Ericka Huggins is an educator, leading Black Panther Party member, former political prisoner, human rights advocate, and poet. 

For 50 years, Ericka has used her life experiences in service to community. From 1973-1981, she was director of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School. From 1990-2004 Ericka managed HIV/AIDS Volunteer and Education programs. She also supported innovative mindfulness programs for women and youth in schools, jails and prisons. 

Ericka was professor of Sociology and African American Studies from 2008 through 2015 in the Peralta Community College District. From 2003 to 2011 she was professor of Women and Gender Studies at California State Universities, East Bay and San Francisco. 

Ericka is a Racial Equity Learning Lab facilitator for WORLD TRUST Educational Services. She curates conversations focused on the individual and collective work of becoming equitable in all areas of our daily lives. Additionally, she facilitates workshops on the benefit of spiritual practice in sustaining social change.

Oakland City Councilmember Carroll Fife represents the residents of District 3, in Downtown and West Oakland and serves as the chair of the Public Safety Committee. Her priorities include providing low-income housing for Oakland residents and finding permanent solutions to address the homeless crisis, reallocating police resources to invest in community services, supporting essential workers and preserving Oakland’s historical and cultural spaces for Black and Brown communities.

Carroll Fife is an executive director, a community leader, a mother and a fearless freedom fighter. As director of ACCE Oakland, she helped found Moms for Housing and passed legislation at the state and local level to build collective power for tenants. She has fought back against police terrorism and helped to build a network of Black organizations and individuals working together for community self-determination. She has been involved in Oakland electoral politics for over a decade. She is an elected member of the Oakland NAACP’s Executive Committee and serves as the housing chair of the organization. Since 2014, she has managed several campaigns, including Oakland's first ever slate of all Black women candidates for City Council and the OUSD Board. She was a 2016 and 2020 Platform Committee delegate for Senator Bernie Sanders and drafted an amendment for the 2020 Democratic National Convention Platform to make housing a human right.

Carroll’s legislative and electoral accomplishments include the grassroots organizing energy behind Oakland’s Department of Race and Equity, pushing for the Cannabis Equity Permit program, protecting the Coliseum area from gentrification, passing Oakland’s emergency eviction moratoria and pandemic eviction ban, and most recently, pressuring the City Council to reopen the City budget in order to divest from Oakland’s police department to invest in community services. Carroll facilitates many grassroots coalitions, mentors youth organizations and candidates running for elected office and is a trusted advocate and servant of marginalized people everywhere.

Gary L. Cunningham is President and CEO of Prosperity Now, a DC-based national nonprofit focused on creating an economy that works for everyone. Under his leadership, the organization has shifted its strategic focus from simply mitigating the effects of a broken racist system, to transforming that system by testing, investing, and scaling systems-level solutions. Gary’s experience has earned him national recognition as an expert on entrepreneurship, job creation and racial wealth equity.

Gary grew up in both north and south Minneapolis to a single mother. He was 10 years old during the protests and riots of 1967, which were spurred by long-standing grievances in the Black community over lack of access to adequate housing, education, and health care.

Before moving to Washington, DC, to lead Prosperity Now, Gary served as the top leader of philanthropic, health care, public policy, and educational organizations. He held the roles of President and CEO of the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA), Vice President of Programs at the Northwest Area Foundation, and CEO and Director of Primary Care at NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center, a community health and dental clinic and social services agency in north Minneapolis.

Gary has also served as Superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools, the Deputy Director of Civil Rights for the City of Minneapolis. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Policy from Metropolitan State University, located in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Dana King is a classical figurative sculptor who creates public monuments of Black Bodies in Bronze.

King’s work explores a subversive concept in a traditional form. She rescues everyday Black American heroines/heroes from unjust obscurity and then ennobles their tenacity and courage through figurative sculpture, recontextualizing a medium often used to elevate Eurocentric and white supremacist statuary. 

Across countless generations African elders and their descendants have communicated culture, history, and wisdom through storytelling. Dana King continues that tradition in bronze, resurrecting love, and truth from America's buried past. Intense research shapes such memories empowering King to create art that invites people to understand themselves and their lives in a connected and compelling way.

King’s public sculptures are in the Bay Area and across the country. In addition to her most recent bronze bust of Dr. Huey Newton scheduled for installation in West Oakland, CA., her life size bronze artwork is in South Berkeley, California, New Haven, Connecticut and at the Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. She also just installed and dedicated “Monumental Reckoning” in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the first African American woman to create a sculptural installation in the park representing the history of African descendants. 

King prefers sculptures because they inhabit space and space is power. She believes sculpture provides an opportunity to shape culturally significant memories that determine how African descendants are publicly held and remembered.

Equity and justice are integral to Dana King’s art practice.

Sakeena and her younger brother, Charley, were born to loving but drug addicted parents in New York in the early 70’s. In an effort to keep the siblings safe, their grandparents arranged for them to move to Berkeley, California to live with their Aunt Angela, their two older siblings and their 5 cousins. This arrangement made an indelible impression on Sakeena; by watching her Aunt achieve her academic and career goals while raising nine children assured her that she could do anything with her life. Fredrika Newton and Angela were best friends and Fredrika’s son, Kieron, became family. When Fredrika married Dr. Huey P. Newton, Sakeena got to see a caring protector; he was something different to everyone in the family but always present when he was with each person. The world remembers him as the co-founder of The Black Panther Party; an articulate, bright, and fiery man who was steadfast in his beliefs. But, Sakeena will remember him simply as Uncle Huey - a loving and patient man who was willing to listen and be “the peacemaker”. Sakeena visits California as often as possible and resides in New York. She has worked for New York City Transit for the past 23 years.

Greta Ronningen is an Episcopal priest and member of the Community of Divine Love, a monastic community in Southern California. She was the Co-Director of PRISM Restorative Justice, a ministry of spiritual care in the Los Angeles County jails for over 13 years. She is an advocate for those living behind bars and seeks to raise awareness of the injustice of mass incarceration. Greta currently facilitates restorative justice programs and Victim Awareness classes in the California state prison system. She is also a public speaker, retreat leader, and an author (Free on the Inside: Finding God Behind Bars). Greta holds a master’s degree in Spiritual Formation from Claremont School of Theology. A yoga practitioner with over 40 years of experience, she co-founded Yoga Works in Los Angeles and Yoga Zone in New York City. While married to the movie producer Bert Schneider, Greta became best friends with Huey Newton. She was the maid of honor at Fredrika and Huey’s wedding.

At 13, Aaron met and marched with Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This meeting lead to Aaron joining the local civil rights movement and participating in protest marches and demonstrations. He became one of the first Black students to volunteer to integrate the Seattle public schools and he organized the first Black Student Union in the Pacific Northwest at the University of Washington. In 1968, at the age of 19, he was appointed as captain of the Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party, which was the first Black Panther Party Chapter outside of California. Four years later Aaron, and other Seattle Panthers, relocated to Oakland, California - home of the Party’s national headquarters. In 1978, after 10 years and 2 assignation attempts on his life, Aaron resigned his position in the Black Panther Party. He then spent the next 25 years working with gang involved and at-risk youth and raising his 3 daughters as a single father. In 2000, he founded Central House (a nonprofit organization providing transitional housing for young adults) and a youth leadership program in the Seattle public schools. In 2006, Aaron ran for US Senate as a Green Party candidate and in 2012 he published his first book, My People Are Rising - A Memoir of a Black Panther Party Captain. That same year he traveled to Palestine as part of the African American Heritage Delegation. Aaron is currently working on his second book, Journey Through the Black Underground, as well as traveling and lecturing.