San Diego City College will be hosting the sixth annual Social Justice and Education Conference on March 24-25 on Zoom.

The two-day virtual event will feature panel discussions and presentations that offer meaningful insight into the challenges facing City College’s local community.

“A lot of the issues being addressed in these panels are issues students are feeling,” said Manuel Paul Lopez, City College English professor and member of the conference planning committee. “They are very real.”

The conference will highlight the work of Think Dignity, a local nonprofit organization that emphasizes hands-on advocacy and activism with the unhoused community. 

According to Lopez, one of the main goals of the event is to call students to action and show them how they can be agents of change in their communities.  

“The action component is really important,” Lopez said. “It is transformative.”

Each day of the event will include a morning keynote and a wide range of speakers, presenters, and sessions to choose from.

The event’s keynote speakers are award-winning author Willie Perdomo, as well as Detroit educator and author Yusef “Bunchy” Shakur. Local presenters involved in this year’s event include human rights attorney Annie Rios, activist Sharlia Lebreton-Gulley Paz and physiologist Carol Lynn Curchoe Burton.

Visual Audio Monologue Performance, a session sponsored by  City College’s City Voices and local community arts organization So Say We All that is also known as VAMP, will feature eight City students telling their own true stories inspired by the theme “Wake Up.”

For more information and a complete schedule, click here.