A rich schedule of interactive workshops, community forums, featured speakers, field experiences, and arts events will promote mutual learning and foster future collaboration.

In cities across the United States, everyday people are working to transform our democracy by strengthening their voices in local government, shaping an economy that works for all, and reimagining public safety and health. They are organizing locally to imagine and build a new future where people have good jobs, affordable housing, climate justice, and a real voice in the decisions that affect our lives.

Join us in Buffalo for Uniting on the High Road, June 20-22, 2024, a conference bringing together leaders, advocates, researchers, and organizers from these broad movements for racial and economic justice and authentic democracy. The conference will include speakers from local and national organizations like PowerSwitch Action, Good Jobs First, ALIGN, Demos, Bargaining for the Common Good, Grassroots Collaborative of Chicago, New Yorkers United for Child Care, Starbucks Workers United, and local unions, universities, and partners in government. Come and take part in interactive workshops, field experiences in Buffalo neighborhoods, art performances, and collective artmaking as we learn from each other and imagine future collaboration within and across cities.

The conference is hosted by Cornell University ILR Buffalo Co-Lab and the Partnership for the Public Good. Since 1946, Cornell ILR’s education programs, action research, and public policy work have advanced the mission of an economy that works for everyone. Partnership for the Public Good, founded in 2007, is a community-based think tank that builds a more just, sustainable and culturally vibrant Buffalo Niagara together with its partner network of more than 360 community groups, nonprofits, and civic organizations. Our collaborative organizations are dedicated to advancing social, racial, and economic progress and the promotion of knowledge for the public good.

Buffalo is home to a vibrant network of organizers, advocates, researchers, artists, and workers who continue a great tradition of activism and organizing in our region. Buffalo was an epicenter for historic social movements including abolition, the Underground Railroad, labor organizing, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and many other forms of grassroots activism. Now, residents and community groups continue to resist injustice and organize for a better future, including organizing the first Starbucks stores in the US and many other emerging unions.