Day 1 Speakers

Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley

Keynote Speaker

Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA.  His books include Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class;  Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, and (forthcoming) Making a Killing: Capitalism, Cops, and the War on Black Life.   He also co-edited (with Colin Kaepernick and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor), Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies;His essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Nation, New York Times, New York Review of Books, Hammer and Hope, Black Music Research Journal, Callaloo, Black Scholar, American Quarterly, and The Boston Review, for which he is a contributing editor.

Funmilola Fagbamila

Professor of PanAfrican Studies, UCLA

Funmilola Fagbamila is a Nigerian-American playwright, a performance artist, professor, and international speaker whose work explores the intersections of culture and identity. Currently, she is serving as a Professor of Pan-African Studies at UCLA, where she joined the faculty in Fall 2016

Kaya Dantzler

Co-Founder, We Love Leimert

Kaya Dantzler is a cultural strategist, community organizer, and social practice artist who thinks deeply about Black memory, place, and what it means for a neighborhood to truly belong to its people. She’s a co-founder of We Love Leimert, a cultural initiative rooted in Leimert Park Village, one of Los Angeles’ most storied hubs of Black art and creative life. Her work there is about more than preservation; it’s about helping a community see itself clearly, imagine boldly, and build on its own terms. Through oral histories, community archives, participatory mapping, and cultural programming, she helps document what exists, protect what’s at risk, and make space for what’s possible. Day-to-day, she serves as Director of Community Engagement at Community Labs, where she works alongside artists, local businesses, cultural institutions, and residents in Leimert Park Village to support community-rooted economic development. Her organizing work extends beyond LA, as she has contributed to national advocacy efforts through Color of Change.

Josiah Eduards (he/him)

Organizer and Trainer, Sunrise Movement

Josiah (Jō-sigh-uh) Edwards (he/him) is a youth organizer based in Los Angeles, CA. He began organizing in 2018, leading a student walkout after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. He became further involved in youth organizing through Sunrise Movement. Growing up in the South Bay of Los Angeles County near the largest refinery on the West Coast, he experienced environmental racism in his daily life. As an organizer and trainer with Sunrise Movement, he works to uplift the voices of youth in frontline communities by training young people in the organizing methods and discipline needed to build multiracial, cross-class solidarity—an essential foundation for the power required to win a Green New Deal. In addition to his organizing with Sunrise Movement, Josiah serves as the project coordinator for convenings at Youth on Root, a nonprofit that envisions a self-sustaining grassroots movement led by youth with meaningful opportunities to enact their visions of environmental justice for their communities. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Common Dreams, and Democracy Now.

Periloux Peay

Assistant Professor, African American and Africana Studies, University of Maryland

Periloux Peay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and Africana Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research explores how underrepresented communities use collective strategies to influence political processes both within and outside American political institutions, with work published in outlets such as Politics, Groups, & Identities, the Journal of Race, Ethnicity & Politics, Social Science Quarterly, and the National Review of Black Politics.

Tiny

Co-founder, POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork

Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia) is a formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher and single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled, indigenous mama Dee, and the co–founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork. She is also the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America, co-editor of – Poverty ScholarShip -Poor People Theory, Arts, words and Tears Across Mama Earth A PeoplesTeXt which was just released in 2019. In 201, just to name a few.  She co-launched The Homefulness Project – a landless peoples, self-determined land liberation movement in the Ohlone/Lisjan/Huchuin territory known as Deep East Oakland, ,and co-founded a liberation school for children, Deecolonize Academy  She has taught Poverty Scholarship theory and practice in Universities, street corners and encampments from Columbia to Skid Row.

James Suazo (he/him/his)

Co-Founder, Long Beach Chapter, Democratic Socialists

James Suazo (he/him/his) is a 35-year-old reader, writer, organizer, and abolitionist who identifies as queer, Latinx, and Jicarilla Apache. James was born, raised, and politicized in occupied Tongva and Acjachemen land known as modern day Santa Ana, California and has lived in Long Beach since 2011. James’s activism began at the age of 18 when he started organizing fellow bus riders to advocate against public transportation cuts during the Great Recession in 2008. Since then, he has contributed to and led student, labor, community, and electoral organizing efforts on issues ranging from poverty, housing justice, education equity, justice system reform, and Palestinian liberation. James has dedicated the last 11 and a half years to organizing with Long Beach Forward, a multicultural and multigenerational grassroots organization and third space building community knowledge, leadership, and power to advance racial, spatial, economic, and educational justice citywide.