2026
Local to Global Justice Forum & Festival
Reflection, Repair, and Renewal
February 13-14, 2026
Friday, February 13 • Starts at 5:30 PM
An evening of musical performance, fireside chat, and a vegan feast catered by Mario Etsitty!
Registration and check-in starts at 5:30pm at Wilson Hall on the Tempe Campus. Wilson Hall is northeast of the Gammage Auditorium near the intersection of Gammage Parkway and Forest Ave.
Attendees are encouraged to bring non-perishable food items and personal care products for donation to the mutual aid group NOURISHPhoenix.
Location
Wilson Hall
ASU Tempe Campus
240 Orange Mall
Tempe, AZ 85281
Parking
We encourage everyone to use the Tempe Streetcar from the Valley Metro Light Rail for an affordable option.
The nearest paid parking lots include ASU Lots 3, 9, 13 and Apache Blvd Garage.
Dinner • 6:00-6:45 PM • Wilson Hall Breezeway
Vegan dinner catered by Mario Etsitty of Rez Catering
Menu includes: Blue corn frybread, kidney bean and pumpkin chili, Navajo sumac quinoa pilaf, and apricot saffron tamales
Mario Etsitty
A Navajo chef, artist, educator and activist. He is from Many Farms and has volunteered with Food Not Bombs and other community groups for many years in Phoenix. His catering is familiar to all who have attended Local to Global Justice over the years.
6:15 - 6:45 pm
Musical performance by Walt Richardson • Wilson Hall Breezeway
Walt Richardson
Walt Richardson is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist born in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. He is a celebrated music veteran in the Tempe, Arizona area where his humanitarian contributions to the music community and music in schools (with an emphasis on cultural diversity) have been recognized with numerous awards.
7:00 - 8:45 pm
Reflecting on 25 years of L2GJ • Wilson 103
Beth Swaderner
Beth Blue Swadener is a Professor Emerita in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on internationally comparative social policy, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, impacts of neoliberal policy on local communities, and children's rights and voices. She is a co-founder of Local to Global Justice, The Jirani Project and Friends of the Girl Child Network in Kenya, and the international organization, Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education and loves to feed and support young activists!
Sujey Vega
Sujey Vega is the director of the Community Collaborative Initiatives program, an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and affiliate faculty member in the School of Transborder Studies and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Her research explores the every day lived experiences of Latina/os in the U.S. By looking to moments of belonging, she traces the way Latina/os make their own notion of home in the U.S. Using ethnography, oral history and archival analysis, Professor Vega's research includes race/ethnic studies, social networks, gendered experiences and ethno-religious practices.
Luis A. Fernandez
Dr. Luis A. Fernandez is a professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. He served as the President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in 2017-2018 and is currently the co-editor of Critical Issues in Crime and Society, Rutgers University Press. Luis was a co-founder of Local to Global Justice in 2001 and is a longtime activist.
Melissa Dickman
Melissa Dickman, Student Experience Manager at The Sidney Poitier New American Film School, has spent over fifteen years building supportive systems for design and arts students while being involved in her community through the intersections of gardening, art and whimsy.
Matt Besenfelder
Bio coming soon.
Aaron Golub
Dr. Golub is a professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University (PSU). He has twenty-five years of experience working in the advocacy and academic arenas on issues of transportation equity and justice. His research focuses on who wins and loses from transportation plans and investments, how we measure those disparities, and how academic research can assist communities to advocate for more equitable transportation systems. Aaron was co-faculty adviser of Local to Global Justice before moving to Portland.
Flora Farago
Dr. Farago is Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Stephen F. Austin University with a background in developmental psychology and early childhood education. Her teaching and research interests center around gender and ethnic-racial socialization of children in schools and at home; gender identity, anti-racist education and interventions at schools and at home. Interested in links between research and community activism, she collaborates with colleagues and organizations nationally and internationally, including the Indigo Cultural Center, EmbraceRace, Local to Global Justice, the Jirani Project, and the Girl Child Network.
Saturday, February 14 • 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM
Morning panels followed by lunch and a plenary panel with various speakers!
Saturday, February 14th, will be at ASU Tempe Campus. We will have limited morning sessions in Wilson Hall, lunch catered by Green New American Vegetarian, an afternoon plenary panel, followed by a closing discussion.
Attendees are welcome to bring non-perishable food items and personal care products for donation to the mutual aid group NOURISHPhoenix.
Scroll down to view more details about the panels and speakers.
Location
Arizona State University
Tempe Campus
Wilson Hall
240 Orange Mall
Tempe, AZ 85281
9:00 am
Registration and breakfast • Wilson Hall
Breakfast includes coffee donated by Ron Cortez of Cortez Coffee and tea from Skoden Tea and Coffee.
9:30-10:45 AM • Morning Plenary
Repair and renewal in community: Indigenous knowledge and strengthening relationships • Wilson 103
Description coming soon.
Daphne Littlebear
Daphne Littlebear is from the Tamaya (enrolled in Santa Ana Pueblo), Yuchi, Mvskoke, and Shawnee Nations. She received her PhD in Justice Studies at Arizona State University's School of Social Transformation. Her dissertation is titled, Intergenerational Intersections of Teaching and Learning in Santa Ana Pueblo. Daphne is an interdisciplinary Pueblo scholar with research interests in Indigenous education and policy, Indigenous evaluation, Indigenous community building, data sovereignty, and Tribal governance.
Jessica Tartaro
Dr. Jessica Tartaro has spent her career in mental health integrating the realms of trauma recovery, embodiment and social change in her therapy, coaching and teaching, including co-founding Home Safe Violence Prevention Center at ASU while in graduate school, teaching and leading at Dance Camp Northwest since 2018, weaving racial consciousness into Authentic Relating during the pandemic as well as fundraising for the healing of families in the Middle East in 2025. She is a former L2G student leader.
11:00-11:50 AM • morning panels
1. Mindful Music Listening as Medicine: • Wilson 114
We will share our recent experience mindfully listening to self-curated playlists daily and writing reflexively about it. We are now able to use music as a tool to adjust our mood, focus, and athletic performance in 30 minutes. Over weeks, we can improve sleep quality, reduce anxiety, moderate pain, extend focus, increase athletic endurance, and more. Adding some brief breathwork and somatic exercises before and after can intensify the experience. If time allows, we hope participants will start to curate their own playlists and make plans to begin their own mindful listening practice.
Amy Shinabarger
An ASU alum for all three of her degrees, amy dawn shinabarger is a Freirian committed to changing the world and empowering students through teaching as social practice. She teaches both international students and more local ones, primarily composition but also linguistics. After completing her PhD at ASU, shinabarger taught as an assistant professor at University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras and California State University, Northridge before following her heart home. Her research interests are Second Language Writing, Basic Writing, Writing Program Administration, Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, and Popular Cultures (particularly with a foci on music and body modification). The common ground is a fascination with studying how language and power intersect and interact.
2. Reflection, Repair, and Renewal at ASU: Reclaiming Our Campus as a Commons • Wilson 105
This interactive workshop centers the voices of ASU workers, who are members of UNITE HERE Local 11, who will share their stories and lived experiences on campus. Their perspectives will ground our conversation about what happens when a public
university is run more like a corporation than a public good. We’ll explore how
privatization and cost-cutting shape campus life, and how power gets enforced when
people who speak up are silenced or punished.
ASU workers hope their stories will motivate students to not only stand in solidarity with them, but to use their unique position to take actions that address issues concerning the integrity of the university. While ASU publicly promotes itself as an institution committed to the common good, the realities of student and worker life on campus often don’t align with that image. Students will be encouraged to take creative and direct actions such as, petitions, public testimony, panel discussions, peaceful demonstrations, and one-on-one organizing with workers.
Yolanda Bejarano
Yolanda Bejarano is a lifelong Arizonan and the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants. Raised in the small farming town of Roll near Yuma, she attended public schools. Her father was a farmworker, and her mother was a homemaker. Before entering politics, Yolanda served as a union steward at a call center for the Communications Workers of America (CWA) for 18 years, later becoming CWA’s National Field Director. She now serves as the Chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic Party (ADP), where she has elevated the Party to new heights.
3. How to Empower Technology for Justice • Wilson 103
We want to have a conversation with participants about the concept of “technology for good” and how we can best approach creating human-technology relationships that empower communities to achieve justice. Our perspective is that the current relationships that people have with technology — the ways that they use it and weave it into their lives and livelihoods, as well as wider social, economic, and ecological fabrics — contributes to exacerbating injustice and inequality, and that we need to develop new ways of doing technology and doing with technology if we want to empower communities and help them advance justice. We want to explore if this idea is shared or, if not, how participants see the challenges; get inputs from participants, and collaboratively generate ideas for advancing “technology for justice.”
Clark Miller
Clark A. Miller is a theorist and designer of techno-human futures. His work aims to improve people's ability to design and operate technological systems and navigate technological change in ways that cultivate human thriving and justice, not least by understanding how techno-humans imagine, know, and construct their technological instruments and environments and, in the process, their techno-human selves and the technological Earth.
4. Leading Authentically • Wilson 225
“Leading Authentically: The Hero’s Journey of Community Leadership” is an interactive session that invites participants to reflect on their own stories, gifts, and “second why” for doing justice work. Using emergent strategy and transformative justice principles, we will explore six core gifts—Presence, Contribution, Collaboration, Insight, Talent, and Resilience—as concrete tools for repairing harm, building trust, and sustaining movements over time. Through guided reflection and collaborative activities, participants will practice shifting from top-down models of leadership to shared, relational, and community-rooted approaches that center healing, accountability, and mutual support in the long struggle for social and environmental justice.
Noah Garcia
Bio coming soon
Lunch • 12:00-1:15 PM • Wilson Hall Breezeway
Vegan lunch catered by Green New American Vegetarian
Menu includes: Green tangerine plant-based chicken (non GMO) with fresh vegetables and noodles, enchiladas with black beans, grape soda Szechwan “meatballs”
Performance • 12:30 PM • Wilson Hall Breezeway
Ryan Zmierski
Bio coming soon
1:30-2:20 pM • Afternoon workshops
1. Complexities and Entanglements in [Post] Education and Humanitarian Aid: Experiences from Guinea, South Africa, and China • Wilson 103
This is a themed panel presentation, three faculty from different/shared experiences, reflecting on their entanglements with post/colonial projects and aid designed to ameliorate the persistent lack of education resources and poverty created by colonialism. For example, the panelists entangle marketized education aid, which we argue has done little to repair the education of poor children, particularly the education of girls and women in those nations. In addition, the panel reflects on the most recent adjustments on International Aid, such as USAID. The panelists draw on the work of postcolonial theorists, including Fanon (1961), Said (1978), Foucault (1980), Bhabha (2004), Spivak (2009), and Tuck (2009, 2012), to challenge humanitarian and education Aid models that have perpetuated neocolonial oppression instead of providing a radical space for collective reforms towards renewal and socially just vision for the democratic future. This themed panel contributes to the on-going body of scholarship and conversations focused on the strategies for repair in these struggles for justice, especially in the global South.
Chelsea Bailey
Bio coming soon
Mimi Bloch
Marianne (Mimi) Bloch is Professor Emerita t of Curriculum and Instruction and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is Editor Emerita of the International Critical Childhood Policy Studies Journal which she cofounded, and coeditor of the Bloch and Swadener Palgrave book series titled “Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood.” Her scholarship focuses on national and transnational policies related to child care and early education, critical educational policies, postfoundational and post-qualitative studies of childhoods. She is active with the Raging Grannies in Madison and has long been an advocate for social justice.
Bekisizwe Ndimande
Dr. Ndimande grew up under Apartheid in South Africa and is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Faculty Associate in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Dr. Ndimande’s research focuses on curriculum studies, education policy, multicultural education, and international comparative studies. Dr. Ndimande is the editor of the Critical Studies in Education journal and an advocate for equity in education and impacts of ideology on education policy.
2. Storying Just Futures: Community, Futures Thinking, and Expanding Career Horizons • Wilson 105
The Storying Just Futures (SJF)’s mission is to empower youth with the tools, language, and creative practices to co-design resilient futures grounded in humanities, informed by science, and elevated through global dialogue. Storying Just Futures envisions a world where young people use storytelling, futures literacy, and collective agency to reimagine a more equitable, resilient future. This panel will present the vision and goals of the project for empowering the next generation of scholars and community leaders—within and beyond academia—to contribute meaningfully to environmental justice-oriented research, storytelling, and futures thinking. One concrete goal for achieving the mission of the project: To produce a youth-authored White Paper to present at UNESCO to representatives of more than 100 nations in Paris in 2026, ensuring youth voices are positioned to influence global conversations on justice, sustainability, and the transitions ahead. At UNESCO “youth” is defined as anyone under 35 years of age. Join us in creating this vision!
Joni Adamson
Joni Adamson is President's Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Department of English and Distinguished Global Futures Scholar at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory (GFL). She is Founding Director of the Flagship Hub of UNESCO BRIDGES Sustainability Science Coalition, the first humanities-led science platform in the world, and Director of Humanities for the Environment North America (HFE), based in the Global Institute for Sustainability and Innovation.
3. Voices of Courage: Girls’ Education and Youth-Led Change in Afghanistan • Wilson 114
This presentation, co-led by She’s the First and Alekain, highlights the experiences of young women in Afghanistan who are determined to continue their education despite restrictive conditions. The session opens with a 3-minute video featuring Afghan girls speaking about their educational journeys, the challenges they face, and the hope that Alekain has offered them. Presenters will then share context about barriers to girls’ education in Afghanistan and the emerging partnership between Alekain and She’s the First as the girls work toward establishing their own chapter. The presentation will offer a personal understanding of the realities of girls’ education in Afghanistan and showcases how global solidarity can uplift youth-led empowerment efforts.
She’s the First & Alekain
Alekain is a nonprofit led by educators, diplomats, and professionals with longstanding connections to Afghanistan. We deliver secure, accredited online education that allows Afghan girls to keep learning, growing, and shaping their own futures.
4. Geographies of Extraction: The Discursive Regulation of Lithium Extraction in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands • Wilson 225
The presentation explores the discursive construction of lithium as a cornerstone of the global “green transition,” situating it within broader dynamics of capitalist accumulation and extractivist expansion. Amid rapidly escalating global demand driven predominantly by electric mobility sectors, lithium extraction is both materially and symbolically central to sustainability narratives, which, under the guise of „green capitalism“ have been operationalized by political and capital power elites alike. Focusing on emerging lithium exploration projects in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, the research examines how diverse stakeholders aim to legitimize and regulate regional lithium extraction through promises of regional development, national resource sovereignty, and increased transboundary cooperation. Through investigating the case of the Arizona-Sonora border region and in understanding the international border not merely as a dividing line but as an institution creating both separation as well as cooperation, this research seeks to reveal how global political‑economic processes intersect with local border contexts to shape local extractive imaginaries and legitimize new configurations of transborder resource governance.
Julia Wurm
Research Assistant and Graduate Student at the School of Transborder Studies
5. Building Community • Wilson TBD
The structure of your organization can either enhance or inhibit human connection. This presentation will explore the benefits of the nonprofit and cooperative model of organizational structure.
Richard Starling
Richard has been helping people create nonprofit organizations and cooperatives for over 45 years. He is also the executive director of the Arizona Community Land Trust and the Chairperson of the Arizona Cooperative Initiative.
2:30-3:45 Renewal: Present and future issues and activisms • Wilson 103
This plenary features a Local to Global Justice co-founder, Sa Hea Kil, who is the first public university Professor to lose her job taking a stand with students against genocide in Gaza, who will share her story and then be in dialogue with 4 current LTGJ student leaders, with a focus on current activisms, how to renew energies and practice insurgent optimism, and a vision for the future of LTGJ.
Sang Hea Kil
Sang Hea was a co-founder of Local to Global Justice in 2001 and is the first tenured Full Professor fired for Anti-Genocide and Pro-Palestine speech (7/25) at the Justice Studies Department at San José State University.
Ian Sherwood
Ian Sherwood (he/him) is a current Justice Studies Masters Student and research assistant at the Center for Work and Democracy at ASU. His research focuses on rebuilding the U.S. labor movement and highlighting how the struggle for economic justice is intrinsically with a multitude of other social justice causes.
Sirada Kananurak
Sirada Kananurak (she/they) is a Fulbright scholar from Thailand under the 2024 Fulbright Thai Graduate Scholarship Program. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies at Arizona State University. Prior to her studies in the United States, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Language and Culture from Chulalongkorn University in 2023 and worked as a part-time educator for English and basic cultural studies knowledge for high school students. Sirada’s research interest lies in queer studies in the context of Thailand. She is currently conducting research and creating a mini-documentary on the intergenerational sapphic community in Thailand.
Kendyl Neef
Kendyl is a second year undergraduate studying Biochemistry, interested in blending social justice work and scientific research by closing the gender data gap in healthcare and medical research. She is active on the current Local to Global Justice planning team and has volunteered with the group for two years.
Hexiang (Alex) Dong
Hexiang (they/them) is a third-year PhD in gender studies, doing research on crip of color critique and critical university studies, and chairs the funding committee on the current Local to Global Justice planning team.
4:00-4:30 pM • closing discussion • Wilson 103
In these rapidly changing and threatening times, solidarity, organizing, and resisting are all critical to multi-issue activism and social justice. Local to Global Justice has strived in our more than 25 years to provide spaces for activists to network and organize. In our closing session, we will have a town hall format discussion of these issues. We also commit to updating our Community Calendar to share local events and actions. Please join us with your ideas!
We will conclude with a closing song led by Mara Sapon-Shevin.
Mara Sapon-Shevin
Mara Sapon-Shevin, Professor Emerita of Inclusive Education at Syracuse University is a longtime social justice activist who leads singing and chanting at protests and makes love quilts for friends.
Clean Up
It requires many volunteers to make this free annual event happen - please support us with some assistance as we clean up and pack up for another year - thanks!
Thank you to all our sponsors and donors: Undergraduate Student Government, Graduate Student Government, School of Social Transformation, ASU Department of English, Storying for Just Futures, Center for Work and Democracy, and Cortez Coffee.
L2GJ 2025-2026 organizing team: Sirada, Kendyl, Julianne, Alex, Richard, Eric, Jen, Sujey, Ian, Terri, and Beth