Panel Overview: The past 15 years have seen persistent and powerful uprisings and mass movements in the streets. With unrest likely to grow in the coming years, it is critical that base-building organizations think strategically about what their role in these movements should be. This strategy summit revives a longstanding debate on the most effective means for making transformational change and the role of organizations in movement moments. Should organizations stand to the sidelines, use the moment to bring in new members and develop leaders, or put aside their own agendas in order to facilitate movement building?

Moderator:

Lissy Romanow was formerly the Executive Director of Momentum, a training organization dedicated to building social movement organizations for the 21st century. She was formerly a lead organizer with Neighbor to Neighbor, an economic and environmental justice organization in Massachusetts, and is a cofounder of IfNotNow. She is currently writing a book on the evolution of organizing methods in the U.S.

Meet the Panelists:

Asha Ransby-Sporn is a Chicago-based community organizer and writer who has helped build movement organizations, led on both winning issue-based and political campaigns, and is deeply committed to Black, left social movements. She was a co-founder of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), served as Director of Organizing for anti-war youth organization Dissenters, co-created a citywide mass organizing campaign to Defund the Chicago Police Department, ran the South Side field program for Brandon Johnson’s winning mayoral campaign in 2023 with United Working Families, was Deputy Director of the Bring Chicago Home ballot campaign, served on the steering committee for the Uncommitted National Movement, helped develop the pro arms embargo Not Another Bomb campaign and is now working to elect a movement leader to Chicago’s first ever elected School Board

Ahmad Abuznaid is a Florida-based attorney, director of the coming documentary film “Shukran”, and executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Prior to joining USCPR, Ahmad co-founded the Dream Defenders, serving as its legal & policy director and coo during his time there. Ahmad then went on to serve as the executive director of the National Network for Arab American Communities from 2017 to 2019.

Vincent Bevins is an American journalist and writer. From 2011 to 2016, he worked as a foreign correspondent based in Brazil for the LA Times after working previously in London for the Financial Times In 2017 he moved to Jakarta and began covering Southeast Asia for The Washington Post and in 2018 began writing a book about Cold War violence in Indonesia and Latin America.His work has mostly focused on international politics, the world economy, and global culture.