Collective support
Black and Indigenous-led organizing, disability justice and art, food sovereignty and land rights
This is a short(er) new-moon missive requesting your input! I’d love to know what organization you think Starlight and Strategy should support with a monthly donation.
Here’s the backstory: Just about a year ago, in April 2020, I opened up paying subscriptions for this newsletter. I did so in order to raise money for COVID-related relief funds—and I was thrilled at how you all responded. We raised enough to donate $150 to the National Domestic Workers Alliance relief fund and $160 to the relief fund for undocumented workers through the Pioneer Valley Workers Center. Then in July and August, we raised $110 for Movement for Black Lives and $150 for Massachusetts-based abolition organization Familes for Justice As Healing. In September, I decided to start making monthly donation to Families for Justice As Healing. I started at $15/month, and then, as subscriptions increased, raised it to $25/month.
All told, we have given away $750 to Black and people of color-led organizing and relief work. Thank you to all of you who are paying subscribers for making this possible!
Now, there are enough paying subscribers that I can make a total of $50/month donation. I could increase the donation to Families for Justice As Healing, or I could choose another organization. And I’d love to hear from you about where you think this money should go. It doesn’t matter if you are a paying subscriber or not—each of you make up this community, and I welcome input from all. And if you are not yet a paying subscriber and are able and feel moved to support organizing through your subscription, that would be fabulous!
These are the organizations I’m considering—and I’m also excited to know if there are other organizations you recommend. Let me know what you think here or by clicking on the button below.
I first learned about the Highlander Center at the 2007 U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta. In a dynamic and energizing workshop, we sang, we listened and talked, and we learned. That’s where I first learned that Rosa Parks wasn’t just a tired seamstress, but that she was an organizer, trained in part at the Highland Center, and that her refusal to give up her seat was a planned action. Currently, the organization is co-directed by Ash-Lee Henderson, whom I experience as a brilliant organizer. Here’s their mission:
Highlander serves as a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the South. We work with people fighting for justice, equality and sustainability, supporting their efforts to take collective action to shape their own destiny. Through popular education, language justice, participatory research, cultural work, and intergenerational organizing, we help create spaces—at Highlander and in local communities — where people gain knowledge, hope and courage, expanding their ideas of what is possible. We develop leadership and help create and support strong, democratic organizations that work for justice, equality and sustainability in their own communities and that join with others to build broad movements for social, economic and restorative environmental change.
Indigenous Environmental Network
IEN has been leading the fight for environmental justice for decades—in local communities, at the national level, and at the U.N. climate treaty. They have helped to shape environmental and climate justice organizing, including the demand for a just transition rooted in Indigenous principals and the analysis of carbon markets as a false, industry-driven solution. I know about them through my work with Corporate Accountability. They are a key organization in the campaign to kick Big Polluters out of climate policy and make them pay for their role in fueling the climate crisis. Here’s their mission:
In 1991, near the sacred Bear Butte in South Dakota, near 500 Native people came together at the outdoor 2nd Annual IEN Protecting Mother Earth gathering. At this gathering, this Unifying Principle and the Environmental Code of Ethics were written.
IEN is an alliance of Indigenous Peoples whose Shared Mission is to Protect the Sacredness of Earth Mother from contamination & exploitation by Respecting and Adhering to Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Law
I’ve given a shout out to Sins Invalid in this newsletter before. I first learned about disability justice from co-founder Patricia Berne when I worked at San Francisco Women Against Rape and she was a trainer. I love the radical nature of Sins Invalid’s performance work. Here’s their mission.
Sins Invalid is a disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized. Led by disabled people of color, Sins Invalid’s performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body, developing provocative work where paradigms of “normal” and “sexy” are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all bodies and communities.
We define disability broadly to include people with physical impairments, people who belong to a sensory minority, people with emotional disabilities, people with cognitive challenges, and those with chronic/severe illness. We understand the experience of disability to occur within any and all walks of life, with deeply felt connections to all communities impacted by the medicalization of their bodies, including trans, gender variant and intersex people, and others whose bodies do not conform to our culture(s)' notions of "normal" or "functional."
Every time I hear co-founder Leah Penniman speak, I’m deeply moved, I learn something new, and I’m inspired to go out and get my hands in the dirt. I believe that the mission and work of Soul Fire Farm is an essential part of the new world we’re headed toward. Here’s their mission:
Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm committed to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. We raise and distribute life-giving food as a means to end food apartheid. With deep reverence for the land and wisdom of our ancestors, we work to reclaim our collective right to belong to the earth and to have agency in the food system. We bring diverse communities together on this healing land to share skills on sustainable agriculture, natural building, spiritual activism, health, and environmental justice. We are training the next generation of activist-farmers and strengthening the movements for food sovereignty and community self-determination.
Our food sovereignty programs reach over 10,000 people each year, including farmer training for Black and Brown growers, reparations and land return initiatives for northeast farmers, food justice workshops for urban youth, home gardens for city-dwellers living under food apartheid, doorstep harvest delivery for food insecure households, and systems and policy education for public decision-makers.
Thanks to each of you who recieve and read this newsletter! I’m grateful to be in community with you, whether this is your first time reading, whether you are a long-time subscriber, and whether you are a paying subscriber or not.
I’m excited to be able to continue to support important organizing work through this newsletter. All of this is one small way of trying to move through capitalism in as an aligned a way with my values as possible. More on that here.
That’s it for now. I look forward to getting your input and reporting back to you which organization we will be supporting together.
I hope this new moon is restful and generative for you!