Social activists from across the country will begin gathering today on campus for the second annual Solidarity Conference.

Robyn Stephens (senior-sociology), one of the event's organizers, said this year's conference will build upon last year's, which focused on introducing ideas related to solidarity.

"Yes, we know that there is racism; we know that there is sexism; we know that globalization is a problem," Stephens said. "Now what are we going to do about them?"

The conference will include multiple concurrent workshops, two keynote speakers and a free vegan dinner. Registration begins at 1 p.m. today in Osmond Lab, where information about the locations of specific conference events will be available.

Jello Biafra and Howard Zinn are the two keynote speakers of the weekend. The conference's Web site calls Biafra's talk "a spoken-word performance" and says that it will probably include topics such as social responsibility and censorship of the arts.

Zinn is known as an author, historian and social activist.

Both speakers will address audiences in HUB Alumni Hall. Zinn will speak at 12:45 p.m. tomorrow, and Biafra will speak at 1:30 p.m. Sunday.

The organizing body for the conference is the Bread Liberation Collective. Emma Schnitzel (junior-anthropology), another conference organizer, said the name was created because representatives of many different student groups came together to plan for the event.

"It was a new group that formed just to organize the conference," she said.

Stephens said she expects more than 1,000 people, both local community members and Penn State students, to attend. The event is free to students with Penn State IDs, but community members are asked to give one-time donation attend for the entire weekend.