  Fundamental assumptions about what it means to be educated for purposeful citizenship in a global society, foundational components for socio-politically just infrastructures, and requisite core guiding principles for administrative leadership.  REACH'S blue print projects a design for higher education based on the view that capacities for pluralism and justice at the institutional, community, and relational levels are unconditional criteria of educational excellence.

session leaders: Toni King (Denison Univ.), Rhunette Diggs (Columbus State Community College), S. Alease Ferguson (Univ. of Phoenix, Cleveland Campus)

Session V - Saturday 10:45am - 12:15pm

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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.

session leaders: Gita Gulati-Partee (OpenSource Leadership Strategies), Maggie Potapchuk (MP Associates)

Session V - Saturday 10:45am - 12:15pm

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Description: By 2042, communities of color can and will achieve parity and equity when obtaining credit, specifically with regard to obtaining and maintaining mortgages. With no "silver bullet" to increase quality homeownership among communities of color, this session will highlight innovative avenues toward overcoming common barriers to quality homeownership, including: financial literacy; government support and encouragement of safe mortgage products; and government curtailment of predatory lending practices. The next 30 years present a period of great potential for some people to access a safe and affordable mortgage, ultimately locking them and their families into everything that goes along with homeownership--increased credit scores, which begets better financial products, roots into a community, long-term relationships with neighbors and schools, and the most obvious: home equity.

session leaders: Jane Holzer (Foreclosure Relief Law Project)

Session V - Saturday 10:45am - 12:15pm

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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.

session leaders:Julie Ajinkya (Center for American Progress) Qian Cai, University of Virginia; Vanessa Cardenas, Center for American Progress; Tate Hill, Fresno (CA) Metro Black Chamber; Walter Tejada, Arlington (VA) County Board Member; Sarah Treuhaft, PolicyLink

Session V - Saturday 10:45am - 12:15pm

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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.

session leaders: john powell (Haas Center, U.C. Berkeley)

Transforming Racial Inequality At Home and (Very Far) Abroad

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Description: This panel will explore what our world (and other worlds) might look like in 30 years if major social policies to address racial economic disparities have been adopted and implemented. Particular attention will be given to potential new problems that might emerge in the aftermath of the execution of these (non-incremental) strategies. If, in fact, racial wealth inequality has been confronted with a universal redistributive program like the "baby bonds" initiative or a race specific program of reparations, what would be the outcome? If, in fact, the black-white unemployment rate gap has been tackled by the adoption of a federal job guarantee for all citizens, how would the world that ensues look? If colleges and universities had faculty and graduate student demographics consistent with the ethnic/racial composition of the American population, what would be the consequences? And if the process of settlement of other planets was underway, what steps would have to be taken to insure that racial inequality is not reproduced on those far-flung "shores"? In short, if dramatic policies for social change are adopted to eliminate major racial economic disparities will we have achieved Nirvana or will there still be important social problems that emerge on the new terrain of racial equality?

session leaders: Ytasha Womack (Independent Scholar), Rhonda Sharpe (Bennett College) Darrick Hamilton (New School), William Darity Jr. (Duke University)

Poetry: Visioning the Future

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Description: This session will be curated by Scott Woods, president of Poetry Slam, Inc and an accomplished poet, author, musician, and DJ. Come watch and listen as multiple local poets perform some poems, talk about their creative process, and muse aloud and argue about the role of art in general (and poetry in particular) in visioning the future. Each time slot will feature different poems and poets, so feel free to come to both!

session leaders: Scott Woods

Integrating and Making the Change We Want

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