LIVING LEGACY TOUR July 23 – Aug 1, 2016
Applications are due by June 10th.
Black bodies are murdered every 28 hours in the U.S. Police officers are taking our people without judicial penalty. The prison system is largely privatized and depends on local and federal policies that criminalize, destabilize, and profit off of people of color. One in three Black men will be imprisoned in their lifetime according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and Black women are three times more likely to be incarcerated than White women. The South is a hotbed for escalated repressive social and legislative attacks, on people of color, women, immigrants and refugees, lesbigaytrans people, youth and working class people. Felony disenfranchisement and a surge of voter disenfranchisement laws overtly designed to keep people of color and the poor away from the polls are sweeping the south. Nearly every southern state has passed restrictive voting laws in the last few years. These attacks have mobilized cross sector and cross-issue organizing efforts to stop this repression, work for progressive policies and build alternative infrastructure. We will combine Highlander’s methodologies to collectively develop strategies targeting the root causes and build intergenerational, cross-issue and cross-cultural connections and networks to organize and fight state sanctioned violence against low-income communities and communities of color. Our long-term goals include among others, embarking on tours of the South to connect fights, struggles, and victories of people working in the 1950s-60s on voter registration, civil rights, immigration reform, and lesbigaytrans rights to the work of young people fighting against the same injustices, in the South, today.
This summer, July 23 – Aug 1, 2016 we invite Southern and Appalachian youth-led and youth centered groups organizing for social change to join us on the 2016 Living Legacy Tour. This includes two young people (ages 13-18) and one adult ally (ages 19 and up) from each group. If you are currently organizing to address these issues or interested in learning and building support networks to organize in your community please apply to join us. This year’s tour will go through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana communities. We are looking for Southern and Appalachian youth and adult ally leaders to join the Seeds of Fire Living Legacy tour, an intergenerational group that will be strategizing to address issues of state-based violence. Applications are due by June 10th. For more information call or email Esme Baltazar at 865-933-3443 ext.242 / esme@highlandercenter.org or Kierra Sims at 865-933-3443 ext.232 / kierra@highlandercenter.org.
If you are interested in applying please make sure to send a group application and three individual applications for each one of the participants your group is sending to the tour by June 10th. The applications can be found in the links below.
MAIL-IN APPLICATIONS
Seeds-of-Fire-2016-Application English Group and Individual
Semillas-de-Fuego-Campo-2016-Applicacion Spanish Group and Individual
ONLINE APPLICATIONS
Seeds of Fire Legacy Tour Online Application “https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1S67olLwxuYW0pLjE1O2-GY_G4CtZMPFNCOJ1VFmMXvQ/viewform“>Click here to apply.
SEMILLAS DE FUEGO – APLICACION INDIVIDUAL “https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TXuI7P8irngHSExfMCzZ1509b787y7yZ_AKXV8_K7T4/viewform“>Click here to apply.