Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Maurice Mitchell, and Adaku Utah will be the featured keynote speakers as the YWCA Madison will host its 23rd annual Racial Justice Summit on September 25-26.
The theme for the Summit this year is “Get Together: Becoming the Liberation Ecosystem.”
“The Summit offers dynamic opportunities for community dialogue, practice, and action-envisioning around intersectional racial justice within an environment that encourages learning from one another and mutual support in nurturing this common imperative across our personal lives, communities, and organizational roles,” YMCA Madison said in a press release announcing the event. “Register today and join us in connecting with the practices, mindsets, values, and actions needed to become a community that can respond to the moment and context we are living in.”
Adaku Utah, the senior manager of Movement Building Programs at the Building Movement Project, where she works with organizations on short-term rapid-response efforts and long-term projects to deepen solidarity within and across networks and ecosystems, will be the featured practitioner for the in-person day of the summit.
The virtual day of this year’s Summit will open with a keynote from Robin Wall Kimmerer, a beloved scientist, storyteller, and author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, and The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World.
The virtual day will close with a generative dialogue with keynote contributors Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Maurice Mitchell. Gilmore has been a leading voice on abolition for decades, contending with the impacts of racial capitalism and bold visions for building life-affirming institutions, according to a press release from YWCA Madison, and Mitchell is the national director of the Working Families Party, a nationally recognized social movement strategist, a visionary leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and a community organizer for racial, social, and economic justice.
“The Summit is a life-giving gathering that invites us to center love, community, and possibility—not just to survive the times we are in, but to support us in recalibrating toward the values, tools, and practices we need to transform systems of harm and violence at every level. Now is the time to rebuild and reimagine how we show up for one another, and to build sustained movements rooted in multiracial solidarity, mutual aid, abolition, and repair,” said YWCA Madison CEO Gery Paredes Vásquez in a statement.
Registration is now open for the Summit through August 29. General tickets range from $100 to $300, with additional discounts available for groups, youth, chaperones, young adults, and elders. To learn more and register, click here.
