In this talk Prisca Dorcas will name what it means to attend a predominantly white institution, PWI, as a non-white person. She will also address generational trauma telling stories about her own experiences with therapy, the stigmas around therapy, being 1st generation, and the experiences with being from a war-torn country has meant for her and her family. She will also explore ways to reclaim traditions while healing from generation trauma. 

Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez was born in Managua, Nicaragua but calls Nashville, Tennessee home. She is a feminist, theologian, storyteller, and advocate founder of Latina Rebels, and author of “For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts” A Love Letter to Women of Color.” Mojica Rodríguez merges storytelling with pedagogy to help folks understand the larger forces at play, also known as systemic oppression.

Dr. Bernice A. King is a global thought leader, strategist, solutionist, orator, peace advocate, and CEO of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center For Nonviolent Social Change (The KingCenter), which was founded by her mother as the official living memorial to the life, work, and legacy of her father. In this position, Bernice continues to advance her parents’ legacy of nonviolent social change through policy, advocacy, research, as well as education & training through the Kingian philosophy of nonviolence, which she re-branded Nonviolence365TM️ (NV365). See Complete Bio

In this talk, Dr. Megan Asaka will examine how Asian Americans have responded to, challenged, and resisted anti-Asian racism and injustice. Though often portrayed as passive “model minorities,” Asian Americans have a rich legacy of resistance and militant action that has long been overlooked. Focusing on historical accounts from in and beyond the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Asaka will offer a new understanding of the Asian American past as a pathway for future action.

Award-winning scholar, writer, and teacher of Asian American history, urban history, and public humanities. She is the author of Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City, which examines the erased histories of the communities that built Seattle. The book was inspired by her own family history in Seattle as well as her work as an oral historian and archivist for Densho, a community-based organization that seeks to preserve and share the stories of the Japanese American incarceration. She is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Riverside and lives in Pasadena.

From automated decision systems in healthcare, policing, education and more, technologies have the potential to deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to harmful practices of a previous era. In this talk, Ruha Benjamin takes us into the world of biased bots, altruistic algorithms, and their many entanglements, and provides conceptual tools to decode tech predictions with historical and sociological insight. When it comes to AI, Ruha shifts our focus from the dystopian and utopian narratives we are sold, to a sober reckoning with the way these tools are already a part of our lives. Whereas dystopias are the stuff of nightmares, and utopias the stuff of dreams… utopias are what we create together when we are wide awake.

Ruha Benjamin is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells JUST Data Lab and author of three books, Viral Justice (2022), Race After Technology (2019), and People’s Science (2013), and editor of Captivating Technology (2019).  Ruha Benjamin speaks widely about the relationship between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, race and citizenship, health and justice.

Kimberlee Williams, Author of Dear White Woman, Please Come Home, is a humanist first and believes that racism can be dismantled through authentic relationship building where a mirror is held up to interrogate one's assumptions, beliefs, behaviors, and patterns of interactions. With a shift in any and all of the above as authentic relationships dive beneath the surface, the power and harm caused by the legacy of racism can be dismantled.

Within this presentation LeDerick Horne  will draw from the book “Empowering. Students with Hidden Disabilities: A Path to Pride and Success.”  LeDerick will share his own experience navigating special education classes and will give advice to help all students develop positive identities as people with disabilities. Strategies to help students reach their transition goals will be provided. The audience will also explore the intersectionality of disability, race, and identity to help them create more inclusive schools and communities. LeDerick’s personal story and poetry will also be shared during this talk.

Participants will be able to:

• List several evidence-based practices and strategies which can empower students with disabilities to reach their transition goals.

• Describe the importance of disability identity to reduce stigma and improve student engagement and disability pride.

• Address many of the challenges facing students with disabilities from communities of color to help service providers and families build a more equitable learning environment.

• List sources of mentors and role modelsto help students build a meaningful connection to the disability community.

Grow your antiracist consciousness! Using a framework similar to This Book Is Anti-Racist, learn how to take action and work towards creating anti-bias anti-racist classrooms, libraries, schools, and community spaces. Listeners will grow into their awareness and start to make a plan on how to support their own growth and that of those they are working with. Learn how to authentically center the voices of those who are too often silenced, ignored, and left out of history in our own spaces! Build an inclusive anti-bias antiracist community that empowers all who enter! 

Who is allowed to say the N!word? What do we do or say when the N!word is said in our classrooms, hallways, practices, cafeterias and resident halls? Ignoring the N!Word is not an option anymore - You can hear N!Word everywhere nowadays. Participants are challenged to examine their personal/professional histories with N!Word when and/or how they first heard N!Word and pictures/feelings associated with the word. The workshop encourages all people, but specifically future leaders, educators and parents, to consider the ramifications of casual or uniformed usage of a powerful and troublesome word.

Participants will leave the session with:

• a heightened understanding of the impact of the word, especially on our youth;

• strategies for eliminating the word from school/curriculum;

• resources for continued growth and development of strategies for addressing difficult conversations.