Choose your Class
Discounted pricing is available at checkout.
- Use discount code PPGPARTNER and pay $200 if you are a current partner in the Partnership for the Public Good
- Use discount code HIGHROADALUMNI and pay $150 if you are a High Road Alumni.
- If you have a question about payment or need financial aid, please reach out to event organizers, (ks844@cornell.edu).
Program Description
In cities across the United States, everyday people are working to transform our democracy by strengthening their voices in local government, shaping an economy that works for all, and reimagining public safety and health. They are organizing locally to imagine and build a new future where people have good jobs, affordable housing, climate justice, and a real voice in the decisions that affect our lives.
Join us in Buffalo for Uniting on the High Road, June 20-22, 2024, a conference bringing together leaders, advocates, researchers, and organizers from these broad movements for racial and economic justice and authentic democracy. The conference will include speakers from local and national organizations like PowerSwitch Action, Good Jobs First, ALIGN, Demos, Bargaining for the Common Good, Grassroots Collaborative of Chicago, New Yorkers United for Child Care, Starbucks Workers United, and local unions, universities, and partners in government. Come and take part in interactive workshops, field experiences in Buffalo neighborhoods, art performances, and collective artmaking as we learn from each other and imagine future collaboration within and across cities.
The conference is hosted by Cornell University ILR Buffalo Co-Lab and the Partnership for the Public Good. Since 1946, Cornell ILR’s education programs, action research, and public policy work have advanced the mission of an economy that works for everyone. Partnership for the Public Good, founded in 2007, is a community-based think tank that builds a more just, sustainable and culturally vibrant Buffalo Niagara together with its partner network of more than 360 community groups, nonprofits, and civic organizations. Our collaborative organizations are dedicated to advancing social, racial, and economic progress and the promotion of knowledge for the public good.
Buffalo is home to a vibrant network of organizers, advocates, researchers, artists, and workers who continue a great tradition of activism and organizing in our region. Buffalo was an epicenter for historic social movements including abolition, the Underground Railroad, labor organizing, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and many other forms of grassroots activism. Now, residents and community groups continue to resist injustice and organize for a better future, including organizing the first Starbucks stores in the US and many other emerging unions.
Agenda
THURSDAY, JUNE 20
Transforming our Democracy to Build a People’s Economy
In this collective keynote the voices of local and national leaders will convey their vision for a solidarity economy and the movement building underway to get there. The keynote will share the work and long-term agenda of PowerSwitch Action, a national network of 21 powerful grassroots organizations. As PowerSwitch Action states, “Most of us want pretty similar things: a safe home, meaningful work, a livable planet, and time to enjoy with family and friends.” These are the priorities that our economy and democracy should center, and leaders from PowerSwitch Action’s network and local Buffalo leaders will reflect on how we build the people power and people’s institutions to achieve this vision.
- Lauren Jacobs, Executive Director, PowerSwitch Action, a national network of 21 grassroots organizations building people power in US cities
- Carlos Fernandez, Executive Director, Grassroots Collaborative, a community-labor coalition of ten membership organizations in Chicago and Peoria, Illinois
- Maria Noel Fernandez, Executive Director, Working Partnerships USA, working for a just economy in San Jose and Silicon Valley, California
- Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., Director, Center for Urban Studies, University at Buffalo, School of Architecture and Planning (invited)
FREE FRED BROWN!, Ujima Company, Inc. Theatre
Free Fred Brown! is a devised theatre piece about a young Black man who becomes the reluctant face of a movement while in prison for “theft of services” from the National Gas Company. Fred is from Uptown, a frontline neighborhood at the epicenter of economic, racial, and climate justice, in a rust-belt city that is identical to Buffalo, NY. When a surprise snow storm wreaks havoc on the region, Uptown suffers most and demands explanations: What happened? Who is responsible, and how do we make sure it doesn't happen again? In partnership with a climate justice coalition in Buffalo, this play was created in 2017 by Ujima Company, Inc., founded as a multi-racial and multi-ethnic theatre in 1978.
Reception to follow
FRIDAY, JUNE 21
Breakfast and Opening
PLENARY PANEL
Public Goods for Public Money: Investing in Communities Instead of Corporations
Where should our tax dollars go? For childcare or for corporate welfare? For privatized or public control of public-funded healthcare? At a time when public investments in economic and social programs are being controlled by and for corporate interests, how can citizens counter-act the privatization of taxpayer-funded resources? What policies are being put in place around the country to redirect the use of public resources for the benefit of all, not just the corporate few?
- Greg LeRoy, Executive Director, Good Jobs First
- Rebecca Bailin, Executive Director, New Yorkers United for Child Care
- PowerSwitch Action representative (invited)
- April Baskin, County Legislator (District 2) and Chair of the Erie County Legislature
- Sean Ryan, New York State Senator (61st District)
Moderator: Russell Weaver, Director of Research, Cornell ILR Buffalo Co-Lab
CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS
Labor and Community Together: Fighting for Living Wages, Healthy Communities, and a Livable Planet
A founding ideal of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the United States, is to assemble a broad progressive coalition for social and economic justice, understanding that the struggles of workers are inextricably interwoven with the struggles of communities. In this moment in time, how are labor and community partnerships faring? Why is building enduring labor and community alliances critical in a country facing accelerating deep divides and inequalities? How do we grow our memberships? How do we grow our allies? How do we grow our collective power?
- Bianca Cunningham, Campaigns Director, Bargaining for the Common Good
- Theo Moore, Executive Director, ALIGN
- Grace Bogdanove, Western NY Nursing Home Division Vice President, 1199SEIU, United Healthcare Workers East
- Lara Skinner, Executive Director, ILR Climate Jobs Institute
- Michelle Eisen, Theatre Artist/Stage Manager, and Organizing Member of Starbucks Workers United
Moderator: Cathy Creighton, Director, Cornell University ILR Buffalo Co-Lab and Kathleen Mulligan, Interim Executive Director, Worker Institute, Director of Labor Leadership Programs, and Co-Director of the National Labor Leadership Initiative
A Just Economy is a Democratic Economy: Overcoming Race, Class, and Gender Inequalities
- Tori Kuper, Director of The School of Democratic Management, Democracy at Work Institute
- Kim Smith, Rochester City Council Member (At-Large) and Political Director, VOCAL-US
- Jodi Anderson, Jr., Director of Technological Innovation, ILR Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative
- Erin Hatton, PhD, Professor, UB Department of Sociology
- Rev. George Nicholas, Executive Director, Buffalo Center for Health Equity (invited)
Moderator: Dejia James, Director of Policy Advancement and Media, Partnership for the Public Good
Lunch and Arts Opportunities
PLENARY PANEL
Democracy on the Defense: What’s the Economy Got to Do With It?
In the face of our nation’s existing concentration of wealth and power – a power imbalance initiated by the deregulation of public control over public investment - how can disempowered citizens “un-rig” a rigged economy? What actions are being taken to reconstitute public control of the economy in the 21st century, this time as democratized public control: governance by the people to insure that the economy works for the people?
- Udochi Onwubiko, Director of Economic Justice, Demos
- Phi Nguyen, Director of Democracy, Demos
- Shelley Mayer, New York State Senator
Moderator: Rosemary Batt, Cornell ILR; Center for Economic and Policy Research
Guided Buffalo Field Trips and Dinner
See, first hand, high road policies and practices in action and have a chance to talk to other conference attendees, as well as local workers and activists. Transportation and dinner from a local restaurant will be provided. Space is limited-- first come, first serve!
Options:
- Learn about engaged learning programs that develop genuine partnership between universities and community organizations to allow a unique place to create dialogue, build relationships, and that work in concert to tackle the awesome challenges facing America and the world. Intended to bring together High Road Fellows, alumni and supporters, explore some Buffalo silos and, over dinner, hear what changes fellows and alumni are working toward and how best to prepare young people for a better, more democratic society.
- Connect with the land and get your hands dirty while learning about local, sustainable practices. We will have the opportunity to volunteer for a bit with Massachusetts Avenue Project, an urban farm that offers youth employment and job training, a community kitchen, and a mobile fresh market and tour 5 Loaves Farm. For dinner, we'll get (delicious!) pizza from Extra Extra, Buffalo's worker cooperative restaurant!
- Walking tour of the Broadway-Fillmore area of Buffalo. We will explore "reinvestment," look at upcoming development projects in the area, and afterwards, will have some delicious Indian-Mediterranean food from Alibaba Kebab.
- How do you revitalize an entire neighborhood from the ground up? Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., Professor, Urban and Regional Planning, University at Buffalo will lead a tour of the East Side Neighborhood Demonstration Project Area- part of his "How We Change The Black East Side" initiative. Dinner will be delicious!
SATURDAY, JUNE 22
Breakfast and Slam Poetry Performances
Plenary Gathering
Local Movements for a More Equitable, Sustainable, Democratic Society: Building Democracy from the Ground Up
How are communities mobilizing to move from where they are (on the low road to an inequitable, unsustainable economy) to where they need and want to be (the high road to an equitable, sustainable economy)? How are community and labor organizations collaborating to reframe their strategies for combatting economic injustice? What policies are these collaborations enacting to make local economies more equitable and community-sustaining?
- Phylicia Brown, Executive Director, Black Love Resists in the Rust (invited)
- Grace Karambizi, Executive Director, The Buffalo Immigrant Leadership Team (invited)
Moderator: Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, Partnership for the Public Good
Democracy Sparks
What new (or old) idea will spark a change that will revolutionize how our society operates…how we think…or what we believe? `This series of 5 minute presentations, will showcase innovative ideas that serve the public good—either imagined or actualized—to ignite sparks of creativity and possibility. These ideas help our audience of advocates, researchers, lawyers, labor union members and others to imagine the future economy, democracy, and community that is possible.
Closing
