S.O.N.G.

“I am a revolutionary feminist because I want me to be free. And it is critically important to me that you who are here, that your commitment to revolution is based on the fact that you want revolution for yourself.”

Pat Parker (from Revolution: It’s Not Pretty, Easy or Quick)

This article looks at the connections between the rightwing’s attacks on LGBTQ folks and all low-income women of color and the “gay marriage agenda”.

from-welfare-queens-to-gay-marriage-the-path-to-compulsory-heterosexual-marriage.pdf

“Inside/Out” is an excellent article written by one of SONG’s founders. It can be used as a tool for groups and organizations to ask ourselves questions about how we are doing our work, and what our methods and processes mean for the work of building a movement.

inside-out-dem-participation-and-econ-justice-in-our-own-orgs.pdf

Mailing Address:

PO Box 268 // Durham, NC 27702

Phone: 919.286.3230 (new!!!)
Fax: 919.286.3637 (new!!!)
Web: www.southernersonnewground.org

SONG’s Staff

• Paulina Hernandez, Atlanta, GA Co-Director(paulina@southernersonnewground.org)
• Caitlin Breedlove, Atlanta, GA
  Co-Director (caitlin@southernersonnewground.org)
• Sendolo Diaminah , Durham, NC
  Superstar Intern (sendolo@southernersonnewground.org)

Paulina Hernandez is a queer femme cha-cha girl, artist, political organizer & trouble-maker-at-large from Veracrúz, Mexico. This Xicana grew up in rural North Carolina, and is currently growing roots in Atlanta, GA. She is the Co-Director of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), having joined the staff after coordinating the Southern regional youth activism program at the Highlander Center for over 4 years. Paulina has a background in farm worker and immigrant rights organizing, youth organizing, anti-violence work, and cultural work. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the young feminist Third Wave Foundation (in NYC) & her first political ‘home’ organization Student Action with Farmworkers (in Durham, NC). She particularly loves queers / people of color / immigrant people / healers / cultural workers / her elders & parents / her sweetie / her comrades & her three brothers : )

Caitlin Breedlove is a Queer Femme Organizer who lives in Durham, NC. She is proud to be a Queer, first generation immigrant of Central/Eastern European descent. She is the Co-Director of Southerners On New Ground (SONG) and loves her work with LGBTQ people all over the South. Before working at SONG, she was on the youth organizing staff at the Highlander Center for 3 years. Especially close to her heart are the struggles of working class people, sex workers, survivors of sexual violence, immigrants, incarcerated people and their families, and LGBTQ people.

Sendolo Diaminah (aka Don Dolo) is a Queer/Black/Radical, cimarron, and working-class intellectual living and organizing in Durham, North Cackalacky. His politics have their origins in the cultural work for Black liberation that was the life blood of his childhood community in Kalamazoo, MI and in his love for other men of color, but have been broadened by his Third World/POC marxian mentors, sharpened by his work as a student/popular education organizer of the Free Akademy at the City University of New York, nurtured by his queer communities in Brooklyn and the Triangle, and deepened by his own studies and life experiences. Radical spirituality, Fred hampton’s dimples, intersectional politics, brushing off haters, land/agrarian struggles, and a well-chosen outfit are all essential elements of his politics and well-being. Sendolo frequently escapes his plantation gig(s) to do work as a member of Left Turn magazine’s North Carolina collective and as intern for SONG.

SONG’s Fabulous Organizing School Team Members

• Cara Page, Atlanta, GA
• Suzanne Pharr, Knoxville, TN

Cara Page is the co-founder and Project Director of Kindred a southern healers organizing collaborative, based in Atlanta GA. As a Black queer artist, organizer and healing arts practitioner living in the South, she works for queer liberation, reproductive, environmental and economic justice striving to use the healing arts as tools for resiliency and sustainability. She is also an aspiring documentary artist collaborating on several storytelling projects to bring public awareness to issues of state violence and genocide, population control and eugenics, and stories of holistic responses to trauma and social conditions. She believes telling our stories is a tool of healing, towards transformation and liberation. Cara is also the former National Director of the Committee on Women Population and the Environment (CWPE). She is a recipient of the Next Generation Leadership Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (2000) and the Human Rights Community Arts Award (2003) from the National Center for Human Rights & Education, for her achievements as an artist and organizer. Her work experience includes theater and organizing, youth and multimedia arts curriculum development, training & research, playwriting, performance poetry, sound healing and vocal improvisation. As a co-trainer of the new SONG Organizing School she seeks to incite and build new strategies and ‘third dream spaces’ for our organizing movements…and LOVES SONG!!!

Suzanne Pharr founded the Women’s Project in Arkansas in 1981, was a co-founder of Southerners on New Ground in 1984, and was the director of the Highlander Center 1999-2004. She is an organizer and political strategist who has spent her adult life working to build a broad-based social and economic justice movement. Suzanne is the author of Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism, and In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation.

SONG’s Board

• Roberto Tijerina, Durham, NC
  Highlander Research & Education Center
• Paris Hatcher, Atlanta, GA
  SPARK! Reproductive Justice Now
• Jessica George, Louisville, KY
  Kentuckians For The Commonwealth
• Deepali Gokhale, Atlanta, GA
  Queer Progressive Agenda
• Jurina, Durham, NC
  UBUNTU: Women of Color and Survivor-led Coalition to End Sexual Violence
• Stephanie Guilloud, Atlanta, GA
  Project South
• Aesha Rasheed, New Orleans, LA
  The New Orleans Network

Roberto Tijerina is a queer Latino first-generation child of immigrants, keeper of the heart-space, and closet diva. Since becoming politicized in his early adolescence around language as a tool of power and his emerging queerness, Roberto has worked as an activist – first in Chicago and now in the South – with his three mainstays being LGBT, immigrant, and disability rights. His experience includes working as an Outreach Associate for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, supporting diverse LGBT communities around civil rights issues. He has also worked as a freelance sign-language interpreter, with a focus on the Deaf Latino community in Illinois. Currently, he is the lead person at the Highlander Center’s Multilingual Capacity Building Program. In addition to English, he is fluent in Spanish and American Sign Language. Throughout his activist career, he has maintained close ties to the immigrant community in which he was raised, working on issues of literacy, second-language learning, immigrant discrimination, and preparation for citizenship exams. His current passion is the intersection of Immigrant and LGBTQ issues: where are the voices of queer immigrants? He holds a special place in his heart for queer folks who have been cast out of their families in the name of a Christian god.

Paris Hatcher is a passionate, radical feminist activist dedicated to working for justice and liberation. As a life long Southern Snob, Paris has been organizing for over 10 years, on the community, campus, and international level. Her activism is rooted in an intersectional approach which validates the lived experience of individuals and communities and works to challenge all systemic oppression. Paris’ activist interest focuses on gender liberation, in particular movements, such as reproductive justice, gender and racial justice and equity, ending sexual violence, queer communities of color, the South, and research that explores historical legacy as a motivator for current social movements. She has her Master’s in Africana Women’s Studies and is currently the Co-Executive Director of SPARK Reproductive Justice Now. When not grinding hard for justice, she loves to dance, read, laugh, give, cook, honor warrior women, queers and playing with gender, the outdoors, home renovation, doggies, daydreaming about liberation, and to spend time with her family and community.

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Jessica George strayed to Antioch College in Ohio and across the South to North Carolina and Georgia. In 2004 she returned home to Louisville to be an aunt to 5 small ones and work as an organizer on the No on the Amendment campaign, a statewide amendment to ban gay marriage. Her world changed on the No campaign because it was there that she was introduced to SONG. A piece of her heart and soul have relocated to the main SONG office in Durham, North Carolina, while the rest of it works from Louisville at Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, a statewide, multi-issue social just organization.

Deepali Gokhale (pronounced “go-clay”) emigrated to the U.S. from India in 1973. Her childhood experiences growing up in a brown immigrant family in semi-rural Virginia shape much of her outlook on social justice. She has been an active volunteer and community organizer in queer and South Asian communities in Atlanta since 1995, as co-organizer of Raksha’s Masala Chai Houses, Steering Committee Coordinator of Trikone Atlanta, Steering Committee Co-Chair of the campaign against Georgia’s anti-gay marriage amendment, Founder of Queer Progressive Agenda, and Campaign Organizer for the Racial Justice Campaign Against “Operation Meth Merchant.” She is the recipient of the 2004 Human Rights Guardian Award from the National Center for Human Rights Education, the 2005 Ramesh and Vijaya Bakshi Community Change Award from Raksha, and the 2007 Award for Leadership in LGBTQ Community Organizing from KhushDC.

Jurina, a national of the lovely Island of Bermuda, ventured to the American South, to Raleigh, NC in pursuit of happiness and higher education. After graduating at the top of her class, she has been applying her passion for people to creative and healing arts, as well as community organizing. Jurina joined the board of directors of Southerners on New Ground in 2006, and she has been the point person for the Artistic Response committee of UBUNTU, a women of color/survivor led coalition, dedicated to ending gendered violence through sustaining transformative love. Currently, Jurina is a personal trainer. This work allows her to impulsively perform random acts of kindness in her community, such as putting together a book shelf or organizing an inpromptu/emergency breast-casting for a cancer patient. Henceforth, we revere her as ‘coach,’ for she actively motivates us/people to tackle and conquer the seemingly impossible.

Originally from Houston, Texas with roots in Alabama, Stephanie Guilloud began her political work through campus & community organizing efforts in Olympia, Washington. Stephanie initiated political education and writing classes with incarcerated women and young people, resulting in the anthology Through the Eyes of the Judged. Stephanie was a lead local organizer in the Seattle World Trade Organization shut down in 1999. A critical experience, Stephanie moved back to the South to work with communities committed to long-term racial and economic justice. She has worked with Project South in Atlanta for the past five years and worked on local, regional, and national planning committees to organize the 2007 United States Social Forum.

Aesha Rasheed is a healer, masseuse and public education advocate who lives in New Orleans. Since Hurricane Katrina she has worked for the self-determination of residents in New Orleans’ recovery. She produced the New Orleans Parents’ Guide to Public Schools and is currently developing the New Orleans Parents’ Organizing Network. She was project manager for the New Orleans Network, an information sharing and collaboration hub for grassroots organizations in post-Katrina New Orleans, and covered education for The New Orleans Times Picayune for five years.

SONG’s Founders:

Mandy Carter, Suzanne Pharr, Pam McMichael, Pat Hussain, Joan Garner, Mab Segrest

new-relationship-between-forms-of-oppression.doc

Ever had a hard time talkin’ to folks you know about the relationships between different forms of oppression? We have! So we doctored up this tool that we use in workshops to help us. Check it out, and if you are facilitating for a group, it has possible discussion questions at the end!

These were pictures taken during our Local Durham “Love Extravaganza” get together & potluck… hosted by Board Member Jurina & SONG member Lexi P. Gumbs….

All towards the building of Durham’s queer political family & visibility of our whole selves…enjoy!

Greetings Family!

As part of SONG’s new programs, and our re-connection with our hometown of Durham, NC, we hosted a Love Extravaganza a few days after Valentine’s Day. We really want to create spaces where folks who share the Vision and Dream of SONG (a world free of all kinds of oppression) can gather together to support and strengthen each other through a politic of love.

Our newest board member, Jurina, hosted a beautiful and love-filled evening of sweet foods, love note writing, games, community education about SONG, hand massages and washing, and general community love.

To see more pics, check out the page on ‘Family Pictures: Love Extravaganza’.

Oh-So-Dope SONG member Shannon Rogers made this beautiful video of the SONG Love Extravaganza event:

please check it out!! ~ just press PLAY button below or link to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVPf_syhY6Q

Love, SONG

PS-Special Thanks To Lexi for all her loving hosting too!!!!

These pictures were taken throughout the process of the convening and documenting gatherings SONG hosted as part of the evolution of our political work: our intention was one of gathering southerners who identify as gay / lesbian / bi / trans & queer who are engaged at the intersections of political work, and transformational movement building, as well as national allies who are helping us to shape the political vision, structure, and strategy of our work.

To learn more about this process, and what we learned / reflected / visoned along the way, please check out our Reports & Documentation of an evolving vision Page… enjoy : )