The Enduring Call for Racial Justice presentation will provide an overview of the history of anti-Blackness in the United States. It will examine slavery, U.S. apartheid known as Jim Crow segregation, lynching, and current day mass incarceration, police violence, and the recent attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Aligned with the Maryknoll Monarch Initiative theme of Nonviolence, this presentation will also highlight African Americans who have fought for racial justice including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr, Bryan Stevenson, and Michelle Alexander. Also aligned with the MMI theme of Nonviolence, Alessandra will discuss restorative justice, an alternative response to the criminal legal system and response to harm. She will examine restorative justice’s roots in Indigenous cultures and how it is being used locally, nationally, and globally to solve conflicts and repair harm.

Alessandra Harris is a writer, author, wife, and mother of four. She earned degrees in comparative religious studies, Middle East studies, and a graduate certificate in restorative justice and chaplaincy. She has published three novels and her fourth book, In the Shadow of Freedom: The Enduring Call for Racial Justice, is her first non-fiction title, which won first place for Religion in the Public Square in the Catholic Media Association Awards 2025. In addition to co-founding Black Catholic Messenger, her writing has appeared in National Catholic Reporter, America Magazine, US Catholic, The Revealer, Critical Theology, and The Catholic Worker. She currently volunteers as a chaplain at the women’s jail in Santa Clara County, California.