Search Sessions

To view individual panels, trainings and other sessions and to see who’s speaking, check out our searchable agenda below.

Wondering what a typical day at Netroots Nation is like? Check out our overview schedule.

Order by:

Protecting the Right to Protest and Voice Dissent

Over recent years, we have seen an escalation of the effort to criminalize and silence protest, dissent and critical advocacy. This shrinking of civil society space, driven by right wing extremists and extractive corporations, poses serious threats to our democracy and efforts to address the climate crisis, as well as advancing a progressive agenda overall. While the effects are being felt more and more across the movement, many in Congress and in state legislatures are not yet aware of the growing threat or the potential legislative remedies. There are two different streams of the attacks: state-level policy criminalizing various types of protest and corporate legal bullying in the form of SLAPP suits. We’ll talk about these attacks and how we can protect our right to protest and voice dissent.

Led by: Ebony Twilley Martin

Panelists: David McKean, Deepa Padmanabha, Bruce Shoemaker, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard

Effective Ways to Leverage Generative AI Tools for Your Digital Campaign

The exponential development of Generative AI technology over the past year, has brought about a lot of questions about the impact of this new technology and how to prepare for it. This training session is focused on helping progressive organizers at non-profits and campaigns navigate these questions and better understand how they can use these technologies to their advantage.

More specifically the training will focus on:

  • How do you properly evaluate an AI-powered tool for a specific use case in politics & campaigns?
  • What are the best practices of integrating AI in your digital organizing workflow
  • How can you develop efficient prompts for a large generalist AI model (e.g. ChatGPT, StableDiffusion, DALL E-2)?

Led by: Hillary Lehr, Tudor Mihailescu

Email Masterclass: It's Still the Killer App

Whether your community of supporters is five thousand or five million strong, email remains by far the most cost-effective and powerful digital channel at your disposal to inform and engage your base. The basics of how to run a good email program haven’t changed a lot over the years, but new developments—such as Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, malware screening software, and the rise of unethical actors in the fundraising and activism space—are forcing us to develop new strategies. I’ll share lessons learned—about list growth, deliverability, messaging, testing, fundraising and more—from more than 18 years experience managing email programs for CREDO Mobile, Bernie 2016, NextGen, Vote.org, Mozilla Foundation and People for the American Way.

Led by: Will Easton

How Illinois Ended Money Bail

The Pretrial Fairness Act was signed into law to end wealth-based jailing and reduce pretrial incarceration in Illinois. The implementation of the law will make Illinois the first state in the U.S. to completely eliminate money bail. Since the law’s passage in January 2021, it has been subjected to numerous attempts to undermine its success and preserve policies of mass incarceration. Organizers, policy experts, and elected officials will share how Illinois built a statewide movement to secure this historic reform and the lessons learned from successfully beating back a multi-million dollar right-wing misinformation campaign.

Led by: Aditi Singh

Panelists: Sharlyn Grace, Illinois State Senator Robert Peters, Tanya Watkins

Small and Steady Wins the Race: Microstorytelling for Campaigns

When amassing content for the long haul, it’s time to think smaller. Powerful, memorable stories don’t require massive monitors, video shoots and thousands of dollars: instead, mobilize 100 supporters to tell a tale in 15-second segments. Not every piece of content needs to belabor the issues. You can create tweets, teasers and small pitches that capture the mood, spirit and flavor of your campaign. Microstorytelling is scalable, sustainable, phone-based and makes digital organizing a group effort rather than a losing battle for a few tired staffers. Just as we ask folks to chip in small amounts like $5 or $10, we should feel comfortable asking them to dedicate 15, 30, or 60 seconds to amplify your impact.

Trainers: Janani Sreenivasan

Interactive Activism: How to Create Fun and Engaging Workshops

Training and educating are key components of organizing and advocacy work; but to keep organizers and volunteers coming to your events, they need to be fun and engaging. But how do you make trainings fun? How do you move away from panels and lectures and into engaging, thought-provoking, interactive sessions? During this training, which we promise will be fun, we’ll walk you through climate education examples of how to meaningfully incorporate games, music, art and other activities into your events. We’ll share both in-person and virtual options.

Trainers: Alaura Carter, Jill Leaness

Religiously Unaffiliated: Understanding and Engaging the "Nones"

Religiously unaffiliated Americans, or the “nones,” are the fastest growing religious demographic in the nation—now representing nearly one-third of Americans and nearly 40% of millennials and Gen Z. But this population is stigmatized, overlooked and misunderstood despite its enormous potential as a voting constituency. Learn everything you need to know about the nones: their very diverse demographics; their voting behavior; how to reach and activate them; and how to be more inclusive of this constituency, including how to avoid common missteps and pitfalls that further marginalize them.

Trainers: Sarah Levin, Juhem Navarro-Rivera

Someone Always Calls the Cops: When Karen or Chad Dials 911 on Your Canvassers

Canvassing is protected First Amendment free speech, but that doesn’t stop residents from calling the cops on your team for canvassing while Black or Brown. And, unfortunately, it doesn’t usually stop the cops either. In this session, we’ll share three steps to support canvassers and keep the campaign strong and safe, without reverting to savior mode.

Trainers: Mira Weinstein

From Training to Trending: How to Build and Activate a Team of Trusted Messengers

Whether you’re trying to get out the vote, invite people to join a rally or collecting petition signatures, a grassroots social media team that is inclusive of all communities is your key to success. By learning how to build, train and activate a diverse team of trusted messengers to mobilize their personal networks using our tried and true best practices, you can reach an exponential number of people you won’t find on your own targeted list. Creating a low barrier to entry volunteer role for your supporters not only grows your base, it expands the communities you are able to reach. Let us show you how to build your team using recruitment tactics, volunteer trainings and ways to distribute messaging toolkits.

Trainers: Gabriela Diaz, Lisa Hendricks

Making the Impossible Mainstream: Learning From Progressive Economic Policy Wins

Over the past few years, with perseverance and resilience, the progressive movement has shifted economic policies, making ideas once dismissed as radical now embraced as common sense. This work has led to policy victories at all levels of government that tackle corporate power, expand workers’ rights, directly meet peoples’ needs and address our housing crisis. How did organizers, policy experts and advocates change entrenched narratives around progressive economic issues and achieve massive policy wins? How can we build on these successes and ensure the reign of outdated neoliberal ideas favoring the so-called free market at the expense of our communities finally ends for good? Come find out!

Led by: Claire Guzdar

Panelists: Ben Beachy, Brandon McKoy, Tara Raghuveer

Shifting the Narrative Around Philanthropy: Escaping the Scarcity Mentality

Our panel will illustrate that we as a progressive movement have long been mired in a scarcity mentality that pits organizations against one another for resources—and reinforce the need to shift the narrative across the philanthropic and advocacy sectors. In this session, we will have a robust discussion with panelists underscoring the importance of progressive collaborative funding. Panelists will explore trust-based impact framework models that have worked in the past. This expedition will help us better understand progressive collaborative fundraising and power-building while promoting cross-sector collaboration. Participants will leave the session with the knowledge and motivation needed to abandon the scarcity mentality.

Led by: Sadé Dozan

Panelists: Cherita Ellens, Stacy Kono, Krista Scott, Choua Vue

You Cannot Win Without The Youth Vote

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, many national news sources suggested that the youth would not turn out. In reality, the election saw the second-highest youth turnout in the last 30 years. Gen Z voted overwhelmingly for pro-democracy candidates. Without the youth vote, the “red wave” may have become a reality. Hear from youth organizers on how they helped turn out the vote in November and what they are doing now to prepare to turn out the youth in record numbers in 2024. We’ll discuss approaches youth mobilization and engagement, what galvanized Gen Z, as well as what strategies organizations and campaigns can employ to boost youth engagement.

Led by: Marianna Pecora

Panelists: Santiago Mayer, Ashwath Narayanan, Victor Shi

Utility Justice: The Next Frontier in Environmental Justice Campaigns

Groups around the country are taking on investor-owned electric utilities, which are responsible for 25% of America’s climate emissions yet shut off power for millions of Americans each year. Through state-level work and campaigns pressuring corporations, they are winning justice from these giant corporations. Join us to hear from the campaign manager for a ballot initiative in Maine to create a consumer-owned utility, a renewable energy worker pushing utilities to raise standards in her industry and a national alliance of groups fighting for energy democracy in the utility sector.

Led by: Jean Su

Panelists: Felicia Allen, Al Cleveland, Dieynabou Diallo

Taking Back Our School Boards from Right-Wing Extremism

Book bans. Attacks on LGBTQ+ youth. Our public schools are under a coordinated, well-funded attack from right-wing extremists who have taken over local school boards and are working to dismantle our education system. Dark-money groups have spent big in local races where every dollar counts, and pro-equality, pro-education forces need to fight back. Learn how we can support school board candidates and refute extremist talking points. Grassroots donors and volunteers are rising up to take back our school boards, and fight for justice and equality. Our democracy depends on it.

Led by: Kenton Ngo

Panelists: Sean Frame, Liz Ratcliff

Relational Organizing at Scale: When to Run an Incentivized vs Volunteer Program

In 2022, we saw the first-ever experiments demonstrating the persuasive impact of relational. This new research shows relational organizing can be more impactful and efficient than other modes of campaign communication such as TV, mail and door, and latest advancements have finally unlocked the ability of relational to scale. This panel will examine the new research around RO’s persuasive impact and the innovations in the space that have allowed groups to scale—from paid relational programs to volunteer ones that leverage growth over time. In this panel, experienced relational organizers will discuss their paid vs volunteer campaign strategies, outcomes and the lessons learned from the largest relational campaigns this last cycle.

Led by: Nick Chedli Carter

Panelists: Amanda Brink, Quinn Dunlea, Amity Foster, Sri Kulkarni

The Parallels of Anti-Abortion and Anti-Trans Laws and What We Can Learn

For the last 50 years, right-wing policy makers have put increasingly complex laws on the books to impact how and where abortion is accessible. They are now—almost to a T—replicating those laws to limit access to gender affirming care for trans and gender non-conforming people. The result of these restrictive policies around abortion access has created a vast network of organizations that help people travel for their care (called practical support) which is now also starting to be replicated in trans health. We talk about the local, national and legal systems that exist within abortion access and how they can be understood and leveraged to support trans people who will need to travel.

Led by: Marisa Falcon

Panelists: Walker Fitz, Em Lawler, Mariah Moore, Erin Smith

Building a Feminist, Anti-Racist Peace Movement

It’s past time for the progressive movement to hold the U.S. accountable for its militarized foreign policy. The U.S. militarized approach to security has not made people safe, either at home or abroad. Instead, it has worsened systemic exploitation, harmed targeted communities worldwide and accelerated the climate crisis. As the Feminist Peace Initiative, we are building the antidote to militarized policies: a peace movement that centers the leadership of women and gender-nonconforming people of color, who have organized in solidarity with communities of color in the U.S. and in the Global South. Join us to answer the question: how do we build this peace movement?

Led by: Kate Alexander

Panelists: Cathi Choi, Diana Duarte, Kitzia Esteva, Brittany Ramos-DeBarros

Fundraising for Campaigns, an Overview

Your campaign needs money, and a lot of it. Every campaign does. Money is what powers our message, helps reach voters, pays organizers, and sustains your campaign. In this session we will cover the best practices and newest techniques and technology for campaign fundraising. Every participant will leave with a better understanding of everything from call time, events, texting, bundling, budgeting and more. Participants will hear from prominent progressive fundraisers, who have worked with notable progressive candidates and organizations such as Rep. Cori Bush, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Justice Democrats, and more.

Led by: Connor Farrell, Jacob Sher