After a two-month long process of scoring and discussing (and more scoring and discussing), we are thrilled to announce our 2012 agenda!
Our final list of 70 panels includes some timely topics like the 2012 elections, the Occupy movement and reproductive rights. But this year we're also including some topics not often touched on at Netroots Nation, including transgender issues, criminal justice and fracking. There are also 30 super useful, hands-on training sessions led by some of the top trainers in the progressive movement.
Click here to peruse the full list of panels and trainings, then follow me over the fold.
Before I get too deep into previewing some of the sessions, I want to give a special shout out to everyone who submitted proposals and everyone who helped us select them. We had almost 500 submissions this year, which gave us an amazing breadth of topics to consider.
I wanted to highlight some sessions that I thought would be of particular interest here, as well as call out the sessions that are led by or feature folks from the Daily Kos community.
First, a few headed up by DK regulars:
• Teacher Ken will be leading a session called What Progressives Can Do to Stop the War on Public Education, featuring Linda Darling-Hammond and Diane Ravitch.
• David Nir, along with Laura Clawson, Arjun Jaikumar, jeffmd and Steve Singiser, will head up The Battle for Congress: Q&A on the 2012 Elections.
• Markos is a panelist on this great session about the Latino vote in 2012.
• David Reid will reprise the session he led last year, Promoting People of Color in the Progressive Blogosphere, featuring Denise Oliver-Velez, Neeta Lind, Iris Morales and Ian Reifowitz.
• And the Netroots for the Troops crew will be leading a session on Military Sexual Trauma.
• Greg Dworkin is a panelist on Making Sense of Polling Data.
In addition to these community-led sessions, we've got some really meaty topics to address—from the Occupy movement to foreign policy and national security to criminal justice—as well as some sessions that we've not covered before at Netroots Nation, like this panel on transgender issues.
Head on over to our website and take a look at the 70 panels and 30 training sessions we'll have at Netroots Nation this June. I think you'll find this year's agenda is the most diverse, engaging year yet.
A side note on diversity: There's been some concern that Native American Netroots voices won't be represented at Netroots Nation but I want to assure you that's not the case. There are multiple panels (for example: Handcuffs, Conventional Wisdom and Dirty Oil: Activism’s Big Win Against the Keystone XL Pipeline; Organizing Outside the Lines: Reaching Hard-to-Reach Communities Online and Offline; Protecting Voting Rights in Communities of Color in 2012; Promoting People of Color in the Progressive Blogosphere; Building the Movement to Ban Fracking in a Regulation Climate) that will include Native American panelists who will address issues of importance in that community. Once we have a full list of speakers uploaded I think you'll also find that this is the most diverse year we've had yet across the board.
You'll notice that not all the panelists are up on the site yet -- we're in the process of confirming panelists and will be updating speakers frequently over the next couple of weeks weeks. So check back frequently as we continue to update.
And if you haven't registered yet, do it now before prices go up on April 16.