The 15th annual YWCA Racial Justice Summit, titled “Changing the Narrative,” will be held Sept. 29-30 at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center and will feature a leading voice in the racial justice movement, keynote speaker Rinku Sen, president and executive director of Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation.
The annual Racial Justice Summit is one of the YWCA’s signature events, although they focus on racial justice issues all year long. Looking at culture through the lens of race, the YWCA offers educational training to broaden intercultural and interracial awareness and to improve intercultural and interracial communication through their Racial Justice Workshops
It is a critical time for the Racial Justice Summit with the current political narrative of this year’s presidential campaign being fueled by racialized anxiety, fear, tension and hatred across the country. Policy platforms built around xenophobia, misogyny, and separatism has reinforced a sense of divisiveness that continues to permeate American society.
“Changing the Narrative” will offer breakout sessions and keynotes from advocates, practitioners and national experts around the awareness of institutional racism. This year’s keynotes will feature two leading voices in the racial justice movement, Rinku Sen and Vernā Myers.
· Rinku Sen is the president and executive director of Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation and the Publisher of the award-winning news site ColorLines. Through her leadership at Race Forward, she is transforming the way we talk about racism, from something that is individual, intentional, and overt to something that is systemic, unconscious, and hidden.
· Vernā Myers is on a personal mission to disrupt the status quo and she knows how to: she’s lived it. She rose out of Baltimore’s working class to become a Harvard-trained lawyer, entrepreneur, author, and cultural innovator. She has helped eradicate barriers of race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation at elite international law firms, Wall Street powerhouses, and the 10,000 member Fire Department of New York, with the aim of establishing a new, more productive and just status quo.
Many of the breakout sessions focus on changing the narrative toward issues such as strategic community organizing, the criminalization of black mothers and white privilege just to name a few. These sessions hope to support national conversations happening around race, race relations, and working toward finding a common ground rooted in our collective humanity.
The Summit will be held September 29 and 30 at the Monona Terrace Convention Center and will provide an environment for people to learn and engage in authentic and reflective conversations around race and privilege. Attendees will be equipped with resources to help discover ways to affect systemic change and will leave empowered to carry out that work in their respective ways.
For more information, visit the website, Facebook or contact Colleen Butler at [email protected].
