Largest gathering of racial justice activists in the country

The Applied Research Center’s national conference ‘Facing Race’ kicked off yesterday in Oakland California to explore the innovative strategies and successful models of racial justice activism and to “outline a vision for the future of racial justice.” 

The Facing Race conference is purportedly the largest gathering of racial justice activists in the country, and the packed ballroom of over 500 people clearly showed the continuing power of the racial justice movement in the 21^st century, and the renewed importance of the movement after the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.  APA for Progress is here to screen the documentary film “Vincent Who?” and to give those of you who couldn’t make it (or who couldn’t afford the $350 registration fee…ouch) a play-by-play of the conference, which features some of the nation’s leading all-star progressives (Jeff Chang!  Rinku Sen!). 

Last night, in the ballroom of the Oakland City Center Marriot downtown, the conference opened with a welcome from host Daisy Hernandez, Editor of “Colorlines” magazine, followed by a raucous, knee-slapping-hilarious keynote address by Native American writer and activist Sherman Alexie, who opened the conference by telling the story of his life, punctuated with biting, uproarious, and sometimes incredibly inappropriate racial jokes that had the audience applauding, reeling with laughter, and even crying with emotion as he deftly used humor to show the harsh tragedies he has had to face growing up poor and Native American in this unequal world, growing up in “the basement of the sky scraper called ‘Poverty’”. 

During his speech, he both uplifted and offended, but whether people were hurt or healed, he set the tone of the conference by stressing the importance of “forming new tribes” with people regardless of experience wherever one goes.  He reminded us that the challenges that face us in this new century are a reinvention of the same challenges from last century, and asked us to look deeper at things like White Supremacy as functions of poverty and structural inequality. 

The conference promises to be a powerhouse of strategy, and should serve to electrify the racial justice movement in many different ways.  APA for Progress will be updating you throughout, so stay tuned...