(New Market, TN) – The Highlander Research and Education Center is pleased to introduce the members of the inaugural class of Greensboro Justice Fund Fellows at Highlander. Highlander is honored to have been chosen, along with the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, NC, to carry on the social and economic justice legacy of the Greensboro Justice Fund (GJF).
Teumbay (Tee) Barnes is currently Outreach Organizer at FOCAL (Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama). Tee believes that creating change begins within. Her passion is being involved in movements that help alter negative images that destroy communities. She helps create safe and sacred spaces where people are free to advocate for policy change. In her leisure, she enjoys yard sales, reading fiction, traveling, and experimenting in the kitchen. She has also served as an Adjunct Instructor at Trenholm State Technical College.
Darrell Bouldin is a lifelong Tennessean who was raised in a village of less than 200. He dreams of building a better world free of war, poverty, and racism – such as the global Beloved Community. Darrell is the founder of the Coffee Party Progressives, as well as a group of grassroots activists in his city. He serves on the board of the TN Alliance for Progress , the steering committee for the Emerging Changemakers Network, and is a member of the core management team of WorldShift Movement, an alumnus of the Rockwood Leadership Institute, and a 2010 graduate of the New Organizing Institute’s New Media BootCamp.
Ahmané Glover is from Savannah, Ga. She graduated from Loyola University New Orleans with a B.A. in Communications and Spanish. She has lived in New Orleans for almost seven years and has done work and continues to work for HIV/AIDS prevention, education/mentorship programs, violence prevention, economic justice, disaster rebuilding, and community healing through the arts to name a few. Her recent peace building work includes: the Peace by Piece Nonviolence Youth Group, an annual Peace is Power Giant Puppet Parade, and a Peace Recycled Art Curriculum for youth (among other things).
Marcus Hill – Social justice has been a personal focus for as long as Marcus can remember, but he only began thinking about structural solutions during his time at Wake Forest after meeting Cornel West. Marcus interned as a community organizer before moving on to graduate school, and also took part in the Z Media Institute (a progressive political think tank and bi-annual school hosted by the publishers of ZNet/Z Magazine). Marcus has since moved back to Winston-Salem, NC, and is working on projects aimed at increasing community access and participation.
Maria Quezada was born and raised on the South Side of San Antonio, Texas. As the oldest of three children, she was the first in her family to attend college. While a student of the University of Texas at San Antonio, she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Mexican American Studies and a Master of Arts in Bilingual Cultural Studies (with a concentration in Urban Studies). Maria continues to help build bridges between higher education and her community because she feels that education is the best way to overcome poverty and fight for equality.
For thirty years, the Greensboro Justice Fund worked to increase capacity of the progressive movement by supporting over 300 cutting-edge, community based organizations working to end all forms of discrimination and exploitation. The Fund was established to honor and carry on the work of César Cauce, Mike Nathan, Bill Sampson, Sandy Smith and Jim Waller, five community organizers who were murdered in Greensboro, NC on November 3, 1070 by the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis.
Believing in the power of and strategic need for committed and skilled organizers, the GJF at its 30th anniversary announced the donation of its assets to the Beloved Community Center and to Highlander to train organizers in the name of the Greensboro Justice Fund. The Fund was originally created using an award from a civil case that found the city of Greensboro and members of the Ku Klux Klan complicit in the murders.
Greensboro Justice Fund Fellows at Highlander began their year-long fellowship focused on learning, thinking and acting by attending a popular education and community organizing social change workshop at the Highlander Center, during which time fellows worked together as a class as well as part of a larger learning circle of people from around the country. Throughout the year, fellows will have access to mentoring, be networked to each other through technologies, attend a second training at the Highlander Center and be supported in other learning opportunities regionally and nationally to enhance their skills and build relationships.
The Highlander Center serves as a catalyst for grassroots organizing in the South and Appalachia and approaches its 80s anniversary as a world renowned beacon for progressive organizing.