Speakers
featured speaker
Acknowledgment to Action: Native Students and Union Power
Dr. Megan Red Shirt-Shaw (Oglala & Sicangu Lakota) is a nationally recognized leader in education, known for her visionary thinking, grounded leadership, and deep commitment to Native students and communities. A scholar, speaker, and advocate, she brings cultural clarity and institutional insight to her work, calling for accountability, advancing Indigenous leadership, and guiding young people toward purpose and belonging.
Megan is the co-founder of Tokahe Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering Native youth to dream of, invest in, and plan for their futures. Through Tokahe and her broader work, she is helping create pathways for the next generation of Native leaders to imagine expansive futures rooted in identity, community, and possibility.
umid speaker
Dr. Tiffany Crutcher is a nationally recognized justice advocate, community leader, and social impact strategist dedicated to advancing equity, economic opportunity, and community transformation. As Founder and Executive Director of the Terence Crutcher Foundation, she leads initiatives focused on public safety, criminal justice reform, economic mobility, community healing, and the revitalization of historically marginalized communities. Widely regarded as one of Oklahoma’s most influential civic leaders, Dr. Crutcher has become a powerful voice for systems change and collective action across the nation.
Dr. Crutcher’s work is rooted in love for her twin brother, Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old father. On September 16, 2016, while coming home from Tulsa Community College, Terence was shot and killed by a Tulsa police officer. He was unarmed, with his hands raised. In 2017, Dr. Crutcher left her career, returned home to Tulsa, and founded the Terence Crutcher Foundation to honor his legacy and ensure what happened to Terence would not happen again.
featured conversation
This is How We Win: Building Working-Class Uprisings
What does it take to build power that actually wins? This is How We Win, an all-new book from the May Day Strong coalition, opens with Minnesota’s January 2026 economic shutdown, before examining the global history of general strikes that have toppled dictators and won workers the eight-hour workday.
Join us for a conversation with labor leaders that draws on the book's practical lessons to explore what solidarity looks like in practice — how coalitions form across unions, community groups, and impacted workers; what it takes to sustain collective action under pressure; and how the strategies that won past victories can inform the organizing work ahead of us.
Marcia Howard is an English teacher at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, MN, where she has taught since 1998. She has been one of the key leaders in the George Floyd Square occupation and is currently the President of the teacher chapter of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, Local 59.
Alex Han is Executive Director of In These Times. He has organized with unions, in the community, and in progressive politics for two decades. In addition to serving as Midwest Political Director for Bernie 2020, he’s worked to amplify the power of community and labor organizations at Bargaining for the Common Good, served as a Vice President of SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana for over a decade, and helped to found United Working Families, an independent political organization in Illinois that has elected dozens of working-class leaders to city, state and federal office. Most recently he was executive editor of Convergence Magazine.