NCOE Partners with Southern Movement Assembly

The Southern Movement Assembly is committed to creating a region-wide Southern infrastructure to advance and regenerate the Southern Freedom Movement in the 21st century. It has three Southern initiatives: A New Economy, A People’s Democracy, and Protect and Defend Our People. We work from a blueprint created from what we have learned in our regional assemblies over the past five years: a plan of action in a time of crisis.

Aljosie Harding and Suzanne Pharr represented the National Council of Elders at Southern Movement Assembly 7 in October in Whitakers,

For additional information, go to http://southtosouth.org/govern/

Southern Movement Assembly 7 : Convergence in a Time of Crisis

300 people participated throughout the weekend, over 70 organizations represented from all 13 Southern states, Puerto Rico, rural Oregon, and beyond.

7 Frontline Assemblies shared analysis about the current landscape affecting workers, youth, rural realities, climate disaster, borders and migration, land, and democracy in our communities.

15 Movement Building Skill Sessions created organizing tools for this political moment. We discussed the accomplishments and ongoing work to implement the Southern Peoples Initiative and the Blueprint we created at SMA 6.

The SMA 7 Synthesis Team connected analysis, vision, and action steps and facilitated 10 Power Groups to be bold and build coordinated strategies throughout the next year.

We created a liberated Southern movement village on sacred land, and we worked to heal our ancestors and to vision a future that extends seven generations out. We broke bread and celebrated in the spirit of Harriet Tubman who said “My people are free.”

We closed the assembly with words of solidarity from the Lucha Movementfighting on similar frontlines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We committed to fight white supremacy, deportations, worker exploitation, social control, extractive industries, and all forms of oppression by building the world we deserve. We recommitted ourselves to building a just world with a transformed economy and a peoples democracy where we protect and defend one another.

We are working a plan of action in a time of crisis, and we are growing a multigenerational, multiracial, multi-gendered, cross-movement convergence of #SouthernPeoplesPower