S.O.N.G.

From Organizing Schools to the largest gathering of Southern LGBTQ people in over a decade, SONG has had a great year. Want to read more about what was up in 2008?
Click here: 2008 Love Letter to read our End of the Year Love Letter.

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Did you see the movie ‘MILK’ this season? Are you going to? Regardless of our opinions on the film, it is being seen by many audiences and we should be part of the conversation.
Click this link for ‘Living My Life Like Its Golden: SONG Harvey Milk Study Guide’ to get some conversations started! Living My Life Like It’s Golden: SONG Harvey Milk Study Guide

Have other ideas about what the movie brings up? Email them to us at: caitlin@southernersonnewground.org

IGNITING THE KINDRED: A SONG ORGANIZING SCHOOL

It is a time to focus on Surviving and Thriving Hard Times: this means understanding what is going on, and learning from past and current times about how to respond. In 2008, we are in a time of economic recession that means great struggle around housing and basic resources for our communities and family. We are in a time of global battle over access to water, food, and other basic resources. We are in a time of newly trained organizers in every state in the US, and a national conversation about what community organizing is and will be, in light of the elections. We are also in a time of spiritual and emotional struggle: in our relationships, our organizations, and our movements remain deeply divided, and without resources and capacity to re-generate and sustain ourselves. SONG works across lines of race, class, culture, gender and sexuality to strengthen and build our power to work together. Though our base is primarily LGBTQ, we hold our allegiance to the Southern struggle for justice as a whole. For more than 2 years, since Hurricane Katrina, we have been working hard on creation, vision, listening and innovation for our region. As we see it, this moment gives SONG as a collective organization 2 options: Not knowing what to do, and continuing to do the same thing, or Not knowing what to do, and trying something new—risking that it may or may not work. We have chosen the latter. We hope that others will do the same in their own way. For more than 2 years, we have worked on this Organizing School, to meet the conditions of the current moment. By meeting the current moment, we mean that we vision a region and a country where local communities are setting up our own infrastructures (what connects or links people collectively so they can get things done) in sustainable and well ways—these infrastructures are capable of meeting needs for basic resources; as well as capable of transforming trauma and pain, and multiplying and amplifying our resiliency and strength. The Organizing School is only one step in this process. The rest is up to ALL of us together. Folks have asked us to know more about the School, and now we are releasing more detail than we ever have before, in the hopes that what we have learned, mistakes we have made, and work we are trying out might help others in their work in critical times. This work involves the voices (directly and indirectly) of over 100 people in the South. It has had many different versions and formats. This is the latest. We share this with the knowledge that being part of a movement comes first before being a non-profit that fiercely guards information and material. We hope it is helpful to you in some way. We ask only that you credit those more than 100 SONG people when you borrow from it or use it.

In Solidarity,
SONG Organizing School Team (Paulina Hernandez, Cara Page, Suzanne Pharr, and Caitlin Breedlove

PLEASE CLICK BELOW TO DOWNLOAD AGENDA FOR THE SCHOOL AND CORE VALUES OF OUR TEAM. TO APPLY FOR THE SCHOOL ITSELF SEE THE POST BELOW..WE ARE ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS PAST THE DEADLINE ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS, AS WELL AS A SET NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS OUTSIDE LITTLE ROCK

public-agenda-for-igniting-the-kindred-song-organizing-school.doc

core-values-for-our-work-together.doc

A 4-day advanced training for people committed to social justice work that is cross-issue, anti-oppression, and meets at the crossroads of race, class, culture, gender and sexuality, towards building the local capacity, unity and interconnection of people
in the greater Little Rock, Arkansas area.

It’s all going down:
Thursday November 13- Sunday November 16, 2008
With additional opportunities to choose other small workshops that fit your specific needs taking place between
Tuesday, November 11 & Wednesday 12, 2008
(so save the date & tell your FOLK!!)

If you are interested?? Want to know more information?? Want to apply??
In the Little Rock, Arkansas area, contact CAR:
Phone: 501.244.9690 / Email: obrian_30@yahoo.com / www.artisticrevolution.org

To contact SONG:
Phone: 919.286.3230 // Email: kindred@southernersonnewground.org
Check out our website: www.southernersonnewground.org

Application Deadline: Saturday, October 25th, 2008

We are worn out, but in the best possible way! Thank you so so much to all SONG members that made this past weekend incredible. Do you have reflections on the SONG 15th Celebration? Email them to Sendolo at Sendolo@southernersonnewground.org and we will put them up for you!

15th Anniversary:

FOR ALL FOLKS COMING IN THIS WEEKEND:

EMAIL ALBA at ALBA@SOUTHERNERSONNEWGROUND.ORG if you are not registered and need a logistics packet.

The recommended hotel (with SONG rooms, $50 a night for 2 double beds with free breakfast) is:

Days Inn on Hillsborough Road
3460 Hillsborough Rd
Durham, NC 27705
(919) 383-1551

The Friday Night Gathering is at:

Sarah P. Duke Gardens

Saturday daytime:

WD Hill Community Center on Fayetteville Street

Saturday night:

Barriskill Dance Studio on Shannon Road

We are preparing to house many of our folks from all over the South in cozy spaces like this all over Durham! Join us Sep 19-21, 2008 for SONG’s 15th Anniversary weekend (see link to ‘15th anniversary’ for more details). Also, please note any registrants who need community housing or have access needs must register by FRIDAY, AUGUST 29, 2008 so that we can make sure everyone is taken care of.
Have questions about access for folks with disabilities??-check out the 15th Anniversary Page.

Do you live in Durham and want to house some lovely SONG members for the 15th anniversary? Or want to help carpool people around? We could really use the help! Contact Alba at: Alba@southernersonnewground.org

Other SONG Updates:

-We are continuing our commitment to the 3 point strategy of our Southern base building:
1. Queer Mapping–finding our folks thru phone organizing and mapping of small LGBTQ communities and bases around the South
2. Drawing what we learned mapping and spending time in local communities and collaborating with small towns and rural areas to hold small workshops, creation studios, or campouts
3. Drawing what we learned from spending time in these communities to convene a group of local seed leaders for an Organizing School

This summer SONG has held a campout in Tyro, Virginia; a studio in Little Rock, AR; a discussion in Chapel Hill, NC; a speaking and dancing event in Greensboro, NC. This Fall we will be holding: a workshop in Asheville, NC; and an Organizing School in Little Rock, AR—In addition to our People of Color fall gathering and our 15th Anniversary. We keep busy!

(From left: Candie Carawan, Mandy Carter, and Guy Carawan)

Mandy Carter, one of the original founders of Southerners on New Ground and former Executive Director, has been named the co-chair for Obama Pride! We are very proud of the work Mandy is constantly doing for multi-racial, multi-gendered, multi-classed LGBTQ communities all across the country. Regardless of our members and constituencies views on the election, SONG is committed to observing and engaging with the ENERGY of young people, people of color, working class people, and LGBTQ people around this election.

The Greensboro SONG family is doing amazing work to bring together a strong and loving LGBTQ community for liberation in their community across race, class, gender, and age. This wonderful event will feature the great skills of DJ Real, great food, lots of fun activities, and dancing! Please come and let Dara (Daranix@aol.com) know if you can volunteer.

Dick Dyke and Drag Derby!!
A Southern Queer Field Day
Saturday, July 11, 2008

If you have more pictures of the SONG Atlanta Derby, please email them to paulina(at)southernersonnewground(dot)org

Build Solidarity. Build Sustainability. 100 For Justice.

SONG has been selected to be part of 100 for Justice in an effort to get folks to give to 100 important organizations around the US: “Use $100 of your stimulus package to…give $ back to our communities, support local economies, and stimulate the kind of world we want to live in. ” Click here to learn more about the project, and give to SONG or any of these other powerful organizations.

What is Skills Transfer and Why is it Different Than Standard Teaching and Training?

By Caitlin Breedlove, with the thinking of many SONG folks

One of the things that we have learned at SONG over the past few years, is that we have to look really deeply and self-reflectively at what we are doing and how we are doing it. In this time of great change, we commit to our strategies being bold AND thoughtful. One of the conversations we have been having a lot around the SONG house and SONG calls is about Skills Transfer, and what it takes to truly transfer skills from one person to another.
In the age of non-profits in the US, too often we have experienced first-hand how ’skills training’ is a process that only begins to scratch the surface of any given skill, and leaves the trainer with all the power they started with, and the participant with only a beginning understanding of what a skill like facilitation or outreach really is.

If we truly believe in popular education as a process led by the people and for the people, we must always strive to deepen our ability to do skills transfer; and if we recognize that organizing means building leaders AND power, then we must work to see ourselves and other living beings as our most valuable resources.

What the Left has been better at than skills transfer, some would argue, is facilitating political dialogue and education. We have done hard work to help expand thinking, to push hard questions, to build critical thought in our circles. What we have to figure out is how to unite this practice with good skills transfer.

Skills Transfer means that a skill is delivered whole from one person to another. It means that when we help to transfer the skill we recognize that we are not ‘teaching’ in the sense that the knowledge comes from us, but rather that we are a conduit for the skill moving through us to others–thus we concentrate and evaluate ourselves based on how thoroughly the skill has transferred.

Here is a possible check list for what to think about when we are leading a skills transfer process:

-Have we transferred an understanding of what the skill is, where it comes from, and its context? If so, how do we know we have?

-Have we helped others practice and ask questions about each component of the skill?

-Have we shared all the ‘tricks of the trade’ with the skill that we know? (Think deep–some of these we might not even notice we do anymore if we have been practicing a skill a long time)

-Have we helped imbue a sense of confidence in others in their ability to use the skill?

-Have we helped them schedule a first time when they can use this skill? If they don’t feel ready for this, have we asked them what they would need to get there, and planned to follow thru with whatever support we can offer?

-Have we talked with them about follow up and reflection around the skill?

-Have we talked about how they can help to transfer the skill again at some point, and discussed the power dynamics of not transferring the skill?

NOTE: When we are having a skill transferred to us we can also take responsibility for our own learning, by using these same questions re-framed. Asking ourselves and the person transferring skills to us: Have I gotten all I need about the context of this skill? About the ‘tricks of the trade’? Do I feel confidant in how to use this skill? Why or why not? (Much thanks to the Beehive Collective for reminding us that this checklist should go both ways!!)

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At SONG, we would not claim we are perfect at any of this. But, we have recognized the need to think more deeply about the process of skills transfer to build self-determination for groups, and equity among group members.

Do YOU have thoughts about skills transfer? Experiences you want to share? Email us at Caitlin@Southernersonnewground.org