Moderator: Tony Talbott, University of Dayton Human Rights Center

• Tara Campbell, Community Activist and Dayton United for Human Rights (DUHR) Steering Committee Member
• Youssef Abdul Aziz Elzein, Community leader
• Amaha Sellassie, Co-creator of the Dayton Lab
• Stephanie Van Hoose, REACH Indigenous Advocacy
• Tony Talbott, University of Dayton Human Rights Center
• Shenise Turner-Sloss, Dayton City Commission

This session will outline the mission, journey, and impact of declaring Dayton as a human rights city.

Uniting Dayton for Human Rights movement was initiated in January 2022, in collaboration with the Collaboratory, City of Dayton Human Relations Council, University of Dayton Human Rights Center and other community organizations. We are a movement of engaged community members, partners, and collaborators, who envision: a just community where everyone is accountable to one another and all live in dignity. We will accomplish this by listening to, educating, and involving members of the community and elected officials to ensure accountability for the promotion and protection of human rights. Our goal is to advocate for a formal statement of support from the city government for human rights, justice, and equality for all people of Dayton Ohio. In addition, to establish a collaborative structure of city officials and community members to achieve these aims.

We challenge all community members (Stakeholders) to work together to promote change and identify meaningful actions along with commitments to further our collective goals. Using human rights as a grassroot movement, will allow the community to form a resolution and establish a real partnership of shared authority between residents and government

officials (Duty Bearers) to ensure the protection of human rights. You may ask, what are human rights? Claims that we all hold equal because we are human, living a life in and of dignity where the government is responsible to respect, protect and promote those rights. These rights are not charity, humanitarian assistance, or optional, they are born given for quality living.

Declaring Dayton as a human rights city will bring history to the state of Ohio and the city of Dayton. We aim to have one thousand or more online signatures to submit with the proposed resolution to the city government by December 10, 2023, which is national Human Rights Day.