⏩ Organizing for Social and Political Empowerment: Watch Our Conference

A half-day Zoom conference on challenges and strategies, featuring national and local progressive organizers and students of organizing

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Our half-day conference on Organizing for Social and Political Empowerment featured several of America’s most effective organizers who share the conviction that we will reclaim and strengthen democracy and build grassroots empowerment for social justice only by recommitting to more effective organizing.

Watch the full video below:

Welcome

Bob Kuttner, co-founder, The American Prospect

Panel 1: The Challenge of Scale, Financing and Durability

(video timecode: 0:03:44)

Heather Booth, organizer, strategist; founder, Midwest Academy

Maurice Mitchell, national director, Working Families Party

Deepak Bhargava, longtime executive director, Community Change; now CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies

Hahrie Han, Johns Hopkins University; author: How Organizations Develop Activists

Ernesto Cortés, national co-director, Industrial Areas Foundation and executive director of the West/Southwest IAF regional network

Moderator: Gabrielle Gurley, deputy editor, The American Prospect

Panel 2: Organizing Workers: New Opportunities, Strategies, Obstacles

(video timecode: 1:16:21)

Lauren Jacobs, executive director, Partnership for Working Families

Celeste Faison, campaigns director, National Domestic Workers Alliance

Stephen Lerner, labor and community organizer; architect of SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign

Charese Rasberry, organizer, Local 226 UNITE-HERE, Las Vegas

Michelle Ringuette, assistant to the president, AFT

Moderator: Harold Meyerson, editor at large, The American Prospect

Panel 3: Combining Movement Organizing and Electoral Organizing

(video timecode: 2:28:10)

Nse Ufot, chief executive, New Georgia Project

Brian Kettenring, Hewlett Foundation, former co-executive director, Center for Popular Democracy

Afua Atta-Mensah, executive director, Community Voices Heard; board president, People’s Action Institute

Michael Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president, AFL-CIO

Moderator: Bob Kuttner, The American Prospect

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Free entrance to this event was made possible by 350.org

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