We know that this “bathroom bill” moment calls for us to be bolder and reach farther than ever before as conservative state legislators go after our people all across the South. We’re working to counter the Confederate Spring we saw rise up these past few months from Mississippi to North Carolina, and, as always, we’re looking for the people who are looking for us. This summer we want to dance with all of you we have met (and our long standing members!) that have stood up and out during this right wing backlash to muscle all our queer courage to organize, organize, organize!

In North Carolina we’re building to expand SONG capacity within seven counties across the state this summer. We have big plans of holding town halls, talking to our neighbors, bringing the gay pain, shifting the story in the small town papers and radio where too often those in power speak for us. We’re ready to turn up to demand our freedom from state legislators, to demand police accountability to community, and to demand ICE out of our communities. We’re ready to demand and build a North Carolina free from fear. We’re ready to bring the best of SONG’s training, infrastructure, and support to fight for the People’s Agenda in lock step with our members and in coalition with allies and other organizations across the state. Together we’re fighting for and building policies and community solutions that are pro-poor, pro-Black, pro-worker, pro-immigrant, pro-queer, pro-trans, pro-choice, and pro-local democratic control over our communities.

We want to re-introduce you to the SONG organizers that will be supporting and amplifying work across North Carolina.

Serena Sebring, has been on SONG staff for several years, and we welcome Jade Brooks to the SONG staff after many years of deep and committed membership and leadership through the Amendment One campaign and the more recent Durham Free From Fear Campaign. We are so excited to welcome Jade to staff!

Dr. Serena Sebring, PhD, is a queer black feminist organizer, educator, and mother. Originally born in Boston, MA, Serena came to the South by way of Boulder, CO in 2005, where she found home in Durham, NC and SONG family. Serena lives and loves in Bull City (aka Durham, aka Queer Capital of the Universe) with her partner and teenage children. Her academic background includes research examining the history of reproductive justice and women of color in North Carolina. She is a Taurus, who loves working in the garden, house parties, porch-sitting, and kitchen table talks.

Jade Brooks, grew up poor in a small forest city in the Northwest. Her people are white immigrants (Eastern European Jews and bohemian French Catholics) and the Quakers who were among the first to colonize stolen indigenous land in Pennsylvania. She found her way South 7 years ago. She fell into great luck to attend SONG’s North Carolina Organizing School in 2009 and then fell in love with the work. Jade helped to organize against Amendment One with All of Us North Carolina in 2012 and then with SONG’s Free From Fear campaign in Durham for the last 2 years.  She’s all the way fired up for campaign work that builds movement and people’s power. An anti-Zionist Jew and member of the organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jade helped to lead a boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign against Durham County in North Carolina to drop a contract with Israeli-apartheid profiteer and private security company, G4S. She loves girls, camping, books, bookstores, poetry, radical publishing, hot summer thunderstorms, and making shameful pop mix CDs.

Together, Serena and Jade, along with the fierce leadership of SONG members in North Carolina will be: focusing on creating safety, dignity and power together; uplifting bodily autonomy; create autonomous spaces for healing and sacred connection; building wellness and safety through our kinship network; expanding access to health and wellness resources for our people; and living the lessons we carry in our bones from the generations of us who have fought for a world free from fear. What does that look like?

  • building and run local Free From Fear campaigns focused on the criminalization of Black, immigrant, LGBTQ, and young people
  • strongly closing out the Durham Free From Fear campaign to to win changes to police practice to incorporate standard operating procedures (SOPs) for transgender and gender non-conforming individuals
  • documenting campaign lessons of the past year to support campaigns emerging both across the state and across the South
  • naming, exposing, and disarming the staunchest right wing enemies of the people responsible for nonsense like HB2, Blue Lives Matter Bills, and other anti-immigrant and anti-worker bills including:
    • Governor Pat McCrory
      • State legislators Dan Bishop and Buck Newton
      • The North Carolina Family Policy Council
      • The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce
  • countering backlash attacks on reproductive health care and abortion access
  • working for total repeal of HB2 with organizing and legal strategies
  • strengthen a statewide SONG Black Lives Matter cohort to support leadership development for queer and trans Black North Carolinians
  • initiate new and strengthen existing coalition and alliance work with Black liberation, worker justice, reproductive and gender justice, and immigrant rights organizations

We see the agenda coming out of the state capital and that’s why on April 25th, outside of the North Carolina General Assembly we called for the People’s Special Session to make it clear to the Right that we will do whatever it takes to to protect and secure our most basic protections and rights. We will strengthen our skills, grow our connections to each other, and move boldly toward liberation in our lifetime and a world free from fear together.