Click for more information about Highlander's 75th anniversary.

1. Save the Date! Highlander's 75th Anniversary Celebration: 8/31-9/2/07
We look forward to seeing you at the 75th anniversary celebration at Highlander this Labor Day weekend, August 31-September 2, 2007.

We'll be making a special announcement soon about the event, which will go first to readers of View from the Hill.

In the meantime, please visit www.highlandercenter.org/anniversary for preliminary information about the weekend.

Highlander's strategic plan outlines new initiatives to strengthen organizing and movement building. To read the Executive Summary, click here (PDF; 322KB).

2. New Initiatives to Strengthen Organizing and Movement Building
Highlander's strategic plan for 2007-2011 charts new initiatives to strengthen organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the South.

The plan responds to the region's changing demographics, the need to develop new leadership for social change, and the need to build bridges across differences of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and age. It includes:

• Developing a new multi-racial, intergenerational organizing and leadership training institute that will include groups from the Deep South, Appalachia, and immigrant communities across the region.
  
  
• Expanding Highlander's youth leadership program to include a focus on activists and leaders in their 20s, and to strengthen intergenerational and cross-generational organizing.
  
  
• Broadening Highlander's work on immigration issues by building bridges between immigrant and non-immigrant communities, and by expanding the immigrant leadership development institute beyond Latino immigrants to include immigrants of African, Asian, Asian Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern descent as well.

An Executive Summary of the strategic plan is available online at www.highlandercenter.org/pdf-files/strategic-plan-summary.pdf (PDF; 322KB). To receive a hard copy, contact Highlander at (865) 933-3443 or hrec@highlandercenter.org.

3. Support the United Mine Workers Campaign for Justice at Peabody Mines
The Justice at Peabody campaign is supporting organizing efforts by miners at 19 coal mines in Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and West Virginia owned by Peabody Energy Company, the world's largest privately owned coal company. The miners are fighting for union recognition and the improved safety protection, health and pension benefits, wages, and working conditions that a union contract provides.

In recent years, Peabody has closed many of its union mines and reopened them non-union, with lower wages and benefits, and less protection for workers. Today, 70% of Peabody's mines are non-union, and the company is using intimidation and pressure tactics to keep them that way.

Since its founding in 2005, the Justice at Peabody campaign has already made significant progress.

• A 2006 report by Religious Leaders for Coalfield Justice and the Interfaith Worker Justice has documented Peabody's callous disregard for the miners' health and safety and its refusal to allow them to organize.
• Over 500 religious leaders have signed a statement calling on Peabody to respect workers' rights.
• Towns in West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois have passed resolutions supporting the Peabody miners.

Peabody miners need and deserve a union contract. You can support their efforts by contacting your Senators and Congressman or by getting your church or community to endorse the Justice at Peabody campaign. If you live in Michigan, Texas, or Wisconsin, where Peabody sells much of its coal to electric utilities, you can also press your local power company not to use Peabody coal until Peabody allows all its workers to join unions.

To learn more about this campaign for justice and to take action, go to www.justiceatpeabody.org.

Participants in the Interpreting for Social Justice workshop in Hattiesburg, MS; 3/2-4/07.

4. Interpreting for Social Justice Workshops in Mississippi and at Highlander
Highlander's Multilingual Capacity Building (MLCB) program took its Interpreting for Social Justice workshop on the road for the first time on March 2-4, with an interpreter training workshop in Hattiesburg, MS. The workshop grew out of Highlander's work with the Mississippi Poultry Workers Center and was designed to meet the need for interpreters working on labor and other social justice issues.

Twenty-one participants from throughout Mississippi and New Orleans attended the Hattiesburg workshop, which was conducted in three languages: Vietnamese, Spanish, and English. The workshop was facilitated by Highlander staff Roberto Tijerina, intern Francisco Flores, and Juan Carlos Cook, a local professional interpreter and participant in a previous Highlander interpreting workshop.

The following weekend, March 9-11, the MLCB program conducted an interpreter training workshop at Highlander with fifteen participants from throughout the Southeast. The facilitation team included Tijerina and Flores from Highlander and Andrea Arias of the Center for Participatory Change in Asheville, NC. In another first, American Sign Language was incorporated into the curriculum, along with Spanish and English.

The MLCB program is planning a regional workshop at Highlander in May, and local workshops in New Orleans, North Carolina, and Florida in the following months. We are also beginning work on a curriculum for an intermediate-level interpreter workshop to be held later in the year.

For more information on the MLCB program, visit www.highlandercenter.org/p-multilingual.asp.

Pictures from the Hattiesburg and Highlander workshops are available in the Highlander's 2007 photo gallery: www.highlandercenter.org/photo-gallery-2007.asp.

5. Highlander Staff Trains Facilitators for National Student Conference
Highlander staff helped train facilitators for the 2007 Idealist Campus Conference, held on March 23-25 in Chicago. Attended by over 900 people this year, the annual Idealist conference is the largest gathering in the country of college students working on social justice issues.

On March 22nd, Highlander staff members Elandria Williams and Roberto Tijerina provided an all-day training for the conference's 85 facilitators, discussing and modeling popular education and facilitation techniques. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and helped set the tone for the conference.

During the conference itself, Roberto and Elandria facilitated an affinity group for students of color. The group discussed movement history as well as the current challenges and opportunities faced by students of color.