Join us on Labor Day Weekend, Sunday, August 31st, from 1:00-9:00 p.m. for the Highlander Homecoming and, a first this year, Apple Festival!

Homecoming 2006 (click here for more pictures)

Highlander is expanding with an 80 acre farm next door that has a beautiful apple orchard. We will be having hayrides and apple picking trips to this farm as part of Homecoming this year, so come and help us plan for the future.

We will celebrate the lives of Lewis Sinclair, Nayo Watkins, James Orange, and other supporters of justice, to remind us of the shoulders that we all rest upon.

There will also be great music, children’s activities, workshops on What’s up at Highlander and Making Change beyond the Election, and a barbecue dinner (including apple desserts!). We are also pleased to share the “One Day of the War - How Would You Spend It?” exhibit from the American Friends Service Committee.

Images from “One Day of the War - How Would You Spend It?”

Directions: Click here for directions to Highlander.

For more information, e-mail us at hrec (at) highlandercenter.org

View from the Hill #27 is now online. Articles include “Art and Activism: An Interview with Highlander’s Cultural Organizer,” “Southern Strategies - July 7-9,” “Upcoming: 9th Annual Seeds of Fire Youth Leadership Camp” “Virginia Immigrant People’s Coalition Protests ICE Raids,” and more…

To read View from the Hill #27, click here. Back issues of View are available here.

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.

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.

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 coming months.

You can read more about Seeds of Fire here.

The Carroll County Times has published an article about longtime Highlander friends and former staff members Guy and Candie Carawan - “Duo Shares Their Passion for Human Rights at Common Ground On The Hill,” by Rachel Hare.

The article focuses on Guy and Candie’s participation in the Common Ground on the Hill Festival, an annual music festival held in Westminster, Maryland. The Carawans performed and facilitated workshops at the event.

The article also talks about Guy and Candie’s work with Highlander, which included the Civil Rights Movement and the Appalachian environmental justice movement, and it notes that Guy “introduced the song ‘We Shall Overcome’ to the civil rights movement by teaching it to members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.”

As Candie puts it in the article, “There’s a huge river of song that has gone through Highlander.”

You can read the article here.

Highlander will hold its annual Homecoming Festival on Sunday; August 31, 2008 (the Sunday of Labor Day weekend). Homecoming will include music, political discussions, great food, and more. Details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Check out this 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.

For more information about ACF, visit www.appalachiancommunityfund.org.

The Community Arts Network Reading Room recently published an interview with Highlander’s cultural organizer, Tufara Waller Muhammad, 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 emphasizes that this involves more than artists presenting their work in community settings or participating in three-week community residencies. Instead, she 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 critizes 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.

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,” challenges 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.

Highlander is mentioned in “Will Obama Inspire a New Generation of Oganizers?,” a recent article by Peter Dreier that has been published in Dissent Magazine and 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 here.