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1. Support Social Justice - Add Highlander to Your Gift List!
2007 has been an incredible year for Highlander, and we couldn't have done it without the many generous individuals who share Highlander's commitment to social justice.

Please join us in this work by making a year-end contribution to Highlander. We cannot continue our work without you!!!

For a summary of Highlander's activities in 2007 and our plans for 2008, see the year-end letter from Anasa Troutman, the new coordinator of our Development & Communications Team, at www.highlandercenter.org/n-2007-year-end-letter.asp.

To make an online contribution to Highlander, click here. You can also mail your contribution to 1959 Highlander Way, New Market, TN 37820. For information about other ways to contribute, visit www.highlandercenter.org/a-contribute.asp.

Thank you for giving what you can.

2. Holiday Shopping Opportunity! - 75th Anniversary Merchandise Available Online
Just in time for the holidays, Highlander's bookstore is now featuring merchandise from the 75th Anniversary Celebration. Items for sale include:

• 75th Anniversary T-shirts - designed and printed by Liberation Ink.
• 75th Anniversary Tote Bags - natural canvas EveryDay Totes created by ECO BAGS. Each bag sports Highlander's 75th anniversary logo in English and Spanish.
• Weaving Threads of Justice: Highlander Center's 75th Anniversary Book of Years - with amazing photographs from Highlander's archives, a timeline of Highlander's work from the 1930s to the present, and a bibliography of books and videos about Highlander.
• Harmonies from the Hill, Vol.1 - the first of a series of CDs featuring music and stories connected to Highlander's history.
• The 75th Songbook Sampler - a zine-style compilation of historical and contemporary songs representing the music of the people with whom Highlander works.

The bookstore also offers a wide range of books, CDs, and videos on Highlander's history, popular education, and grassroots organizing - all guaranteed to inspire people working for social change.

Buy your holiday gifts at the Highlander bookstore today! Visit www.highlandercenter.org/r-bookstore.asp.

3. Highlander Supports National Gathering on the Criminalization of Youth
On November 17-19, three Highlander staff members participated in the 1st National Convention of The Gathering for Justice, founded two years ago by Harry Belafonte. Over 800 youth and adults travelled to Oakland, CA, for the Gathering, which focused on organizing and training young people to challenge the criminalization of youth and the school-to-prison pipeline.

Highlander helped organize a delegation of 25 southern youth and adult allies from groups across the region, including Power U (Miami), PODER (Austin), Actvists with a Purpose (Grenada, MS), Action Communications and Education Reform (Duck Hill, MS), Families and Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (New Orleans), and a delegation from Knoxville, TN. We also coordinated our efforts with other southern and Appalachian organizations who attended the Gathering, including Appalshop (KY) and the Algebra Project (New Orleans).

The presence of so many southern and Appalachian groups at the Gathering was partly the result of Highlander's eight-year-old Seeds of Fire youth leadership program and the work we have done over the past several years on intergenerational organizing and education and prison-pipeline issues. These efforts include the "Fight the Lockdown" gathering in 2003, the "Pupils, Prison, and Priorities" strategic research workshop in 2005, the Intergenerational Think Tank in 2006, and youth and intergenerational programs we helped organize this year at the U.S. Social Forum and at Highlander's 75th anniversary celebration.

Many of the youth and adults in the Highlander delegation had been to the 2007 Seeds of Fire camp, the Social Forum, and the 75th Anniversary Celebration, so the Gathering was the fourth time they had worked together this year. Together, these sessions have given them valuable tools for local organizing and helped build a sense of regional solidarity that will strengthen their future work in this area.

Tufara Waller Muhammad and the Minister of Culture from Ecuador at FILVEN 2007.

4. Highlander Participates in International Social Justice Forum in Venezuela
On November 9-17, 2007, cultural organizer Tufara Waller Muhammad represented the Highlander Center at the 2007 Venezuelan International Book Fair (FILVEN 2007) in Caracas. Highlander was invited as a special guest to the Book Fair following the participation of Roraima Albornoz, Press Attache of the Embassy of the Republic of Venezuela in Washington D.C., in Highlander's 75th Anniversary gathering.

Highlander was one of several organizations and individuals from the United States invited to attend FILVEN 2007. Other guests included Amiri and Amina Baraka, Ward Churchill, William Blum, Mary Alice Waters (New International magazine), Antonio Gonzalez (Southwest Voter Registration Education Project), and Jimmy Massey (Iraq Veterans against the War).

Tufara was a featured speaker at the Fair's central forum, entitled "The United States: A Possible Revolution," which explored whether fundamental social change is possible in the United States. In her talk, "Rhythm, Resistance, and the Fight for Justice in the U.S. South," she suggested that social change in this country will be led by young people, who are "revolutionizing the country from the inside," and she highlighted the importance of current struggles for racial and environmental justice in this process. She also discussed Highlander's 75-year history of supporting social justice movements and the important role that music and other forms of culture have played in its work.

Tufara was honored and inspired by her participation in the forum, which is consistent with Highlander's commitment to ensuring that our work is informed by international understanding and exchanges. There is much that we can learn from social justice movements in Latin America and the rest of the world, and we look forward to Highlander's continued involvement in such efforts.

For links to press and online coverage of FILVEN 2007 and Tufara's speech, visit www.highlandercenter.org/n-press.asp. To see pictures from Tufara's trip, visit www.highlandercenter.org/photo-gallery-filven2007.asp.

5. Highlander and the We Shall Overcome Fund Support State of the Nation Festival
On October 4-6, Tufara Waller Muhammad, Highlander's cultural organizer, helped facilitate a workshop on cultural organizing at the fourth annual State of the Nation Art and Performance Festival in Jackson, MS.

This powerful gathering brought together artists, activists, and community residents from across Appalachia and the South for performances, workshops, and dialogue that explored the many issues facing communities in the region and the use of culture as a strategy and an organizing tool. One of its main goals was to help keep the Gulf Coast in the national spotlight by inviting artists from across the United States to see first-hand the region's slow rebuilding process.

The performances at the festival ranged from Hip Hop Spoken Word to African Dance, and featured artists from New Orleans that were affected by Hurricane Katrina, as well others from Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida. Tufara reported that they were "some of the best . . . I have seen this year. The pieces were well thought out and really connected to the communities that people came from."

The State of the Nation Festival was funded in part by a grant from the We Shall Overcome Fund, which distributes the commercial royalties from the song "We Shall Overcome" to projects that use arts, culture and community activism to organize for social, economic, and political justice to the benefit of African American communities in the South. For more information about the We Shall Overcome Fund, visit www.highlandercenter.org/wsoc.asp.

SACE staff & volunteers prepare the anemometer tower at Highlander.

6. Highlander Explores Installing a Windmill to Generate Electricity
In late September, staff and volunteers from the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), with help from Highlander staff, installed an anemometer tower on the top of the hill at Highlander to measure whether we get enough wind to use a windmill to generate electricity.

The tower and related equipment are on loan from SACE and will be at Highlander for 6-12 months. SACE will analyze the results monthly. If we do get enough wind for a windmill, we could sell the electricity to the Tennessee Valley Authority through their Green Power Switch program.

Installing the anemometer tower and exploring the possible installation of a windmill are both part of Highlander's 75th Anniversary Capital Campaign, and reflect our commitment to environmental justice and sustainability.

Data from the anemometers on the tower will be posted on the Highlander website as it becomes available. For more information, visit www.highlandercenter.org/n-anemometer.asp. To see pictures of the installation, visit www.highlandercenter.org/photo-gallery-anemometer.asp.

Pete Seeger on Highlander's 75th. To view, click here.

7. Pete Seeger on Highlander's 75th Anniversary

Pete Seeger, a longtime friend and supporter of Highlander, honored Highlander's 75th anniversary with a video tribute that was played during the benefit concert on September 1st. The video is now available online at www.highlandercenter.org/anniversary/video.asp.

Other pictures, audio clips, and video clips from the celebration are available on the Highlander website at www.highlandercenter.org/anniversary/documentation.asp.

8. Press and Online Coverage of Highlander's Work
Highlander is receiving extensive press and online coverage for its 75th anniversary and its ongoing work for justice. The following are a few recent examples.

• "Will Democracy Survive in the 21st Century? Why Progressive Leaders Need to Know About Cultural Organizing," by Judi Jennings; Huffington Post, 10/30/07. This blog highlights Jennings' notes and analysis from the 75th Anniversary Celebration.
  
  
• Four articles in the Fall 2007 issue of Race, Poverty, & the Environment :
• "Mónica Hernández, Highlander Research and Education Center: 'The only way change is going to happen is from the bottom up'," based on an interview by Diana Pei Wu
• "Pancho Arguelles, Colectivo Flatlander: Understanding Transformation," based on an interview by Diana Pei Wu
• "Civil Rights Movement Origins at Highlander Educational Sessions," by John Hurst
• "Educating and Organizing," by Mike Miller.
  
  
• "Film Review - Morristown: In the Air and the Sun," by Mónica Hernández; Ark Magazine 24 (Fall 2007). Morristown offers a working-class view of globalization by chronicling the impact of economic change on workers in Tennessee and Mexico. In this review, Hernández praises it as a "powerful organizing tool that can help build . . . solidarity" between immigrant and U.S. born workers.

For links to more coverage of Highlander's work, visit www.highlandercenter.org/n-press.asp. For coverage of the 75th, visit www.highlandercenter.org/anniversary/press.asp.

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