Registration will open in May for Summer Conference, scheduled from Sunday, July 26, to Wednesday, July 27, at UMass Amherst. In 2026, we are excited to offer a wide range of engaging workshops, welcoming social events, and meaningful opportunities to connect around the issues that matter most to our members.
This year’s conference theme is Building on Legacies of Collective Resistance. This theme invites us to learn from the long history of education justice, labor, and civil rights movements, and to translate those hard-won lessons into effective organizing and advocacy strategies today.
Scenes from Summer Conference
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2025 Keynote Speakers
Cornel West
An American philosopher, theologian, political activist, politician, social critic and public intellectual. Cornel West acknowledges the gravity of the current moment — a time of moral decay, deepening inequality and spiritual emptiness in the halls of power. He invokes the legacy of prophetic voices — W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Ella Baker — reminding the audience that every generation faces its own reckoning. With his signature blend of righteous anger and deep love, he calls on us not to despair, but to organize, mobilize and reimagine.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
An author, scholar and activist, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor speaks with clarity and urgency about the crossroads we now face. Drawing on history and grounded in the lived experiences of the working class and the Black freedom tradition, she illuminates how this moment — however bleak — is also one of profound possibility. Member-leaders will present prior to Taylor and demonstrate how, now more than ever, we must take action to protect our unions, our workplaces and our democracy.
Maurice "Moe" Mitchell
Maurice "Moe" Mitchell is national director of the Working Families Party, a progressive political party known for cross-endorsing candidates through fusion voting and its deep ties to unions. Maurice is a nationally recognized social movement strategist, a visionary leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and a community organizer for racial, social, and economic justice. Born and raised in New York to Caribbean working-class parents, Mitchell began organizing as a teenager — and never stopped. He is applying his passion and experience to make the WFP the political home for a multi-racial working-class movement.
