Wednesday, October 4 – Virtual Schedule & Sessions
Wednesday, October 4 will feature Virtual Summit Experiences, including an Intergenerational Generative Dialogue, followed by Drop-In Facilitated Community Spaces in Race-Based Affinity and ending with a Closing Keynote and Practice with Autumn Brown and Susan Raffo.
Ticket Eligibility
Everyone registered with a Virtual Summit Experience Ticket and/or a Combined Virtual and In-Person Ticket will have access to the events this day. These will not be available for attendees with an In-Person Day Only Ticket.
Advanced sign-up is not required for any sessions on Wednesday. Information about how to access these spaces will be available in the Summit booklet and in the Hopin conference platform during the two virtual days of the Summit.
Click here to download a printable version of the full Summit Schedule.
Intergenerational Generative Dialogue | 9:00 am – 11:00 am
STreamed Live on Our Virtual Platform – Hopin | Access at the “Stage” Area | No Sign up Necessary
This will be a collective conversation with Ja’loni Owens and Kabzuag Vag, and Mickey Mestiza – hosted by Ali Muldrow.
It will build on this year’s Summit invitation of Creating New Possibilities for Intersectional Racial Justice, Collective Healing and Liberation.
By connecting multigenerational and multiethnic people to share their stories, experiences, and insights, the generative dialogues provide attendees an opportunity to examine the intertwined levels of their own stories, experiences, and insights.
More Contributors for this Dialogue will be added soon.
Ja’Loni Amor Owens, J.D. (they/them), is a Black queer reproductive justice organizer and full-spectrum doula of Puerto Rican and Black American descent. From 2020 – 2023, Ja’Loni was the lead manager of Fill the Gap, a mutual aid project based in New York City providing free emergency contraception, disposable and reusable menstrual products, pregnancy tests, infant caretaking supplies, and school supplies to communities impacted by increased surveillance and policing during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Ja’Loni’s work as an organizer, writer, lawyer, and doula continues to center Black gender marginalized communities, Black queer and trans people, Black people living with disabilities, and Black people navigating experiences of criminalization, including but not limited to the criminalization of abortion access, gender-affirming care, and drug use. Grounded in the Black radical politics of Reproductive Justice, Abolition, and Pan-Africanism, Ja’Loni believes in the leadership of radical survivors of violence, who are the true architects of safe, sustainable and free communities no longer subjected to carceral control. Ja’Loni also currently serves as the Research Coordinator at Law for Black Lives, a national Black-led movement lawyering organization.
Kabzuag Vaj (she/her) is a Hmong refugee who was born in Laos and raised in Madison, WI. She is the founder and co-executive director of Freedom Inc and the executive director of Freedom Action Now, Inc. She has dedicated the majority of her life to ending gender-based violence. Her advocacy started when she was 16 years old, assisting and housing at-risk teens, and challenging abusive gender norms within her community. She is a strong believer that those who are most deeply impacted must be at the forefront of the movement and must have opportunities and resources to advocate for themselves and tell their own stories. In the past 20 years, Vaj has spent her life working to build collective power and social change within Southeast Asian and Black communities. She was recognized as a Champion of Change at the White House during Domestic Violence Awareness month in 2011, and was part of NOVO’s Move to End Violence 4th leadership cohort. In 2020 she was named one of “20 Women of Color in Politics to Watch in 2020” by She the People. She is a co-founder of Building Our Future, a global feminist Hmong movement that works to change traditional practices, behaviors, and beliefs that contribute to gender-based violence within Hmong communities. Kabzuag is also a co-owner/founder of Red Green Rivers, a social enterprise that works with women and girl artisans from the Mekong Region in Southeast Asia. Kabzuag is a daughter, mother, artist, feminist and organizer. Her first love is the movement.
Mickey Mestiza (they/them)
Strategic Social Justice Marketing is my “career.” Teaching Community Restorative Justice Engineering is my “role.” Playing is my passion. The best way to learn is to teach; I was born determined to create community abundance. We deserve to feel Joy together. My heart is a bridge from Nezahualcoyotl Mexico to Madison Wisconsin. Through actively decolonizing I am reimagining my possibilities as a trans, DACA recipient and becoming a XicanX innovator.
Drop-In Facilitated Spaces in Race and Gender Based Community | 12 pm – 1:30 pm
Access in the “Sessions” Area | No Sign up Necessary
We offer race and gender-based community spaces to be responsive to the way our system of racial inequity impacts each of us differently. This differentiated impact means that we are called to engage in differentiated learning, unlearning, and practice.
People who have been racialized as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and/or Multiracial* will have opportunities to gather with others who have been racialized similarly with the intention to support healing, community, and power-building with each other.
People who have would like to be in community around their gender identities and/or sexuality* will have opportunities to gather with others who identify similarly with the intention to support healing, community, and power-building with each other.
People who have been racialized as white* will have opportunities to gather with others to engage in honest and vulnerable reflections on the ways that white dominance is present in their lives, and how they can be accountable for ongoing racial justice practice and action.
Race-Based Affinity Spaces are always an invitation and are not mandatory. Each person can choose what is a healthy growth edge in their journey.
*Please note that if you do not provide your race at registration you will only have access to community spaces that are open to everyone.
Closing Keynote & Practice | 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
We will close out the Virtual portion of the Summit with a keynote dialogue and practice with Autumn Brown & Susan Raffo.
STreamed Live on Our Virtual Platform – Hopin | Access at the “Stage” Area | No Sign up Necessary
Autumn Brown (she/her) is a mother, artist, and movement facilitator. A student of Black feminism, freedom movements, and the solidarity economy, she is a worker-owner of AORTA, the Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance, and co-host of the podcast How to Survive the End of the World. Autumn writes speculative fiction and creative non-fiction, and her work has been published in Parenting for Social Justice, Lightspeed Magazine, Pleasure Activism, Octavia’s Brood, the Procyon Science Fiction Anthology, and Revolutionary Mothering. Autumn lives in South Minneapolis with her three brilliant children.
Susan Raffo (she/her) is a writer, cultural worker and bodyworker with a personal practice who is living in Mnisota Makoce, on the unceded traditional homelands of the Dakota people, in the city of Minneapolis. Her interest is in looking at all of the layers of resourcing needed to support community and movements, from support for individual and collective bodies shaped by generational trauma and supremacy to support for infrastructures that are grounded in dignity, care and generational vision. In addition to maintaining an individual practice, Raffo has spent 12 years working with Cara Page on the Healing Histories Project, an abolitionist and anti-eugenics project working in solidarity with health and healing practitioners/workers by holding with dignity and respect the lives and communities they care for and by disrupting abuses of the state. Raffo is also a core group member of REP, a Black-led network showing up to support others in moments of crisis or urgency, with care and respect for the full dignity and autonomy of those in crisis. Raffo is the author of Queerly Classed (1997), Restricted Access (1999), and Liberated to the Bone (AK Press: 2022). Find her at www.susanraffo.com
REGISTER FOR A KEYNOTE ONLY TICKET HERE
General Registration is now Closed.
Keynote Only Tickets are available!