Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations organized by the Decolonizing Wealth Project. As the conference’s media partner, YES! Media spoke with more than a dozen prominent organizers, activists, and leaders. Among them were Venneikia Williams, campaign manager at Media 2070, and Trevor Smith, director of narrative change at Liberation Ventures, where he is building the Reparations Narrative Lab.
Williams and Smith spoke with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar in Atlanta about how media can begin to repair the harms of racism, and how we can move toward reparations.
This video is part of Realizing Reparations, an exclusive digital series exploring the leading edges of the reparations ecosystem—and revealing a path toward healing and reconciliation.
This series was funded by a grant from Liberated Capital, a fund of the Decolonizing Wealth Project, which is led by Edgar Villanueva, of the Lumbee tribe, and works globally to disrupt the existing systems of moving and controlling capital using education and healing programs, radical reparative giving, and storytelling. Reporting and production of the series was funded by this grant, but YES! maintains full editorial control of the content published herein. Read our editorial independence policy.