Tickets for Reclaiming Our Love are sold out! Please contact reclaimingourlove@the-network.org if you would like to be added to the waiting list.
The Network’s Reclaiming Our Love: Social Justice & Domestic Violence Conference will be held in-person May 28th & 29th, 2026 in Chicago. The conference is an important platform to advance social justice and equity frameworks that underpin the antiviolence narrative across multiple levels program, policy, funding, and survivor leadership, to name a few. Since its start in 2021, the conference has served as a shared space for anti-violence activists, advocates, funders, and practitioners to examine non-carceral, non-punitive responses that have employed restorative and transformative justice models. The conference themes have uplifted trauma-informed, survivor-led programming and culturally sensitive frameworks that address gender-based violence work.
Our 2026 conference focuses on ‘Centering Community Voices in Practice and Policy’. If we want to build more equitable, effective systems that consistently fight gender-based violence, we must center communities impacted by it—not as a checkbox, but as a core principle!
Our anti-violence space envisions a lasting shift in ownership of power to survivors and the communities they represent. This shift requires an intentional and strategic centering of community voices, which means recognizing the lived experiences, indigenous and cultural knowledge, and collective wisdom that already exist within communities impacted by violence historically. It means shifting power from institutions to people, and from experts to those with direct experience. It requires deep listening, mutual accountability, and a willingness to share decision-making power. In practice, this looks like co-creating programs and policies with community members from the very beginning, not just inviting feedback after decisions are made. It means investing in survivor and community leadership, compensating community members for their time and insights, and building mechanisms for ongoing dialogue. It also means challenging internal systems that reinforce top-down control and gatekeeping.
The 2026 conference will uplift models and experiences that have shifted power dynamics and demonstrated survivor or community-led anti-violence work. We will continue to build on the foundations that have been set in our last four conferences and move forward with perfecting our understanding of concepts and practices that enable dismantling systemic power-based violence and creating better pathways to justice for survivors and advocates.
