Speaking on the theme “Turning Towards Each Other, Not Against Each Other: Bridging in Times of Crisis” the panelists address what it means to build towards co-liberation in difficult times – especially in the context of the war on Gaza.

Tyson contemplates how we may open ourselves up to being beckoned outside of the ego, and how we may resist the individualizing neoliberal urge—decolonization is not just about poetry, or word, or aesthetics, and how we must be materially and fiscally decolonial for the real work to be done.

Layla shares the power and perseverance of homeland, even in the face of colonial violence. As the genocide in Palestine continues and worsens, Layla offers a powerful call to listen to our rage and take real action against empire.

Bayo, Cecile, and Sa’ed explore how honoring each other’s grief may allow us to reclaim each other’s humanity and perhaps shed light on a path forward to belonging in Israel-Palestine, for Muslims, Jews, and Christians, and for all people around the world.

Envisioning other ways of creating democracy,  Báyò, Madhulika, and Minna describe festival democracy, democracies of contestations and dancing, and democracies of the more-than-human.

Ayana and AbdouMaliq meditate on how the design of our environments shapes us. Considering how to make marginalized places and groups more visible but not more vulnerable, AbdouMaliq offers a nuanced perspective of the “global majority.”

Speaking about climate grief and hope, Báyò, Naomi, and Yuria build together to consider the value in tapping into the depth of emotion as we feel it, not as we are told we should feel it.

Collins dives deeply into the world of wealth hoarding and staggering inequality. Recognizing the complexity of these issues, Ayana and Chuck engage deeply with questions of philanthrocapitalism, tax spending, the wealth defense industry, and power inequities across society.

Ayana and Báyò dance together through questions of crisis, identity, and rupture. As we attempt to break from the monoculture that cements us as citizen subjects of empire, Báyò suggests that we need an ontological mutiny. 

What if justice gets in the way? Báyò and Keeanga consider how our quest for justice shapes us and is simultaneously shaped by systems of power and control. They ask: how can we move justice out of the existing political paradigm and move beyond a normative sense of justice and reform? 

Ismail’s approach to drug policy centers around finding spaciousness as an advocate, and making room for the growing body of knowledge around the uses, harms, and benefits of drugs. He invites listeners to dream of a conscious, compassionate, and safe world.

Indy and Báyò consider our modern crisis as one of the self – a particular version of the objective and singular self that creates space for violence and waste. If we perceive the world through dead and objective things, as Indy supposes, then that is what we become.

Báyò and V dance and reveal portals of possibility that edge us towards deep change. Discussing the Congo as both place and portal, Báyò and V focus on V’s work with City of Joy, a transformational leadership community for women survivors of violence.

john a. powell explores the frameworks of “othering and belonging” and "targeted universalism," as well as ideologies of supremacy, global dislocation, rethinking citizenship, and lastly, how we can co-create shared visions and practices of humanity that bring us back into belonging.

Articulating both the harsh realities of modern day division and the simultaneous reality of our connection to each other and to the earth, Báyò and john examine what it means to be “other” and to invite in the “monstrous” and the “strange.”

Ayana and Morgan dive into the need for repair, healing, and acknowledgement as we face the historical roots of modern inequity. This heartfelt and expansive conversation calls for us to unlearn the ways racial capitalism has taught us wealth should be passed down.

Speaking to the ways that carrying the trauma of caste manifests within the body, Thenmozhi emphasizes the importance of slowing down to process the grief and pain caused by mindless oppression. She offers important context to the conversation about caste, emphasizing the ways caste discrimination manifests within global schemes of technology and power distribution.

Ismail guides listeners through an overview of where we are in our relationship with drugs in the American context, and how this relationship is indicative of our relationship with the Earth and with humanity broadly encouraging us to move beyond the black and white view that some drugs are medicine while others are criminal.

Brett shares how mass-incarceration and climate change are not crises of the individual, but of our culture. The abolitionist imagination may be the key to a collective future– as Brett reminds listeners that one can be both practical and utopian.

Bayo Akomolafe guides listeners on a journey to lose oneself and leave behind the ties that bind us to world views that do not serve humanity’s wholeness. Bayo challenges us to lean into the “political un-project” that is fugitivity, blurring societally-imposed binaries, in order to better understand the human territory and to make more-than-human sanctuary through post activism.