In a panel moderated by Angela Glover Blackwell, Michael McAfee was joined by Crystal Echo Hawk, Jeff Bradach, Linda Sarsour, and Manuel Pastor to discuss what embracing "all" meant for them. Angela opened the discussion by acknowledging the difficulty of embracing ‘all’ when your people are suffering, when many groups of people have been intentionally kept behind, inviting a conversation about what “all” means to the panelists.

Crystal Echo Hawk, CEO and Founder of IllumiNative, reflected on the fact that her people, the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, had their own Trail of Tears, surviving through genocide. When she started IllumiNative to push back on the erasure and false narratives about Indigenous people institutionalized in our government, their research showed that even if every Native person in this country organized to change this reality it wouldn’t be enough; they need non-Native relatives to work alongside them.

In thinking through what “all” could mean, she invoked the Indigenous precept of “All My Relations,” the idea that all our communities are connected, and our well-being is tied up in each other. And she acknowledged that this work needed to be held and nurtured within our own movement."I really do believe in the 'all,' I believe in that my heart and my values, but some days it gets tough, right?" she said. "When we don't see each other and there are divisions and bias in things between our respective communities. We have to acknowledge that...and we've gotta do this healing and education work amongst ourselves."

Organizer, strategist and author Linda Sarsour reflected on her journey around the “all” as a Palestinian-American organizer from Brooklyn and shared her own challenges. "It requires a lot of faith," she said. "As a Muslim, I believe in God, but I've never seen God. I believe in this idea of 'all,' but I haven't seen it. And so I have to believe in it in order for it to be manifested."

And similar to Crystal Echo Hawk, she saw the movement itself needing to reflect and realize that future."We oftentimes as a movement talk about all the external forces out there that keep us behind," she said. "But the bottom line, if there's gonna be an 'all,' it's gotta start right here."

Jeff Bradach, cofounder and partner at the Bridgespan Group, shared that he was initially concerned about adopting the concept of “all” because white people have abused the term in the vein of “all lives matter,” to pull away from talking about racism, white supremacy, and stolen labor. But upon reflection, he saw that this invocation of 'all' was much different. It was an effort to reclaim “all” as an expression of our highest aspirations, a "call to the most elemental fundamental belief in the dignity of all people." "It's not about moving away from understanding deeply the specific structures and the specific systems that have created harm in the world," he said. "It's holding both."

Manuel Pastor, Director of the USC Equity Research Institute, shared how a focus on the 'all' creates the opportunity "to build without disappearing difference." He reflected on a previous Equity Summit theme of solidarity, where he was struck by the phrases of "I see you, I recognize your reality, your difference, and your particularity."

"And I realized at the end of that, that I had hoped that the next step from 'I see you' was 'I see us.' To me, that's the 'all.' It's not how it's been weaponized against us to disappear particular interests...it's the ability to look at specifics in order to get a sense of the whole, in order to see the power of us if we would actually come together and make change."

In his talk, Michael made clear that the invitation to embrace "all" is not permission for erasure or denying or minimizing our differences. “You can’t get to 'all' without liberating Black folks," he said."And you can’t get to 'all' without redesigning this nation.” He noted that the invitation to embrace "all" is a joyful stance, a hopeful stance, and one we would deliver together. "There will be no more debating whether we're gonna help Black people or not. There will be no more debating whether we can say poor whites, Latinos, Asians, etcetera. The debate is over. This is our house, this is our work ... and we’re going to do it."

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EQUITY SUMMIT, 2024

EQUITY SUMMIT, 2024

EQUITY SUMMIT, 2024

EQUITY SUMMIT, 2024

EQUITY SUMMIT 2024, FUN(K)TIONAL DESIGN

EQUITY SUMMIT, 2024