Session Availability

Virtual Day

Still Open - Virtual Sessions

12:30 PM - 2:30 PM

  • Facilitated By: Ben Lorber

    Audience: Open to Everyone

    Description: Antisemitism is a form of injustice that impacts all of us. And today, authoritarians in power are twisting the fight against antisemitism to serve their own purposes--stifling movements against Israel's genocide in Gaza, attacking universities, deporting students, and undermining democracy. Christian Zionism is one powerful, and often invisible force behind these campaigns, and behind US support for Israel more broadly. Millions of American Christians support Israel because of Biblical prophecies about the End Times, and these antisemitic, anti-Palestinian beliefs are also a cornerstone of Christian nationalism in America, the deeply exclusionary movement to turn America into an authoritarian 'Christian nation' that impacts women, LGBTQ folks, and practically everyone else.

    Now more than ever, we can't let these forces divide us. We need an intersectional, justice-driven agenda to fight antisemitism, Christian Zionism and rising authoritarianism with solidarity. In this workshop, we'll work together to understand these intertwined forms of oppression and explore how to counter them together.

  • Facilitated by: William Park-Sutherland, Nadiyah Groves  & Nathaniel Ansari

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description:

    Budgets are a statement of Wisconsin’s values and how we agree to invest Wisconsin's resources to meet our collective needs. The state budget is one of our greatest opportunities to advocate for policies that impact the lives and livelihoods of all Wisconsinites, including health care for everyone, affordable child care, well-resourced schools, and a tax system that supports working families. At the same time, budgets are also a tool for racial justice: they can either reinforce historic inequities or be intentionally designed to dismantle them. Attendees will learn the basics of the state budgeting process, why it’s vital for communities to build power to impact the process, and the importance of starting now.

  • Facilitated by: Bee Buehring and Meiver De la Cruz

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: What does transphobia have to do with racism and white supremacy? This session will push participants to consider the significance and impact of an intersectional approach to gender and racial justice, in a way that honors the Black feminists who birthed these frameworks into existence. Centering trans and nonbinary communities of color and their experiences with oppression, the session will use reflection, dialogue, and teachings from activism and scholarship to move our communities closer to racial and gender justice.

    Participants will be able to:

    1. describe the ways in which the historical and contemporary legacies of racism and transphobia are intertwined with one another and their impacts on trans communities of color today.

    2. apply the concepts learned to their own analysis and practice.

    3. engage in self-reflection of their own experiences with gender and race in a space that is welcoming to BIPOC, trans and gender nonconforming people.

  • Facilitated by: Kristin Klingman and Gary Kiss

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: What if liberation begins in the body? This healing-centered session offers a powerful blend of somatic nervous system regulation and biophotonic light transmission to support internal coherence, rest, and reconnection with the light within. Somatic Therapy Practitioner, and founder of Aki Somatics, Kristin Klingman will guide participants through a grounding somatic process to reconnect with Mother Earth and the divine flow of the cosmos, creating a spacious internal field from which transformation can emerge. Together, we will explore how survival energy keeps us locked in a worldview shaped by disconnection, scarcity, and the need to control or defend—even within ourselves—and how reconnecting with the body’s innate light can restore inner safety and alignment.

    As part of the session, Gary Kiss, founder of Eluumis and creator of the Biohealing Stream, will offer a 15–20 minute teaching on the science and spirit of biophotons—the coherent light naturally emitted by cells—and how this light facilitates healing, nervous system balance, and deeper connection with self, Source, and the more-than-human world. Participants will also receive a live group Biohealing Stream meditation, where this light-based healing technology will be activated to support deep restoration and integration. Gary will share how the Biohealing Stream helps the body reestablish coherence, reduce survival responses, and return to safety and vitality. He will also speak to the global accessibility of this technology, and how embodied light work can serve not only personal healing, but collective liberation.

  • Facilitated By: David Dean

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: With particular focus on Palestine, we'll discuss how the rich and powerful have for centuries used settler colonialism as a weapon to divide and rule over the global 99%. Through this, we'll come to clearly see how all of our well-being depends on decolonization, Palestinian freedom, and global justice. We'll consider how these truths can help us build a powerful mass movement based in a profound commitment to both solidarity and repair. This experience will include engaging presentations as well as time for small and large group reflection. The session will expand upon David's essay, "The "Set-Up" of Settler Colonialism: From the US, to Ireland, to Palestine," which we ask that participants read or listen to prior to our time together.

  • Facilitated by: Brooke Anderson

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project will share their strategic framework for advancing a just transition away from the extractive economy toward a living economy based on cooperative labor, deep democracy, and ecological and social well-being. The workshop will share how we harness the shocks and slides of increasing authoritarianism toward the social, political, economic, and cultural shifts we need, pulling on frameworks like abolitionist organizing, disability justice, and queer ecology.

  • Facilitated By: ananda de oliveira mirilli and Colleen Butler

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: In a time when DEI efforts are under attack and many organizations are questioning how to stay committed, the nINA Collective offers hard-earned insights from the frontlines. Drawing from our work with more than 80 organizations and 200+ individuals across 13 states and a wide range of sectors, including women’s sports, healthcare, education, local government, and nonprofits, this session will explore what’s working. We’ll share highlights from our recently released brief on transformational strategies for turbulent times, focusing on the practical tools and mindsets that are helping organizations not just survive, but move closer to justice. Whether you're navigating backlash, burnout, or big transitions, this session is designed to re-energize your purpose and sharpen your approach.

  • Facilitated By: Angelica Euseary

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: This yoga class will be a 50-minute, beginner-friendly, yoga flow. We will be flowing to Pop, R&B, Reggaeton, and Hip-Hop music. Throughout the class, I will be sharing my journey as a yogi and what it means to yoke as a community, especially right now. I will also share ways that we can connect with each other during the conference in-person and emphasize the gratitude I have for being able to connect virtually and flow in community. I will also draw connections between the practice of yoga and the conference theme of getting together and becoming a liberated ecosystem. After our flow, I will guide participants through a 10-minute Loving-Kindness Meditation where we manifest and send love to ourselves, to loved ones, and throughout the world. After our meditation, I will have the last 10 minutes available for those who would like to reflect on the experience and share contact information, if interested.

  • Facilitated By: Eva Wingren & Maggie Kerr

    Audience: White People but Open to All

    Description: Answering the call from Black organizers for white people to organize their own communities, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) has brought thousands of white people in hundreds of communities into movements for racial justice. SURJ offers concrete ways for white people to take action in solidarity with national groups that represent and are accountable to BIPOC communities. Along the way, members deepen their understanding of how race and class are used to divide us and weaken our collective power. Members develop organizing and leadership skills while practicing a "shared interest" approach that emphasizes what white people stand to gain by fighting racism. This session will introduce participants to the conversation skills used by SURJ organizers to move people from nearly anywhere on the political spectrum into anti-racist action. text goes here

In-Person Day

Still Open - Institutes

9:30 AM - 12:00 PM

Open to All Audiences

  • Facilitated by: Adaku Utah - Featured Practitioner

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: In our lives, and within movements and organizations, many of us step into different roles in the ongoing pursuit of liberation, justice, and collective power. Each role matters, and each of us brings unique strengths and responsibilities to the whole.

    As people and organizations committed to social justice, how do we sharpen our skills, clarify our social change roles, and practice solidarity in deeper and more sustainable ways?

    In this interactive session, Adaku Utah of the Building Movement Project will share frameworks and embodied practices that can help us anchor our commitments and align our actions with our values.

    Together, participants will:

    • Identify guiding values and principles that shape their work.

    • Map the roles they hold within their organizations and movements.

    • Assess the ecosystems they are part of and explore how to strengthen connection and collaboration.

    • Reflect on what sustains their practice of solidarity and collective care.

    By the end of the session, participants will hopefully leave with more tools, clarity, and inspiration to more intentionally play their roles in building the world we long for.

  • Facilitated by: Alejandro Miranda, Brian McInnes, Dekila Chungyalpa, Guy Reiter, Janice Rice, and Marin “Mark” Denning, Roxanne DeLille.

    Audience: All- Open to Everyone

    Description:
    This brand new documentary, Sacred Wisdom Sacred Earth, unveils the deep connection of Wisconsin’s Native American tribes to the land and waters of the Great Lakes and how that relationship seeds their efforts to restore spiritual, cultural, and environmental resilience. Showing for the first time in Madison (and to non-Native audiences), the documentary screening will be followed by a generative dialogue between culture keepers of Wisconsin's Indigenous traditions that are featured in the film and the audience. Viewers are invited to be in solidarity with movements for Indigenous sovereignty, resistance, and resilience, and to explore ways to build direct mutual aid with Wisconsin's tribes. The documentary is a Loka Initiative production, in partnership with Bravebird, UW-Madison's Center for Healthy Minds, and the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council. Learn more and Watch the Trailer Here

    The screening will be followed by a dialogue with some of the people featured in the film. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear about the current status of the fight to protect our water, and will learn more about how we can all take action now for our future generations.

  • Facilitated by:
    Mya Williams, Micah-Jade Stanback, Rudy Bankston, & Sam Jeschke

    Audience:
    Youth and Educators take priority, but is Open to All Community Members

    Description:
    Throughout history, the concept of freedom has manifested in various forms across cultures, ranging from dance to visual art to collective social justice movements. Honoring the Summit theme of Get Together: Becoming the Liberation Ecosystem, we invite high school youth, eighth-grade youth, young adults, and K-12 educators to participate in a mixed-media art co-creation that focuses on what freedom looks like, sounds like, and feels like as both individuals and as a community. Co-led by youth from Bayview Community Center, we will explore several forms of media, including painting, music production, and written poetry, to co-create an art exhibition centered on the experiences of youth, young adults, and educators. At the end of the session, there will be a showcase of the different art pieces that were created. With this offering, we hope to create an ecosystem where participants can come together to craft an intricate and beautiful representation of liberation that transcends time, honors our ancestors, ourselves, and future generations to come.

  • Facilitated by: Bobbie Briggs

    Audience: All- Open to Everyone

    Description: This workshop offers participants an affirming and interactive space to explore the realities of vicarious trauma, particularly in the context of racial justice work. Through guided education, reflective dialogue, and body-based practices, attendees will learn and practice tangible ways to release stress, regulate their emotions, and process the emotional toll of showing up for others. Rooted in the belief that rest is resistance and healing is collective, this session advocates for liberation as a daily practice - not just in external systems, but within ourselves. Participants will engage in self-healing while being held in community, modeling what it means to be part of a liberation ecosystem that centers Solidarity, embodies Mutual Aid through shared tools and care, and commits to Repair by addressing harm, burnout, and over-responsibility. By reclaiming rest, emotional well-being, and nervous system safety as necessary tools, this session moves us closer to becoming the world we’re fighting for - together.

  • Facilitated by: Keena Atkinson

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: This immersive workshop invites participants into a powerful three part experience of reflection, embodiment, and practice. It begins with readings and dialogue that uncover the personal and communal impact of incarceration, centering the voices and experiences of those left behind, and exploring what true safety and accountability can look like outside of carceral systems. The session then shifts into a brief dance break, where movement serves as a liberatory tool to recharge the body, clear the mind, and embody joy, resilience, and connection. To close the session, participants engage in an interactive conflict resolution practice that emphasizes repair, trust, and accountability as essential ingredients for sustaining communities and fostering safety, acceptance, and wholeness. Together, these three parts create a transformative arc that encourages deep reflection, embodied engagement, and practical tools for building life affirming systems of care, justice, and connection.

    Participants are encouraged to dress comfortably and bring water, as the workshop includes an energizing dance segment accessible to all body types and experience levels. No dance or movement background is required. (Just a willingness to engage, laugh, and move in a supportive environment) This workshop is especially valuable for those seeking to further understand the impact of carceral systems, explore embodied approaches to justice and repair, and for community members, leaders, practitioners, or anyone committed to fostering connection, accountability, and healing in their personal, professional, and community relationships.

  • Facilitated by: Rebecca Hoyt

    Audience: All- Open to Everyone

    Description: This session is about unpacking ableism from its roots in history anti-Blackness, eugenics, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism and capitalism.  We will examine how models of disability are mobilized today to institutionalize, segregate, and disempower people with disabilities.  Often issues of race and gender are not centered in disability spaces and issues of disability are not centered in race and gender-centered spaces.  This session is designed to foster solidarity for stronger movement work.  In this approachable and conversational training, you will learn (and unlearn) different social narratives of disability and how Disabled people have informed their own sense of identity. We'll explore movements rooted in disability rights, the social model of disability and disability justice.

Open to Specific Audiences

  • Facilitated by: Zakiyyah Sorensen and Carla Williams

    Audience: Black Women

    Description: This session is a space for Black women to lay down the struggle for liberation of others and tend to themselves. To dream of their existence in a world without tending and work but one with their leisure that knows the fulfillment of their dreams without constant battles. Instead of thinking that liberation is a distant dream for future generations, how can we start making intentional space for our own liberation now?


    This session will also center the voices of Black women leaders to confront misogynoir, the layered impact of racism and sexism in leadership. Through storytelling, dialogue, and reflection, we’ll unpack how harmful stereotypes, double standards, and invisible labor shape Black women’s leadership journeys, and the personal and collective costs that follow.


    Grounded in truth-telling and community care, the conversation invites participants into solidarity and repair: affirming Black women’s lived experiences, naming systemic barriers, and envisioning practices that move us beyond performative equity toward real transformation.

  • Facilitated by:
    April Kigeya and Jaylin Stueber

    Audience:
    This session is designed for Black women, femmes, and other BIPOC individuals. We also welcome accomplices and aspiring co-conspirators who are ready to listen, learn, and take accountability for dismantling oppressive workplace dynamics.

    Description:
    In this experience, we will offer an unapologetic, healing-centered space rooted in storytelling, shared wisdom, and community-building among Black women and others navigating the impacts of white supremacy culture in professional spaces. Through honest dialogue, humor, and reflective exercises, participants will unpack the unspoken rules of "survival" in these environments-examining how racism, silencing, performative allyship, and workplace trauma show up in their daily lives. Our session is grounded in solidarity and mutual aid, centering truth-telling, validation, and collective healing. Participants will leave with tools for navigating harmful systems while also building networks of support, shared accountability, and deeper connection-moving beyond survival toward liberation.

Block A: 9:30 AM - 10:15 AM

Open to All Audiences

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • Offered by: Kayla McGhee

    Audience:
    BIPOC Queer People

    Description:
    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

  • 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.

  • 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

    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

  • Facilitated by: Cassandra Xiong

    Audience:
    Queer BIPOC Youth & Young Adults

    Description:
    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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Afternoon Sessions

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Open to All Audiences

  • Facilitated by: Stephanie Roades

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: Now more than ever, it’s going to take community to keep each other safe and minimize harm. No one is born with these skills; it takes lifelong learning and practice to keep the tools in your harm reduction toolbox sharp. Whether you’ve attended similar workshops before or this is your first time, this is a space for everyone to learn something new.


    Bystander Intervention De-escalation training will focus on ways to intervene in public instances of racist, sexist, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Trans, ICE raids and other forms of oppressive interpersonal violence and harassment while considering the safety of all parties. The physical and vocal practice of various strategies is designed to change social norms and encourage people to find ways to interrupt violence and prevent further harm. This workshop includes a learning segment of tips and strategies, how to document, knowing your rights as an intervener, and practice scenarios constructed on ways to show up and support a diversity of identities, both as the intervener and the person experiencing harm. 


    Important Note: This session ends at 3:00PM

  • Facilitated by: Abha Thakkar, Noah Bloedorn, and Jess Guffy Calkins

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: We all need food, and unlike other basic needs such as housing and healthcare, food represents an easily accessible, radical opportunity to lessen our dependence on the market economy and grow our own sustenance. The Dane County Food Action Plan has been in development for two years and will include formal policy and investment recommendations for helping us foster a resilient, equitable food system. Join us for this session to help us develop the grassroots recommendations for the plan, grounded in mutual aid and solidarity practices. How do we build a food system where we feed each other in ways that celebrate our distinct humanity, enhance our health and wellness and build community at the same time?

  • Facilitated by:Hanna Homestead, Heba Mohammad, Hebah Kassem

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: This session relates to the theme of becoming the liberation ecosystem by focusing on the importance of building trans-national, intersectional solidarity for abolition movements in the U.S. and Palestine. This is critical. Our collective liberation depends on our ability to collectively care and fight for each other. This panel goes into detail about how freeing Palestine is key to fighting against the war industry, oligarchs, fascists, and climate collapse — all of the forces that threaten a livable world for us all. It will also touch on how the same forces that perpetuate genocide abroad are at the root of racial violence at home. The panel will also cover how mutual aid and abolition are being fostered to unlearn these harmful systems and fight for a future rooted in liberation, humanity, justice, and ecological reciprocity.

  • Supported by: People Connected to the Loka Initiative

    Audience: All - Open to All

    Description:
    After viewing Sacred Wisdom, Sacred Earth, participants will be invited into a grounded space to digest and reflect on what they've witnessed. The session includes time for inner reflection, and optional journaling or sharing.
    As the film uplifts Indigenous voices and urgent planetary truths, this session supports participants in feeling those truths in their bodies—making space for grief, beauty, and clarity to arise. Together, we’ll practice slowing down, listening inward, and reconnecting to ourselves, the land, and the collective body.

  • Facilitated by: Alinne Ramirez, Sol Thea Kelley-Jones, Karen Romo, Francis Henn, and Francesca Hong

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: The escalating violence and repression against migrants we have seen this year requires a community response. This session will offer multiple practical and hands-on ways to be in solidarity with migrants in Wisconsin. Building on the decades of organizing that Voces de la Frontera has been doing with migrants, and building on the multiple pronged approach they have developed in response to the current anti-immigrant tactics present in our communities, participants will be invited to choose an area of solidarity they would like to engage with. We will explore specific areas of action such as in the realms of  advocacy, mutual aid needs for legal and labor supports, tangible tactics for defense of migrants, engaging faith communities, or engaging organizations or businesses to act in solidarity with migrants. Participants will come away with concrete ways they can continue to support migrants in their communities.

  • Facilitated by: Sarah Shatz and Colleen Butler

    Audience: All - Open to Everyone

    Description: At the end of the summit, it can be beneficial to pause and reflect on the moments throughout the summit that impacted you.  In this session, we will use the summit booklet as a tool to reflect on these learnings by ourselves and with each other.  Art supplies and the Summit booklet will be provided. We hope to provide a spacious container for reflection and connection. 

Open to Specific Audiences

  • Facilitated by:
    Mya Williams and Sam Jeschke

    Audience:
    Youth Only

    Description:
    Honoring the theme of Get Together: Becoming the Liberation Ecosystem, we invite all youth attendees to join us in the Youth Room: a dedicated space for youth to relax, create, and share their collective experiences in and out of school. The session will open with a Welcome Circle, facilitated by Bayview Community Center’s Restorative Justice Club, and the remaining time will be dedicated to youth-led activities such as art, music, journaling, or even just resting. This space has an open-door policy, so youth may enter at any time if they feel they need a break from Summit experiences, or they are welcome to stay the entire afternoon. The youth of Madison, and all across the world, work hard day in and day out to speak up for themselves, for others, and for their community– this space is dedicated to honoring that they, too, need spaces to unwind and care for themselves.

  • Facilitated by: Allison Dungan and Ginger Francis

    Audience: White Parents and Caregivers

    Description: As white-bodied parents and caregivers who value liberatory practices, we face the ongoing challenge of interrupting the dominance we’ve inherited and preventing its transmission to the next generation. In this session, we will draw on Tema Okun’s framework of White Supremacy Culture Characteristics and Liberatory Practices to reflect on how these dynamics show up in our parenting, caregiving, and family systems.

    Together, we will explore:

    • How white supremacy culture lives in our bodies and everyday family practices

    • What it means to shift from “power over” to “power with” in our relationships with children

    • Skills for practicing repair when harm inevitably arises, so that our children learn trust, accountability, and reciprocity

    By engaging these practices in community, we deepen our ability to parent and care in ways aligned with abolition, liberation, and belonging. Participants will leave with tools and embodied practices that support raising young people who can trust themselves, practice repair, and contribute to collective liberation.

  • Facilitated by: Garrett Denning

    Audience: White People

    Description: White neurodivergent folx often boast a "strong sense of justice" as part of what brings us to social justice movements, yet often we find ourselves unprepared for what that work looks like and how messy it can be. Left unchecked, this leads to poking others' wounds and even hiding behind our identities when confronted with our actions. But it doesn't have to play out this way. In this experience, we will reframe this "sense of justice" and other neurodivergent traits to dream and reimagine what liberation, community, and solidarity could look like. Participants can draw on our own individual neurodivergent traits, interests, and wisdoms to reshape our social justice journeys by determining what could serve the cause and what could harm it if not watched out for.  Through this work we can start working to imagine a better world, rooted in liberation and defended through uncolonized and unfiltered neurodivergent "chaos." While this workshop is tailored for neurodivergent folx who hold whiteness, these skills can apply to anyone with at least one dominant identity who wishes to better be in community at a time where everything is exhausting and o no one who wishes to be part of it will be turned away if there is room. We also honor all definitions of neurodivergence and journeys of connecting to neurodivergent identities. Self diagnosis is real and will always be honored.