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

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Program | Highlander Staff

Program

Highlander has long been known for its ability to stimulate people's best thinking on questions of social and economic justice.

Today, when many progressive people feel stuck in old methods, balkanized by competing theories, and discouraged about the left's ability to mount a movement, we want to give people an opportunity to discuss some of the most critical problems facing us and to develop new ideas and new approaches to the difficult but vital task of social and economic change.

Desegregation workshop at Highlander.

We will do this through a Grassroots Think Tank that will sponsor intensive sessions on the problems we face and on issues and strategies that offer the potential for organizing and movement building. These sessions will bring together African Americans, Latinos, and youth from Southern grassroots organizations, along with progressive academics and promising leaders in a mix that can present a variety of perspectives on the topics discussed.

The questions that have been brought to us and those we have discerned focus on two areas:

• How can we build and sustain a movement? This includes such things as how to do cross-race organizing, how to connect local struggles to international ones, how to transition from Civil Rights and baby-boomer leadership to younger leadership, how to expand from a black/white racial analysis to a multi-racial analysis, and how to add organizing to service delivery organizations.
  
  
• What issues offer common ground for organizing across race and gender? These include state repression, which targets youth, Latinos, and African Americans, among others; low-wage workplaces such as food production or the tourist and service industries that primarily employ youth, African Americans, and immigrants; criminalization and imprisonment; and right-wing organizing in our communities.

The ideas and strategies developed at these meetings will be documented and widely disseminated.

For more information about Highlander's Grassroots Think Tank, contact one of the members of our staff listed below.

Highlander Staff

Susan Williams (lead)
E-mail: swilliams at highlandercenter.org
Phone: (865) 933-3443 x229

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