Anima Cafe

Anima Café | Just Compassion: Achieving Justice Goals and Expanding Our Reach During a Time of Fear, Democratic Destruction and Authoritarianism

Host: Shakil Choudhury
Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Time: 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. EST

Register below for the link to join

How do we build the mass movements required to challenge this moment of democratic destruction by the forces underlying Trump and other authoritarians—hyper-capitalism, white supremacy, misogyny, climate denial and other interlinking social injustices? 

While there is no single solution to such enormous, multi-generational problems, a collaboration of North American activists co-led by Anima CVO Shakil Choudhury and author and elder Dr. Loretta Ross, have been reflecting honestly on our experiences of social activism over the last year, identifying both our strengths and weaknesses. We have explored what has worked well to engage people as well as roadblocks that have limited our ability to “expand the tent” including cultures of callouts, cancelling, purity politics and perfectionism. Our belief is that pro-democracy forces cannot be marshalled into movements with real power unless progressives learn to “call in” the “persuadables”, that large mass of people who are open to justice ideals but feel silenced or repelled by some harsh, shame-and-blame practices that are common within DEI activism. 

The result is Just Compassion, a framework and set of practices to achieve social justice and human rights goals, using an ethos of love, fairness and forgiveness to get us there. 

This special Anima Cafe will share our work to date, introducing the 8 principles of Just Compassion as well as related practices social change makers can utilize whether they work in progressive organizations, justice initiatives or movement spaces. Please join us for this important session that provides a long-term strategy to achieving justice goals! 


Anima Cafe 44 – April 29, 2025
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Shakil Choudhury

Author, Chief Visionary Officer & Co-Founder, Anima Leadership

Shakil Choudhury is an award-winning educator, consultant and author with over 25 years of experience in the field of racial justice, diversity and inclusion. He coaches executive teams and has worked with thousands of leaders across sectors in Canada and the United States to help improve their equity outcomes. Shakil also facilitates dialogue processes to resolve inter-group conflict, having led projects internationally as well as with organizations locally. He is the author of Deep Diversity: A Compassionate, Scientific Approach to Achieving Racial Justice. Written in an accessible, storytelling manner, many have called it a “breakthrough” book on issues of systemic racial discrimination due to its non-judgmental approach that integrates human psychology with critical race perspectives. Shakil’s most challenging and rewarding management experience, however, involves his two high-spirited children repeatedly teaching him the humble lessons of fatherhood. To clear his head during the week, Shakil loves to run the beautiful ravine trails near his home in Toronto.

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