Course Categories: Reclaiming Our Humanity and Voices through PROTEST: Responding to Racial Trauma and Violence

At KCTI’s 9th Annual Fall Conference we will once again convene as a community and tap into how institutional racism attempts to stifle our collective genius and identity as a community. It is our goal to build on last year’s conference, A Communal Discourse: Embracing Racial Consciousness, and work towards creating a new paradigm that lifts up people of color, indigenous people, and other marginalized communities. It is our intention to provoke conversation that will impact our awareness, propel us toward sustainable equity for communities of color and into action beyond complicity.

We are at a racial and cultural crossroads as a community and society. Arriving at an intersection of racial unrest that has led to on going trauma, voiceless-ness, violence, and rage. Wrestling with the recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless other black & brown bodies, while being attacked by COVID-19 and all of its aftermath, has left our collective mental health and well-being tattered. Systemic racism is alive and thriving. Locally, in the City of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, leaders have moved to declare racism a public health emergency, and demand systemic change through defunding the police as one of many solutions towards rebuilding and creating a more just and equitable society. This year’s 9th annual conference will be held as a form of PROTEST and another opportunity to create healing in our community. We have invited Dr. Kenneth Hardy, Elder Atum Azzahir, Resmaa Menakem, MSW, SEP, Susan Raffo, Dr. Manijeh Daneshpour and others to lead us in conversation.