Beneath lettering that reads “Liberty and union now and forever,” speakers who presented on the Impact Stage of Forbes Under 30 Summit meditated both on society’s current state and their hopes for the future.
Sitting in Faneuil Hall, having woken to the news of the Las Vegas shooting, attendees and presenters alike steeped in a sense of greater context. The Monday morning programming was preceded by a moment of silence for lives lost in Las Vegas.
“We think that environment is very important,” said Randall Lane, editor of Forbes magazine. “What we think is that we have venues that help bring home the momentousness of the issues of the day and hopefully drive some answers.”
Monday’s final panel, “How to Create a Movement,” explored the process of inspiring substantive action around social and political issues.
Panelists included Gavin Grimm, transgender activist and plaintiff in a U.S. Supreme Court case impacting bathroom laws, and DeRay Mckesson, creator and host of Pod Save the People, and the panel discussed current events through a social justice lens.
Opening the discussion, moderator Adam Foss asked Grimm and Mckesson to reflect on waking up to news coverage of the Las Vegas shooting.
“This is all too familiar for so many people,” Mckesson said. “People talk about this being the worst massacre on American soil, and we know that there have been so many instances where whole towns of black people were killed.”
Mckesson added that he’s interested in the pessimism present in organizing communities following mass tragedies.
“There are a lot of people [whose] immediate reaction is that nothing will change; we can’t do anything about it,” Mckesson said. “I want us to check the way that we become pessimistic and we don’t even realize that it’s happening to us.”
When asked how to maintain hope in the face of oppressive institutions, Mckesson said imagination is key.
“A world of equity and joy is a world that we actually don’t know what it looks like,” Mckesson said. “That requires deep imagination.”
Monday’s first panel, “Changing Society Through Pop Culture,” was the first panel in the history of Forbes annual summit to address the LGBT community specifically, according to moderator Raymond Braun.
In line with the panel’s discussion of the success of the LGBT rights movement over the past decade, Braun asked panelists how their work has changed people’s perspectives on the LGBT community.
Asia Kate Dillon, an actor on “Billions,” shared a powerful social media interaction with a fan.
“I used to be transphobic, homophobic and such,” Dillon read from their phone. “I recently came out as bisexual after hating myself for a long time, because I didn’t know it was okay to be anything other than cisgender and straight.”
Contemplating the stage’s true impact, Lane said it lies not predominately in the summit’s stages or speakers but in its aftermath.
“It’s one thing to see something,” Lane said. “What we try to do is take it to the next level is how do we do something about it. By convening everyone together, all these young leaders from all these different fields … what we’re doing is creating community that can then take action to actually solve our world’s biggest problems.”
Minhaj Chowdhury, co-founder and CEO of Drinkwell, is working on one of those problems: clean water. Drinkwell produces and installs technology that purifies arsenic tainted water, which is common in South Asia and highly carcinogenic, according the organization’s website.
In one of the stage’s final events on Monday, Chowdhury pitched for a chance to win $500,000 for his company, and won.
“I just flew in,” Chowdhury told The Daily Free Press. “So [I’m] half jet-lagged and trying to get my bearings on where I am, and [I was] incredibly nervous. But I guess adrenaline just kicked in, and I was able to put it.”
Sarah Shugars, a graduate student at Northeastern, said that the initiative shown by young people, like Chowdhury and the summit’s attendees, gives her hope for the future.
“The truth is that young people are very active,” Shugars said. “This is the most active generation that’s happened in a long time.”
