ASU’s participation in the Summit of the Americas

The United States will host the Ninth Summit of the Americas the week of June 6-10 in Los Angeles. The focus will be on “Building a Sustainable, Resilient, and Equitable Future” for the Western hemisphere. Arizona Horizon spoke with Dan Restrepo of the Equis Institute, a hub for leaders in the Latino community working to increase civic participation in American democracy.

ASU is finding itself very involved in this major event. The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and the Equis Institute are teaming up to find solutions to these issues.

In partnership with the U.S. Department of State, the Cronkite School and Equis Institute are hosting the Media Summit of the Americas, a first-of-its-kind event which will invite policymakers, government representatives and accredited journalists covering the week-long summit. The conference will address the serious challenges our information environment faces in the hemisphere and hear from leading experts and keynote speakers from Latin America and the U.S., including U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.

The Media Summit is part of the larger Ninth Summit of the Americas, the only hemispheric meeting of leaders from the countries of the Americas which serves as a forum to address our region’s shared challenges and opportunities. The summit has met every three years since 1994. 

The theme of this year’s Summit of the Americas is “Building a Sustainable, Resilient and Equitable Future.”

The multilingual Media Summit event, which will take place on Tuesday, June 7 at the ASU California Center at the historic Los Angeles Herald Examiner Building, will feature a series of conversations and breakouts with a focus on fact-checking best practices; platform accountability; reporting under high stakes and more. 

The event has not been hosted by the United States since the inaugural meeting in Miami in 1994, making the 2022 summit in Los Angeles President Biden’s highest priority event for the region, according to the State Department’s website.

The June summit will focus on issues like climate, health and social justice.