1959 Highlander Way · New Market, TN 37820 · phone: (865) 933-3443 · fax: (865) 933-3424
e-mail: hrec@highlandercenter.org

Visite esta página en español

Much of Highlander's work of the 1980s continued into the 1990s. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, Highlander's work with local organizations struggling with environmental issues resulted in the creation of the Stop the Poisoning program, which provided ongoing support to these efforts.

Jobs with Justice Rally; Knoxville, TN; 1998

Highlander also sponsored several major workshops on the problems caused by declining rural economies in Appalachia and the South. A collaborative church, labor, and community project on the growing number of factory closings resulted in the formation of the Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network (TIRN), which continues to address structural economic issues like free trade and living wages. (For more information on TIRN, see their Web site at http://www.tirn.org.) Adult and youth leadership development also continued throughout the decade, as did as cultural work.

In the late 1990s, the Highlander staff and Board undertook a major strategic planning process to analyze current conditions and provide an overall focus for Highlander's work. This process identified economic justice and democratic participation as common themes that connected groups working on many different issues. It also affirmed Highlander's commitment to Appalachia and the South, the continuing need for Highlander to serve as a democratic gathering space for local organizations, and the importance of keeping alive a sense of regional, national, and international struggles.

As the new century dawned, Highlander worked hard to transform this strategic thinking into effective support and capacity building for local organizations. The staff and Board identified young people, poor and working class people, people of color, and lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender people as marginalized populations and important targets for organizing. As a result, a newly formed education team decided to focus on groups working with these constituencies and to encourage them to join forces to build a multi-racial, multi-generational movement for social and economic change .

Participants in the Seeds of Fire youth leadership camp, summer 2002.

The growing population of immigrants to the southern United States, largely from Mexico and Central America, provided the first new constituency. Highlander helped groups organizing among this population to create a loose educational-support network that functions in Spanish. We continue to provide assistance to this network through workshops and ongoing staff contacts.

As Highlander looks towards its 75th year, many challenges remain. The need to construct a more complete democracy in organizations and communities in this country and around the world is as pressing as ever. Our hope is that by providing a democratic space at Highlander, we can encourage people struggling for justice in their communities, while at the same time building connections across race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual preference, class, and age that will lay the groundwork for a broad movement for social and economic justice.

...to Further Reading and Viewing on Highlander...

top of page