2015 Conference

Florentine Films has produced some of the most acclaimed documentary films ever made, including Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” and “The Dust Bowl.” David McMahon, producer of “The Central Park Five” and “Jackie Robinson” shared clips from these films and discussed their social and cultural significance in American life.

Glenn Harris, the President of the Center for Social Inclusion, led an interactive session about racial equity at the 2015 Purpose Built Communities Annual Conference in Fort Worth, TX. He discussed the reality of race and its historic, cultural, and institutional impact, the need for progressive economic policy development and the need to reimagine the roles and practices of community and government in addressing inequity.

Patrick Sharkey, Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University and author of “Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality” spoke at the Purpose Built Communities Annual Conference in Fort Worth, TX. He discussed how in the 1960s, many believed that the civil rights movement’s successes would foster a new era of racial equality in America. Four decades later, the degree of racial inequality has barely changed. To understand what went wrong, Professor Sharkey shared why we have to understand what has happened to African American communities over the last several decades and what urban policies that have the potential to create transformative and sustained changes in urban communities and for the families that live within them.