Summit for Civil Rights Rights
Summit for Civil Rights Rights
July 30, 2020
10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
The Journal of Law & Inequality (JLI) will co-host the virtual 2020 Summit for Civil Rights with the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity and Georgetown Law's Workers' Rights Institute on July 30 and 31, 2020. The prominent list of speakers include Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, University of Minnesota Law School’s Professor Myron Orfield, Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, Professors Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Sheryll Cashin, Theodore M. Shaw, john a. powell, John C. Brittain, and Eric Foner, Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, Author Richard Rothstein, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, leaders at NAACP, AFL-CIO, Rockefeller Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Century Foundation and Ford Foundation, numerous other elected officials, union leaders, activists and community organizers. We have witnessed an extraordinary outpouring of anger, outrage and solidarity across the nation in these past months, sparked by the killing of Mr. George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020. This movement for change is coming at a time of a global health crisis, political turmoil, and a massive economic catastrophe deepening existing inequalities while accelerating economic trends already devastating workers and communities. JLI is proud to have co-hosted the first Summit for Civil Rights back in 2017 and is excited to revisit and explore issues affecting Black Americans and other minority groups during this crucial time for the country. For the past three years, the Summit for Civil Rights has convened multi-racial and intergenerational gatherings of some of the nation’s top civil rights leaders in the field of organizing, labor, faith, academia, law and government to respond to the powerful and dangerous intersection of enduring racial disparities, widening economic inequality, and rising political polarization throughout our society. The third Summit will not veer from these timely topics that have only intensified with the pandemic and been courageously amplified by the protesters. 2 The Summit will start at 1:00 PM on Thursday, July 30 and end at 4:00 PM, Friday, July 31. It will be broken down into four distinct but interrelated discussions over the course of the two days (see topics below). While much attention is rightly directed to immediate demands for sweeping police reform and abolition, the Summit will attempt to examine some of the deeper, historical structures of racial apartheid in American’s institutions and their meaning, especially at this juncture, for working people of all backgrounds and the implications for political action, multi-racial power, and a meaningful and transformative policy agenda. JLI will publish papers from the Summit as part of Volume 39’s Issue 1. While the Summit will be an interactive video conference this year, it will have limited capacity, so please register today.