The Rural Cultural Organizer Gathering (April, 2007) was cosponsored with the Main Street Project /Raices, Center for Rural Strategies, and the Humboldt Area Foundation. This was a small 1.5 day-long strategic national gathering of rural cultural organizers who included, in addition to the cosponsors: Alternate Roots, Appalshop, Central Valley Partnership for Citizenship, Llano Grande Center, Feral Arts, United Indian Health Services, and Northland Poster Collective. The gathering offered participants an opportunity to share their place and culturally based strategies and methodologies with one another in the areas of community development, community organizing, education, communications, health, philanthropy, media, and the arts. Topics included: capacity building, generational transitions, policy change, strategic communications, cultural organizing, rural voting, organizing in the Gulf post-Katrina, civic dialogue, youth organizing, rooting your work in place and cultural identity, digital storytelling, and community and cultural mapping. The gathering sparked various collaborations and will be documented through a series of dialogues between participants and a commissioned essay. The gathering took place in Klamath, California and included an exchange with Native cultural leaders from the area. Resources from the gathering are included on the Resource List.

(Photos top to bottom: Searching for whales, the Mouth of Klamath, and some of the gathering participants)

Cosponsored with the Highlander Center and Alternate Roots. This session built on previous discussions and followed a one-day institute on cultural organizing as part of the 75th anniversary celebration of the Highlander Center in New Market Tennessee. The Highlander Center was founded in 1932 to serve as an adult education center for community workers involved in social and economic justice movements. The goal of Highlander was and is to provide education and support to poor and working people fighting economic injustice, poverty, prejudice, and environmental destruction. The Center helps grassroots leaders create the tools necessary for building broad-based movements for change. Presenters included: Co-facilitators Anasa Trautman, Highlander Center, Caron Atlas and Javiera Benavente, Arts & Democracy Project; Amelia Kirby, Appalshop; Carlton Turner, Alternate Roots; Michelle Miller, SEIU; Mathew Jones, SNCC Freedom Singers, and Baldemar Velazquez, Farm Labor Organizer Committee.

Judi Jennings, Director of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and a participant in the gathering, wrote about the celebration in The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judi-jennings/a-human-rights-revival-in_b_66656.html

Photos top to bottom: Highlander 75th Anniversary logo, Hot 8 Brass Band, and Maurice Turner, Highlander Board Chair and Carlton Turner, co-founder of M.U.G.A.B.E.E