Morning Sessions
Block A: 9:30 AM - 10:15 AM
Block B: 10:30 AM - Noon
Sessions are short and more focused, designed to highlight a specific issue, practice, or perspective. These offerings provide concentrated learning and conversation, giving you the opportunity to engage with a variety of topics throughout the day.
Please note: On the morning of the In-Person day (September 26), you’ll choose either one institute or two shorter sessions during Block A and Block B.
Block A: 9:30 AM - 10:15 AM
Open to All Audiences
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Facilitated by: Araceli Esparza
Audience: All - Open to Everyone
Description: This workshop blends mindfulness practices and traditional curandera storytelling to create a healing space for self-reflection and cultural empowerment. Participants will be guided through grounding exercises like meditation, body scans, and gentle movement before entering a writing journey rooted in metaphor, memory, and resilience.
Drawing from her signature Skeleton Hand & Monkey Mind curriculum—based on Indigenous Mexican symbolism—Araceli Esparza helps participants quiet the critical voice and access their authentic stories. Writing prompts are framed within a healing narrative that centers survivors, working-class women, and those historically left out of institutional wellness.
Expect a gentle, welcoming environment where BIPOC women and allies can write, reflect, and share within a circle of care.
This session is designed for those doing racial justice work, community advocacy, or personal healing, and seeks to support the Summit’s vision of building a Liberation Ecosystem grounded in tradition, story, and mutual restoration. -
Facilitated by: Esty Dinur
Audience: All - Open to Everyone
Description: Under both Democratic and Republican administrations billions of dollars have been devoted to Israel's war on Palestine which by now has been defined as a genocide even by the conservative International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the largest professional organization of genocide scholars with around 500 members worldwide, including Holocaust experts. This support for Israeli genocide and Israel in general is driven by US Imperialist interests. Any criticism of Israel, Zionism or this US policy is attacked as anti semitic. As members of Jewish Voice for Peace we make clear that this is false. The weaponization of antisemitism is also being used to attack and dismantle targets of the Trump administration at home. Resources to support women, children and families in the US have dwindled and the Trump administration claims there is no money to feed and educate children, care for the disabled, support mothers living in poverty, provide housing, and practically every other life-supporting initiative. This skewed situation calls for international solidarity in order to start correcting the wrongs of the racist, supremacist thinking that allows for such horrors in both Palestine and the US. In this session we will offer facts and stories that will demonstrate the connections between injustice and the lack of humanity in the way certain populations are treated by this country and call for solidarity in support of these populations' struggle for freedom and dignity.
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Facilitated by: Aissa Olivarez
Audience: All - Open to Everyone
Description: There is no due process or fairness for people facing detention and deportation. The Trump administration has vastly expanded the circle of people at risk of detention, deportation, and criminalization, and is actively working to restrict legal protections and court processes for people to navigate the immigration court system. Learn more about the universal representation model and the work the Community Immigration Law Center is doing to expand access to representation for people detained in Wisconsin.
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Facilitated by: Koren Dennison
Audience: All - Open to Everyone
Description: Let’s play a game! This game is referred to as Dignity Ball. Each ball represents an aspect of dignity to be respected, protected and fulfilled for every person. Dignity is a sense of mutual self-worth shared between yourself and your community. Participants in this session will engage in a physical game that acts as experiential learning to deepen these concepts.
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Facilitated by: kristy kumar
Audience: All - Open to Everyone
Description: In a world where harm, fear, and disconnection are often met with punishment or abandonment, what might it look like to respond with care, courage, and community? This interactive workshop introduces the concept of Pods, a transformative justice and mutual aid organizing tool developed by Mia Mingus and SOIL to help us build intentional networks of support, accountability, and safety. Together, we’ll explore how pods can ground us in interdependence and shared responsibility—and you’ll begin mapping your own pod to practice accountability in your personal, work, and/or organizing life. Come imagine what becomes possible when no one is left to face harm or healing alone.
Open to Specific Audiences
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Offered by: Kayla McGhee
Audience:
BIPOC Queer PeopleDescription:
This space is for BIPOC queer folks to rest, create, chat, dream, connect, and co-conspire. -
Facilitated by: Angelica Euseary
Audience:
People of Color and those that identify as LGBTQ+Description:
This 45-minute beginner friendly yoga flow is intended to draw connections between mind and body as we prepare for the rest of the day and conference. This slow, restorative flow will provide participants with an opportunity to start the day more present and grounded. While we flow, I will share what it means to me to flow as a community of color in the predominantly white city we live in and the importance of connecting through movement and mindfulness. In the context of yoga, yoke means to unite and join together. I will also draw connections between our experience and the conference theme of getting together and becoming a liberated ecosystem. We will flow to R&B, Soul, Reggaeton, and Hip-Hop music. After our flow, we will participate in a 10-minute body scan meditation to continue connecting our mind and bodies, and with one another. After the meditation, we will have 10 minutes to reflect on this experience and connect in other ways, however folks see fit.
Block B: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Open to All Audiences
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Facilitated by: Panhia Thao and Becca Wyland
Audience: All - Open to Everyone
Description: At the Summit, I hope to offer a hands-on workshop on base building for the care economy. The session will create space to explore strategies for engaging, growing, and sustaining grassroots membership around issues like paid leave, childcare, and care worker rights. Participants will gain tools for building strong relationships, developing leadership within their communities, and mobilizing collective power to advance care-centered policies. Building collective power around care is an act of abolition, challenging systems that exploit caregivers and deny communities the resources they need to thrive. By sharing strategies for organizing and growing membership, the session uplifts mutual aid practices that center community care and interdependence. It also contributes to repair, addressing the long-standing inequities in our economic and social systems by amplifying care workers’ voices and leadership. The workshop will be interactive and grounded in lived experiences, leaving participants with both inspiration and feeling equipped to build cross-movement relationships that strengthen the fight for justice and dignity in the care economy.
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Facilitated by: Stephanie Salgado Altamirano
Audience: All - Open to Everyone
Description:
“A community organizer’s skills should be measured in how many leaders one helps develop, not in how many campaign victories one claims.” - Charlene Carruthers
This session is an opportunity for everyday people to comprehend what tools you already have to organize, various frames to remain hopeful while struggling together, and how to sustainably stay in the fight for the long run. We will cover some basic framing of what is to organize, the venues of organizing most popular such as: community organizing and labor organizing, and the most effective conversations of 7 points to move people into action. Participants will also have the opportunity to practice choosing the issues that feel the most profound to them to organize around. Are you ready to not only struggle together but win the victories we organize for? -
Facilitated by: Marianne Oleson and Dennis Franklin
Audience: All - Open to Everyone
Description: EXPO’s SAFE (Sisterhood Alliance for Freedom and Equality) initiative is a gender-specific trauma healing program rooted in the lived experience of formerly incarcerated women. This session will examine the systemic barriers faced by women returning home—from trauma histories and child separation to housing insecurity and the criminalization of poverty.
SAFE is more than reentry—it’s a movement rooted in radical healing, collective power, and community-led solutions. Grounded in an understanding of the deeply racist impacts of the carceral system, the session will highlight how racialized disparities compound the challenges women face, and how centering dignity and healing justice is essential to addressing these inequities.
Participants will learn how EXPO’s SAFE model redefines care and accountability, uplifts sisterhood, and challenges harmful systems by centering dignity and racial justice. The session will include storytelling, interactive dialogue, and a clear call to action: building trauma-informed and racially just reentry ecosystems that dismantle barriers, restore families, and shift power to directly impacted women and communities by using the SAFE house model. -
Facilitated by: Alberto Prado, Erica Nelson, and Amanda Butzen
Audience: All - Open to Everyone
Description: During this session, we’ll explore how the tool can be used by community organizations, advocates, case managers, and client facing professionals to support people navigating civil legal issues, particularly those impacted by poverty and systemic barriers. We’ll also discuss strategies for incorporating Legal Tune Up into outreach, legal clinics, and advocacy work to help increase individual agency and reduce the legal obstacles that contribute to economic instability.
With increasing pressure to do more with less, organizations that do Poverty work are stretched thinner than ever. The legal sphere of Poverty work is no exception. Wisconsin is facing an Access to Justice crisis, especially in rural areas. The term “access to justice” describes the ability of any person, regardless of income, to use the legal system to advocate for themselves and their interests. At this workshop, Attendees will learn how to use the online Legal Tune Up and the Wisconsin Law Help’s website, two legal technology tools that are working to address this ever growing need.
Both of the programs will discuss access to justice issues in civil actions, teach the basics of the tool, and seek critical partnerships with other organizations to guide users to greater access to information.
Open to Specific Audiences
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Facilitated by: Cassandra Xiong
Audience:
Queer BIPOC Youth & Young AdultsDescription:
Creativity is more than just being good at art. It is the ability to imagine abstract ideas and transform them into reality—a crucial skill in social justice work. In this workshop, participants will create a collage while engaging in a guided discussion about lessons from art that we can apply to social justice practices. No lectures, just communal learning. No pressure, just presence. No concrete learning objectives, just a chance to experience healing, connection, and creative thinking. Be empowered to imagine a world beyond the current systems we live under. -
Facilitated by: Sangita Nayak & Alice Traore
Audience: BIPOC Women and Femmes
Description: In this session, we will seek our ancestral strengths in abolition of unjust practices (warrior work) and the creation of our vision. Ancestral strength is an acknowledgement of that which makes us "natural-born survivors." We claim this self in re-imagining ourselves in the world. In this session participants excavate their own ancestral strength stories; and if your ancestral strength story isn't currently available to you, imagine and borrow from your future self(ves) of all your life may inspire.
Participants can tell their story visually using a pre-folded zine template, simply journal or write a letter to yourself; or tell your story by using an "I am" poem-template; There will be time for both reflection and creation; We'll end with some Visionary Work—actionable steps that evolve from accessing your Ancestral Strength story--what do we want to create in this world? We'll leave with greater connection to our stories and a desire to seek out more truths that help us do our necessary warrior work. -
Facilitated by: Angelica Euseary
Audience: Black people, Black people who identify as LGBTQ+ or gender nonconforming
Description: This 40-minute beginner friendly, slow flow and restorative yoga class will be a space for those who identify as Black across gender and age to join in community to move and meditate together. While we flow, I will share my experiences as a Black, plus sized woman navigating predominantly white yoga spaces and how that encouraged me to begin sharing this practice with my community. I will also share fun facts about Black people in history who used yoga and movement as resistance, including Rosa Parks and Angela Davis. I will also share information about The Nap Ministry by Tricia Hersey and talk about her book, Rest is Resistance. We will be flowing to R&B, soul, rock and roll, and trap music. After our flow, we will participate in a 10-minute guided meditation around healing/emotional awareness. After our meditation, we will have an opportunity to reflect on this experience and discuss how we can further these relationships with each other and build opportunities for connecting outside of this space.
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Facilitated by: Isaac Trussoni
Audience: People who Identify as Black
Description: As Hip Hop continues to be a medium that modern popular music across genres gravitate towards to iterate on the newest trends and innovations, there is more and more discussion around what Hip Hop even is anymore, as well as questions to its staying power. As we start to see evidence of the decline in Hip Hop's popularity, along with other genres co-opting styles and sounds from Hip Hop while asserting themselves away from Hip Hop as a music and culture, it is worth discussing what we are even speaking about when we discuss Hip Hop in the present day. This Restorative Justice circle focusing on Hip Hop will offer a space for deeper considerations of the music and culture for anyone who is looking to listen, reflect, and share their perspective with all the good, bad, and in-between in Hip Hop.
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Facilitated by: Sarah Branch
Audience: Black People
Description: This immersive workshop blends the therapeutic resonance of a sound bath with the grounding ritual of herbal tea to support deep relaxation and nervous system regulation. Participants will first be guided through an intention-setting practice while sipping a thoughtfully selected herbal infusion known for its calming and restorative properties. Then, they will settle into a comfortable position as I lead them through a meditative sound bath featuring crystal singing bowls.
Three Objectives:
1. Understand the physiological effects of sound healing and herbal tea on the nervous system.
2. Experience firsthand how vibrational frequencies and plant medicine work together to promote relaxation and emotional balance.
3. Learn simple techniques to integrate sound healing and tea rituals into personal wellness practices.
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Facilitated by: Sara Alvarado
Audience: White Identifying Women
Description: This session invites participants to step into the messy, necessary work of being in multiracial families, workplaces, and communities where mistakes are inevitable. Together, we will explore how perfectionism—rooted in white supremacy culture—shows up in our bodies, in our stories, and in our interactions, and how it keeps us disconnected, defensive, and can cause real harm. By dismantling the urge to “get it right,” we open the door to deeper relationships, courage, and repair. This is about liberation from perfectionism and the building of real relational skills, with repair spotlighted as both a practice and a skill. Participants will learn frameworks, practical tools, and practice role-playing. These capacities prepare us for deeper intimacy, stronger relationships, and more successful collaborations in solidarity movements, board rooms, teams, and beyond.