The People's Conference III: Chasing Freedom

Join us for The People's Conference III - a three day journey of healing, liberation, and joy, where emerging voices and seasoned practitioners come together to reimagine justice in our schools and communities. Rooted in the philosophy of restorative justice, we're creating a space where students share the stage with educators, families lead alongside organizers, and your lived experience holds as much weight as any credential. We're building a movement on a simple truth: those most impacted by systemic inequities must lead the way forward. Past gatherings have sparked lasting partnerships, influenced policy changes, and launched new leaders - because when you center the voices of those who navigate these systems daily, transformation becomes inevitable. This is a conference that truly feels for the people, where authentic, community-led solutions create real impact.

Info: Begin with personal healing. Explore how individual transformation lays the groundwork for collective change. Through intimate storytelling and reflection, we examine what it means to free ourselves from internalized oppression and trauma.

Info: Shift from the personal to the systemic. Engage with practitioners and organizers who are dismantling inequitable structures in education and community spaces. Learn strategies, build coalitions, and envision new possibilities together.

Info: Close with celebration. Reclaim joy as a radical act. Experience how play, creativity, and community care sustain us in the work of justice.

Info: This session is an embodied and reflective experience rooted in the practice of chasing freedom – not as something outside of ourselves, but as a return to what is already within. Inspired by the spirit of Lauryn Hill’s “I Get Out” and “Freedom Time,” this workshop invites participants to step out of boxes – expectations, roles, inherited expectations and internal narratives – and reconnect with a more spacious way of being.

Through guided somatic release and movement, reflective journaling, a freedom-centered meditation, and a restorative sound bath, participants are supported in liberating the mind and softening the body. The experience honors freedom as both a feeling and a practice – one that lives in breath, movement, stillness, and sound.

This workshop offers a collective pause to arrive fully, release accumulated tension, and begin again with intention. Participants will leave grounded, open, and connected.

Info: Join Law for Black Lives Membership Director Nzingha Hooker and special guests for a conversation about organizations across the nation and the work they are currently doing for freedom.

Info: Restorative justice practitioner Anjole Wright recounts the most startling structural & ideological similarities she observed between state-run schools and juvenile detention centers. She provides a healing-centered space to reflect and discuss the subtle ways the idea of Pr*son lives on through practices we learn, encourage, and pass on in schools.

Info: This workshop will discuss the critical need to rethink how restorative justice in education should be approached in schools. Skye will bring awareness to the Afro-Indigenous history of restorative justice and how to unpack our own bias, privilege, and power to be game changers and relational activists and healers. This engaging workshop will bring perspective for creating authentic RJ communities centered on relationships, youth empowerment, and social justice advocacy. Restorative Justice in Education has the potential to change the culture in order to change the game. Who's ready?

Info: Join Black Children Play! and Play Play DC for an afternoon of play for all ages and a community picnic. Bring your own food and beverages or pre-order picnic boxes from Chef Jamila.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Harriet Tubman Cultural Center, Harriet Tubman Lane, Columbia, MD, USA, United States

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

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