This year’s Rural Caucus & Strategy Session’s theme is Who Speaks for Rural Oregon? We will convene as rural organizers, activists, and community leaders in beautiful Bend to reflect and strategize around how our organizing can elevate our collective voice for justice. Click here to register!
We are thrilled to announce this year’s keynote speaker will be Carla Wallace, an awe-inspiring long-time movement leader from Kentucky!
Carla has been engaged in social justice organizing for over 30 years. She was mentored by white southern antiracist Anne Braden and activists in Kentucky’s Black Liberation Movement. Carla is a cofounder of the Fairness Campaign in Louisville which places racial justice central to the struggle for LGBTQ equality. She also helps lead Louisville Showing Up for Racial Justice and the national SURJ network which works to broaden the base of white people engaged in racial justice work.
Carla came to Oregon in the early 1990s to help organize with the No on 9 campaign that successfully defeated Ballot Measure 9, which would have written that queers are “abnormal and perverse” into the Oregon Constitution. ROP was borne from that resistance in 1992!
Carla will join us to share her reflections on this political moment as a national movement strategist, describe how Oregon and ROP’s work is being held up nationally, and tell stories about the ways folks across the country are boldly and creatively building the movement for justice. Carla will discuss her own experiences building up a multi-racial, cross-class base of folks in Kentucky fighting for LGBTQ rights that defies stereotypes, breaks down division, and WINS!
Carla is one of many incredible speakers lined up for this year’s Rural Caucus & Strategy Session. Stay tuned for more announcements this week. If you haven’t already registered, click here to save your seat today!