Three Rivers Market is located on 1100 N. Central St., Knoxville, TN  37917. Their phone number is 865-525-2069.

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Some Bees from the Beehive Collective will be working with the camp this year in a graphic workshop called Graphics for the Commons: Collaborative Design for Movement Building. Everyone will leave with a organization graphic and a Highlander/Seeds of Fire graphic!! We will be silkscreening and using other forms of production so come learn and be ready to teach these skills back home!! For more information about the Beehive Collective check out www.beehivecollective.org

Seeds of Fire Fund
We are please to announce that the Seeds of Fire Fund was able to support the following grantees: BreakOut! In New Orleans; El Pueblo in Raleigh, NC; Kids Rethink in New Orleans; Power U Center for Social Change in Miami, FL; SEEED Inc. in Knoxville, TN; and VAYLA in New Orleans. All of these organizations are doing amazing work and we are happy to support them!!!
Deadline for the next round of funding is September 15, 2013.

Travel Fund
The SoF Travel Fund is a one-time small grant fund to help with either event or conference travel needs. The deadline to apply is June 15th and decisions will be made no later than June 27th for a quick summer turnaround.

2012-2013 Seeds of Fire Advisory Committee

The Seeds of Fire Advisory Committee members are Mary Espinosa from Charlotte, NC; Cynthia Moreno from Homestead, FL; Joshua May from Whitesburg, KY; Jarrell “Jay Jay” Strong from Miami, FL; Jorge Ramos from Raleigh, NC; and Luis Reyna from San Antonio, TX.

Save the Dates

Pedagogy of the Theater of the Oppressed Conference – June 27-30th in Oxford, OH
www.ptoweb.org

Alternate ROOTS Annual Meeting – August 6-11th in Arden, NC
www.alternateroots.org

STAY Summer Institute August 8-11th at Highlander
www.thestayproject.org

Seeds of Fire Fund Deadline- September 15th

Highlander’s Homecoming –September 20-21st at Highlander

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Caption: Seeds of Fire campers share their experiences and strategize together.

Jewel Bush has written a wonderful article for Uptown Messenger about Myron Miller, a teenager who attended Highlander’s Seeds of Fire camp and has since put the skills he learned there to good use organizing his community in an attempt to save his high school from closing. As a result of his efforts, students now have a voice in selection of their principal and have had a number of their recommendations enacted by the school system.

“It was a life changing experience for me to attend Highlander,” Miller says in the article. “I knew it was time to go back home and do some nonviolent direct action.”

Jewel is the Communications Coordinator for SEIU Local 21LA, which worked with Highlander this spring as part of the Zilphia Horton Cultural Organizing Residencies to put together a New Orleans-style cultural celebration for the release of its State of the Schools participatory action research report. Myron Miller was there for that event. We’ll have a detailed reflection on the residencies for you in our next edition, and in the meantime, make sure you read Jewel’s full article here!

The post Seeds of Fire Alumni Organizes for Education appeared first on Highlander Research and Education Center.

Activists and organizers from across the South do some actual jamming as part of the Southern Jam. Photo by Abeni El-Amin

In March, Highlander hosted the Southern Jam in collaboration with the Emerging ChangeMakers Network, YES!, Grassroots Democracy, and Southern Partners Fund. The Jam brought together 30 activists, organizers, leaders, and thinkers ages 20 to 43 from across the South to strategize about the best ways to work together for progressive change in the region. The gathering centered around relating to each other differently, building new models, creating new policies, and striving for change on multiple levels: personal, interpersonal, and systemic.

The mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, neighbors, and children at the Jam acknowledged the many different paths toward creating a new South, and focused on finding ways to support each other regionally in the local work which is at the heart of building stronger communities. As they move forward into the next phase of this ongoing “think-act tank,” participants will develop skills and common resources, take their local work to a larger scale, plan future Jams across the region, and stay connected through learning exchanges, forums, and monthly calls.

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Susan Williams and Elandria Williams facilitate 70 activists from diverse backgrounds at the Extreme Extraction Summit. Photo by David Braun.

Earlier this year, Highlander Education Team members Elandria Williams and Susan Williams facilitated an Extreme Extraction Summit in upstate New York. The summit brought together 70 activists from groups across the country (including Alaska!) who are organizing to fight coal, oil, fracking, uranium extraction, tar sands, industrial biomass, and their devastating effects on communities and environments. During the snowy weekend at the beautiful Ashokan retreat center, Highlander staff led the groups through exchanges that shared their experiences, developed strategies, sang songs and worked to join themselves together into a broader, stronger movement to overturn the deeply-rooted, complex system of business and government that profits off of energy while destroying the lives and health of local communities.

Participants in the Summit established general principles for their work together, including an acknowledgment of the strength of their diversity, a promise that no people should have to suffer in order to provide energy for others, and, at the core of Highlander’s approach, the understanding that those most affected by the issue of energy extraction are the most qualified to solve it. They also left with specific, concrete plans for moving the work forward, collaborating, and creating the infrastructure which will combine the strengths of different groups without bogging them down with bureaucracy or replicating already existing efforts. As Mathew Louis-Rosenberg, one of the Summit’s organizers, put it, “There was an incredibly powerful feeling in the room during this summit that we were on the cusp of something very big, but whether that proves to be true depends on the work we put in now and [the] ways in which we do our work differently back home with our renewed commitment to solidarity.” A follow-up summit is being planned for later in the year.

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Sandra Steingraber talks to Bill Moyers shortly before beginning her jail sentence. Video from Moyers and Compan

Of twelve protesters charged with trespassing, Steingraber and two others refused to pay the fine. In her prepared sentencing statement, Steingraber said, “Inergy has been out of compliance with EPA regulations every quarter for the past three years. In spite of this, Inergy applied for, and has received, from the state of New York a permit to discharge, every day, an additional 44,000 pounds of chloride into Seneca Lake… a source of drinking water for 100,000 people. Those industrial discharges trespass into the bodies of those who drink it. Additionally, Inergy’s planned 60-foot flare stack will release hazardous air pollutants, including ozone precursors. This kind of air pollution is linked to heart attack and stroke risk, preterm birth, and asthma in children. Thus does Inergy trespass into our air and lungs. To bring attention to such hazards for the Finger Lakes–and for the act of protecting water, which is life itself–I trespassed. It was an act of civil disobedience. For that, and because I have deep respect for the rule of law, which Inergy company does not, I am willing to go to jail.”

Inergy’s plans are currently under review by the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. You can leave a statement of support for Sandra Steingraber and her colleagues on her facebook page.

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Students from Emory & Henry College who visited Highlander to learn about its history and methodologies.

Highlander has recently hosted a number of university groups, including the Bonner Scholars from Carson-Newman College, who came to Highlander for their Day of Service in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Bonner Scholars are part of a program through the Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, which provides around 1500 students at over 27 colleges and universities with scholarships in exchange for their commitment to community service and activism. Andre Canty, a member of Highlander’s Development and Communications Team, welcomed the 40 students and engaged them in our Living History discussion at the Workshop Center. The scholars then worked with Stephanie Mc Aninch, Operations Coordinator, and Johnny Bailey, Buildings and Grounds Manager, to clear out the garden and apple orchard.

Students from Emory & Henry College also came to Highlander for a day long workshop on Community Organizing.  This group included students from a Race, Class, Gender & Sexuality class as well as students in a Community Organizing class.  They were here to learn about Highlander’s history, with a particular interest in Civil Rights and organizing in the Appalachian region, as well as Highlander’s methodologies, including how to organize communities and how to situate local action within the broader movement for social justice. At the end of the day, they wrote and performed songs and skits about Highlander’s methodologies, which not only revealed all they’d learned that day but were so funny they left Stephanie in tears.

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The Fund provides grants of up to $2,000 for a wide variety of cultural projects, including performance and visual art, workshops and conferences that use culture to organize and mobilize communities for action, and research and preservation of Civil Rights Movement documents and history. Requests are accepted from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. All Fund-supported projects must work for the benefit of African-American communities, and we strongly encourage proposals from diverse racial and ethnic communities working together to fight racism, economic and environmental injustice, sexism and homophobia.

More information is available on our website, as is the application form, or you may contact Kristi Coleman at 865-933-3443 x221 or coleman@highlandercenter.org.

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Grace Boggs, author, organizer and activist for over 70 years

We’re especially thrilled that Dr. Grace Lee Boggs, founder of the Boggs Center in Detroit, will be taking part in the festivities as a guest of honor. Born in 1915 to Chinese immigrant parents, Grace Lee Boggs has been an activist and organizer for 70 years, and has been a part of the major U.S. social movements of that time, including the labor movement, the Civil Rights movements, and the struggles for racial, gender, and environmental justice. She founded the Boggs Center with her husband and collaborator James Boggs to develop the leadership capacities of individuals and organizations committed to creating a more just and sustainable society. And at the age of 95, she released her most recent book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century.

We’ll let you know about more details in the coming months, but make sure you save the date now—we want to see all of you here on the Hill in September!

Attendees enjoy last year’s 80th anniversary celebration.
Photo Credit: Emily Smallcomb

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