MDSS: Reframe with Rebecca Solnit & Steve Phillips

Step into “Reframe,” the inaugural Merritt Dialogue Speaker Series—an electrifying live conversation between Rebecca Solnit and Steve Phillips, moderated by Jane Kim of the Working Families Party. Together, they’ll explore the tensions and intersections between cultural storytelling and political strategy, between hope and power. Be part of an evening where differing ideas don’t divide—they deepen. Leave not with answers, but with richer questions and fresh insight to carry into your communities, your conversations, your everyday.

Series description: The quarterly Merritt Dialogue Speaker Series, launching in Oakland’s California Ballroom in 2025, invites us into generative conversation—where two thinkers, whose viewpoints may align or diverge, engage in dialogue that engenders critical thinking and deepens understanding of complex issues. Our aim is not to sway but to illuminate, cultivating nuance and richer perspective. Rather than trickle up or down, insights move in and out, sending reverberations through our myceliadic communities, weaving empathy and complexity into our collective consciousness. Participants will leave not only transformed as individuals, but also as threads in a larger societal stitching, our communal weave ever more intricate and alive.