Test

“People have moved from fighting for reform to demanding transformation”

Highlander Center Co-Executive Directors Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson and Allyn Maxfield-Steele answer “What are you noticing from this period and moving forward that requires our adaptation?” in this inaugural offering of Highlander’s “As We Re/Gather”

“People have moved from fighting for reform to demanding transformation”

From Aimee Inglis: An organizer for a dozen years, after studying tarot for the last few years I’ve started a monthly blog where I do collective tarot readings for my comrades in the social movement left and our organizations. Last month, I pulled cards to reflect on what we went through during the pandemic, and how we can start to heal and learn from those experiences. I believe the work of spirit and the work of changing our material conditions are twin keys to liberation, and tarot is just one of many ways to support our human development. “Unprecedented upheaval […]

This report was crafted from feedback gathered in a listening and assessment process following the culmination of Highlander’s Appalachian Transition Fellowship program. With support from Dialogue and Design, 20 grassroots organizers in Central Appalachia were interviewed about the values and principles underlying just transition work in the region. They lifted up case studies, opportunities, and challenges toward advancing a transformative vision for new economies in Central Appalachia, particularly as we emerge from 2020, an historic year of loss and resistance that amplified how intersecting crises rooted in white supremacy and capitalism impact our lives and communities in this particular moment.

Highlander Co-Executive Directors Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson and Allyn Maxfield-Steele continue their conversations as part of our As We Re/Gather project, asking questions to examine our understanding of thriving in this time.

The photography exhibit “Nashville: A Pandemic Observed” is on display at the Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville, TN,  through Sept. 30. Curator and photographer Joon Powell, a librarian at the Center and a former news photographer, coped with the isolation of the pandemic by photographing her family’s life at home, ultimately inviting photojournalist friends John Partipilo, Bill Steber and Dawn Majors, who were also documenting the pandemic in their own ways, to collaborate on a show and build community around their work. Joon, Bill, and John each selected a photograph from the exhibit to share as part of Highlander’s As […]

Amira Karaoud is a photojournalist and audio-producer based in Louisville, KY. Karaoud is passionate about telling stories of tight-knit communities who thrive on finding their own authenticities and creating connections around their subculture.  She shares her photo story “Connecting Lands” with our As We Re/Gather project, an excerpt from her larger digital storytelling project “Healing Lands” that explores the potential of food system transformation through the lens of communities in Louisville, KY, who are reimagining and reinventing food security during the coronavirus pandemic.  “Food is powerful. It brings us together, shapes our memories, and empowers our communities, Karaoud shares. “With […]

Hilary Moore and Vincent Bababoutilabo join our As We Re/Gather project in conversation from Germany, sharing reflections on anti-racist organizing in Germany, lessons in organizing amid the pandemic, and global connections in our work coming out of the events of 2020 and beyond.  Hilary Moore is author of Burning Earth, Changing Europe: How the Racist Right Exploits the Climate Crisis–And What We Can Do About It (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2020). She co-authored No Fascist USA! The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today’s Movements (City Lights/Open Media, 2020) and Organizing Cools the Planet: Tools and Reflections to Navigate the […]

Highlander Co-Executive Directors Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson and Allyn Maxfield-Steele join in another conversation as part of our As We Re/Gather project, reflecting on how grief shapes our work and is vital to hold and honor in this period of loss and extended uncertainties.  “How do we prepare ourselves for collective grief, and the ways that we act when we are not our best selves, because we’re in the multiple stages of it? How do we hold each other as grieving people, even now? Even in these virtual ways of being together, how do we hold each other with grace and […]

Highlander Board Co-Chair Makani Themba and adrienne maree brown joined us at Highlander’s 2021 Homecoming to bring light and love in a conversation about what is possible in this moment and for our emergence from this historic period of loss and change.

Over the course of our As We Re/Gather project this year, we invited folks to share their stories and experiences emerging from the last 18 months amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, attacks on democracy, and uprisings to defend Black lives. In the U.S., we have experienced our global connectedness and interdependency in new ways, while systems of white supremacy and globally racialized capitalism have exploited conditions to reinforce false borders and boundaries, deepening existing crises with further harm on public health internationally. Communities across the globe are being impacted by the same root causes and global systems, but white supremacy, […]

This period has made it obvious that we are much more connected than we think and that artificial barriers created because of race, gender, caste, class, religion, geography, physical ability, sexual orientation etc. are not so clear cut in the face of a pandemic. Of course the pandemic also laid bare for us the huge inequities that exist and how some communities have been thrown into the deep end because of the pandemic and how health and healthcare access is deeply determined by one’s social location. In India, poverty, nutrition, caste, gender, religion, geography have all influenced outcomes due to […]

https://vimeo.com/652211981 In this segment of our As We Re/Gather collaboration with Equal Health’s international chapters of its Campaign Against Racism, CAR’s Uganda chapter lays out the impact of vaccine inequity, Western capitalism, and systemic racism on public health and the livelihoods of Ugandans, with clear calls to action on vaccine access and redistribution of wealth and resources: “This inequity we are seeing in vaccine distribution is not an accident. It is a symptom of neocolonial policies driven by capitalist economic models that richer countries have leverage to hold vaccines in the market and leave poorer countries at the mercy of […]