SONG’s current work is focused on organizing LGBTQ Southern people to protect and defend our communities against the most repressive pieces of legislation coming down on us in the South, whether they are directed at Immigrants, LGBTQ people, or other oppressed communities being scape-goated. This Southern legislation and its implementation are among some of the worst attacks on human rights currently happening in the US, and must be stopped. As we move into 2012, we have total consensus among board and staff about our internal growth: we are making moves to strengthen and solidify our infrastructure and staff in order to best support SONG to design and implement more inter-sectional, coalition-strong campaigns and concrete projects on the ground. The time has come in the LGBTQ movement where we no longer talk about intersectionality, or criticize models that are not fully intersectional: instead, we must build hybrid intersectional models (using the best of new and classical thinking) to win concrete gains for our communities while strategically unifying Southern progressive forces with coalitions of unprecedented strength. These models than must be evaluated, improved, and shared nationally. The South is a unique and key terrain to test organizing strategy: precisely because it is a strong hold of the right wing, and the part of the country where the right wing most often test their strategies. In 2012, we will seek to fight for policy change through grassroots organizing, and a set of strategies detailed below, that we learned from our Georgia 2011 campaign.

Affiliates Program: This is SONG’s core program, and the one where we lay out the most base building and organizing. SONG is moving to a deeper build phase of our work by concentrating our membership building, listening and organizing in 5 states: Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia. In these 5 states, we listen to our base and document stories, conditions and key issues to constituents in these states. Then, (in coalition or SONG-initiated) we lead campaigns and projects that reflect what we learned in our listening. We know that too often SONG’s constituents have not had opportunities to speak their own lives, and lead their own organizing on behalf of themselves. This program makes space to do that. Please read below for 2 updates on individual campaigns.

Georgia 2011 Campaign

In early 2011, SONG became aware that the right wing intended to bring a piece of legislation to Georgia similar to the repressive, anti-immigrant legislation that passed in Arizona in 2010. Georgia House Bill 87 (HB87) sought to legalize federal and state officers’ racial and ethnic profile practicing, and ask for documentation from people living in Georgia for no reason and under no suspicion of a crime. It also sought to require employers to implement ‘e-verify’ and other employment verification systems in all workplace in Georgia. The above parts of the bill, unfortunately, passed. However, there was one other part of the bill, a very draconian and severe aspect, that we were able to defeat. The bill also included a ‘harboring clause’. The harboring clause sought to make it illegal for churches, businesses, and organizations to work with, drive in cars with, or in any way associate with undocumented people. In essence, these kinds of clauses, create a level of segregation in states where they pass that is so severe it can fine or destroy groups for defying it: making it illegal for individuals, organizations, and faith groups to ‘house’ or ‘harbor’ undocumented people. This kind of law makes movement-building leadership and infrastructure itself illegal, thereby severely limiting our ability to organize. It effectively cuts off whole chunks of organizing infrastructure at its root. It sends a message to states that live under its tyranny, that racial and ethnic segregation based on immigration status is acceptable, and that people who seek to build community across such lines should fear the consequences. Tactically, it promotes the further isolation and oppression, of communities already marginalized. For people of faith and conscience who believe in justice, it sends the message that in order to not live under fear of criminalization and legal consequence, we must defy a core value: the worth of all other human beings, and our responsibility to care for those we are in community with every day.  Because of what the harboring clause could mean to a state like Georgia, in a region like the South, SONG and our coalition partners fought this aspect of the bill very hard. We could not let this pass in Georgia, and, as of today, we have stopped it. The clause is suspended, thru a judicial proceeding, in indefinite injunction. First and foremost, it is not a story of any one organization working alone. It is a story of real coalitions—coalitions that work smart, work brave, and work together.

NC Campaign 2012

In May 2012, an anti-family amendment goes to the ballot in NC. Not only would this ballot measure, if won, declare that marriage “is only between one man and one woman” it also stands to remove basic protections from all unmarried couples, leave children in LGBTQ families unprotected from basic rights, and remove domestic partner benefits from public employees in townships that have city-wide domestic partner benefits. SONG is working to pull out the connections between this fight and basic struggles of all oppressed people in NC around jobs, violence, and defending our families from right wing attacks. We are doing this work in concert with the NC NAACP, Equality NC, Self-Help, the NC ACLU and other partners

Collaborative Work:
Part of SONG’s mission is to raise the visibility and leverage support for Southern-led organizing, and another way we do that is through connecting our members to National Convenings and other spaces that affect their lives and integrate Southern organizing into the national fabric of movement work. Currently, we are focused on building with ROOTS—a national LGBTQ POC initiative to build power and national work collaboratively; as well as Southern-based work (The Southern Alliance) with Project South and others to strategize around Southern movement building.

Technical Assistance:  One of the ways we do direct-support to our members and organizers on the ground is through technical assistance and tool-development, and sharing those in trainings, convenings, over the phone, email and our website. We are continuing to deepen this work; focusing on technical assistance to our most marginalized communities in the South.

Other SONG Programs & Initiatives:

• On-going developing and publishing of organizing tools and articles
• Local / Regional Membership events and trainings.

Want more information? Want to get more involved?
Get in touch with us and find out!