Activism

What kinds of futures unfurl when we stop acquiescing to what we’ve inherited and start building spaces with intention? In this forward-looking conversation, Shizue Seigel (Courting A Man Who Doesn’t Talk; Uncommon Ground: BIPOC Journeys to Creative Activism), Kimi Sugioka (Wile & Wing), Kelechi Ubozoh (We’ve Been Too Patient), and Andre Le Monte Wilson (Hauntings) gather to talk about how writers and artists of color are imagining and making creative spaces that feel livable and can grow with us.

Curated by the Mixed Race Affinity Lit Collective, which centers creative community, and the power of underrepresented stories for those who identify as multiracial, multiethnic, or of mixed cultural heritage, this conversation will move through questions of belonging, collaboration, and care, and look at how small, intentional choices can open up much larger possibilities. The future doesn’t show up all at once. It takes shape in rooms like this one, through conversation, care, and the choices we make alongside each other.

Find out more about our Affinity Lit Collectives

As women’s rights are increasingly violated in the US, the historical narratives and personal accounts of this crucial panel discussion will remind us of the work we’ve already done and inspire us to continue pursuing a world where women are truly free. Just Pills: The Extraordinary Story of A Revolution in Abortion Care documents journalist Rebecca Kelliher’s research into the little-known history of mifepristone and misoprostol, better known as the abortion pills, which are safe, cheap, and clinic-less means of ending a pregnancy that are already changing the fight for abortion access as we understand it. Prior to the approval of abortion pills in the 1990s and 2000s, however, women’s options were severely limited. In her historical novel Where the Girls Were,Kate Schatz writes about a pregnant teenager’s struggle with agency after being sent to a home for unwed mothers in 1960s San Francisco. Shame, faith, and morality all shape a woman’s choice to abort or carry to term, and Judy Juanita reflects on self-induced abortion and California’s Therapeutic Abortion Act of 1967 through the poetry, fiction, essays, and creative nonfiction in Abortion (or Woman As Threefold Murderess) which reveal that choosing to abort is not simply a political or moral issue of right and wrong, but one tied to safety, survival, and the meaning of life itself. Moreover, abortion care is ethical care, grounded in competence, compassion, sensitivity, as exemplified by Shelley Sella, a board-certified OB-GYN and the first woman to openly practice third-trimester abortion care in the US. In her book Beyond Limits: Stories of Third Trimester Abortion Care, Dr. Sella challenges preconceived notions of who gets abortions and why, inviting readers into a typical week at her clinic to demystify third-trimester abortion, which is still often stigmatized and misunderstood within both the anti-abortion and pro-choice movements. Carole Joffe, professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences and author of After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe But Not Abortion, will moderate this panel honoring the women affected by abortion and pregnancy, the hard-working individuals who have kept abortion afloat in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s destruction, and the continued help urgently needed if we want to sustain our right to abortion care.

Eighty years of lessons from the Black freedom struggle, labor movements, and internationalism illuminate the path forward in our fight for democracy and never-ending commitment to building a better world. In a multi-generational conversation, legendary Civil Rights organizer Walter Riley andcommunity organizer, musician, and journalist Jesse Strauss will offer insights from their book, Civil Rights and Structural Attacks, drawing parallels between past movements and present injustices. Raised among the entrails of chattel slavery in Durham, North Carolina, Riley brings decades of movement experience from mobilizations against Jim Crow apartheid laws, to student and labor organizing with early Black Panther formations, to organizing against South Africa’s apartheid system as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer. His more recent work involves supporting infrastructure for Haitian movement-building and confronting police violence in Oakland. Strauss is the co-creator of the first-ever daily abolitionist radio show Law & Disorder andan anti-imperialist and abolitionist cultural worker who was raised in Oakland and Berkeley (unceded Ohlone/Chochenyo land). He was also a producer for Al Jazeera during the so-called “Arab Spring” and “Occupy” movements, and together with Riley, they will reflect on the importance of political action as the primary venue for learning and reflection in this insightful and vital conversation moderated by writer, director, and musician Boots Riley.

Activism can show up in spaces big and small—we just need to keep up the tempo! R. J. Owens shows us the power of taking steps toward meaningful change in his picture book Walk the Walk, which follows Dex’s day walking the walk with his Papa by joining the Montgomery Bus Boycott and standing up against segregation. In Searching for Mr. Johnson’s Song, music makes the air vibrate like a thousand protesters marching for equality in Ariel Vanece’s touching story about a boy who helps his elderly neighbor find the rest of the song that has been forgotten due to dementia. With warmth and gentle authenticity, this read-aloud and discussion moderated by author, illustrator and Social Justice Book Fair co-organizer Rob Liu-Trujillo remind us about kindness and neighborliness, inspiring a new generation of activists willing to keep on walking to fight for our communities.

Today’s kids are well aware of the many challenges that they face in the world they are inheriting, from climate change to police violence, crowded classrooms to healthcare. The organizers of the amazing Social Justice Children’s Book Fair are here to show everyone that a better world is possible, and it can be here today if we choose it! Poetically written and beautifully illustrated in Innosanto Nagara’s signature style, Oh, The Things We’re For! offers a vision of where we could go for today’s kids, who are ready to tackle big issues to build a better world they envision. One way we can fight for our future and make an impact on our community is by voting, but as the kids in Calling All Future Voters! find out, voting isn’t easy for everyone. Blending narrative and educational content in her co-written book, Laura Atkins highlights our country’s ongoing struggle for a more inclusive democracy and encourages readers to understand their rights and responsibilities toward their community. Joining the fight for a better future is author, illustrator, and organizer Robert Liu-Trujillo, who will moderate this enriching panel about how all of us can build towards a better world.

To write an inclusive future, we must publish diverse voices who represent our collective interests and stories. The publishers and imprints represented in this headliner panel will discuss the implications of the current political climate on the future of publishing and put forward creative solutions to the lack of opportunities for publishing underrepresented stories. Tiny Reparations Press, founded by standup comedian, bestselling author, producer, and actress Phoebe Robinson, is a highly curated imprint dedicated to fiction and nonfiction that pushes the conversation forward. HeartDrum, an acclaimed imprint of HarperChildren’s featuring stories that emphasize the present and future of Native peoples and the strength of young Indigenous heroes, will be represented by its author-curator and award-winning writer Cynthia Leitich Smith. Turning the page to publishers, Palestinian American author and book worker Hannah Moushabeck runs Interlink Publishing alongside her family, the only Palestinian-owned independent publishing house in the United States offering global perspectives to readers through works of literature-in-translation, history, activism, politics, art, cultural guides, award-winning cookbooks, and illustrated children’s books. Through publishing talented writers whose works have been overlooked by large-scale publishers, co-founder Kate Gale of Red Hen Press fosters diversity, promotes literacy in local schools, and supports the Greater Los Angeles Area and international communities with arts-based events and literary advocacy. Moderated by acting Co-CEO of the intersectional, feminist press Aunt Lute, María Mínguez Arias, this inspiring panel is a celebration of the innovative and diverse members of the publishing industry dedicated to creatively curating and publishing the voices of our future.

Introductory live music performance by Bushwick Book Club Oakland

In the midst of white nationalism, global capitalism, and authoritarian regimes that drive individualism and isolation, a look to our past and envisioned futures reveals the prevailing strength of creativity and rebellion across time. By surveying a world that has changed dramatically since 1960 in her book The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit unveils the sheer breadth and scale of social, political, scientific, and cultural changes that have shaped a more interconnected, relational world which embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas. Because transformation is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized, but change is inevitable, brought about by dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. Poet, performer, and director Saul Williams charts his own creative visions for change in Martyr Loser King, his graphic novel about a global cyberattack rebellion in a small East African country where the Black population and the land are exploited for the mining of the precious ore coltan. Simultaneously a cautionary tale and hopeful vision for the future, this cyberpunk fable raises incisive questions about capitalism, colonialism, and the future of technology. Moderated by writer, producer, and activist Christie George, who is working at the intersection of media, technology, and social change, this headlining conversation features the creative minds who are mapping and shaping the trajectory of our futures despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history.

Illustrator Morgan Sörne will join for book signing after this headliner conversation.

Introductory live music performance by Bushwick Book Club Oakland

The Trump administration is terrorizing our communities with mass deportations, militarized raids, and brutal detainment, tearing families apart and unlawfully withholding immigrants in inhumane conditions. As historian Ana Raquel Minian points out, this is only the latest chapter in a saga in which immigrants to the United States have been held without recourse to their constitutional rights. This imperative panel will trace back to the 1800s with Minian’s In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States, which braids together the vivid stories of four migrants seeking to escape the turmoil of their homeland for the promise of America: a Chinese refugee, a European war bride, a Cuban exile, and a Central American asylum seeker. Personal accounts give this history a human face, as with The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest,Satsuki Ina’s memoir documenting her parents’ forcible removal from their home, their incarceration in wartime American concentration camps, and the generational struggle of Japanese Americans who fought for the restoration of their rights and clung to their full humanity in the face of adversity. As she traces the legacies of trauma, she connects her family’s ordeal to modern-day mass incarceration at the U.S.-Mexico border, which is what Daniel A. Olivas bases his modern retelling of “Waiting for Godot” on. Through a darkly comic absurdist lens, Waiting for Godínez: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts features the forever-waiting character Jesús, who is kidnapped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents each night to be deported and thrown into a cage that is left unlocked. Though these “black sites” of rightlessness exist out of view from the average American, their reach extends into our lives, all the way to the gradual unraveling of the right to bail and the presumption of innocence. Veronica Granillo brings a lawyer’s perspective from her experience working on affirmative and defensive asylum cases, U Visas, residency, and naturalization as the Senior Staff Attorney at East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, a community organization that provides services to support low-income immigrants and people fleeing violence and persecution. Moderated by Piper Kerman, justice reform activist and author of Orange is the New Black, the narratives of this panel allow us to see how the changing political climate surrounding immigration has played out in individual lives, imploring us to reconsider this country’s policies in light of the fact that we are all human and deserve respect, dignity, and democracy as we make our way in this confusing and often indifferent world.

Given California’s reputation as a haven of liberal thinking and the pinnacle of tolerance, many people would be surprised to hear about the stories of educators, librarians, and storytime performers who have been harassed and threatened for teaching honestly about race, gender, immigration, religion, and sexuality. Veteran California public school teacher Sue Granzella will moderate this timely conversation featuring the people at the frontlines of today’s escalating culture wars. Pushed to the Edge: Teachers’ Stories From the Culture Wars is her collection of first-person accounts of resilience in the face of growing bigotry stoked by the far right. She was inspired to write her book when she heard about the Proud Boys storming a local library to disrupt a Drag Story Hour, which was hosted by Kyle Casey Chu, drag queen and author of The Queen Bees of Tybee County Queen. They will be joined by high school librarian and media specialist Betsy Sergeant as well as former English teacher and program director for the Davis Phoenix Coalition Anoosh Jorjorian to offer a sobering view of what’s at stake in our schools, libraries, and for young people today. Their firsthand experiences offer unique perspectives about the impact of California’s culture wars on its youth and provide a hopeful testament to those who refuse to back down.

Featuring critically-acclaimed authors who frequently experience censorship of their books, this rousing panel will highlight the escalation of book bans around the country and how we can fight back against them. While promoting The Day the Books Disappeared, National Leader of Authors Against Book Bans Joanna Ho was forced to leave a school after refusing to comply with the school’s demands forbidding them from mentioning book bans or gay books, sparking discourse about the deeply unconstitutional movement to limit the freedom to read. Palestinian American author and publisher Hannah Moushabeck also faced censorship during a university event, which initially barred Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine, a Palestinian picture book. With support from the campus community, she read her book anyway and inspired a university-wide resolution that affirms the freedom of expression. Also continuing the fight at the legislative level is Dashka Slater, whose book The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives is one of the most banned books in the United States. In 2025, Slater joined the Big 5 Publishers and other authors to sue the State of Idaho over a bill that censored which books youth could read. The scope of today’s bans is much wider than before, but the authors of this panel moderated by activist and organizer Alejandra Domenzain are proof that fighting for our most basic freedom to think, to read, and to arrive at our own opinions is necessary for effective change.