A Conversation about Southerners on New Ground:
Transformation, Legacy and Movement Building in the U.S. South
Southerners on New Ground (SONG) connects us to the collective
rhythm and dreams of the South through legacies of resiliency and
resistance, transformation and movement building. This article reflects
a conversation about SONG from the perspective of older and newer
members to SONG. Cara Page, Evelyn Lynn, Lamont Sims, and Noemi Molitor
came together in August 2010 to talk about SONG's meaning in the context
of organizing around social justice in the South.
SONG is a Southern regional organization that builds strategies for
economic and racial justice through a lesbian, bisexual, gay,
transgender, queer, gender non-conforming, and two spirit (LBGTQTS)
lens. SONG focuses its efforts and resources on rural communities in the
U.S. South by offering Organizing Schools, workshops on community and
movement building, as well as member-organized social spaces and other
forms of social justice work and coalition building.
Sixteen years ago, three African American and three white lesbians
came together to found SONG to focus on the South as a political
region, attentive to its legacies, and the South as a space of living
and community for LBGTQTS people. SONG is and has always been a
membership-based organization. It is a multi-racial organization doing
multi-issue work, addressing how racism affects our communities,
foregrounding the perspectives of working class folks, and always
articulating how different forms of oppression are connected. SONG is
invested in transformational work. We strive to create space to
collectively envision our lives free of oppression, to resist
assimilation, to think about what we need to build movements rather than
single-issue campaigns, and to create the kind of community and support
structures we need to survive as people of color, as queer people, as
people with disabilities, and as all of the above marginalized
communities in the South.
While SONG focuses its energies on rural communities, SONG does
occasionally work in cities such as Atlanta, where we met to write this
article. We asked each other questions about SONG's work and vision:
How do we see SONG in relation to movement building, to queer politics
and feminism, and to social justice issues in the South? We reflected a
little bit on academic research, as it is helpful to the cause, and,
most importantly, we exchanged our experiences with, concerns about, and
longings for activist work. While we present our conversation as a
whole, our individual perspectives remain visible and audible. As you
read, our individual voices and stories will be highlighted at times
within a context of our common ideas and visions. Let us briefly
introduce our literal kitchen table:
Cara Page has been with SONG for two generations, from
its leadership in the 90s, to its new leadership in Durham, North
Carolina, to the present. These days she lives in Atlanta, organizing in
the South with SONG and the
Kindred southern healing justice
collective. She described a process of "colic and rebirth" that
SONG underwent a few years ago when co-directors Caitlin Breedlove and
Paulina Hernandez held a listening campaign to position SONG's strategic
action in the South.
Evelyn Lynn first encountered SONG in 1997 when attending the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Creating Change conference. Having
left the South in search of LBGTQTS political community, this brief
encounter with SONG spoke to that longing for political community and
offered a glimpse of the kind of support she might have if she returned
home. Evelyn's more recent relationship with SONG began in 2006 while
she was living and working in New Orleans and trying to handle the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. During this time SONG offered much
needed support to local communities around healing, trauma, and
survival.
Lamont Sims came across SONG quite recently and is a member of
BlackOut at Georgia State University, a Black queer student
organization that exists to challenge all oppression. He is also a
member of Sweet Tea: Southern Queer Men's Collective, a small
group of queer men based in Atlanta who challenge sexism. From 2009
through 2010, Lamont was part of the Atlanta Mentorship Circle;
this 6-month program brought together LBGTQTS activists from the
metro-Atlanta area for co-mentorship training around social justice
work. Working towards "local capacity, unity and interconnection of
people in the state of GA", the circle envisioned "social work that is
cross-issue, anti-oppression, and meets at the crossroads of race,
class, culture, gender, and sexuality". The Mentorship Circle is also
where Lamont and Noemi connected.
Noemi Molitor learned about SONG through her chosen-family in 2006
and has been with SONG in spirit ever since. In 2009, she moved from
Germany to the U.S. and got to join SONG in person. She is currently
pursuing her PhD in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory
University in Atlanta where she commits herself to social justice
struggles in her scholarship. She continues to be involved in political
projects in Berlin that address the legacies of German colonialism. In
this vein, she has worked to push the critical remembering of street
names that celebrate colonial actors and worldviews in Berlin's
cityscape today, and has lobbied to rename them while
publicly documenting their
history.
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