Words of Wisdom on SONG’s history…
June 11th, 2007 at 2:16 pm (Poetics, Politics)
(Above: Mandy Carter, SONG founder, with Guy and Candie Carawan, Civil Rights Movement Elders, at SONG house party 2007)
We Know The Value of Honoring Our Elders. They are part of not only our past, but also our present and our future. Here are some great words from Mandy:
“The underlying principle of SONG has never been about promoting SONG as much as it is the values of the work. Because we decided this is more important, it takes out a lot of the stuff that gets in the way. SONG has always been about how do we pass along stuff, engage in conversations so it’s not always about asking folks to come to our table–the SONG table– instead it’s about going to other people’s tables, going to where people are. We go and listen or we go to a third space – we did a complete inventory of the South–a listening– this mapping of who we know is out there against the backdrop of race/class/age and then we did visiting of those folks or efforts and it did create a relationship so that we could know what people are doing. Now we’re going into our 13th or 14th year and it still works – visiting other tables always works.”
-Mandy Carter, 2007