GENERATIONS TO COME

Top Left: Highlander’s Social Change Workshop. Top Right: Presentation from Children’s Program at Highlander’s 80th Anniversary, 2012.

Bottom: “80 on 80,” with Vincent Harding and Helen Lewis at 80th Anniversary, 2012.

HIGHLANDER

RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT AND ACTION

OCTOBER, 2013 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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Introduction

The Highlander Research and Education Center is a world-renowned beacon for progressive organizing and widely

acclaimed as a leadership development center for grassroots and community leaders across race and generations.

Highlander is a critical resource and gathering place for strategy and action, social justice research, best practices, and

movement building.

Over the past several months, board, staff and constituents have been engaged in a Strategic Assessment and Action

Process with the intention to reflect on our role and work in the current context and continue strengthening our capacity

for strategic, adaptive work. We looked honestly at our challenges and celebrated Highlander’s unique role and enduring

contributions. We engaged in a broad process of inquiry, asking what people need in the current context to build effective

leaders, organizations, networks and movements, and how Highlander can best bring its particular role, assets and

capabilities to bear for transformative impact. This process is based on a spiral of continual listening, action, learning

and adaption.

Through that process, we have heard affirmations of Highlander’s role and contributions, and appeals that the movement

needs Highlander to play an even stronger role in these times. Highlights of new and expanded areas of work for the next

fifteen months of our operational plan include:

Developing a new curriculum on governance/democratic participation and the economy,

set in the southern context and adaptable for different uses and issues. Highlander will convene five Horton

Chairs to work with our Education team to develop, pilot and implement a workshop curriculum that can be used

on the ground in communities for analysis and praxis.

Co-anchoring the development and implementation of a new economic transition fellowship in Appalachia,

addressing economic transition by nurturing emerging leaders from the region and strengthening local and

regional networks and strategies. The Appalachian Transition Fellowship program will increase the capacity and

connectivity of actors working for the economic transition of the region, while simultaneously fostering the next

generation of leaders to carry that work forward, through a year-long, full-time program that will incorporate

institutional placements, independently designed projects, training, and mentoring.

Increased sharing of methodologies of popular education and cultural organizing at Highlander and in

communities across the south and country. Highlander is often consulted by organizers, activists and educators

across the country, and internationally, to share methodologies of popular education and cultural organizing for

integration into their organizing efforts, campaigns and classrooms. These methodologies are building blocks of

strategies for long haul effectiveness.

Intensified efforts for worker justice, through sharing methodologies, leadership development, strategic

convenings and facilitation, on-the-ground support of organizing efforts, amplifying worker justice issues, and

connecting worker justice to other issues.

“[Highlander is] the most notable American experiment in adult education for social change.” – 1979 Ford

Foundation report on adult illiteracy, via Atlanta Constitution, 1982

“[Myles Horton] left behind an institution that is not only alive but also remains one of the most stubbornly

tenacious instruments for social change in the nation.” – Peter Applebome, New York Times, 1991

“In the mountains of the southeast, one of the poorest regions of the country, a bastion of revolution has nurtured

the great social movements in the United States for 75 years: from the great Labor struggles of the 30s to the Civil

Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s, from the defense of the environment…to the current battle for the rights of

immigrants.” – David Brooks, La Jornada, 2007

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Current Context of the South

The South bears a legacy of brutal exploitation and courageous resistance. Centuries of aggressive underdevelopment

have created a pervasive need for sustainable economic development, environmental restoration, active civic participation,

progressive education and social justice.

The economic fallout of globalization and the recent recession has

raised national poverty rates to their highest level (15%) since US

Census data collection began in 1952, increasing existing economic

disparities and disproportionately affecting people of color. The highest

rates remain in the South, exceeding the national average in almost

every Southern state, including Mississippi where more than 21 percent

of residents live in poverty. In many places, local law enforcement

officials have been empowered to use racial profiling in collaboration

with federal immigration agents. Our prison system has been largely

privatized in order to profit from the criminalization of Black, Latino,

and other people of color.

The current electoral map may allow the Democratic Party to win national elections, but if the political landscape of the

South is not changed substantially, it is questionable whether progressive gains can be sustained, the country governed

effectively, or democracy thrive. Efforts to disenfranchise voters are sweeping the South, and the rights of people of color,

women, immigrants, the poor and LGBTQ people are still under attack. Rightwing strategies count on holding the

Southern electoral bloc by repressing civic participation and deepening economic and racial divides. Ecosystems from

Appalachia to the Gulf Coast have been ravaged by extraction, and climate change and pollution of natural resources

threaten communities regionally and across the globe.

While the current political, social, and economic context is one of great struggle and injustice, there is also great

opportunity and resistance, and the South has to be part of a national strategy. Communities across the South are working

on a wide range of issues: improving education, decriminalizing youth, holding their government accountable and

drawing public attention to corporate interference in democracy. There is a growing movement to develop alternative

economic systems designed to sustain people instead of exploit them. There are strong efforts for fair and just

immigration, and workers are organizing. Youth are taking over the state house in Florida. Moral Mondays protested

repressive legislation in North Carolina with hundreds arrested and the effort continues with organizing strategies across

the state. Appalachians are working to stop environmental degradation and towards economic transition from a coal

economy. There have been herculean efforts to exercise democratic rights. All these efforts protest what is, while putting

forth a vision of what can be, from the region that profoundly affects the entire country.

Highlander is making key contributions to each of these efforts and is uniquely positioned to affect lasting impact by

bringing its legacy, vision, credibility, methods, skills, creativity, resources, political education and analysis to support

selected efforts in four areas:

1. Cultural, Human and Civil Rights are strengthened and protected;

2. Participatory Governance systems and practices are broad and robust;

3. Natural resources are protected and restored; the commons reclaimed; and,

4. Economic life of the region is thriving, inclusive and sustainable.

The ways Highlander contributes in these arenas are further detailed on the following pages in Highlander’s Theory of

Change. The Theory of Change details root causes, values, methodologies and key leverage points toward social, political

and economic justice. It should be read from the bottom of page 5 with root causes, pulling each level up through the top.

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Highlander’s Work and Impact

Highlander is a popular education center and works in local communities as well. We bring people together to learn from

each other to build relationships, develop skills and analysis, and strategize for progressive social change. Highlander

works on multiple levels to help create and resource the building blocks of strong social justice movement infrastructure.

Highlander’s work includes:

Nurture and foster the skills, analysis and capacity of community-based, grassroots leaders to ensure a

strong and diverse intergenerational leadership base for the complex political work in front of us;

Support groups and organizations through intensive technical assistance and capacity building; connect

groups to each other, to other resources, and to networks, alliances and collaborations;

Anchor and participate in key networks that amplify efforts and help build strong, unified movements;

Conduct workshops and residencies in popular education and cultural organizing to strengthen

organizing efforts;

Organize strategic convenings to build skills, analysis, strategies and actions;

Document and disseminate resources, models, and curricula to collectivize learning and share analysis;

Nurture a collective and historical identity for movement workers through land-based programming,

celebrations, and residencies.

Highlander’s Key Points of Leverage

The needs in our region are great, and Highlander’s work is structured on key points of leverage where our methodologies

and the current moment converge to create great potential for lasting, decisive change. We approach this work through

resistance to repressive policies, creation of progressive policies, and development of new alternative systems beyond

existing structures. Crucial to these approaches is how we do the work, based in the centrality of race, class, gender and

sexuality through a broader understanding of oppression and intersectionality. These leverage points are interdependent,

so that engaging with one has the potential to shift others. For this reason, each of our programs targets and impacts

multiple leverage points:

Increasing Migrant Justice in the Context of Global Economics: Highlander has been at the leading edge of creating

the infrastructure of Southern organizations pushing for migrant justice and building multilingual capacity. We

developed the region’s first immigrant leadership program, pioneered language justice workshops and a toolkit used

across the country, and provided key support in the launch and work of local, state and regional organizations,

including Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, Southeast Immigrant Rights Network, Black

Immigration Network and groups fighting for the Dream Act. Highlander continues to provide training, resources

and support to these groups and campaigns, including leadership development of immigrant activists and building

networks connecting immigrant, African American and working class white people.

Spreading Access to Quality Education, Decriminalization of Youth and Restorative Justice Processes: The

dismantling of public education and the privatization of the prison system have hit young people hard. Through its

Seeds of Fire program, Highlander has nurtured and trained young people working on this issue, helping them

develop a broad, intersectional analysis. Power U Center for Social Change, Miami, SpiritHouse and El Pueblo,

NC, Kids Rethink New Orleans, and Action Communication and Education Reform (ACER), MS, are just a few

of the groups with which Highlander has worked over 13 years of the Seeds of Fire program. We have also been

instrumental in the launch of new youth leadership efforts in Appalachia, including Stay Together Appalachian

Youth and Supporting Emerging Appalachian Leaders, assisting youth who want to address economic and

communities’ issues so they can stay in the mountains they love and call home.

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Increasing Practice and Innovation in Participatory Governance: Participatory governance, in which people are

empowered to make decisions about matters that directly concern them, is a basic concept in Highlander’s

philosophy and methodologies. Recently Highlander provided support to the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement,

which is working to jumpstart participatory budgeting in Jackson, Mississippi. Highlander’s role is to knit together

disparate participatory governance efforts such as this across the South and help them learn from each other’s work.

Highlander is developing a new curriculum on economics and governance/democratic participation and will be

piloting that curriculum this coming year.

Transforming Exploitative Ownership and Use of Land, Water, and Air into Sustainable Practices for Healthy

Communities: In 2013, Highlander facilitated two national Extreme Extraction Summits, bringing together a

broad range of groups fighting resource extraction for cross-movement strategy. We are being asked by other groups

for help in developing a larger, systemic framework for their strategies. Through Highlander’s relationships with

Coal River Mountain Watch, Ohio River Environmental Coalition, The Alliance for Appalachia, Appalshop,

and other groups, we help connect local struggles against extraction to broader issues of climate change and social

justice. Highlander’s own land is a learning environment integrated into all our programs on these issues.

Building a Regional Network of Economic

Alternatives and Shifting Policies toward

Transformative Economic Models: Highlander

is a founding partner and continues an anchoring

role with the Southern Grassroots Economics

Project that has included hosting the Solidarity

Economy Workshops at Highlander, serving on

the US Solidarity Economy Network national

steering committee, and helping organize

CoopEcon gatherings to bolster alternative

business ownership structures in the South and

Appalachia. Efforts to formalize Cooperative

Business designation and establish Local

Community Broadband policy are growing

across the region, but in fragmented form. Highlander is helping these groups build a connecting infrastructure and

organizational framework to propel them into truly transformative movements. We are launching the Appalachian

Transition Fellowship program in collaboration with Rural Support Partners to work for a just and sustainable

economy in Appalachia.

Strengthening Worker Justice: Throughout our history, Highlander has worked to deepen labor education, build bridges

between unionized and non-unionized workers, amplify worker organizing, expand worker solidarity within

communities and beyond borders, and connect worker justice to other issues. We have a long relationship with Jobs

with Justice, regionally and nationally. Recently, we have done leadership development with members of

Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights and the New Orleans Racial Justice Workers Center. Earlier

this year, we conducted a cultural organizing residency with Service Employees International Union in New

Orleans, as well as helping plan and facilitate workshops with JWJ Working Women’s Council, Teamsters

Women Facebook group, United Association of Labor Educators Southern School for Union Women in Little

Rock, Arkansas, and the Tennessee Education Association.

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The Place of Highlander

Highlander has always been connected to place. For years,

Highlander was one of the few places in the South where

people could come together across race. In this place,

workshop participants, researchers and visitors connect to that

history, learn from the curricula, videos, and photographs of

people like themselves uniting to accomplish great things, and

are inspired by being part of the larger trajectory of the

struggle for justice.

The Highlander land shapes our work, stimulating discussion

and modeling sustainable practices. From every vantage point

on this land there is a distinctly different view far into and

over the distant mountains, inviting us to step away from the

confines of the moment and into new and larger perspectives. Through watching the sun set, braving walks up steep hills,

and joining together for meals, the place of Highlander gives those who come here, many of whom rarely have the chance

to enjoy a place of such natural beauty, the chance to create relationships and restore, reflect, relax and recharge.

The Generations to Come Capital Campaign

The Generations to Come campaign will increase comfort and accessibility, renovate buildings for long-term durability

and energy efficiency, and enable our programs to grow while keeping our workshop size small and intimate.

With the generosity of Highlander’s community of donors, the Generations to Come campaign has raised over

$1,600,000 towards our $3.2 million goal. These funds will enable us to:

1. Create lodgings for 40+ workshop participants that are fully accessible, energy efficient and comfortable through

a combination of new construction and renovation, including one new, 16-person sleeping lodge.

2. Complete the purchase of the 80-acre property and house next to us for use in small-scale, extended-length

residencies and to protect Highlander from encroaching development.

3. Upgrade all our facilities for energy efficiency and durability, reduce operating costs and create a $360,000

maintenance endowment.

The improvements in facilities and land will enable a profound expansion and integration of Highlander’s popular

education and organizing work on the intersection of labor, immigration, race, land and food justice issues---regionally,

nationally and internationally. This is the work we believe crucial to achieving a socially just, sustainable economy.

Contact Us! Web: www.highlandercenter.org

Email: hrec@highlandercenter.org

Phone: 865-933-3443

Fax: 865-933-3424

Printed in-house at Highlander Research and Education Center

1959 Highlander Way, New Market, TN 37820