Making belonging a global norm means practicing it everywhere.
Belonging is not just a theory, but a practice and is contextualized by region, place, and people.
OBI is bringing O&B26 to Louisville as part of our work to make belonging without othering a global norm. If belonging is to become the organizing principle of our communities and institutions, it has to be rooted, tested, adopted, and proliferate regionally and locally.
It is a border city. Louisville sits on the banks of the Ohio River where the cultures of the Midwest, the South, and Appalachia meet. Throughout its history, the city has embraced both northern and southern characteristics in its culture, holding the contradictions of the whole country in one river town.
In their struggles against racial injustice in the mid-twentieth century, Louisvillians crossed racial, economic, and political dividing lines to build coalitions not seen in other cities of its size. Bridging differences and multi-faceted identities is in the city's bones.
It is a city of contradictions, like all places but in the US a phenomenon that has a particular edge in the South. A tiny blue dot in a red state, Louisville doesn’t fit neatly into what is a generalized perception of this region.
It was once called the "Harlem of the South," yet it still carries the scars of redlining and urban renewal.
This is the city where Breonna Taylor was killed, and is also the city whose people rose up for more than 100 days and won Breonna's Law, banning no-knock warrants.
Louisville has always built first-of-their-kind things.
- In 1999, Louisville passed its Fairness Ordinance, the first city in Kentucky and among the first in the South to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination, won by a decades-long grassroots campaign.
- Louisville created the nation's first local government Center for Health Equity and first Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods. There was no model, so they built one.
- In 1963, Louisville adopted the first public accommodations ordinance in the South, won by the city’s own young people.
- In 1905, the Western Branch Library became the first public library in the nation fully run by and for African Americans.
- From Kentuckians for the Commonwealth to Hood to the Holler, the state is a living lab of rural-urban bridging.
Louisville invited us in. A Local Host Committee of Louisville organizers, artists, educators, and community-builders has been shaping this conference from the beginning. We will spend our dollars at local businesses, and develop a lasting connection with this region. Belonging is co-created and belonging is collective.