NN16

Despite the Supreme Court’s recent decision to put a temporary hold on the Clean Power Plan, climate and public health advocates and activists are still making one thing clear: it won’t revive the fortunes of the coal industry, slow the transition to clean energy or disrupt progress toward meeting the climate commitment the U.S. made in Paris last year. As the Supreme Court legal process unfolds, something else will continue unfolding as well—the steady progress of activists to retire dirty coal-fired power plants and replace them with clean, safe energy sources. Learn about the judicial process related to the Clean Power Plan and how to keep telling positive, progress stories that beat out the noise of opponents.

Led by: David Weiskopf

Panelists: Aliya Haq, Mary Anne Hitt, Michelle Romero

In 2015, a shocking report from the Reflective Democracy Campaign found that 79 percent of the 2,437 elected prosecutor positions in the U.S. are filled by white men, and only 1 percent by women of color. When it comes to sheriffs, women are only 1.3 percent of the 3,081 sheriffs in this country. From district attorneys to sheriffs to elected judges and attorneys general, it is our duty to elect representatives who reflect the diversity of our communities to ensure a truly just application of the law. This panel will discuss and share strategies and approaches to recruiting women—specifically women of color—to run for elected law enforcement offices in order to dismantle racist structures within our judicial system and police departments.

Led by: Brenda Choresi Carter

Panelists: Kim Foxx, A'shanti Gholar, Melba Pearson

Though it’s long been an issue, recent high-profile incidents have highlighted the persistent problem of so-called progressive people, businesses, and organizations that ostensibly fight for justice and equality, yet sexually harass, assault, and otherwise abuse their fellow activists, colleagues, and employees behind closed doors. How can we address this issue, through organizational accountability and restorative justice models? How do we balance the need to keep people—particularly girls, women, and members of the LGBTQIA community—safe, while also making space for people to learn from and overcome harmful mistakes? Join us for a participatory working session to develop movement-wide solutions.

Led by: Sabrina Joy Stevens

Panelists: Robyn Swirling, Rachel Tardiff, Bridget Todd

Anti-worker advocates in the Show Me State’s Legislature have in recent years tried to repeatedly push through bills that would curb workers’ collective bargaining rights and their ability to contribute to their union through so-called right-to-work and paycheck deception legislation. Those efforts have been fueled by corporate dollars. But Missouri isn’t the only state where this is going on. This panel will discuss the struggle for workers’ rights.

Led by: Tyler Longpine

Panelists: Theresa Hester, State Senator Jamilah Nasheed, Sean Soendker Nicholson

Many non-Black progressives profess anti-racist values online and in conversation but fail to show up when action is needed. How do we move people with privilege up the ladder of engagement to riskier actions? How do we get them to show up — in the streets, in the office and in institutions—and is showing up enough? Solving the puzzle of turning out groups that aren’t most affected by our issues is critical to building strong movements. Panelists on the front lines of social justice campaigns will share case studies and lessons learned from turning out co-conspirators to protest, donate and lead.

Led by: Julien Burns

Panelists: Heather Cronk, Cayden Mak, Johnny Mathias, Dara Silverman, Monique Teal

As the movement for Black lives increases in visibility, so do the voices and strategies of those working on and offline to end state-sanctioned violence against Black people. As we work to shift culture and change the way people think and behave toward one another, we employ bold, visionary digital and traditional communications tactics rooted in the Black experience. Hear from organizers and communicators who work at the intersection of race, digital strategy and communications about how they organize and mobilize people to broaden international conversations about the impact of state violence on Black communities and drive critical conversations from the ‘hood to the White House about an authentic transformation of American democracy.

Led by: Miski Noor

Panelists: Malkia Cyril, Mervyn Marcano, Autumn Marie

When Bernie Sanders calls for a “political revolution,” he isn’t thinking just about the race for the White House. Bernie knows that the political revolution involves millions of people standing up to transform our country by electing progressive leaders up and down the ballot, especially candidates for Congress. This panel will explore how we can elect bold new candidates—taking the political revolution to Congress.

Led by: Charles Chamberlain

Panelists: Maria Chappelle-Nadal, Rep. Alan Grayson, Alexandra "Alex" Rojas, Misty Snow

Distributed organizing has proliferated across the advocacy space. Far from the early create-your-own-petition sites, many organizations are running programs that give members a larger role in campaigning strategy and execution, putting their trust in members’ abilities. The benefits are huge, including list growth from people engaged in heartfelt causes and a powerful leadership pipeline. There are also challenges: balancing the needs of growth and impact, wrangling campaign support resources, avoiding brand damage and finding the right technology. Join us for a conversation with Color of Change, MoveOn, 350.org and Fission Strategy about what’s working, what’s not and what’s next as we move toward more participatory campaigning.

Led by: Josh Nelson

Panelists: Emily Figdor, Allyse Heartwell, Yeshimabeit Milner, Hemly Ordonez

Over the last several years, we’ve seen grassroots organizing turn the tide and deliver progressive victories on several key climate battles, including the Keystone pipeline and Arctic drilling. Now, the Keep It in the Ground movement is building on those victories and turning to an even-more ambitious goal: ending all new leases for coal, oil, gas and tar sands extraction on our citizen-owned federal public lands. Sen. Jeff Merkley, the lead author of the Keep It in the Ground Act, will join others in the climate movement to discuss the successes of the past few years and how the progressive community can work with grassroots organizers, Congress and the Administration to take even bolder steps to save our planet.

Panelists: May Boeve, Senator Jeff Merkley, Tom Steyer, Murshed Zaheed

What is the role of art and culture in movement building? How are we developing artist leadership in cultural organizing? How do we create structures which support cultural work in our organizations? Based on their new book “When We Fight, We Win! 21st Century Social Movements and the Activists that are Transforming our World,” Greg Jobin-Leeds joins forces with AgitArte, Paulina Helm-Hernandez of SONG and other organizers and artists to further the discussion on the role of cultural work within our organizations, communities and movements. This panel will consider the mutual impact that arts and social movements have on each other and explore how the arts as cultural forms contribute to social transformation.

Led by: Jorge Díaz

Panelists: Sasha Costanza-Chock, Paulina Helm-Hernández, Dey Hernández, Greg Jobin-Leeds

The unexpected death of the late Justice Antonin Scalia has opened a rare window of opportunity to undo perhaps the most despised Supreme Court decision of the modern era: Citizens United. With a new 4-4 divide on the high court, and with the hope of a progressive court majority in 2016 or early 2017, the time to chart a course for reversing Citizens United and its doctrinal predecessor, Buckley v. Valeo, has finally arrived. It’s time for campaign finance and corporate power reformers to move from defense to offense, and to heed a new call to redeem the promise of American democracy.

Led by: John Nichols

Panelists: John Bonifaz, Spencer Overton, Zephyr Teachout

During this election season we have seen insults and offensive rhetoric to demean different ethnic groups and pit them against each other. And we all know that when working people are divided, corporate interests win. The wealthy few focuses on our divisions to encourage working people to attack each other instead of fighting for new rules that will level the playing field and make the economy fairer. The outcome of the 2016 election cycle will determine union rights, voting rights, campaign finance reform, free speech rights, corporate rights, and reproductive rights for many years too come.

This panel will focus on how to unite working people around an agenda that will level the playing field for all Americans and fight for a more inclusive democracy. This agenda includes restoring the Voting Rights Act, delivering on comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship, driving sentencing reforms for nonviolent drug offenses, and for an end to school disciplinary practices that push kids into the mass incarceration system.

Led by: Gregory Cendana

Panelists: Neidi Dominguez, Denise Feriozzi, Cietta Kiandoli, Michael Podhorzer

It’s time for progressives to have a serious discussion about how Israel has become an apartheid state. For nearly 50 years, the Palestinian people have lived under a military occupation by a foreign government that limits their freedom of movement and equal access to water, forces the usage of segregated roads and buses, and allows for the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians in what the U.S. State Department has described in its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices as “institutional and societal discrimination against Arab citizens, in particular in access to equal education and employment opportunities; societal discrimination and domestic violence against women.”

Led by: Dan Goldman

Panelists: Ali Abunimah, Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek, Ari Wohlfeiler

On September 29, a diverse coalition came together to deliver more than 2.4 million petition signatures, hold more than 350 events nationwide and organize hundreds of thousands of pink-clad women, men and young people to #PinkOut and #StandwithPP online and off. The coalition—which included MoveOn, CREDO, DFA, Sierra Club Rise, UltraViolet, ACLU, NARAL, SEIU, NLIRH, Color of Change and others—stepped up to #StandwithPP and its patients after a group of anti-abortion extremists attacked Planned Parenthood in July 2015. This panel will go behind the scenes and discuss how we did it—including the importance of that moment, coalition building, our online-to-offline presence, and why the campaign was so successful.

Led by: Beth Lynk

Panelists: Stephanie Castro, Emily Figdor, Heather Holdridge, Sara Hutchinson Ratcliffe, Brad Lichtenstein, Anne Pfrimmer

Our political system is out of touch with an electorate that is more diverse and demanding than ever before. This session explores bold strategies such as engaging new voters, providing alternative candidates, and revamping political structures that hold back nontraditional candidates. Through specific examples and data, the panelists show that it’s possible to reclaim our power even in the face of expensive campaigns, special interests and entrenched incumbents.

Led by: Aimee Allison

Panelists: Sayu Bhojwani, Carol McDonald, Steve Phillips

Prosecutors may be the most powerful people in our criminal justice system. They have broad discretion to choose if and how to charge. Too many refuse to hold police accountable when they kill Black people while over-prosecuting and incarcerating Black folks for far less damaging crimes. Most prosecutors are chosen by the people, but who do they really serve? Nationwide, there are nearly 2400 elected prosecutors, yet more than 70% run unopposed. Prosecutor elections offer an opportunity to make voting feel meaningful for so many people by holding bad actors accountable. How do we shift the narrative in prosecutor races and create a framework that truly responds to our communities’ needs? And where are the best opportunities to unseat bad prosecutors in the future?

Led by: Scott Roberts

Panelists: Josie Duffy Rice, Johnny Mathias, Blake Strode

More than 50 years have elapsed since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and communities of color are still fighting for their right to vote. This panel looks at how the SCOTUS decision in Shelby County v. Holder opened the floodgates for discriminatory voter suppression laws nationwide, what’s being done to fight back, and what it means to fight for voting rights in the age of #BlackLivesMatter. Leaders from the movement to #RestoreTheVRA will discuss both defensive strategies that protect voters and offensive strategies that seek to secure the right to vote and increase voter turnout. The panel will also focus on strategic communications and how to push back against harmful narratives that support voter suppression.

Led by: Jennifer Farmer

Panelists: Judith Browne Dianis, Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, Kayla Reed

Government actions such as racially explicit zoning, public housing segregation and federal requirements for white-only suburbs systematically segregated African Americans—setting the stage for the protests and racial tension following Michael Brown’s death. Join us for a conversation about how truly moving forward as a nation will require addressing the century of public policy that created our segregated metropolises. Remedies for our racial problems will be unlikely unless we understand how this racial landscape was created.

Led by: Chris King

Panelists: Sherrilyn Ifill, Richard Rothstein

Could debt-free college be to 2016 what healthcare reform was to 2008? A huge grassroots push in 2015 put debt-free college center stage in the presidential debate and political lexicon. Clinton and Sanders both endorsed it, and it has come up in every Democratic presidential debate. Over half of Senate Democrats and more than 100 members of Congress have endorsed it—and candidates across the country are running on it. This panel will explore the history of student debt activism and discuss how debt-free college became a hugely popular issue in 2016. We’ll also discuss how to build bridges between lawmakers and the grassroots so that we enter 2017 with a mandate and an inside-outside legislative strategy to pass debt-free college into law.

Led by: Natalia Abrams

Panelists: Keith Ellison, Mark Huelsman, Ann O'Leary, Kayla Wingbermuehle

On the left, Bernie Sanders built a movement against the buying of our democracy by billionaires like the Koch brothers, and a broad coalition of groups fighting for free and fair elections staged mass mobilizations in April to ratchet up the pressure for change in DC. On the right, moneyed, establishment candidates backed by the Koch network fell by the wayside to self-funding billionaire Donald Trump, defying the media narrative around money in politics. Hear from grassroots activists building the money-out movement about strategies that are working on the ground to harness the energy of this anti-establishment election cycle.

Led by: Lauren Windsor

Panelists: Lisa Graves, Kai Newkirk, Angie Wells, Winnie Wong

Join us for a powerful and emotional conversation with fathers of children murdered at the hands of the police. Hear how they navigate a criminal justice institution that too often views them as criminal. What are the realities that fathers face in the wake of “justifiable homicides” of their own children? And how are these fathers contributing to the movement for freedom and justice today? These questions and more will be explored in this panel.

Led by: cephus johnson

Panelists: Michael Brown Sr., Ron Davis, Kenneth Johnson Sr., Andrew Joseph

This election cycle is a pivotal moment for the Supreme Court. For decades, the Court has been profoundly conservative, standing against progress on issues from voting rights to guns to racial and economic justice. The bitter lesson is that it matters who serves on our courts, particularly the Supreme Court. Now, in the throes of a political battle over one vacancy, we must remember that the next president will likely fill three additional seats, controlling the Court for a generation. Join us as we discuss the issues at stake and how activists can make a difference in judicial selection—including tools for local activism and advocacy.

Led by: Nan Aron

Panelists: Renee Bracey Sherman, Keith Ellison, Senator Jeff Merkley, Ambar Pinto, Anisha Singh

Behind the scenes of the Movement for Black Lives, strategic communicators work to amplify the movement’s visibility and maintain a national dialogue about police brutality and the criminalization of people of color. This panel discussion will offer a unique opportunity to hear directly from these strategists about the most effective tools and strategies they employ in their work. The panel will emphasize the movement’s focus on amplifying the voices of organized communities of color from the local to the national level and explore the innovative, next-generation tactics they’ve used to affirm the lives of people of color.

Led by: Danielle Belton

Panelists: Malaya Davis, Chelsea Fuller, Ian Mann

Community schools bring together academics, health & social services, community development, and parental engagement to turn around struggling schools, disrupt the school-to-prison-pipeline, and stand up for the needs of whole neighborhoods. These schools are transformative. Learn how this progressive solution improves academics and supports entire school communities without turning to the privatization schemes of charters and takeover districts.

Led by: Kyle Serrette

Panelists: Eric R. Brown, Jitu Brown, Jane Quinn

The Iran nuclear agreement was a huge accomplishment for the Obama administration, for the U.S., and for a progressive vision of foreign policy. In contrast to the Iraq war—which cost trillions of dollars, killed more than 4,000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis and was disastrous for our security—the Iran agreement advanced our security by working with international partners and putting diplomacy first. But the work isn’t done. The battle over the agreement in Congress was hard fought. Building a more progressive foreign policy requires supporting those members who supported the deal and blocking the right’s efforts to undermine it. We’ll discuss that, and what’s needed to develop and strengthen a progressive foreign policy vision.

Led by: Matt Duss

Panelists: Marie Harf, Heather Hurlburt, Ilya Sheyman

One in five college women are sexually assaulted. Campus rape is a national crisis, but we are finally at a tipping point. This panel will explore how survivors from across the country have transformed the conversation about sexual assault and turned student activism into a national movement. As we have gained momentum—and won many important victories—the backlash has grown. From George Will’s “survivor privilege” to Rolling Stone, we’ll explore media’s contribution to rape culture—in particular, the alarming trend of victim-blaming and rape denial and how it impacts survivors of color. Panelists will discuss how students are leveraging social media and online advocacy to change the conversation and hold their institutions accountable.

Led by: Kaili Lambe

Panelists: Melissa DeGezelle, Sofie Karasek, Zoe Ridolfi-Starr, Kamilah Willingham

The Progressive data movement has long been heralded as a space of innovation, yet the space remains overwhelmingly white and male. Meet a group of women leading in their respective data fields and learn how they navigated the minefield of white tech bros, overcoming impostor syndrome, negotiating effectively, fighting bias in the workplace (sometimes perpetuated by other women) and building a necessary and supportive data lady squad.

Panelists: Kassia DeVorsey, Genny Mayhew, Annie Wang