RE:Conference Speakers and Sessions Now Live
We’ll still be adding speakers and sessions as we get confirmation from people and lock in the final details, but we’re so excited to share some of the people that you’ll be hearing from at RE:Conference this year and the sessions that you can look forward to attending.
Speakers
“Each day of our lives we are different than the day before; renewal is a gift to continually strive to be a better person each day.”
Jillene Joseph (Aaniiih) is the Executive Director of the Native Wellness Institute. For 40 years she has traveled throughout North America and beyond providing wellness and healing training to Indigenous communities in a variety of areas such as youth leadership development, healthy relationships, wellness in the workplace and more. Jillene is one of the 8 members of the International Indigenous Council of the Healing Our Spirits Worldwide movement. She has always lived by her personal mantra of “Living the Warrior’s Spirit: being positive, productive and proactive.”
“The theme of “renewal” feels like a re-commitment to the community driven practices that centralize the knowledge and decision-making of our communities; practices that foster collective action and harness our power to transform our workplaces, neighborhoods, etc.”
Nicthé grew up in an activist-union household where she was no stranger to conversations at the dinner table about workers’ rights and worker dignity. It is because of this that she became highly aware of injustices impacting immigrant, indigenous, and low-wage communities. After college, she became a community organizer with Unite Oregon in the Rogue Valley and later joined SEIU Local 503 as an internal organizer with the Homecare and Personal Support Worker team. She is now staff at the Northwest Workers’ Justice Project providing workers with the tools necessary to demand better working conditions in the workplace.
Sessions
(Re)claiming Community Control of Land & Home
Through colonization, racist policy, market forces and climate disasters, communities across Oregon have been displaced from their land, their neighborhoods and their homes. But that isn’t the end of the story. By staying organized and staying true to a vision for collective self-determination and community ownership, the groups featured in this lunchtime session are controlling their own destiny – and leading us all toward a future where housing is a human right, rather than a commodity.
Rethinking our Ideas about Healthy Communities
More and more people are seeing and naming the system we swim and drown in, racial capitalism. Anecdotally, there are countless posts on social media of how the prevailing economic system is not working for most people but instead benefiting corporations and rich people. Objectively, we have seen the continuing trend of income and wealth inequality, how the gap is only growing wider. In this session we will explore potential alternatives to capitalism, dig into what economies based on justice, sustainability, and solidarity look like, and have conversations about the movements that are working towards these alternatives.
Advancing New Narratives for an Economically Just Oregon
How do we shift mindsets to advance a bold vision for economic justice? The Oregon Economic Justice Roundtable developed a vision to: nourish a sense of belonging, respect, and dignity among communities and people and create an environment and systems of abundance by Black, Latine, Asian and Tribal communities so that all Oregonians can live into the freedom to actualize dreams. Join this conversation to learn how economic justice narratives developed and tested over the last 18 months by communities will inform shared strategies to achieve this vision. Learn how strong narratives help us advance our vision, what mindsets we need to shift, and how to apply these new narratives from your personal and professional perspective. Your participation in this session is power building which we can take beyond the RE:Conference to continue supporting the movement for economic justice.
You can see all the confirmed speakers here and the current schedule including breakout sessions here. We’ll continue to add to these pages as details are finalized.
If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, what are you waiting for?!?!? The early bird discount ends July 31st!
