Democracy Dialogues

As authoritarian assaults increasingly restrict our media, championing press freedom and critical media literacy is more important than ever. From The Censored Press editorial board member T.M. Scruggs is State of the Free Press 2026: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, a collection that highlights the year’s most significant independent journalism—including original, investigative reports on ICE surveillance, Meta censorship, and police violence—and tracks emerging threats to press freedom. Political analyst and critical media literacy scholar Nolan Higdon will bring expertise about podcasting, digital culture, news media history and propaganda, and critical AI literacy, offering insights from the media spotlight. As an educator of the next generation of media actors, award-winning journalist and UC Berkeley journalism professor Lisa Armstrong will discuss what it means to steward a future of free and responsible press. Frances Dinkelspiel, award-winning author and journalist, will bring unique perspectives as a co-founder of Cityside, the nonprofit news organization behind Berkeleyside, Oaklandside, and Richmondside. Moderated by KALW Public Media Executive Producer Ben Trefny, this timely panel brings together distinguished voices from media to reflect on how we fund, create, and educate about media in an age when press freedom and democracy are under attack.

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.

What is it like to stand up for our beliefs as members of universities in today’s social and political climate? UC Davis free speech and equity law scholar Brian Soucek argues that institutional neutrality is a myth in The Opinionated University, which takes a deep dive into prominent campus controversies that demonstrate how those pushing for neutrality are only preventing universities from standing up for their values. Independent history researcher Aleida García documents inspiring instances of on-the-ground union organizing and power building in Out of the Lab, Into the Street: An Oral History of the 2022 UAW Strike at the University of California, a nuanced account of the largest strike in the history of American higher education. As the leader of several impactful organizations such as American Muslims for Palestine, the Northern California Islamic Council, and the Dollar for Deen Charity, UC Berkeley and Zaytuna College professor of Islamic law and theology Hatem Bazian exemplifies standing up for one’s beliefs and being outspoken in a university environment. Join this powerful panel, moderated by Michael Mark Cohen, that educates and urges community members to keep collective power alive as we fight for a future of free speech in our academic institutions.

Drawing on the expertise of mindfulness educators, frontline organizers, and America’s greatest literary voices, this panel provides guidance for navigating political burnout and civic despair. On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World is professor Jeremy David Engels’ compact guide offering 27 powerful teachings of interdependence and how to show up for democracy with compassion, clarity, and courage. In this age of disaster, community-shaped strategies are essential for practically navigating the challenges posed by overlapping catastrophes, and Kailea Rose Loften and Kate Rose Weiner present engaging prompts, concise checklists, and heartfelt advice for building and sustaining durable mutual aid networks in Compassion in Crisis: Building Disaster-Resilient Communities. Liza J. Rankow combines the compassion of a seasoned spiritual guide and the insightful analysis of a longtime grassroots activist in Soul Medicine for a Fractured World, which offers questions for reflection as well as an array of spiritual and healing practices to guide readers on an integrative path forward through healing and transformation, rooted in our kinship with one another, the Earth, and all of life. Diving deeply into a dharma of liberation, Rima Vesely-Flad examines the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin through key Buddhist principles, revealing that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but also the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment. Whether you’re a seasoned activist or a tender-hearted citizen seeking a new path forward, this nourishing panel moderated by Rev. Dereca Blackmon of the East Bay Church of Religious Science is an invitation into the lifelong work of caring for one another in pursuit of our collective liberation.

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.