The Dinkins Forum

Named for the first African American mayor of the nation’s largest city, the David N. Dinkins Leadership & Public Policy Forum provides a vehicle for understanding the elements of successful and failing urban programs, policies and initiatives. For the past 17 years, this annual forum has addressed many pressing issues including education, the environment, labor, tourism, immigration and fiscal crises, and has featured such notables as US Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Kirsten Gillibrand, Vice President Al Gore, Rep. Charles Rangel, Mayors Ed Rendell, Michael Nutter and Michael Bloomberg, and labor leaders John Sweeney, Lillian Roberts, Randi Weingarten and Dennis Rivera.

The 15th Dinkins Forum will focus on the recent wave of regressive measures that threaten to restrict voter participation, including the immediate effects and historical impact of new laws aimed at impeding the voter registration process, increasing voter eligibility requirements, and restricting participation of certain segments of the voting population.

15th Forum - Voting Rights v. Voter Suppression
Keynote by Benjamin Jealous, NAACP President & CEO

• 14th Forum - Crisis in State Budgets
  Keynote by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
• 13th Forum - Economic Recovery in the Cities
  Keynote by Rep. Charles Rangel
• 12th Forum - Global City: New York City as Model & Magnet
  Keynotes by Community Service Society President
  David Jones and Professor Saskia Sassen
• 11th Forum - State & Future of the Harlem Community
  Keynote by Canon Frederick Williams
• 10th Forum - Changing America: National & Urban Responses to Immigration
  Keynote Address by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
• 9th Forum - Affirmative Action & Higher Education
  Keynote by President Lee Bollinger
• 8th Forum - Economic Rebuilding of New York City
  Keynote by Mayor Michael Bloomberg
• 7th Forum - Urban Education: Making New York City Public Schools Work
  for the Community
  Keynote by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
• 6th Forum - Livable Urban Communities: The Environmental Movement &
  Community Building
  Keynote by Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater
• 5th Forum - Labor & Community Building
  Keynote by SEIU Local 1199 President Dennis Rivera
• 4th Forum - Culture & Tourism: Tools for Urban Economic Development
  Keynote by Representative Charles Rangel
• 3rd Forum - Welfare to Work: Can the Business-Government Partnership Succeed?
  Keynote by Mayors Edward Rendell and Norman Rice
• 2nd Forum - Urban Agenda for Election ‘96
  Panel of Governors Jim Florio, Ann Richards and Lowell Weicker
• 1st Forum - Empowering America’s Cities
  Keynotes by Vice President Al Gore, HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and Mayors Arnold Webster and Bill Campbell