Across the country and in the South we recognize the importance of this political moment. We recognize how dangerous and rampant the anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-poor, anti-woman, anti-trans, and anti-queer rhetoric is this election cycle. All spring and summer SONG members, member leaders, and SONG Organizing Fellows have been organizing across the region to combat the vicious stories being told about our lives. Like you, we’ve driven across the hills and flatlands of the South and we’ve seen the billboards and yard signs that attack our communities and our values.
Together we’ve collaborated to combat the electoral nastiness that has surrounded us for months by creating a yard sign that we feel good about having in front of our homes, churches, and businesses. We created a sign that denounces the platforms and candidates so deeply invested in destroying us and to lift up the organizing it will take from all of us to create a world we want to live in. We don’t want to represent the “none of them are worthy” candidates, but we do want to understand together the significance of both the presidential and local elections this cycle and our role as a movement in this time.
As the political waters have shifted with the tragic attack at Pulse, the continuous killings of Black lives, and the release of the Platform for the Movement of Black Lives, we wanted to move away from just talking about the presidential candidates and towards the visionary organizing happening all around us. We are inspired by the legacy of southern organizing from freedom rides to voting rights and believe that we must step into the mandate to be leaders in the places that we live and love to dream, to vote, and to organize like our lives depend on it, because they do.
We aren’t naive enough to believe that any single candidate or party will save us and we know from a long deep history just how quickly a candidate will sell our votes down the river. What we do believe in is the power of us, our leadership, our organizing, and our communities to stand up for our lives. Our members do this work every day organizing Free From Fear campaigns, pushing back against local right wing conservatives, defending basic human rights against hateful legislation in states like Mississippi and North Carolina, and understanding our work in our electoral climates. Our liberation isn’t solely dependent on these elections, but these elections present an opportunity for us to get our people in office, fight for wins that combat the violence and marginalization we as LGBTQ folks, especially folks of color face, and lift up our values as something worth building towards.
Political family, will you help us spread this message across the South?
Through yard signs, print, and social media, we want to be able to move our message across the region and to get the issues we face back into the conversation. How can you get involved? We’re pulling together teams of SONG members across the South to put up yard signs and write op-eds to spread the good word about our local work, our dreams, and the core issues our communities face. Will you help us get at least 10 op-eds and 1500 yard signs up across the South?
Get into the mix! JOIN our call to get more information on October 13th. We’ll talk about how to build a crew, how SONG can support you in writing op-eds, dropping yard signs in your community, and documenting and debriefing our collective work. The possibilities are endless!
DREAM, VOTE, ORGANIZE CALLThursday, October 13, 20167pm ESTRSVP FOR CALL HERE!
Once you’ve connected with your local crew (either with people we connected you to or through your own networks) then fill out the form below with where you want the signs mailed and how many you think you can move!
We can’t 100% guarantee we can get you all the signs you want, but we will do our best!
PLEASE NOTE: This form must be completed by 3pm, Monday, October 17th or else we won’t be able to get signs printed and shipped to youin time!
