The Racial Justice Summit

The Racial Justice Summit (often referred to as “the Summit”) began in 2002 as a small luncheon that brought community members together to address issues of racial inequity. Over the past two decades, the Summit has grown into one of the largest multiracial, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary gatherings in the country of people committed to racial justice learning and unlearning, collective healing, and liberation. Each year, the Summit welcomes approximately 1,000 attendees, both virtually and in person, to engage in dynamic community dialogues, racial justice practices, and action-visioning.

A Brief History

Expanding Access: Our Evolving Summit Experience

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, YWCA Madison began to explore new ways of connecting and engaging in virtual spaces. That year marked the first time YWCA Madison held the Summit entirely online. While we deeply missed gathering in person, we also witnessed a powerful expansion of access: the virtual format allowed people from across the country including attendees, practitioners, and keynotes, who might not have been able to attend otherwise, to join this vibrant community. In 2021, we embraced a hybrid model, offering both virtual and in-person experiences to create multiple, more inclusive pathways for engagement.

Nurturing Our Emergent Liberation Ecosystem

In an effort to nurture the Summit as an intergenerational community and to honor the intergenerational leadership that makes movement building possible, YWCA Madison began partnering with local school districts, restorative justice clubs, community centers, and universities to bring youth and young adults to the Racial Justice Summit in 2022. YWCA Madison has also expanded youth and young adult participation to include roles as curators, dialogue facilitators, keynote speakers, and featured artists. We remain dedicated to continuing this work. This year, we are deepening our commitment to intergenerational inclusion by expanding access to the Summit for elders as well.

As we look to the future, we hold love and excitement for what the Summit can continue to become as a living, evolving gathering that reflects the shifting needs, wisdoms, and visions of our communities. We are shaping the Summit not only as an annual event, but as a convener for sustained connection, action, and transformation. Rooted in justice, care, and possibility, the Racial Justice Summit will continue to grow as a space where people of all generations, identities, and experiences come together to seed new worlds and become the liberation ecosystem.

Rooted in Practice: Our Frameworks & Invitations

Intersectional Racial Justice

The Racial Justice Summit is grounded in a framework of intersectional racial justice. At YWCA Madison, we recognize that all systems of oppression are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. To truly dismantle racism and build a liberated world, our collective approach must be multifaceted, nuanced, and rooted in solidarity. This means addressing the ways racism intersects with other forms of inequality, such as sexism, classism, settler colonialism, ableism, transphobia, and homophobia, while also working across movements to advance justice for all.

Holistic Learning and Unlearning for Transformative Action

The magic of the Summit lives in the moments, connections, and insights that arise from the abundant sharing of wisdom, knowledge, and practice. We strive to cultivate a community of practice that nurtures broader, more complex, and holistic understandings of ourselves, each other, and our collective journeys toward liberation.

Throughout your Summit experience, you’ll be invited to share the life-giving gift of your full presence. Together, we’ll co-create space and stillness, allowing our hearts, minds, and bodies to be present, honest, and open. This spaciousness is the fertile ground from which our abolitionist practices can take root and grow.

We invite you to bring your whole self to the Summit and engage with all ways of knowing—mind, body, heart, and spirit—as we work to make visible, disrupt, and transform the ongoing violence of colonial ideologies, racial hierarchy, and white supremacy. This work happens at every level: within systems and structures, in our communities and organizations, in our relationships, and within ourselves.

Two Loop Model of System Change

Building on the holistic approach woven throughout the Summit, curated experiences are designed to support attendees in engaging with two interconnected practices:

  • Unlearning, interrupting, and dismantling the beliefs, behaviors, and systems within ourselves, our communities, organizations, and institutions that perpetuate the violent impact of racial inequity.

  • Learning, nurturing, and co-creating the conditions—within ourselves and our collective spaces—that give rise to beliefs, behaviors, practices, and structures rooted in racial justice and collective liberation.

In this practice, we invite you to be deliberately curious and attentive to the transgenerational and ongoing nature of both these cycles. Throughout the Summit, you’ll be guided to explore not only what must come to an end, but also what must be nurtured into being. Together, these practices form the heart of our collective journey, inviting reflection, transformation, and the courageous reimagining of a world grounded in the lived realities and systems we are working to disrupt and transform.

What Kinds of Experiences Can You Expect?

Types of Engagement

  • Plenary Keynotes on the Main Stage

  • Generative Dialogues

  • Identity Based Community Spaces

  • Wellness and Somatic Practice: Yoga, Meditation, Sound Bath, etc.

  • Roundtable Discussions

  • Presentations

  • Skill Building/Frameworks

  • Art: Spoken word, dance, singing, instruments, interactive installations and projects

  • Peer-to-Peer Support

  • Writing/Journaling Practice

  • Film Screening

Session Topics (From 2024)

  • Indigenous Sovereignty

  • Organizational Equity

  • Educational Justice

  • Youth Justice

  • Transnational Solidarity

  • Reflective Processing

  • Healing Justice

  • Body Justice

  • Disability Justice

  • Housing Justice

  • Worker Justice

  • Immigrant Justice

  • Economic Justice

  • Environmental Justice

  • Transracial Parenting

  • Black Masculinities

  • Transracial/Transnational Adoptee Experiences

  • Restorative Justice

  • Organizing White Communities

  • Multiracial Movement Building

Note: All registrants will be asked to make session selections after registration closes in early September. You will receive the selection form via email, therefore it is critical that you provide us with your best email address on your registration.

Why Attend the Summit?

The Racial Justice Summit is more than an event—it’s a gathering place for transformation. Whether you are a long-time organizer, a community leader, a youth visionary, an educator, an artist, an elder, or someone newly engaging with this work, the Summit offers space to reflect, feel, learn, and act.

The Summit is both a unique professional development opportunity for staff across organizations and a powerful space for multiracial and intergenerational dialogue as well as collective visioning across justice movements—including restorative justice, gender justice, healing justice, immigration justice, disability justice, climate justice, economic justice, organizational equity, and more. We are deeply committed to engaging all people including youth, young adults, and elders as vital members of this community and amplifying their leadership, insights, and voice.

Importantly, we strongly believe that YWCA Madison’s holistic approach to justice—integrating the wisdom of the mind, heart, body, and spirit—holds transformative potential. This grounding invites each attendee into a personal journey of learning, unlearning, healing, and growth, which ripples outward to transform relationships, cultures, and systems.

At the Summit, you’ll find an emerging ecosystem, a space to unlearn what no longer serves, and a place to nurture what our futures require. You’ll be held in community as we explore both the inner and outer work of racial justice through many modalities, including dialogue, art, somatics, skill-building, and shared reflection. Together, we’ll practice what it means to live into liberation, not just as a destination, but as a way of being.

Come as you are. Bring your whole self. There is space for you here.