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The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington will next week be the site for both the NFL’s Fall League Meeting and a high-level symposium on why Washington’s NFL team should end its use of a racial slur as its mascot.

The Oneida Indian Nation will be holding a public conference on Monday, October 7 that will feature congressional lawmakers and other leaders who have joined its “Change the Mascot” campaign.

The conference, which will be open to the press and the public, will be a chance for NFL officials, policymakers, and other concerned citizens to hear from federal legislators, community leaders and experts about the campaign. Among those speaking will be:

• Ray Halbritter, Oneida Indian Nation Representative
• U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (Washington, D.C.)
• U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum (Minnesota), Co-Chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus
• Kevin Gover, Director of the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of the American Indian
• Dr. Michael Friedman, a noted clinical psychologist who has done extensive research on the psychological effects of stigma and discrimination
• Dr. David Borgstrom, President of the Cooperstown (NY) Central School District Board of Education
• Two students from Cooperstown (NY) Central School District who led the effort to change the school’s mascot from “redskins” to “hawkeyes”

The upcoming event has already generated an incredible amount of media coverage in top-tier outlets from the nation’s capital and all across the country.