Welcome to Netroots Nation 2016! Each year, nearly 3,000 activists and organizers from around the country (and beyond) come together for a few sleep-deprived, action-packed days.
If this is your first Netroots Nation, we want you to know that this is a place for sharing ideas and connecting. It’s a place to learn from each other and to uplift and affirm one another.
It’s also a place to be challenged.
The direct action that took place at last year’s Netroots Nation challenged many of us—including the presidential candidates who were on stage—to listen and speak up about the systemic racism and oppression experienced by far too many Black men, women and children today.
Listening and speaking up is important, but it’s not enough. As progressives, we should be digging deeper and asking ourselves some tough questions, too. Questions like: “How can I support those who are fighting for liberation?” and “What can I do to help shatter systems of oppression?”
For those of you on the front lines of this fight, we see you and we stand with you. And to our LGBTQ brothers and sisters: Just weeks after the horrifying attack on the LGBT community in Orlando—on Latinx night—we want you to know that we mourn with you. And we as a community will fight with you.
Liberation for one must be liberation for all. That’s why racial justice is front and center in our agenda this year. You’ll find sessions calling out the policies that cemented the racism that’s still prevalent today, as well as panels that highlight the powerful organizing being done around the country in the Movement for Black Lives.
You’ll also find lots of content that challenges us to reject the status quo and build a better movement—one that’s free of patriarchy, racism and sexism and centered around the lives and experiences of the most marginalized.
You’ll find panels that cover the usual breadth of progressive issues and hands-on trainings—more than 40 of them—that provide concrete skills you can take back home and apply to your work. You’ll have an opportunity to step up and organize a caucus or discussion around whatever issue moves you. And you’ll have a chance to learn about and support the work of local organizers on issues like racial justice and voting rights.
We feel it’s just as important to consider which voices are elevated as what’s being said. That’s why the speakers you’ll hear from this weekend make up our most diverse group ever: 65 percent are people of color and 65 percent are women. Thirty-five percent of our panelists are Black, a 17 percent increase over last year.
You may notice some other changes, too. Instead of pre-scheduling caucuses, we’ve decided to open up a number of rooms and time slots to you—the community—to organize as you wish. And on the keynote stage, you’ll have a chance to dig deep into environmental justice, reproductive justice and racial justice with sessions organized not by us as staff, but by those doing the work.
Whether this is your first Netroots Nation or you’ve been to every single one, we hope you experience things this weekend that both challenge you and inspire you to fight a little harder.
—The NN staff