testing agenda fix

Registration and The Commons Opens

Meditation and Movement

Begin your day with a relaxing and energizing guided Sufi meditation (Tamarkoz) practice with Michelle Ayazi.

Conference Opening 

Duniya Dance & Drum company, emcee Sarah Crowell, and the Belonging Resident Company will open up the day with movement and togetherness to welcome us to Day Two of O&B 2024. 

Can We Remain Open? Bridge-Builder Testimonial, with Scott Shigeoka

Scott Shigeoka will discuss the values and practices, such as deep curiosity and the willingness to stay open to each other’s story, that will help us hold onto the inherent humanity of all, not by denying our differences or what makes us unique, but by recognizing that insisting that fundamentally we all belong is the only way to build a shared future. 

Belonging without Othering, keynote with john a. powell and Maria Hinojosa

A conversation between celebrated journalist Maria Hinojosa and OBI Director john powell on our conference theme, Belonging Without Othering.
The conference serves as the book launch of a book by the same name, co-authored with Stephen Menendian. 

Coffee Break 

Pick up coffee and tea as you head to breakout sessions

Breakout Sessions

These 90-minute concurrent workshops will be held across the O&B 2024 campus. Confirmed breakouts on Friday include the following, with more to be announced soon. 

Activating Places of Belonging

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB): Vision, Framing, and Action in a Post-SFFA World

Storytelling for Solidarity: Exploring Somatic Solutions to Impossible Problems through Playback Theater

Global South Feminist Visions for Belonging

Seeding a Global Network for Migration and Belonging in 2024 and Beyond

Land, Culture, and Belonging: Place-based Community Advocacy to Transform Public Event Spaces

Lunch

Pick up your hosted lunch and find a place to relax, connect, and recharge among a wide variety of areas on the O&B 2024 campus including grassy and outdoor spaces at the Oakland Museum of California; the outdoor deck of the Kaiser Building; the banks of Lake Merritt; and throughout the HJK building. Don’t miss offerings in The Commons, the Belonging Bazaar merch station, conference bookstore; and other ways to relax, connect, and recharge.

Harmonizing Belonging, with Melanie DeMore

2:15 - Belonging Economies: An Introduction, with Hossein Ayazi

Solidarity, Democracy, and Debt

Acclaimed author and organizer Astra Taylor will share the intersections of the diverse areas of her work in examining, writing, and organizing around democracy, solidarity, and co-founding America’s first union of debtors. 

2:40 PM - Spoken Word, with Michelle Mush Lee

Building Belonging Economies

What would an economy built on belonging look like? Speakers Nwamaka Agbo of the Kataly Foundation and Restorative Economies Fund, Jovan Scott Lewis of UC Berkeley, and Nick Tilsen (Oglala Lakota) of NDN Collective will discuss what must be cultivated or negotiated if we are to co-create new forms of economic systems. Moderated by Wendy Ake of the Othering & Belonging Institute. 

Hoop Dancing, with Patrick Willie (Navajo)

A Greater Story of We, with Maurice Mitchell

Renowned social movement strategist Maurice Mitchell,  a visionary leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and now National Director of the Working Families Party, will give our day's closing keynote on new formations and ways of being and working with each other that are needed to confront the current era of rising authoritarianism, climate emergency, toxic inequality, and widespread precarity and fragmentation. Maurice will share what he has learned through organizing and his own evolution as a leader about what is needed to build a bigger “we”—that it is only by working together, across identity and issue area, that we can truly build and realize the promise of multi-racial, pluralistic democracies.? 

Mainstage Close with Sarah Crowell 

Salsa Rueda with Jose Richard Aviles- Commons Community Stage

5:15 pm - Book Signing with Astra Taylor - Astra Taylor will be signing copies of her new book Solidarity - look for signs in the Concourse.

Registration Opens & The Commons Open

Meditation and Movement

Begin your day with a relaxing and energizing guided Sufi meditation (Tamarkoz) practice, led by Michelle Ayazi.

Conference Opening 

Emcee Sarah Crowell will open up the day with connection, conversation, and a look at what we have in store for our closing day together. 

Collective Memory, Identity, Trauma, and Belonging

What is the role of collective memory in creating identity and belonging? Is it even possible to imagine a belonging that does not require flattened identities that pit one group against another? And most urgently, what are the narratives that can support bridging and solidarity, and repair and rehumanization, even during this time of unimaginable destruction, division, and dehumanization. 

Cecilie Surasky of the Othering & Belonging Institute will discuss these questions with three of our sharpest chroniclers, observers, and witnesses: Palestinian historian Sherene Seikaly, acclaimed author and activist Naomi Klein, and Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Viet Nguyen. This rich conversation will connect the people, places, struggles, and history of Europe, Israel/Palestine, Vietnam, Asia, and the United States. It will bring into sharp focus how structures of othering such as colonialism, US militarism, ethnonationalism, racism, and patriarchy strip us of our humanity and mobilize fear and trauma to create an other. And most importantly, it will explore the liberatory possibilities of reconceptualizing identity and aspiring toward belonging without othering.

Coffee Break 

Pick up coffee and tea as you head to breakout sessions.

Concurrent Breakout Sessions

A set of eight 90-minute concurrent workshops will be held across the O&B 2024 campus. Confirmed breakouts on Saturday include the following, with more to be announced soon. 

Leaning into Paradox: How we can Block, Bridge & Build our Democratic Future Together

Cultural Equity & Operationalizing Belonging: Oakland Efforts

Food Sovereignty: Toward Belonging and Climate Justice

Bridging Tools & Tactics for High School Educators

The Application of Targeted Universalism: Shared Experiences from the Field

The Current Xenophobic Political moment and the Future of the Immigrant Rights Movement

Lunch

Lunch provided for all O&B 2024 participants. Pick up lunch and find a variety of places to eat including the outdoor spaces at the Oakland Museum of California; the outdoor deck of the Kaiser Building; the banks of Lake Merritt; and throughout the HJK building. 

12:45 pm: Play Marimba & Neblinas del Pacifico: HJK Deck

Book Signings with Naomi Klein and Viet Nguyen

During the lunch hour, Naomi Klein will sign copies of her acclaimed book Doppelganger and other bestselling books. Viet Nguyen will sign copies of his award-winning book The Sympathizer and other recent books. Times to be confirmed. Look for the signs in the concourse for location. 

1:00 pm- Youth Speaks, on the Commons Community Stage

Bandaloop

Aerial artistic group Bandaloop celebrates the human spirit, nature, and communities through dance that uses climbing technology to expand and challenge what is possible. Come see Bandaloop on the wall of the HJK Building.

Long Bridging for Belonging and Democracy

Panelists DeAngelo Bester, Myriam Méndez Montalvo, Pastor Bob Roberts, Omar Salha, and moderator, Yuna Blajer de la Garza will offer practical applications for long bridging and practices across social and institutional differences to help us see the value of bridging as a prerequisite condition for belonging.

Bending the Global Arc toward Belonging

Our closing session will feature a conversation with Shamil Idriss, Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, and Kathryn Nwajiaku-Dahou on what is needed to make belonging a global norm.

Closing Remarks by john a. powell

Closing Performance, with Kev Choice and Destiny Muhammed

Oakland's legendary pianist, emcee, bandleader, and music historian Kev Choice and harpist extraordinaire Destiny Muhammed will take the stage with a choir for a collective, closing experience to send us off in harmony from O&B 2024. 

 Commons Open