Program: Friday, August 13

4:00 PM PDT
Welcome & Introduction of Madeleine Rees
Darien De Lu, WILPF US President and Congress Tech Team Core Member is a peace, justice, and Latin America solidarity activist in the Sacramento branch. She writes her California ballot guide (for over 20 years) plus political and labor songs – and sings frequently!  Prior to retiring, she bicycle-commuted for twelve years to her California state jobs, addressing substance use and co-occurring disorders.  She and her husband bike, especially to the local food co-op. Darien speaks several languages and has traveled extensively. An activist for over fifty years, Darien has been a consensus process and nonviolence trainer. Her civil disobedience direct actions and subsequent jail time inform her activism.

4:20 PM PDT
Opening
Madeleine Rees
Madeleine has been the Secretary-General of WILPF International since 2010. She began her career as a lawyer in 1990 and in 1998, she started working as Head of Office in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as gender expert for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. From September 2006 to April 2010, she served as the Head of the Women’s Rights and Gender Unit for the OHCHR. One of the major elements of her work was to demonstrate the importance of gender and how law should accurately describe and do justice to those different experiences.

4:50 PM PDT
Revive Us Again: Vision & Action in Moral Organizing

We will be exploring the moral imperative for organizing to save our earthly Mother. We also lift up the voices of WILPF US members and branches who are working through the Poor People’s Campaign.

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign:  A National Call for Moral Revival and Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Liz is the author of Always with Us?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor (2017) and has been published in the NY Times, Time Magazine, CNN, the Guardian, Sojourners, and the Nation. In 2018, she gave the “Building a Moral Movement” TEDtalk at TEDWomen, was named one of the Politico 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries whose ideas are driving politics,” and was also named a Women of Faith recipient by the Presbyterian Church (USA). In 2019, she was a Selma “Bridge” Award recipient and named one of 11 Women Shaping the Church by Sojourners. In 2020, she was named one of 15 Faith Leaders to Watch by the Center for American Progress.
 

5:50 PM PDT
Lifting from the Bottom Up: WILPF & the Poor People's Campaign

A presentation on the role of women in the Poor People’s Campaign from 1967 to the present will lift up the voices of women directly impacted by poverty, deepen the meaning of WILPFs partnership with the movement, and stimulate dialogue about what is required of WILPF to play a leadership role in a bottom-up, grassroots movement.

Mary Bricker-Jenkins is the former WILPF liaison to the Poor People’s Campaign, is on the Cuba and Bolivarian Alliance Issue Committee, the CEDAW Issue Committee, and a former member of the Board. She is Professor Emerita of Social Work at Temple University and has worked for years with the National Welfare Rights Union (currently on the Board) and the national Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign.
 

Rev. Rowan Fairgrove, EPs, is a member of the WILPF San Jose Branch and sings with the Raging Grannies. She is a volunteer with the Bay Area and California Poor People's Campaign as a member of the Faith Leaders Working Group (BA/CA), the Bay Area Steering Committee, the Speaker Training Working Group (CA), and the Accessibility WG (CA). She is also a member of the national Prophetic Council. She attended the 2019 PPC Moral Congress representing WILPF San Jose. 

Dorothy Van Soest is the current WILPF liaison to the Poor People’s Campaign, a member of the Women, Money and Democracy Committee, and a member of the Washington State Poor People’s Campaign coordinating committee. She is Professor Emerita and former dean at the University of Washington, and an educator, activist, and author of several award winning novels with a heart for justice.  www.dorothyvansoest.com