These two Brooklyn-based poets-artists-activists-educators-musicians-performers may be the most brilliant socially engaged spoken word duo in the known universe. They’ll perform material from their recent kickass album, Intrinsic.
Introduction by Cat Brooks, Executive Director of Justice Teams Network
Health visionary Rupa Marya, Associate Professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco and Faculty Director of the Do No Harm Coalition, urges us to radically re-envision and expand our concept of medicine to encompass and address the health impacts of poverty, racism and environmental toxicity. She has been working to make visible the health issues at the nexus of racism and state violence through: her medical work; The Justice Study (national research investigating the health effects of police violence on Black, Brown and other disenfranchised communities); helping set up a free community clinic for the practice of decolonized medicine under Lakota leadership at Standing Rock (the Mni Wiconi Health Clinic); and international outreach with her band, Rupa and the April Fishes.
Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers CEO and founder
Bestselling author of landmark books such as The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma that have challenged our fundamental civilizational assumptions, Michael Pollan once again bravely ventures where angels fear to tread. His new book How To Change Your Mind surveys the highly controversial terrain of the renaissance of both the science and popular usage of psychedelic substances. As one of our most brilliant and clear-eyed explorers of such topics as plant intelligence and how we feed ourselves, Michael will share his luminous insights from what began as investigative reportage and became a very personal interior journey into the mystery of consciousness and the nature of spirituality at this perilous moment when only a shift in human consciousness can alter the deadly trajectory of our societies.
Interactive Living Mandala Art Project: Seeds, flowers, gourds and shells are your medium to create a large-scale collective art piece. Led by Aaron Ableman and Erika Minkowsky
Introduction by Joshua Fouts, Bioneers Executive Director
Google Earth Outreach founder and visionary engineer Rebecca Moore says the signs are all around us, telling us that our life-support systems are in critical condition, and only recently has it become possible to monitor the health of Earth's life-sustaining resources in a manner both globally consistent and locally relevant. She’s showing how satellite data, cutting-edge science and powerful cloud computing technology such as Google Earth Engine allow us to achieve an unprecedented understanding of our changing environment and put this data into the hands of those who can take action. Combined with Google Earth’s new narrative storytelling tool, grassroots activists, communities and other environmental change-makers can now vividly show what’s at stake, and envision solutions in ways that can change hearts and minds, while guiding wiser decision-making to protect and restore our vast, fragile planet.
As ecological and economic justice movements hit the same hard limits of possibility, being realistic in our time in history means getting serious about what might have formerly been seen as impossible: actually replacing our broken corporate capitalist system. Gar Alperovitz, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative and co-chair of its Next System Project, will show how we can begin to build together for the systemic change we need to save both democracy and the planet. As a political economist, author, former legislative director in the House and Senate, nonprofit innovator and scholar, Gar will share breakthrough models for community-based political-economic development and new institutions of community wealth ownership. He’ll highlight local, state and national policy approaches to community stability in the era of globalization that really work and can spread widely.
Introduction by Nina Simons, Bioneers co-founder
What's a surefire way to make activism more effective? Make it intergenerational. What's the biggest obstacle? An ageist culture that pits old against young and bombards us with messages that wrinkles are tragic and old people useless. Aging is not a problem to be "fixed" or a disease to be "cured.” It's a natural lifelong process that unites us all, and a world that's better to grow old in is better for everyone. Debunking myth after myth about late life, author and activist Ashton Applewhite passionately urges us to come together at all ages - and dismantle ageism in the process.
Introduction by JP Harpignies, Bioneers Executive Producer
Alex Eaton, co-founder of Sistema Biobolsa, will share how this groundbreaking social business is creating a movement toward regenerative agricultural practices among small farmers in Latin America, East Africa and India. He’ll illustrate how small farmers around the world can work together to increase global food production, while turning their farms, homes and soils into carbon sinks by using waste-to-energy technology, capacity building and innovative financing. Because small farmers still produce 80% of the world’s food, their survival is crucial to mitigating the effects of climate change, protecting biodiversity and preserving social stability in many countries. Alex will show how Sistema Biobolsa’s unique scaleable approach addresses climate change, food security, and poverty around the world by engaging “smallholders.”
Introduction by Joshua Fouts, Bioneers Executive Director
Elizabeth Dwoskin, the Washington Post's Silicon Valley correspondent, is that paper's eyes and ears in the world of tech. For the past six years, she has covered the rise of data-hungry technology companies, online conspiracies, and Russian meddling on social media. She was part of the team that broke over a dozen stories on Russian operatives' use of Facebook, Twitter, and Google to influence the 2016 presidential election. She’ll shine a light on our growing awareness of the dark side of Silicon Valley, and how that awareness is reshaping public policy, our understanding of democracy, and the way tech is used and built.
Closing Performance by Oakland’s own Thrive Choir
Join Heather Henson, Jason Gullo Mullins (South Eastern Cherokee) and Tsering Choedron (Tibetan) for two educational puppetry performances centered on the interconnectivity among endangered Whooping and Black Neck Cranes and the environments and Indigenous communities through which they migrate. After the performances, join the creators for a conversation about how they've approached creating and performing these traditional and contemporary stories.
