Facilitated By:Donna Willmott, Emily Terrana & Jerome Hagan

Audience: All - Open to Everyone

Description: As fascism rises, the state is increasing its use of surveillance, criminalization, and repression to target movements for liberation and justice. Yet many of us and our organizations lack specific, agreed-upon principles of how to keep our movements as safe as possible from these ongoing attacks while we continue to be big and bold in challenging the current racial, economic, and social order. If we want our movements to succeed, we must change this.

To understand what the state is doing today, we need to remember what it has done in the past. This workshop will ground participants in historical examples of state repression, analysis drawn from on-the-ground lessons and experiences, and principles for collective resistance to these attacks that not only protect but also build our movements. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how the state targets liberatory movements, specific actions they can take to protect and defend their organizations and an orientation to security that balances the need to be well-informed and prepared with the need to build mass movements that can win. 

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: Keena Atkinson

Audience: All - Open to Everyone

Description: This workshop invites participants to return to ancestral practices of mutual care rooted in abundance, reciprocity, and collective knowledge. Together, we will examine how gatekeeping, scarcity mindset, and class divisions have been upheld by oppressive systems and how we may unconsciously buy into them. Using book study, conversation, and shared storytelling, we will identify how mutual aid challenges these narratives and creates pathways for thriving communities. Participants will leave with concrete ideas for practicing mutual aid that embody solidarity rather than saviorism, while also drawing wisdom from texts that ground us in the long history of resistance and survival work led by marginalized communities.

Please consider reading the book, Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown at least Pg 15, 41-42, 50 if possible to support you in this workshop discussion.

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: Karla Hargrove

Audience: All - Open to Everyone

Description: In a world grappling with the weight of racial injustice, repair must begin within. Recovery for the Creative Healer is an immersive workshop designed for artists, activists, therapists, educators, and caregivers—those who carry both the burden of advocacy and the gift of healing. Rooted in the summit's theme of repair, this session offers a sacred space to restore the inner landscape through mindful poetry, guided meditation, and creative expression.

Participants will explore the restorative power of language and presence, using mindfulness as a compass to navigate emotional fatigue, racialized trauma, and vicarious grief. Together, we’ll breathe, write, reflect, and reconnect to the creative force within us that resists, reimagines, and rebuilds.

Workshop Take-aways:

• A collection of healing poems and affirmations (your own and others’)

• Tools for grounding and resilience through mindfulness practices

• A renewed connection to your creative voice as a site of liberation and restoration

As a community, we'll create an emotional container for those who give so much to others and need a moment to return home to themselves.

No prior writing or meditation experience required. Open to all identities and bodies.

Facilitated By: Cynthia Garcia

Audience: All - Open to Everyone

Description: This virtual workshop explores immigrant justice as essential to building a thriving, interdependent liberation ecosystem. We’ll examine how immigrant-led movements deepen and strengthen broader struggles for justice through storytelling and strategic mapping of current political conditions.

Grounded together we’ll explore:

- Abolition through dismantling detention and border militarization

- Mutual Aid as survival and resistance to neglect of the state

- Solidarity as a co-liberation practice, not charity

Participants will gain political insight, practical tools, and a collective vision for movements rooted in care, dignity, and shared freedom. Together, we’ll map connections between migration, systemic oppression, and community care — and co-create visions of collective freedom where no one is left behind.

Facilitated by: Brooke Anderson & Sharon Lungo

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: Angela Fitzgerald Ward, Jessica Lee Stovall & Other Members of the SoulFolk Collective

Audience: All - Open to Everyone

Description: The SoulFolk Collective (affectionately called “SoCo”) is a community of researchers dedicated to positioning Black space as a blueprint for more liberatory futures. We engage in multidisciplinary research that prioritizes Black-affirming methodologies to amplify the voices, stories, and lived realities of Black communities. Our scholarship seeks to address the stark antiblackness in the State of Wisconsin and aim to touch the very essence of the Black soul—acknowledging its pain, celebrating its joy, and committing to its freedom through every page of our scholarship. SoCo's mission directly aligns with this year's Summit theme of becoming a liberation ecosystem, and connects with all four of the supporting pillars. Session attendees will learn about SoCo's inaugural oral history project, the Black Madison Archive, and will be invited to engage in discussion on how research can support community building and liberation work in Madison.

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