From Troy Davis to Trayvon Martin, Stop and Frisk to Stand Your Ground, our country’s current criminal justice policies are not only creating a culture of fear in our country, but a second social class. The systemic problems that exist are often borne of old-fashioned bigotry and prejudice. How can we educate others on the role that race plays in our current judicial system? How do we end the cycle of violence that plagues so much of urban America and promote uplifting alternatives to violence and incarceration? And how can the progressive community join with social and racial justice organizations to empower communities—and change a system that essentially undermines social movements and threatens progressive power?

Led by: Rashad Robinson

Panelists: Nicole Austin-Hillery, Jakada Imani, Jasiri X

Join us in the exhibit hall or online for a Google+ Hangout where Congressman David Cicilline will be interviewed by Judd Legum (ThinkProgress).

Have you ever had to give an online training/presentation and felt like you were awkwardly lecturing an unresponsive computer? Worse, have you ever had to participate in an online training (any online training)? As distance training becomes easier to do technologically, more people struggle with ways to keep online presentations engaging, interactive and impactful. Join this session to learn about Obama for America’s 10 tips for executing awesome trainings, and how we’ve adjusted our ten offline tips so that they translate to online presentations. We’ll cover concrete tactics you can use to keep your participants awake, specific online tools that are most amenable to those tactics and most commonly committed errors. You’ll leave ready to webinar the heck out of your organization or fellow organizers.

Trainers: Sara El-Amine, Brad Schenck

Chris Cassidy’s social media rapid response training, given twice at NOI bootcamps, is a consistent crowd favorite. (Ok, second favorite once.) Here, he’s taking that gold/silver-medal formula and expanding it from just social media to include static online sites and public relations. Rapid response is something that requires a coordinated message and approach across mediums. You’ll learn tips and best practices, as well as recent examples of failures and successes, for approaching communications crises.

Trainers: Chris Cassidy

New scientifically effective proven campaign tactics from the Analyst Institute. Randomized controlled experiments have been used by academics and political organizations for the past 10 years to uncover what works and what doesn’t when talking to voters. We will briefly recap old and new proven effective GOTV best practices and touch on findings from voter registration tests (focused on Latino Voters), volunteer and advocacy tests, television ad testing and more. As a progressive community, we have limited resources and it’s important that we maximize our efforts by employing tactics that are proven to be effective. You will leave this presentation with simple phrases, tools and tricks to help you win.

Trainers: Regina Schwartz

Can sports ownership actually shape the 2012 election? Can sports media’s dominant racial narratives influence opinion on Barack Obama? Is Tim Tebow the most influential American challenging Roe v. Wade? Baseball’s integration once influenced desegregation; Billie Jean King promoted advances in gender equality; and sports owners and local politicians perfected a “welfare for billionaires” movement that helped shape broader public policy. Today, millions of Americans learn about government abuse through a steroids trial, institutional racism and exploitation through college athletics and the consequences of unchecked power and privilege through a Penn State “scandal.” This panel will address how sports shapes our national discussion and share examples of netroots, grassroots and legislative responses. Discussion will include roles of sports owners to sports mascots, white male privilege in sports media and the progressive blogosphere’s potential to embrace sports coverage as print media previously did.

Led by: Charles Modiano

Panelists: Eden James, Eddie Moore, Jr., Diane Williams, Dave Zirin

How did voter ID laws pass in a blue state? How many RI state legislators are anti-choice? What’s the deal with civil unions? Why does everyone keep saying tax breaks for the wealthy create jobs? As Democrats move to the right and progressives are fighting tooth and nail to get anything done, it couldn’t be more important to answer these questions. Hear the story of Rhode Island and how fights for tax justice, protecting a women’s right to choose, equal rights for our LGBTQI neighbors and access to the polls played out. Veteran advocates and organizers will talk about what works and what doesn’t when having a D next to a name means nothing.

When Democrats Aren’t Democrats: The Story of Rhode Island

Storified by Netroots Nation · Sat, Jun 09 2012 19:01:29

Led by: Patrick Crowley

Panelists: Kate Brock, Steven Brown, Paula Hodges, Ray Sullivan

Every campaign talks about new media, but too many stop at Facebook and Twitter. Successful campaigns leverage the full breadth of tools and strategies new media has to offer across all their departments to raise money, turn out volunteers and spread a campaign message efficiently and effectively. This panel will present case studies from successful new media programs like those run by the Elizabeth Warren campaign and her allies Eric Griego and Lois Frankel, with new media directors from these campaigns (along with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee) sharing the innovative strategies they’re using to win in 2012.

Led by: Jason Rosenbaum

Panelists: A.J. Carrillo, Audrey Edmonds, Brandt McCool, Lauren Miller

The long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the economic crisis at home, have soured many progressives on foreign policy ideals long held dear by liberals: human rights, multilateral interventions, nationbuilding and support for democracy abroad. Recent debates over Libya, the Arab Spring, drones and Israel/Palestine have deepened this split between interventionists and isolationists. So where’s the common ground? What should the next progressive foreign policy look like? Can liberal interventionists distinguish themselves from right-wing neocons? Is Ron Paul onto something with his anti-war stance? From sanctions and special forces to drones and no-fly zones, attendees to this panel will hear a variety of views on humanitarianism, state sovereignty, multilateralism, limited conflicts and domestic war fatigue from the left’s most prominent experts in international affairs.

Intervention, Isolation and the Future of Progressive Security Policy

Miss this panel? No problem! Here’s what happened.

Storified by Netroots Nation · Sat, Jun 09 2012 16:28:53

Led by: Adam Weinstein

Panelists: Ali Gharib, Michael Hastings, Kristin Lord, Tom Perriello

In 2011 we witnessed the most significant rollback of voting rights since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, with conservative legislators and governors passing laws in more than a dozen states to restrict access to the ballot. These laws included requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, restricting voter registration drives, curtailing early voting, disenfranchising ex-felons and mandating government-issued photo identification to cast a ballot. These tactics harken back to the days when Dixiecrats used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting. According to the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice, the new laws could make it significantly harder for more than 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012, with young, minority, low-income and disabled voters hit the hardest. This panel will look at the voter suppression tactics conservatives are employing and how to fight back to defend democracy.

Led by: Ari Berman

Panelists: Sen. Ben Cardin, Rep. Keith Ellison, Keesha Gaskins, Eric Marshall, Heather Smith

Women are dramatically underrepresented in almost every level of media and popular culture, whether they’re writing, directing, producing or greenlighting projects. While most media criticism tends to focus on the representations of women, whether in romantic comedies or on comic book covers, it’s time to pay attention to who is—and isn’t—making decisions about how culture gets made in the first place. We’ll break down the numbers on women—in particular, women of color—in media; talk about the importance of the pop culture chain of command; and discuss the best ways for consumers to put pressure on companies to produce more genuinely progressive stories, characters and explorations of women’s issues in mass culture.

Led by: Alyssa Rosenberg

Panelists: Anna Holmes, Elana Levin, Alli Thresher

President Obama was elected with overwhelming support from the black and brown communities in 2008. With the 2012 presidential election looming, and considering that we are no longer dealing with a campaign predicated on promises of hope and change, this panel will examine how the policies of the Obama presidency have affected these communities. We’ll also look at how organizers are utilizing culture, technology and the media to reach and engage these critical audiences once more.

Panelists: Javier Gonzalez, Arisha Hatch, Carey Jenkins, Malik Rhasaan