Southern Leadership Jam 2016
Southern Leadership Jam 2016
A Call to Co-Envision, Unite, and Build a New South!
August 18-23, 2016
Prama Institute, Marshall, North Carolina
priority application deadline: June 15, 2016
final application deadline: July 15, 2016
Connect the dots of our work and lives, build beloved community, and expand in self-awareness!
Come to the Southern Jam, and co-envision a New Normal for the South while sharing tools and creating knowledge on how to get there. YOU – organizers, entrepreneurs, strategists, public officials, business leaders, thinkers, activists, builders, artists, educators, researchers, philanthropists, non-profit leaders, and all-around up-standers and visionaries — are invited to join us for the 4th annual Southern Jam!
We will gather at the Prama Institute, a non-profit holistic retreat center located in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia, in Marshall, NC from Thursday, August 18, 2016, to Tuesday August 23, 2016.
WHY A SOUTHERN JAM NOW?
We are in a unique and commemorative moment in history. Within this decade we have already marked 50th anniversaries for many of the most visible Civil Rights Movement victories. From the 1961 Freedom Rides to the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, the South’s legacy is at the heart of national dialogue. At the same time, some of these historical victories are being challenged by current legislation in the South that threatens such liberties as voting rights and anti-discriminatory policies.
The US South is on fire right now. New legislation out of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi overtly targets queer, transgender, and gender non-conforming people and covertly targets people in poverty, Black people and all people of color, workers, differently abled people, people living with mental illness, and single parents while providing government protections for hate groups and individuals motivated by hate. Seeds of violence and genocide are being watered by polarizing electoral politics, the privatization of schools, prisons, and jobs, systems of mass incarceration, and the criminalization therein of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous bodies–and all in the context of rapid gentrification and the subsequent loss of so many authentic cultural hubs.
With all of this happening, we find it crucial to come together across difference to connect, heal, share our stories, and dream together. We want to celebrate our victories, because in the face of such opposition we still win consistently, and share what it looks like for each of us to create safe, just, and sustainable lives and communities. Through collective truth-telling, deep listening, and support, we will push back against the dominant narrative and stereotypes used to justify oppression.
WHAT IS A JAM?
A Jam is a gathering that works on three different levels in order to support change: the internal (self), the interpersonal (relationships) and the systemic (our processes & the whole). It is not a conference, seminar or a typical meeting. 100+ Jams have been held with social change-makers all over the world on six different continents over the last 17 years.
This is the 4th Southern Leadership Jam. Each year we have hosted the gathering in a different location: 2013 at Highlander Research and Education Center near Knoxville, TN, 2014 at the Prama Institute in Marshall, NC, and 2015 at Camp Beckwith in Fairhope, AL.
WHAT ARE THE GOALS OF THE JAM?
The conveners envision the Southern Jam as an on-going gathering and “think–act” tank where intentional self-reflection, relationship-building, strategizing and visioning takes root on the ground, and in our day-to-day lives and work.
In the past few years, we’ve seen a continued groundswell of action being taken in the South to challenge unfair policies and regressive social and economic conditions such as underpaid workers seeking a living wage and union rights, historically disenfranchised communities fighting again for voting rights, students and athletes rising together to demand safe learning and living communities, reproductive justice advocates rallying against detrimental state policies, and mass actions for an end to police misconduct and brutality. Nationally, immigrants and refugees continue to seek humane recognition and full democratic rights even in the face of ever increasing xenophobic attacks and the LGBTQ community, seeing legal progress and greater visibility, experiencing systemic political backlash, violence and discrimination.
The Jam offers a week to slow-down and intentionally reflect on our current struggles and work while integrating play, creativity, healing, connection, honest conversation, and dream-building.
Participants of past jams have been able to take this “think-act” model and convene spaces for the actualization of beloved community in different ways. Some Jammers brought two Theater of the Oppressed trainings to the Southeast. In North Carolina, two 2014 Jammers came together to create a local food hub which helps assure sustainable incomes for local farmers and food security for one of the least advantaged locales in the state. They also created a “Wiser Together Cafe” at a new Senior Center as a hub for uniting generations and creating multi-generational partnerships around critical local issues. A lot of collaborating, celebrating, and re-connecting has taken place over the past three years out of the unique interests and issues of jammers!
On the internal level:
The Southern Jam will allow for purposeful conversation that will be centered on questions like: How do I thrive and sustain during life’s transitions? How do I take care of myself, care for, and be taken care of by community? How do I find more balance across the many responsibilities in my life? How do I evolve my work and role in my community? What’s my purpose/calling and how do I live into it more? How do I want my values to be manifested in my daily practices? What tools and processes are useful to helping me pause, heal, or center myself?
On the interpersonal level:
The Southern Jam knows that healing across our divides is essential and seeks to explore: How do we create Beloved Community in the South and our day-to-day lives? How do we find connections and common ground across our different forms of social change work, whether it’s reform, resistance, alternative-creation, new storytelling, or something else altogether? How can we heal wounds amongst ourselves that have been developed and inherited across identities? How can we together create forms of dialogue and conversation that center on learning, love, truth, forgiveness and transformation?
On the systemic level:
Social change-making can sometimes be all-consuming. In the Southern Jam, we challenge ourselves to ask fundamental questions to build and sustain our movement infrastructure (i.e. relationship & networks): How can we continue to challenge discriminatory and oppressive policies and regressive socio-economic conditions that permeate the South? How can we build and sustain our movement infrastructure? How do we stay hopeful in the face of growing income inequality, anti-immigration, environmental degradation, transphobia and more? What place does reform, resistance, (re)imagining, and (re)creating occupy in this work? How can we better understand what’s happening state by state and where we have common ground? How can we connect the dots of what we are each doing and see a picture of the whole vision we seek?
What questions do you have? They are welcome!
Yours, these and many more questions are the basis of the Jam. And, by exploring them together, we will build a foundation for lasting, transformative change throughout the South.
WHO IS ORGANIZING THE JAM?
The Jam is being sponsored by the Emerging ChangeMakers Network, an organization challenging economic inequality by supporting leadership and financial development in historically marginalized communities in the U.S. South and YES!, an organization dedicated to connecting, inspiring, and collaborating with change-makers through exploratory and innovative programs that meet the evolving needs and opportunities of our world. In addition to being sponsored by the leaders of Emerging ChangeMakers Network and YES!, the Jam will be facilitated and organized by several alumni from the 2013, 2014 and 2015 Southern Jams:
FACILITATION TEAM
Jayanni Webster is a Native of the South and finds her roots in Memphis, TN. After 5 years of going to university in East TN and traveling abroad, she accepted her calling to organize for social and political change in her home town. Currently she works toward building community and worker power for racial and economic justice with the Fight for $15 movement. Her praxis pulls from the traditions of intersectionality, Black feminism, Black radicalism, and popular education. She believes that creating spaces for people to be their full selves, practice self actualization, and self love is part and parcel of uniting a New South!
After 21 years of living in the north, Jovan Julien moved south in 2010 after graduating from school. Since then he has called Atlanta, GA home. He works in the same city and regionally working on building intersectional movement with organizers, community members, and friends grounded in a practice of Beloved Community. His work often has him moving between the US South and the Caribbean as he brings his skills, passions, and dreams into being.
Ashley Cooper is guided by her insatiable curiosity and reverence for life. As a Co-founder and Learning Facilitator at Mycelium, she designs and facilitates learning programs where people feel inspired to be genuine with each other, discover deeper connections with their authentic self, and find the courage and confidence to take the next necessary bold step in their life. Over the the last 15 years, Ashley has worked in a variety of settings from organizational strategy with foundations and non-profits to curriculum development and programmatic implementation in schools and communities. Ashley was born and raised in the south and currently lives in Asheville, NC.
Ekua Adisa is a queer non-binary woman of Southern, Haitian, and West African descent, currently making home in Atlanta, GA and Asheville, NC. Their work in the world is rooted in healing and housed in the South of the US, which they see as a place of potent power for healing, especially for people of African descent. Their work can look like hosting retreats, workshops, and conversations for folks to heal and evolve within, providing one-on-one spiritual council and aiding folks in connecting with their ancestors for guidance, or building community on porches while drinking #Lemonade. Ekua is also a ritual performer, healing artist, and a liberationist. They work for their ancestors and themselves in community and collaboration, and are committed to all things grassroots, including but not limited to #GrassrootsReparations. They believe that change happens from within and the best way to invite change is to model it. They do their best to model this and all truth in their parenting of their two and a half year old child who is called Akoma.
Hannah Sadtler is a social ecologist, group harmonist, and popular educator for community transformation. Raised by Quakers in the Northeast, she’s been living and loving in New Orleans since 2008; a city which has profoundly shaped her life and work. Hannah’s main organizing focuses in recent years have been the struggle for a just and liberatory education system, and racial justice movement-building with other people of European descent. She is challenged and inspired by the indomitable and embracing culture and people of New Orleans every day, and the long history of both resistance to oppression and manifestation of love and liberation in New Orleans and throughout the South. Being rooted here sustains her belief in the power of communities to build a new world.
Shilpa Jain is currently rooting herself in Oakland/Berkeley, CA, where she serves as the Executive Director of YES!. Prior to taking on this role, Shilpa spent two years as the Education and Outreach Coordinator of Other Worlds and ten years as a learning activist with Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, based in Udaipur, India, where she served as coordinator of the Swapathgami (Walkouts-Walkons) Network. All of her work seeks to uncover ways for people to free themselves from dominating, soul-crushing institutions and to live in greater alignment with their hearts and deepest values, their local communities, and with nature.
WHAT DO SOUTHERN JAM ALUM SAY ABOUT THE JAM?
“APPLY! APPLY! APPLY! This retreat changed my life. The things I learned about myself in this space were integral to affirming my work and gave me a taste of the world I want to create. DO IT!”
– Rhiana Anthony, 24, Black Lives Matter, Nashville, TN
"I so appreciate the thoughtful flow of the week. From a group of nervous strangers to a connected & powerful community, the skilled facilitators guided us through the journey with a rich plethora of tools and experiences. I feel renewed and nourished and equipped with a greater variety of techniques to bring to my home community and my work community. Thank you for an incredible, hope-renewing, experience."
– McKenzie Wren, 49, Clarkston Community Center, Atlanta and Clarkston, GA
"There were a host of terrific ideas that can only come to fruition by means of the changemakers that I met here. I also learned much about building the right structure of support for organizing endeavors.”
– Gabriel Santos, 38, faculty and community organizer, Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA
"Being at a cross-roads in my life, I arrived here with a big idea, but not knowing if I had the energy or the means to achieve it. This amazing journey nourished my parched soul and gave me the inspiration and support I need to move forward with courage and confidence."
– Marla Durden, 48, coach & consultant, Houston, TX
“When Martin Luther King stood on a hill in Tennessee and looked down into a valley and had his vision… This is that same hill that I was looking down in this picture. Words cannot express the feelings I had as I sat and meditated on this hill, to walk among the same grounds and sit in the same places that Rosa Parks and many people that brought about profound change in our land was such an inspiring and overwhelming feeling, the healing that I shared with others at this place as we envisioned a new South. The spirit of these change makers reached into my most inner soul and showed me who I really was as a person. To finally find myself, to understand myself, to freely BE myself is a reward in which I will never be able to fully pay back, but I will try with the rest of my life to pay that feeling back with the work I do. I can't wait to share my new vision with my friends in Arkansas, the South and places afar, as we change the land around us for ourselves, our children, and the people our children will be among. To build the new economy, to build communities, and to build ourselves and our future, my destiny has been revealed and I can never forget the people that helped me in my journey and helped promote a new awakening inside of me."
– Brandon C, 28, visual artist and designer, Occupy Arkansas, Hoxie, AK
COST, TRAVEL INFO, AND LOGISTICS
The Jam will be held at the Prama Institute, which houses people in a combination of dormitories and private rooms on-site and offers an eclectic vegetarian dining experience. We are asking people to cover their own travel costs. There will be a welcome packet to help you with arranging your travel.
Tuition for the Southern Jam is $900, of which $450 covers food and lodging for the time, while $450 covers program expenses. Additional tax-deductible donations above the event price are welcome and help us to provide scholarships to enable the diversity upon which this event thrives.
We will work with each participant to create a combination of payment, scholarship and work trade that works for them. Also, we have the option of a monthly payment plan as well. Money should not be a barrier in participating in a Jam, so we will do everything we can to make it work for you to attend.
APPLICATION AND DEADLINE
If you want to join us in co-learning, collaborating, and creating region-wide strategies to tackle the current challenges across the South and a fresh vision of what’s possible here, please complete the application online.
June 15, 2016, is our Priority Application deadline, in which we make our first selections and allocate the majority of our scholarships.
July 15, 2016 is our final application deadline.
We have space for 30 people and are aiming to bring together a diversity of folks from around the region. Please apply today!
If you have any questions that this invitation does not answer, and/or need any more information, please do not hesitate to contact us at <southernjaminfo[at]gmail.com>.
We are looking forward to Jamming with you!
Ekua, Jovan, Hannah, Jayanni, Ashley and Shilpa
