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CAPTURING THE EXPERIENCE

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Opening the conversation

HELLO! - - - - X The Libra Foundation 2016 Grantee Convening exceeded our wildest dreams. As we learned from each other and shared stories, we reconfirmed the values and dedication that define our work. It is truly humbling to be part of such a compassionate and motivated community. Creating this report has been a beautiful reminder of the experience we created and is a testament to the power of people with shared values connecting and listening to one another across multiple movements. We hope that the connections, insights, and resources conveyed in this report provide some solace and strength with which to face the uncertainties and unrest in our country and world. Within the next few pages you will find photographs, excerpts from the inspiring words of Cathy Albisa and Xavier McElrath-Bey, the poetry we heard from Youth

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Speaks, highlights from the sessions and evaluation, some generated dreams and more.

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We are gathered here not because we share a feeling of dread, although we do, but because we know that we have to and are committed to responding, no matter what the challenges – in fact, the deeper the challenge the more

responsible we feel in this room to respond. Because that is what our community is about – and I love our community for that.

- Cathy Albisa

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YOU WERE HERE - - - - X At Cavallo Point September 21-23, 2016.

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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE EVALUATION - - - - X The goals for the convening were:

- Deepen relationships and connections - Share strategies and solutions - Network with other thought leaders - Explore and engage in the intersections of your work - Reflect and rejuvenate

After the convening was over we sent out a survey asking you for feedback. The majority of the survey respondents felt they were able to deepen relationships and connections, network with other thought leaders, and explore intersections of their work. The survey also found that attendees had ample time for reflection and left feeling rejuvenated. Overall, we received overwhelmingly positive feedback:

“I was very pleasantly surprised by the convening - I found the format conducive to real learning, while also giving us a chance to go at our own pace and engage where we each felt worked for us.”

“I deepened existing relationships and met new people I will stay connected to, and most importantly I felt rejuvenated at the end.”

“I really appreciated your emphasis on taking care of ourselves and not having an agenda.”

“I now have stronger connections and plan to follow up and see what we can do together to bring greater strength to the movement.”

“While I already knew most of the grantees within my own sector, this was a rare opportunity to meet important leaders from outside my own sector, and to explore connections in our work. I learned so much!”

Some survey respondents wished that the day 2 sessions had been longer, had clearer goals, and focused more on next steps and solutions.

“The breakout sessions were very thoughtful and thought-provoking. It would have been great to have some period of rotating sessions focused on

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exchanging information about each other's work so as to find direct ways of intersecting.”

“The conference was both rejuvenating and intense (in a very good way). Broad level strategy and solutions were shared, but there just wasn't enough time to dig into concrete strategies and solutions, which is okay.”

“I would have loved to spend less time on the identifying shared challenges piece and more time focused on solutions and to have a little more space to dig in on shared learning and solutions.”

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We appreciated all of the thanks we received for the Convening. However, we cannot take all the credit. Without the contributions of each and every one of you the Convening would not have been the overwhelmingly positive experience that it was. We wanted to share some of the messages we received because you are all deserving of the same praise.

“One of the most heartfelt experiences ever. Thanks to the wonderful facilitators we had a few days we will never forget :)”

“This is honestly probably the best convening (usually called conference) that I have ever been to. All of the above stated goals were met above and beyond any expectation.”

“It was an amazing experience, connecting and sharing experiences, it was one of the best retreats I have attended!”

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“I've been doing this work for 20 years and this is the best convening I've ever attended. Great job.”

“It was incredibly uplifting and inspiring to discuss important issues that are outside of our sector that we care about but don't have time to dig into.” “I have never met so many amazing people in my life and heard so many inspiring, and heart-breaking, stories. Truly a unique and amazing experience that I will always remember.” “I stayed up so late both nights talking to new and old friends and colleagues....I couldn't get enough! I am rarely in the room with people who work in such different sectors yet share such a common purpose. It was such a gift to be able to share and learn from each other and I found hope and inspiration in reflecting on and exploring our shared challenges and goals.” “Overall this was by far the best such event I have ever attended. Everything about the convening worked beautifully to foster connection and discussion of our work from an intersectional basis.”

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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SESSIONS

- - - - X

The depth and richness of the session discussions were hard to wholly capture on a poster. We wish we could all have listened in on each discussion. Short of that, we have included below a summary of most of the sessions.

In reviewing the posters, we found some interesting recurring themes. For example, many different sessions identified a need to better follow the leadership of frontline communities, even in the face of short term deliverables requested from donors. A number of sessions discussed the broad range of obstacles that make it difficult to move towards intersectionality. Everyone wants to be intersectional, yet often struggle to do so effectively. The use of a singular human rights framework was another topic of debate, with some favoring the current framework while others challenging its inherent Eurocentricity.

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Note, If you find that a session that mattered to you is not included below, it’s simply because some posters were missing.

Economic Democracy

QUESTIONS How do we develop an Economic Democracy/ Finance Agenda for/with the HR community? Who is involved in this conversation?

AHAS - There is need for a National political Agenda that does not leave anyone out

- Economic Models: Is there a “tipping point” of money invested that will allow a community to sustain itself/ reinvest in itself?

- We must define our goals for investment; Enriching the communities, not just investors There’s disagreement about how to scale investment in communities

Creative Social Justice Fundraising

QUESTIONS How do we as advocates drive funders, strategies and collaborations? How do we develop partnerships with donors and not become subordinate? How do we invest in development? How do we balance being “forward looking” and doing what we need? What are affordable resources and tools?

AHAS - We have the potential! - Make the space to think calmly - Ask for what you need, then pause - Can charge for services

All of Us or None of Us

QUESTIONS How do we branch out to ally with other affected communities?

AHAS - Not dividing immigrant communities → bad vs. good immigrants

- Violent vs. nonviolent offenders - Shift to a Human Rights framework - All of us or none of us!

Communication Strategies: Racism & Sexism

QUESTIONS How do we/ when do we talk about racism & sexism in light of audience and short/ long term goals? Who spearheads movement and how do we support all voices and stories?

AHAS - Bitesize approaches to engaging community leaders

- Trust/ relationship building is core to storytelling

- We all need to exercise humility - Intentionally create space for women of color

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- Be willing to step back

Intersections of Indigenous and Resource Rights, and Gender & Climate Justice

QUESTIONS

Life is intersectional, we’re trained to be disciplined. How do we get from here to there? How do we make sure Gender issues don’t get left behind? How do we ensure those most impacted by inequality aren’t left behind? How do we incorporate folks who are alienated around our issues and make them part of the solution?

AHAS - We are the answer! - We can connect the dots! - If you want to be a bridge you will be stepped on

Reimagining our Future (Human Rights, Just Transition, Climate & Environmental Justice)

QUESTIONS

What is a just transition?

AHAS - Just transition is a path AND process AND destination

- Keys: 1) Organize! 2) Rule of fundamental law 3) Convince owners of capital that giving it up is the only way to win 4) Start by building visionary and oppositional examples knit together -- we don’t need all of it, just enough to build our freedom

Creative Human Rights Approaches

QUESTIONS Are traditional mechanisms working? How are we building towards Human Rights victories? Does Human Rights have its own constituencies? (or are we in silos?)

AHAS - Traditional mechanisms are working, but very differently internationally vs. U.S. and we need to think more expansively (Laws)

Movement Building & Collaborative Solidarity

QUESTIONS How can we strengthen collaborative & movement building efforts? How can we balance advocacy & organizing? How can we remain agile, eg. rapid response capacity while sustaining long term base building? What tensions do we face? What is hard?

AHAS - Large scale mobilization provides hope, frames issue

- Having the most impacted at front lines

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- Creating echo chambers → Ex: Standing Rock

- Must leverage media (social media) - By not using a Human Rights framework, are we making silos worse?

- Are we failing to educate on the language of Human Rights effectively?

creates power & creative energy - Movement Building can feel overwhelming at the start, but don’t be afraid to take the first step

- Victories are often incremental. Learn from them. There can be tension, especially around legislative wins

- When working in coalition, make sure to clarify goals, what is not acceptable to partners, each other’s roles

Strategies for Co-Creation with Historically Marginalized Communities

QUESTIONS

What does meaningful, authentic, impactful, inclusive collaboration look like? How do we measure success? How do we redefine success for those without power? What do we need to change to make this happen?

AHAS - Create time and space to collaborate and to be thoughtful in enacting those principles even at a cost

- Standing beside, rather than speaking for others

- Redistribution of resources & funding to impacted communities

Intersections of Criminal Justice & Immigration Policy & Gender

QUESTIONS

Why are we using punishment as a model? How do we message in ways that support each other and center the most marginalized communities? What role does gender play? What common ground can we all agree on?

AHAS - Drug policy impacts gender, immigration, mass incarceration (use communication tools to demonstrate intersection)

- Detention/Prison: Organizing w/ private, LGBT, detention, prison abolition

- Coalition with unlikely allies - Pool of experts - Use data and stories to undermine dominant narratives around criminalization and immigrants

State Violence Against Black People

QUESTIONS How do we change the narrative? How do we link common interests to work together for change? How do we get those in power to understand needs and develop & implement

Measuring Advocacy (Collaborations/ Networks)

QUESTIONS How do you measure impact for your org. when your work revolves around capacity building of others? How can we measure our impact when progress is always a result of community

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holistic policies to address issues?

AHAS - Need to shift thinking around us vs. them

- Current drug policies are not productive

- Provide mental health support without judgement for Police

- Need more media watchdogs to counter/challenge narratives

efforts? How to measure the efficacy of advocacy networks?

AHAS - Qualitative and quantitative important to collect

- Stories good for illustration - Agree on a plan

US Elections

QUESTIONS How can we take the Human Rights framework farther and link it to a power-building framework? Is it the best framework for what we need collectively right now? How will we mobilize more power to hold the next president accountable? How can we organize the white working class more to the left?

AHAS - Need participatory democracy beyond voting

- Need a power building framework - National orgs should include organizing white working class in their work

- We can organize within 501(c)3 → Inform analysis of folks on way to ballot box and share tools with other orgs

- Lead with solutions more than problems

Strengths and Challenges of an Intersectional Approach

Challenges

Takes longer and there is unconcious prioritization, compromise for efficiency Grant Writing requires sectionality Hard to get digestible sound bites with intersectional work

AHAS - Create pilots that demonstrate effective intersectional work

- Instead of one movement rising and others falling, collectively amplify movements

- We need effective communication of intersectionality

- It helps when philanthropy can see us as partners and see intersectionality

- Leverage moments in communication when there is a shift (ex: Flint)

- Focus on power building instead of single issue

Transforming & Reclaiming Finance for Social Change

Intersections of Criminalized Communities; Anti-black Police Brutality, Deportation of Immigrants, Islamophobia

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QUESTIONS Reclaiming Capital: How do we supplement philanthropy with earned revenue activities? How do we engage the market as a tool of social change? How do we hold investors accountable to the communities in which they invest? Understanding and adopting transformative finance principles: How do we incorporate communities in the design, governance and ownership of projects?

AHAS - Must build community wealth by organizing and working together as grassroots partners

- Advocate for change in public sector (ie. no private prisons)

- Educate ourselves → Should we invest in Flint MI or Newport Beach?

QUESTIONS

What are the various faces of profiling - Race, Nationality, Religious, and can we work together to fight all forms? Should we bring law enforcement into the conversation? What about criminalization of people with mental illness/ disabilities? What role does Gender play? Do we have a common objective?

AHAS - Drug policy impacts gender, immigration and mass incarceration. We need to demonstrate the intersection

- Use data and evidence-based arguments to persuade different audiences

- We should train leaders to stop using divisive phrases. ie. “We are not criminals”, “Citizen = Person”

FOUND INTERSECTIONS & CONNECTIONS - - - - X The multitude of intersections in our work became readily apparent throughout the course of the Convening. Here are just a few examples from the sessions and world cafe posters:

- The call for justice for Berta Cáceres across multiple movements is about human rights, global economic justice, the environment and politics.

- Global economic justice and international human rights are connected through issues such as violence against women, drug policy, and human rights abuses.

- Lawyers and organizers can develop powerful partnerships and “bake in” a role for community into court-ordered reforms; using litigation as storytelling of frontline communities to shift dominant narratives.

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- Drug Policy Reform and Reproductive Rights; policing of pregnant,

criminalized women. - Drug Policy Reform and Immigration; Immigrants are being left out

of positive reforms happening in criminal justice. Post-plea vs. pre-plea diversion makes a difference for whether someone faces deportation.

- Climate Justice/ Women’s Rights/ Gender Inclusion: Safe motherhood - Clean water and environmental justice issues interconnected. Challenge and opportunity of bringing women’s leadership and experience to bear.

Many meaningful connections were made, both within and between different sectors.

“I will be reaching out to representatives from immigrants rights groups to explore ways to collaborate on criminal justice reform.”

“I made some connections with others working in criminal justice sector. Mostly had a chance to see and hear about the amazing work that others are doing around the country and globe around criminal justice and sentencing reform.”

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“Through the world cafe and the more social events, I met people working in the Americas, which organizations I partner with can address through our work within the OAS. There were groups working locally where we have partnerships, and I will be making some connections there. It was also great to see longstanding partners and develop next steps for collaboration.”

“Within my sector I connected with quite a few grantees who can not only use our services, but actually work together on common issues. Although race is not a direct mission for us, we may be able to partner at an intersection.”

“I loved getting to know more about criminal justice organizing in the US. Criminal Justice is not my sector, and some of the people who I met were quite inspiring.”

We connected at the Convening not only as professionals and colleagues, but as people. Between the late night dancing, amazing food trucks,

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facilitated games and deep conversations, we came together and developed some beautiful relationships.

Several ideas were shared with us in person and through the survey on how The Libra Foundation can continue to foster these connections:

- Create a listserv - Encourage everyone to use the resource and calendar page that The

Foundation has already shared - Host sector specific and regional convenings

RECOMMENDATIONS & DREAMS - - - - X Here are just a few ideas that were generated on what we can, and should, do - to support and amplify each other's work. A strong desire was articulated to lift up excluded voices, develop specific communication and campaign strategies, and create networks to inform how we organize going forward. Lift up and amplify voices:

- Work to elevate the voice and leadership of frontline- especially Indigenous, communities in the work of transitioning toward renewable energy, international negotiations and litigation.

- Intentionally lift up women’s voices and acknowledge their experiences.

- Lift up organizations who build spaces for intergenerational communication.

Communication and campaign strategies: - Support, collect, and amplify human rights mechanisms successes. - Work to shift the dominant refugee narratives away from a

“temporary humanitarian crisis” towards a human rights framework based on the idea that migration is the norm, and part of what makes us strong.

- Challenge the U.S. government and media to stop supporting the coup in Brazil.

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- Identify political strategies to achieve drug decriminalization beyond marijuana.

Develop networks and organize: - Create contextual spaces for intergenerational interaction (i.e.

intergenerational boards). - Develop network for state policy and law groups to coordinate

national strategies (eg. SCOTUS strategies for welfare policy). - White people step up to organize white people for racial justice.

RESOURCES - - - - X In response to a number of requests, we created the convening resource spreadsheet. Please continue to update it. If you haven’t yet checked it out, please do and add your resources and events.

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Many of the communities suffering from high water prices they can ill afford have also been victims of deindustrialization, white flight and jobs moving with it– and when cities lose their populations due to all these factors because the same infrastructure must be maintained with fewer people prices go up—all of this contributes to clear racial inequities in access, with women headed households often being the hardest hit. But even in cities like Boston, not just Detroit and Baltimore – you see that the color of water or the color of who has access to water is far from random.

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And this happens for reasons of power, who has it and who doesn’t – because if communities in poverty had real power over their local resources, over their collective infrastructure, they would use it to the best of their abilities to avoid these atrocities. Instead most water utilities are run in ways that aren’t even transparent, corporate bidders for contracts have more power than communities, and communities don’t know where the money is going, how it's being used, and how problems are being solved or not solved. And it doesn’t take much to guess who often has to pay for the clean up by corporate polluters ….

Water is a particularly shocking example – but these three reasons – the failure to provide public goods, structural racism, sexism and other exclusions, and a failure to distribute power democratically - are often the triple threats to economic justice that produce the poverty and marginalization that has come to define and mar our record of human rights in our country today. These reasons also enable the rampaging criminalization targeting Black and Brown communities – the attacks on women both political and physical, and the crass disregard for a sustainable future.

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- Cathy Albisa

Untitled by Isabella Borgeson

Youth Speaks Tanauan mud is black with baby's limbs drowned dogs chained to the toilet bowl climb the bent back of coconut trees laid to the ground in prayer to the wind to lola, begging no more typhoons

mama scolds me to stop swimming in the ocean bastos naman

how American, iday

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to play in the mouth of your family's grave in the ghost of crumpled sea walls

forget that concrete has never stopped an ocean's teeth from biting through the highway plucking babies from tatay's arms as tita desperately climbs the coconut tree before the next storm surge wave swallows her night gown

there is a mass grave crawling out my tongue each time I ask my mama to speak in English

mama say I just want someone to water my orchids when I'm gone. but I leave & forget

how debris bruises the floating corpse forget the copper taste of canned food relief goods

forget to call mama next typhoon open the bathroom door my uncle is weeping into the toilet bowl as he recounts the family that died when Haiyan blew his firewall on top of them

blue passport child of American tongue,

leave your homeland & forget your mama

the helicopters arrive with more cameras than relief goods mama say how dare you take a picture of all these bodies

iday, how can you leave when we still got all these bodies

only call now when you need someone to fix the Waray in your poems

my mother is an Ocean away no one has ever looked at me & thought of water

preparing for the next typhoon gathering buckets before they turn off the electricity laying sandbags in front of our gate to stop the waters from rising

forget mama can't swim in our empty house of ghosts when the cameras turn off

we forget that the typhoons have never stopped the American volunteer tells my younger cousins global warming is cuz you don't recycle your plastic cuz your family burns the dry leaves with your basura like your brown skin is the carbon pollution

there is no translation for global warming in my mother tongue

but I know, we can't talk about the typhoon

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without talking about the poverty the racism, the stolen lands

resistance is our refusal to forget from the sacred burial grounds in North Dakota

to the mass graves in Barangay Calogcog from the pipelines and oil depots

to the rising Ocean our ancestors rise with us

we people who share the last bag of wet rice before relief goods, who stand in front of bulldozers and hungry dogs to stop the oil to stop the drilling we who can never stop fighting I have always worried I will not have the words to return to my mother

remember, iday the holy of her hands

washing red ants from my feet bringing life back to the guava &

green papaya trees in lola's garden a promise to my mama

that I refuse to forget that I will always

come back home.

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“My experience at the Libra Foundation convening was both inspirational and cathartic. Looking back upon my traumatic childhood I appreciated the company of people who cared about a variety of human rights and social justice issues; people who fought to improve everything, from the air we breathe to the quality of the books our children read. For the first time in a long time, I was able to see — through their eyes — how beautiful our world could be if we continued to love one another and fight for what is right.”

- Xavier McElrath-Bey

IN CLOSING - FROM THE TEAM - - - - X

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With the election finally over, Standing Rock entering winter, Black Lives Matter steadily beating on, the outcome from this historic time is a mystery. The potential now exists for a full assault on everything we are fighting for: racial justice, LGBTQ rights, reproductive and gender rights, climate justice, a just transition, drug policy reform, criminal justice, ending Islamophobia, Indigenous rights, disability rights, immigrant and refugee rights, and social justice. Our intersectionality will be essential as we hold our ground and grow our movements together to protect the health, dignity, civil rights, and

human rights of all of us.

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We were so honored and grateful to be able to facilitate and support you all in building a more equitable world. Levana Saxon and Joshua Bloom

P A R T N E R S F O R C O L L A B O R A T I V E

C H A N G E www.collabchange.org

The Convening was an extraordinary demonstration of our partnership toward greater justice and equality. Thank you! The Libra Foundation Board and Staff