Don't miss the 2025 We the Future Social Justice Conference
Friday, April 18th!
Conference Agenda 2025
8:30am – 9:15am: Registration and morning snacks
9:30am – 11am: Welcome and Keynote
11:05am – 11:20am: Head to workshops
11:20am – 12:10pm: Session 1 Workshops
12:10pm – 12:25pm: Head to workshops
12:25pm – 1:15pm: Session 2 Workshops
1:15pm – 2:30pm: Free food, music, activities, and resource fair!
Session 1 Workshops (11:20am – 12:10pm)
Everything You Need to Know About the Rapid Response Network (Spanish Translation available)
Presenters: Izaac Russo & Vicki Smith | North Bay Organizing Project/North Bay Rapid Response Network
Location: Call Building Room 641
This session will offer a detailed discussion of the workings of the North Bay Rapid Response Network, and offer a wide variety of ways to volunteer and become involved. The workshop will begin with interactive discussion of Know Your Rights Trainings for immigrants and Legal Observer Trainings for allies, and emphasize the urgent need for bilingual dispatchers to answer Hotline calls for legal observers and legal aid. We'll move on to discuss accompaniment teams for both straight and queer asylum seekers; these folks help immigrants get settled in the county, especially with respect to food needs, housing, and legal aid. Finally, we'll provide contact information for learning more about the volunteer roles offered, as well as how to sign up for trainings.
Solidarity is A Weapon
Presenter: Xavier Maatra | North Bay Organizing Project
Location: Call Building Room 644
Coalition building and solidarity have always been essential to fighting fascism and building sustainable movements for social justice. Can we develop a shared definition of solidarity to meet the needs of Neo Fascism and various issues impacting our lives? This interactive session will use media, group activities, and real life examples to explore solidarity as a weapon in activism. Participants will: Develop working definitions of ally and solidarity | Explore intersectionality and contemporary examples of solidarity in activism | Gain tools for applying anti oppression frameworks
Re-Imagine A World With Liberation (and Step In to Reclaim Action)
Presenters: Elizabeth Cruz Reyes & Cecilia Sofranko | Sonoma County Commission on Human Rights
Location: Call Building Room 657
Join Liz & Cecilia as they introduce you to the work of the Sonoma County Youth Commission on Human Rights, and offer tangible steps to prepare yourself and your community for the near future! We will go over the Youth Commission’s projects and goals, including supporting the unhoused community, food security, fentanyl overdose awareness, language justice, the genocide in Gaza, immigration, education equity, LGBTQ+ rights, environmental justice, and so much more. Learn crucial actions you can take as we discuss our insights on government volunteerism, mutual aid, personal responsibility & accountability, disaster/collapse prep, and nourishing the human spirit — key aspects of the work ahead.
Future in Focus-From Post-Apocalyptic Media to Liberatory Art
Presenter: Sebastian Bustamante Ceja | CHISMES
Location: Call Building Room 693
This workshop will examine the current state of Western media through the lenses of cultural identity, representation, and resistance. Participants will employ media literacy tools to critically analyze how underrepresented communities-particularly Black, Indigenous, and Latinx groups-are depicted in contemporary art, film and media, and popular culture. We will explore how media often perpetuates harmful narratives through appropriation, fetishization, whitewashing, and erasure. Together, we will address questions such as: Whose stories are considered worthy of being told, and who has the power to tell them? What does it mean to be represented, and is representation alone sufficient?||In contrast to these limiting frameworks, the second half of the workshop will introduce futurism-specifically Afrofuturism and Latinxfuturism-as practices of cultural reclamation and speculative possibility. These movements envision futures that center the voices, histories, and dreams of communities traditionally excluded from dominant cultural narratives. Drawing from ancestral knowledge, community care, and radical creativity, futurist art reclaims space and offers alternative visions of liberation and belonging. Participants will leave the workshop with a deeper understanding of how media not only reflects but also shapes culture. They will learn how to use critical analysis and storytelling as tools to challenge oppressive systems, reclaim their narratives, and reimagine futures rooted in solidarity, dignity, and collective transformation.
Environmental Justice & Climate Resistance
Presenters: Laura Diaz, Marcela Burgess, Zoel Quiñónez, Daniel Soto | Partners for Equity and Research
Location: Student Engagement & Success Center
The World Health Organization says that Environmental Justice guarantees that all people have equal access to a healthy, safe, and sustainable environment, as well as equal protection from environmental harm. However, in California, we continue to see that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to pollution. In this workshop, we will describe the environmental justice landscape in California. We will unpack the exposure and health burdens facing our communities. We will then spend time exploring community empowerment programs that have led to improved health and local environmental justice wins. We will also describe the work we support for the Latinx Youth Environmental Justice Council in partnership with the North Bay Organizing Project and their Latinx Student Congress. Our community-academic team at Sonoma State University, Partners 4 Equity and Research, is a research hub where community and academic researchers can collaborate in ways that elevate and center the community’s needs, as well as innovate and explore solutions to address disproportionate pollution burdens and empower youth to advocate for a more just environment.
Session 2 Workshops (12:25pm – 1:15pm)
Know Your Rights with ICE & Advocacy
Presenter: Rafael Vazquez Guzman | Lideres del Futuro
Location: Call Building Room 639
In this session we will educate participants on their rights with immigration and how we all can become allies that will support students, families, and other community members during these challenging times. By the end of the workshop, individuals will know what to do when/if stopped by immigration and will learn of ways to support those who feel oppressed and without a voice.
Reclaiming Your Courage: Embodying Resistance and Liberation Through Self-Defense (Spanish translation available)
Presenter: Leslie Lew | Reclaiming Your Courage
Location: Call Building Room 641
In a world where systems of oppression attempt to silence, isolate, and disempower us, reclaiming our bodies, voices, and boundaries is an act of radical resistance. This interactive workshop challenges traditional notions of self-defense and explores how physical, verbal, and energetic protection can be tools for both personal and collective liberation. Through storytelling, movement-based exercises, and dialogue, participants will learn how to: Recognize the ways oppression shows up in our bodies and daily interactions. | Develop practical self-defense strategies that center courage, consent, and community care. | Reclaim personal narratives and set boundaries that honor self-worth and dignity. | Reimagine safety not as an individual burden but as a collective responsibility. | This session is for anyone-activists, educators, students, and community members-who wants to embody resistance through self-protection, stand firm in their power, and cultivate spaces of solidarity where all voices are valued.
Reversing Trauma through Co-Regulation Techniques
Presenter: Nick Lawrence, MA | Tools for Life, Inc.
Location: Call Building Room 644
This session is highly interactive. Participants will receive the following: a brief introduction to trauma and generational trauma; education on how their nervous system is interpreting low levels of danger and how that shows up in everyday life; opportunities for self-reflection and self-care of the highest degree; All of which can create a new layering of excitement and potential for the human being to think creatively and imagine new outcomes for their lives. Frequent low-level danger signs that touch subconscious trauma, block ones ability to fulfill dreams. Making new paradigms requires awareness and consciousness internally first before it can take permanent shape externally.
Housing is a Human Right!
Presenter: Karym Sanchez | Sonoma County Tenants Union
Location: Call Building Room 657
The rents are too high and the wages are too low! This session will explore the current housing crisis and the work that Sonoma County Tenant Union is doing to stand up and fight back. Participants will examine a framework of community organizing and movement building that is addressing the local housing crisis and will be presented with opportunities to get involved.
The Park of Our Dreams: Radical Imagination in Placemaking as an Abolitionist Strategy for Collective Liberation
Presenter: Pam Rivas | Petaluma River Park Foundation
Location: Call Building 693
Participants will learn about the magic behind Petaluma's latest redevelopment project, Petaluma River Park. The future, 35-acre public park has a unique approach: using community-led design in conjunction with public and private partnerships to co-create a culturally rich, climate-resilient, and accessible greenspace in the heart of our city. This presentation will dive deeper into the community engagement process to offer insight into placemaking as a method of radical imagination, a foundational element for abolitionist theory and collective liberation. All presentation materials will be offered in English and Spanish.
Art & Activism
Presenters: Isabel Lopez, Edilia Mendez, Nicolas Valdez | Raizes Collective
Location: Student Engagement & Success Center
This workshop will lead you through a fun, interactive workshop where you’ll learn about artistic activism, work with other artists and activists to develop campaigns in support of your fellow Sonoma County residents, and leave with creative and strategic ways to help your community.