Tufara Waller Muhammad

The Community Arts Network Reading Room recently published an interview with Tufara Waller Muhammad, Highlander's cultural organizer, about how artists can participate most effectively in social justice activism.

Drawing on her experience as an artist, musician, and grassroots organizer, Tufara emphasizes that "Every organizer should be using art and culture as a strategy to help people build bridges." But she notes that this involves more than artists presenting their work in community settings or participating in three-week community residencies.

Instead, Tufara argues, artists must engage in "long-term collaboration" with community people, and they must set aside their desire for personal recognition so they can address the issues that are most important to the community. In her words,

It is really important for community artists to be knowledgeable enough about the local community and their issues in order to be able to inspire people in a way that is related to what is affecting them right then and there. Artists need to be shape shifters who can realize when something isn't working and be able to shift their agenda in order to address the immediate needs of the community.

Tufara also criticizes what she calls "corporate organizing," which tries to "fit people and relationships into a specific timeline." And she urges all community artists and activists to "remember that we are building something bigger than the capitalist system. We are building a new world and a new way of thinking."

You can read the full text of the interview here.

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On July 7-9, 23 people from 17 organizations/communities gathered at Highlander for continued focus on Southern Strategies. Last fall, Highlander had used the occasion of our 75th anniversary to bring southerners together to lift up needs, challenges and cutting edge organizing in the region, and to build on the momentum of the U.S. Social Forum.

Participants in the Southern Strategies Session. Photo by Walter Davis.

This Southern Strategies session built on the one last fall and focused as well on the movement-building opportunities of the elections and how to connect the new energy and momentum around the elections to social justice organizing. Continued work around key questions included:

• Core Values/Unifying Vision
• Funding and Infrastructure and Turf
• Messaging
• Youth
• New Communities/Globalization of the South, Unfinished Business about Race
• Collective Strategy

The gathering was intergenerational, rural and urban, multi-racial, and multi-cultural, and people spent time exploring our shared values and vision. Follow up steps, among others, include a working group on values, and work together on the common interests of educational study groups, opportunities, and tools. Look for our full report next month.

The power of bringing people together to learn from each other was tangible as people impacted by displacement for different reasons - Katrina, immigration, mountaintop removal - learned about each other and developed both personal and political relationships.

Groups participating included Alternate ROOTS, Appalshop, Colectivo Flatlander, Grassroots Global Justice, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Highlander, Midsouth Peace and Justice Center, National Organizers Alliance, People in Defense of Earth and Her Resources, People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, Project South, Southeast Regional Economic Justice Network, Southern Anti-Racist Network, Southern Energy Network, Tennessee Alliance for Progress, and Urban Epicenter.

The gathering was facilitated by Seyoum Lewis (People’s Institute, Southeast Regional Office, Atlanta), Erika Gonzalez (PODER, Austin, TX), and Pam McMichael (Highlander Director). Highlander will convene the next Southern Strategies meeting right after the elections.

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On July 20-26, Highlander will hold its ninth annual Seeds of Fire Youth Leadership Camp, a week-long training program for youth activists age 13-18 and their adult allies.

This year's camp will focus on education and juvenile justice issues. It will include information on the history of the education and juvenile justice systems, alternatives to these systems, and tools and strategies for stopping the cradle-to-prison pipeline, including training for nonviolent direct action. Highlander will provide follow up support to plans developed at the camp.

Education and justice issues had been an important part of previous Seeds of Fire camps, and we are currently working with statewide networks and coalitions addressing these issues in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and helping build new networks and coalitions in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.

The 2008 camp will enable us to bring together some of the key groups involved in these efforts for a week of intensive analysis, information sharing, mutual education, and networking. It will be co-sponsored by the Community Justice Network for Youth and The Gathering for Justice.

Over 150 young people and adults have participated in the eight previous Seeds of Fire camps and are now providing strengthened leadership in their communities. We look forward to telling you more about this year's camp in the next issue of View from the Hill.

You can read more about Seeds of Fire here.

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On May 9th, over three dozen members, leaders, and supporters of the Virginia Immigrant People's Coalition rallied at the construction site for the new Federal Courthouse in Richmond, VA, to protest a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at the site that resulted in the arrest of 33 workers suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

The rally helped draw attention to the impact of ICE raids on immigrant families and communities. It was covered by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, as well as other local media. You can read the Times-Dispatch article here.

The Virginia Immigrant People's Coalition is one of the groups participating in THREADS, Highlander's new multi-racial, intergenerational leadership and organizing school. You can read about THREADS here.

Members of the Coalition also participated in Highlander's March 2008 interpreter training session. Information about our Multilingual Capacity Building Program, which organized and facilitated the session, is available here.

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On June 6, Democracy Now host Amy Goodman interviewed Adrienne Maree Brown of the Ruckus Society about media justice, election protection, and the issue of race in the 2008 election.

During the interview, Ms. Brown mentioned that the term "media justice" was coined at a meeting at Highlander that had a profound impact on the media reform movement.

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: The term was coined five years ago at the Highlander Center in Tennessee.

AMY GOODMAN: Where Rosa Parks trained before she sat down on the bus?

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: Where Rosa Parks trained, where Martin Luther King was. I mean, there's so many great legends that were trained there. And, you know, sitting up on that hill, you know, sitting around in the little rocking chairs, that term was developed. And it was really the idea of not just media reform, not just changing exactly what it is, but really striving towards justice for communities through media.

You can listen to Amy Goodman's interview with Adrienne Maree Brown and read the transcript of their conversation here. A report from the Media Justice Gathering at Highlander is available here.

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Highlander is mentioned in "Will Obama Inspire a New Generation of Oganizers?," an article by Peter Dreier that was published in the spring 2008 issue of Dissent Magazine and on i>The Huffington Post.

Dreier discusses Obama's organizing experience and the history of community organizing in the United States. He cites Highlander as one of "a growing number of training centers" and organizing networks that have "helped recruit and train thousands of people into the organizing world and strengthened the community organizing movement's political power."

You can read Dreier's article in Dissent here and on the Huffington Post here.

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On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail
Charles E. Cobb Jr. Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill. $18.95

SNCC veteran Charley Cobb has written a comprehensive guide to travel in the South if you wish to learn about how people have challenged and changed racial discrimination beginning long before the 1960s. Highlander is prominent in the story - both in its Tennessee location and in South Carolina where the Citizenship School program began. Well written and loaded with individual stories and historic photographs, this book is a real treasure.

* * * * *

Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs
Guy and Candie Carawan. NewSouth Books, Montgomery and Louisville. $21.95

This is a new edition of a historic collection of freedom songs that has been out of print for a number of years. Sing for Freedom contains sheet music for over one hundred freedom songs - including "We Shall Overcome" and "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" - but this volume is more than just a song book. It contains numerous firsthand reports from participants in the freedom rides, protests, and sit-ins, many of them young students, as well as photographs of movement events. Longtime staff members Guy and Candie Carawan collected many of the songs at Highlander cultural workshops between 1960 and 1965.

Sing for Freedom is available through the Highlander bookstore.

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It was hard to ignore all the coverage of the Democratic primaries earlier this year that dismissed Appalachian voters as bigots and hillbillies.

This view of Appalachia is challenged by Ada Smith, an Appalachian Media Institute youth producer and former Highlander intern, in an audio essay that aired on NPR's Morning Edition on May 21st.

Ada's essay, entitled "Appalachia, the Scapegoat for America's Racism," criticizes the analysis of pundits and calls for a real dialogue about race in Appalachia and America, one that isn't based on prejudice or hillbilly stereotypes. As Ada puts it,

I think we may be scared to admit that more Americans than just Appalachians have a race problem. Instead of questioning how we're going to deal with racism as a country, it's easier to make Appalachia the scapegoat, carrying the load.

You can listen to Ada's commentary here.

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Check out the great video about the Appalachian Community Fund.

ACF is a publicly supported, non-profit grantmaking organization that supports grassroots organizing for social, economic, and environmental justice in Central Appalachia (East Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky, Southwest Virginia and West Virginia).

The video captures the voices of ACF grantees and Board members talking about the problems facing their communities and the vital role that ACF plays nurturing hope and activism in the region.

You can view the video by clicking on the picture above, or here. For more information about ACF, visit their website: www.appalachiancommunityfund.org.

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