The 2024 Equity Weekend is packed with four powerful days of programming to promote Equity!

Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal US holiday. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. As it was on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger delivered the final enforcement of the the Emanciplation Proclamation in Galveston, Texas to mark the end of the American Civil War.

60th Anniversary of 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Sixty years ago, there came from many quarters of our nation a youthful diversity of ethnicities, opinions, lifestyles, and persuasions, a cadre of risk-takers committed to lifting the last burden from the shoulders of the world’s last oppressed woman and man. Our coming together was more than idealism that has since been celebrated as the Mississippi Summer of 1964.While countless pundits and chroniclers from without have vertically described, discussed and even extolled the seasonal events of that year, this is the rare occasion, some sixty years later, for a horizontal view of those who survived to tell the story -- it origins, frustrations, triumphs and its aspirations as well as hope.With the doves outnumbering the ravens in the parliament of our hair, this is our unbent and unbowed voice calling to those who must succeed us as radical agents of change. We want them to know that ours was more than theory and faith. It was more than uplifting rhetoric and freedom songs -- It was pragmatic and tedious, dangerous and deadly, not only for us but more importantly for the locals who believed in us with their […]

Netroots Nation is a non-profit organization that provides trainings, resources and connection opportunities to help progressive activists create a more progressive and just world. Since 2006, Netroots Nation has hosted the largest annual conference for progressives, drawing up to 4,000 attendees from around the country and beyond. Our annual event brings together diverse voices from around the country and beyond. Anyone who desires a more progressive and just world is welcome. Our attendees are politicians, online organizers, grassroots activists, and independent media makers. Some are professionals who work at advocacy organizations, progressive companies or labor unions; while others do activism in their spare time. 

From the assaults on Black knowledge, the dismantling of affirmative action, the proliferation of racially targeted voter suppression and the deterioration of DEI there is a broad scale campaign to undermine and circumscribe Black progress. This coordinated campaign has already begun to adversely impact the wealth, health and rights of Black communities across the country. This project is undergirded by an old but powerful ideology: that Black advancement comes at the expense of white America. History reminds us that Black achievement is not guaranteed in a society that chooses autocracy over democracy, greed over equity and lying over the truth. In the face of this anti-democratic attack, institutions are choosing to ignore these historical lessons by compromising and appeasing these forces rather than resisting them to defend the aspiration of a truly inclusive multiracial democracy. This keynote panel will bring together Kimberle Crenshaw, Shavon Arline-Bradley, Tanya Kateri Hernández, Marc Morial, and Janai Nelson to not only make sense of the threat posed to Black America but begin to chart out the urgent work to save our freedom dreams.

In March earlier this year AAPF convened an urgent panel as part of our Her Dream Deferred series to bring together Black women from a variety of sectors to sound the alarm about Black women’s vulnerability to these attacks in the war on woke and discuss how we should see the long-term efforts to undermine Black women’s place in society as part of a larger assault on civil rights and democracy. Since that conversation the continued attack on Black women in universities, politics and businesses has continued unabated. From the cynical coopting of anti-discrimination law to target the Black women owned and funding, Fearless Fund, to the defamation of DEI used to force Claudine Gay out of her historic position as Harvard president, to the countless Black women being scrutinized and silenced in workplaces across the country under the DEI witchhunt, it is evident that this crisis is rapidly escalating. It is also important to highlight that the fuel used to stoke this fire targeted ideas produced by Black women in this country which has been labeled as divisive and dangerous – whether this is Black feminism, intersectionality, critical race theory or the 1619 project. The storm that has been […]