Closing Panel: A Global Arc Toward Belonging

Belonging without othering is a radical new proposition to create a shared future for all including our earth. Where might belonging without othering, as a new political, social, and spiritual frame, take us next on the bending of the arc and beyond?

In March 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr famously proclaimed that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” What is our global trajectory of equality, peacebuilding, and human rights, and how does belonging add to that? How might we integrate and build new norms that advance belonging?

As we face a warming planet and violent conflicts now rage in more than 100 countries, since King’s lifetime, we have also traversed through the adoption of a historic number of peace agreements, the end of apartheid in South Africa, mass decolonization in Africa and the Caribbean, and the fall of the Berlin Wall in Europe. Growing recognition of women’s and LGBTQ rights globally and Identities that were previously hard and enshrined into clear boundaries of “us” and “them” have shifted into new formation, allowing for more expansive understandings of who we are as living beings in relation to each other and the earth.

In this conference closing conversation, four thought leaders whose work spans nations, cultures, regions, and identities, will grapple together on belonging without othering as a global frame and a collective aspiration, and what’s required to build that future together. Among other things, they will help us think through the new norms, both symbolic and institutional, that could move the foundational premise that all people belong that is already happening around the world.

Curated by Sara Grossman, Rachelle Galloway-Popotas, and john powell