Our opening plenary invited us into new possibilities for inclusive prosperity rooted in rights. This session offered a vision of an economy that invests in people through inclusive economic rights, exploring what becomes possible when we recognize immigrant people as essential rights-holders whose flourishing is foundational to our collective prosperity. Through dialogue with pioneering scholars and practitioners, we explored the deep interconnections between inclusive economic rights and immigrant rights. Grounded in the civil, labor, and immigrant rights movements, informed by solidarity and stratification economics, and contextualized in the current context of the Bay Area’s diverse communities, this plenary illuminated what our economy and society can look like when it is designed to promote human flourishing, innovation, and self-determination in peaceful, sustainable, and equitable ways.

But what exactly do we mean by inclusive economic rights, and why frame them as fundamental human rights? Human rights are rights we possess simply by virtue of being human. All people, regardless of what we look like or where we come from, have civil, political, social, cultural, and economic rights. These rights are indivisible and interdependent–they must exist together to reach their full potential. These rights protect our freedom to move, to build better lives for our families, and to keep our families and communities whole.

Inclusive economic rights are fundamental human rights that ensure all people–with affirmative inclusion–have access to what they need to live productive, healthy, and tranquil lives. Inclusive economic rights guarantee housing, health care, family care, debt-free college, dignified work, an income floor, an inheritance, and responsible financial services in intentionally inclusive ways. These rights recognize that when properly resourced, people are innovative and productive agents who make dynamic contributions that benefit themselves, their families, our communities, and our economy. Inclusive economic rights are the foundation for collective flourishing–promoting a more authentic form of freedom, self-determination, and solidarity.

Public narratives around immigrant people have been off course and disconnected from the reality of our day-to-day lives. Current narratives about the contributions of immigrant communities too often reduce their value to economic metrics—positioning them primarily as laborers and consumers—reflecting an extractive economic logic that obscures their full humanity. This narrow framing has limited our collective imagination and perpetuated harmful mental models rooted in extraction rather than mutuality, hiding the truth that immigrant people are not merely participants but active builders and shapers of our communities, culture, and country.

All economic justice and immigrant rights work is narrative change work. At the Summit, Anat Shenker-Osorio named both the opposition’s narrative architecture and the affirmative framework for replacing it. The opposition draws on racial fears and gender panic, economic resentment and status threat, and disgust with government. The Race Class Gender Narrative — which ASO Communications helped develop and test — builds cross-racial and gender solidarity, shared prosperity rooted in racial justice and gender equality, and a government that works for all of us.

In this plenary session, culture change practitioners, strategic communication strategists, and immigrant rights advocates spoke from the frontlines of narrative change — sharing what it looks like in practice to center immigrant communities as co-creators of our shared future, and what philanthropy must fund to make that vision possible at scale.

How Messages Spread: What Philanthropy Must Fund

Anat Shenker-Osorio’s research makes the case for investing beyond message development — in the narrative infrastructure, the relationships, and the conditions that allow a message to actually travel, land, and move people to act.

Activate the choir first. Before a message reaches persuadable audiences, it has to be carried by people those audiences already trust: neighbors, coworkers, faith leaders, organizers. The choir doesn’t just preach to itself — it is the delivery mechanism. Without an activated, equipped choir, the message stays inside the room it was crafted in.

Pass the baton. A message gains traction through coordinated repetition across a coalition — not through a single organization saying something once. Funders must invest in the coalition infrastructure that carries the baton, not just the message itself.

Reach people at scale. A message nobody hears cannot persuade anyone. Philanthropy routinely funds message development without funding the infrastructure to deliver it — paid media, earned media, in-language digital channels. These are not optional add-ons. They are the condition for narrative work to function.

Make bravery visible. People don’t act until they see others like them acting. Visible, relatable, joyful examples of courage convert bystanders into participants and keep them engaged. The movement that throws a better party is the movement people want to join — and stay in.

In an era of brutal, authorized state violence against people based on who they are–the color of our skin, the language we speak, where we work–the truth is clear: We save us. We keep us safe.

The Bay Area has shown how solidarity is a powerful antidote to authoritarianism and the politics of division that pit us against each other based on our identities. Worker organizing in particular reflects people reclaiming their power and shaping democracy itself, transforming our economy from the ground up. Immigration legal representation and advocacy are also essential to this solidarity work, supporting people to defend their rights, challenging unjust systems, and advancing a fair immigration process that respects all families. This session brought critical insights from Bay Area economic justice and immigrant rights leaders on the frontlines who shared on-the-ground strategies for both immediate response and long-term progress.

Speakers explored what authentic solidarity looks like in practice, how philanthropy might be in authentic solidarity with movement leaders and immigrant communities in this moment, what authentic solidarity from local and state governments looks like, and how practicing authentic solidarity can advance inclusive economic rights—helping us not just survive the day, but thrive in the future.

The Bay Area is one of the world’s wealthiest yet most inequitable regions. Our region’s wealth has been built on twin foundations: historical violence—settler colonialism, chattel slavery, exclusionary immigration, and forced relocation—and collective investment through public funding of research, education, infrastructure, and more. Yet this wealth continues to depend on exploiting a global workforce and extracting environmental resources, while systemic failures ensure prosperity remains concentrated rather than shared.

Immigrant workers have long experienced the region’s inequity through low wages, wage theft, unsafe work conditions, and exclusion from basic protections. Now they are increasingly under attack and at higher risk of being exploited. Yet across the Bay Area, immigrant people and workers are organizing themselves for inclusive prosperity and collective power—through workplace and community organizing, know your rights campaigns, public policy advocacy, and establishing their own worker cooperatives. These leaders are also on the frontlines defending themselves, their families, and their communities from racial profiling, workplace raids, and abductions.

Our region has the resources to ensure all people, regardless of what we look like or where we come from, have what we need to live productive, healthy, and tranquil lives. Realizing inclusive economic rights requires ensuring that workers have rights to organize in their workplace and build power. This session explored how immigrant communities are building power through organizing with their co-workers and ownership strategies—and how funders can support these transformative approaches.