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EARNCon 2025
November 12 - November 14
It was great seeing you at EARNCon 2025!
Stay tuned for EARNCon 2026 details
EARNCon 2025: Conference Agenda
Last updated 11.4.25 (Agenda is subject to change)
DAY 1: Wednesday, November 12, 2025
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- 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM: (Optional) Pre-Con Activities
- ○ Additional information about pre-conference opportunities are available in Swapcard.
- 1:00 – 7:00 PM: Registration
- 1:00 – 4:00 PM: Bootcamps & Meetings
- ○ Building Power Outside the Statehouse and City Halls: How Organizing Can Boost Your Advocacy Game
- ○ State of Working X: Data Bootcamp
- ○ EARN Executive Directors Meeting
- 5:00 – 7:00 PM: Opening Plenary Session and Dinner
- ○ Keynote: Julie Su
- ○ Welcome to New Orleans
- 7:00 – 9:00 PM: Welcome Reception
DAY 2: Thursday, November 13, 2025
- 7:30 – 8:30 AM: Breakfast
- 8:30 – 9:30 AM: Plenary Session
- ○ Navigating the Trump Economy: What the Administration’s Actions Mean for Workers and Their Families, and How States Can Respond
- 9:45 – 11:00 AM: Workshop Sessions
- ○ Countering Pro-Business Narratives and Building Public Solidarity
- ○ Community and Worker Power in Infrastructure and Beyond
- ○ Centering Black Children and Families in State Policy Work: Early Lessons from the ECOSYS Initiative
- ○ Taking Care of Each Other: How Researchers, Advocates, and Grass Roots Organizations are Resisting the Deportation Regime and Fighting to Change the Narrative
- 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM: Lunch/Break
- 12:30 – 2:00 PM: PREE Plenary Session
- ○ We’ve Been Here Before: Project 2025 as White Supremacist Backlash
- 2:15 – 3:30 PM: Workshop Sessions
- ○ Progress & Tensions at the Intersection of Labor, Environmental, and Climate Justice
- ○ Defending the Public Sector
- ○ Building an Economy for the Many, Not the Few: State Campaigns to Fight Corporate Concentration and Build Economic Power
- ○ Building Living Wages One Block at a Time: Industry-Level Strategies for Increasing Wage Floors
- 3:45 – 5:00 PM: Networking, Roundtable, and Open Houses
DAY 3: Friday, November 14, 2025
- 7:30 – 8:30 AM: Breakfast
- 8:30 – 9:45 AM: Workshop Sessions
- ○ Building the Right Way: Creating Abundance for Workers and Communities
- ○ Protecting Public Schools from Existential Threats
- ○ Defending Democracy: How Researchers and Advocates are Protecting Ballot Initiatives and Fighting Back Against Preemption
- ○ PREE: Black Cities
- 10:00 – 11:15 AM: Workshop Sessions
- ○ Leveraging State Tax & Budget Fights to Build Power and Advance Economic Justice
- ○ PREE: The Growing Cost of Policing and the Carceral State
- ○ New Technology, Old Ideology: The Use of AI to Advance a Longstanding Corporate Agenda and How Advocates Are Fighting Back
- ○ Community Benefits Agreements and Community-Labor Coalitions: How to Create Virtuous Cycles for Workers and Families Through Local Economic Development
- 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM: Lunch
- 12:30 – 2:00 PM: Closing Plenary Session
- 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM: (Optional) Pre-Con Activities
We are thrilled to host EARNCon in partnership with the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE), at the Loews Hotel in New Orleans, LA from November 12–14, 2025.
New Orleans has a rich history, one that is inextricably tied to racial, economic, and social justice movements. For example, on November 8, 1892, 30,000 factory and dock workers in New Orleans called for a general strike to demand a union. These workers were later joined by musicians, clothing workers, clerks, utility workers, streetcar drivers, and printers. Importantly, Black and white workers came together to demand a union, pushing back against efforts to divide workers by race. The success of these workers remains an inspiration for broad-based, multi-racial organizing in the South as we see organized labor and their allies, including EARN groups, continue to make inroads today.This year’s conference will center around the theme “Community, Solidarity, Resistance: Building multi-racial worker power in the states” and feature content aligned with EPI’s strategic priorities. At EARNCon 2025, we will lay the groundwork needed for an equity-enhancing, worker-centered, state and local research and policy agenda for 2026 and beyond.
Additional conference information will be available here in the coming weeks. If you have any questions or concerns about registration or the conference, please email [email protected].
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