WDN Connect 2024 Recap
We spent three transformative days together and reflected on the current political landscape, celebrated progress through grantee partners and WDN members, shared the journey towards our collective North Star, and how we’re mobilizing for the communities we care about. We invite you to share your highlights, thoughts, and lessons learned.
To set the mood, pop on our WDN Connect 2024 playlist while you browse photos and key highlights.
NOTE: Session recordings, photos, and other conference resources are for WDN community only. If you’re part of our WDN community, reach out to the Community & Development team at [email protected] for access instructions.
Engagement boards with inspiring intentions and love notes. Sharing stories and reflections with table mates. Somatic healing through a wholesome sound bath. Letting loose at open mic. These were just some of the ways members immersed themselves in cultivating an engaging multigenerational, multiracial WDN community. Below are some snippets.
Catch full session recordings of everything on the main stage such as Q&A with Amy Goodman, keynote speech by Noura Erakat on Vimeo. Check the latest conference email or contact [email protected] for support.
Day One was rooted in welcoming ourselves into deep grounding. We kicked off the afternoon with a special pre-con experience of live storytelling by Motus Theater. By evening, the board and staff welcomed members to sunny Denver with a wholesome happy hour before convening for a lively Q&A with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! who amplified the critical role independent journalism plays to safeguard democracy.
Arriving in Our Revenge Era Ready for the Next Revolution
This year has been really devastating and many of us have been in a prolonged state of crisis for a while, where the threat to our lives is more than just existential. That’s why we’re here and that’s what really matters most. To feel less alone in this work and to forge ahead together. We know that where there is progress, there is backlash. And when there’s a setback, we’re ready for a comeback.
– Leena Barakat, WDN and WDN Action President & CEO
Staying Hopeful through the Power of Stories
Because of the incredible determination of people to survive… to create and live in community, I think that is our great challenge today. That community knows no borders. When someone is suffering, we all suffer. I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day. War and peace, life and death. And anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society. It’s hearing people tell their own stories, but sometimes they can’t. That’s the role of an honest, authentic media.
– Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Day Two was focused and ready on leaning into our collective impact in feminist movements and navigating the emerging political landscape. We opened with powerful words by Colorado Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, on staying the course, did sense-making from an election reflections panel with partners of WDN Action while welcoming Hillary Holley, our incoming Managing Director of Politics & Advocacy. In visioning for the future, movement partners from Rising Majority, Maria Fund, and COLOR discussed challenges and preparations for what’s ahead in coalition building in their communities. Bringing the day together, keynote speaker Noura Erakat made connections between colonial powers and the case of Palestine. We took an evening stroll to a cultural reception at History Colorado and capped the night right with our inaugural (audience favorite) Light The Mic: Open Mic.
Palestine as the Canary in the Coal Mine
I want to emphasize that what this national conversation has done unfortunately has been to frame Palestinians as the lowest hanging fruit that if you sacrifice Palestine, however painful it is, you can advance the rest of your agenda. And yet what I want to emphasize is that we are not the lowest hanging fruit. We are and have been the canaries in the coal mine to warn you of danger. And sacrificing us doesn’t make you safer. It actually makes us more vulnerable.
– Noura Erakat, WDN Connect 2024 Keynote Speaker
Invest in Working Class Women
We are going to have to really fight to invest in working class women. Then we’re going to have to triple down in and quadruple our investments in our states and in the areas where we know the most harm is about to happen. We have to. And philanthropy, WDN Action is the model that we need everyone to adopt in their philanthropic strategies.
– Hillary Holley, Care in Action and WDN Action
Make This World Worthy of Our Young People
In this moment, I’m very resolute. I woke up the day after and I had even more clarity of purpose. Part of my purpose is to build a world worthy of my daughter, Olivia, the most brilliant black girl, unapologetically queer girl in this world who’s a beautiful dancer and is so confident. I have so much clarity that that is my purpose and all of our purpose, to make this world worthy of our young people. And the clarity of purpose to protect the people that I love.
– Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center
Reclaim Resources for Communities
Other coalitions and alliances who recognize that their specific sectoral approach, whether it be around housing justice, climate, gender justice, anti-war also has to be connected to other sectors of movement. What it reveals is that the heart of our strategy is: what does it mean to have democratic governance over our own lives, our own communities, our resources? How do we reclaim those resources? Articulating that vision on its own is not enough. We actually have to have a strategy which is, here’s our theory about what it will take to build power to make that vision real. One of the tricky things about strategy is that, it’s less about the answers that it gives us, and more about how do we actually get prepared for opportunities that emerge, where the pendulum may actually swing very far and in our direction.
– Loan Tran, Rising Majority
Day Three was a deep dive in sharing where we’re at on year one of the strategic plan through State of the Network. We heard from abortion grantee partners moderated by Amanda Beatriz Williams of ABC Fund on a more accessible future. Sloan Leo Cowen of Flox Studio walked members through a mindmapping exercise of community design. By evening, we celebrated 10 years of Reflective Democracy Campaign’s groundbreaking research on political power, and Colorado host committee members made a toast towards a just future by dancing the night away with an intimate performance by Cleo Parker Dance troupe.
Navigating the Abortion Landscape
We recently dispersed a first ever round of renewal grants to sustain the critical work of our grantees. And we’re just getting started. As alicia sanchez gill reflected, it’s pouring y’all and in the abortion access movement, especially in the south, like in my home state of Texas and across the Midwest, it’s been pouring for a long time. While it’s so important that we celebrate our hard fought victories on the ballot, we must continue to stay the course and ever so focused on our mission to invest in mending and strengthening a deeply fractured infrastructure, and ensuring frontline organizations have the capacity and spaciousness that they need to imagine, to dream, to organize, and to create a different future for our communities, one that we all deserve.
– Amanda Beatriz Williams,
Director of Abortion Bridge Collaborative (ABC) Fund
Defining Community in Action
I’m a bit obsessed with this question of what is community? Community is about gathering, coming together for an annual conference. This right here right now is community. Your regional gatherings are community. The bat mitzvah you’re going to next month is community. The gathering, the getting together. Because when you’re there, you’re sharing stories, building memories, sharing pain, hope, ambitions, dreams, all of the above. You’re enacting care. When I came to this conference, the first thing someone said was, did you get any sleep last night? Did you get a chance to have some breakfast? Do you need anything? That’s community in action.
– Sloan Leo Cowen, FLOX Studio
Here’s a sneak peek gallery of WDN Connect 2024 highlights. Photography credits to Jas K Productions.
