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Report from the Southern Movement Assembly 1965 2015 Everyday Is Selma

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Report from the Southern Movement Assembly 1965 2015 Everyday Is Selma EVERYDAY IS SELMA Report from the Southern Movement Assembly 1965 2015 Everyday is Selma. In 1965, Tuskegee students paused at the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and said a silent prayer for Willie Edwards, a 24 year-old Black man who had been thrown into the Alabama River by the Klan eight years before. In 2015, a new generation of Southern freedom movement fighters walked that same bridge in Selma and paused to remember the many lives that have been lost to racist state violence in the last few years - Michael Brown, Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin, Islan Nettles, Rekia Boyd. We remember Ernesto Javier Canepa Diaz who was killed by police on the border and the thousands more that have suffered from deportations, harassment in high schools, unsafe communities, and mass incarceration. In 1965, community people from Alabama, young people in SNCC & local college students were at the forefront of building southern freedom movement force, making history in Selma and across Dallas, Lowndes, Perry, and Wilcox counties, Alabama. It was these ordinary people, often considered deviants in their own time, who pushed the ministers and other establishment leaders to either join with or get out of the way of a change they knew was possible. In 2015, as part of the national commemoration of Bloody Sunday, a Southern Movement Assembly (SMA) delegation of almost 100 people, deviants in our own right, converged in Selma to exercise and build our collective power. A sanitized version of history is always more palatable to the establishment of the day. However, as students of our Southern movement history, the SMA delegation fought to shine a light on critical history that shows ordinary people risked their lives and reputations to stand up against the most powerful forces of their day. The Southern Freedom Movement was not a feel good movement - it was a fight hard movement, and today, we are part of a fight hard movement that is growing the power of our collective action to demand “Enough is Enough.” The Ordinary People’s Society (TOPS), a SMA anchor organization, has been working in Alabama for over a decade to expand voting rights and build political power for formerly incarcerated people. TOPS made the call for the SMA organizations to mobilize and converge in Alabama, and although we work on many different frontlines of struggle we all work in the spirit of the words Fannie Lou Hamer said, “Nobody is Free Until Everyone’s Free.” We met with local leaders in Selma and Alabama to recognize that the fight for voting rights is a fight for political power. The SMA united our fight on historic ground in Alabama to support the current struggles for political power and build movements to stop state sanctioned violence today. Everyday is Bloody Sunday. Glory Kilanko, founder and director of Women Watch Afrika made that statement on a recent weekly call with Southern movement leaders. Our international delegation of 100 people from 15 organizations and 7 Southern states represents Black communities, youth, elders, families, Latinos, Muslim communities from Iran and Sudan, LGBTQ communities, and formerly incarcerated people. We recognize the danger and strength of claiming our political power in a moment when institutions are telling us that murder, disenfranchisement, and economic displacement are allowable, legitimate, and justifiable. We name state violence as the cause of our people’s suffering through both neglect and direct proliferation. We learn from and regenerate the Southern Freedom Movement today from the bottom up because we know that until the most oppressed stand together, social justice will not be delivered. On the 50th anniversary on this historic site, we remember the massacres and forced removal of indigenous Muscogee, Choctow, and Creek peoples from this land, we remember Bloody Sunday, the March to Montgomery that followed, the powerful resistance of youth movements, and the legacy of ordinary people, then and now, fighting for extraordinary demands to live full, productive, and dignified lives. This memory is why we organize and know that together we will win. Nobody is Free Until Everybody is Free. 2 In this Report: Everyday is Selma - SMA Statement . Pg 2 A People’s Victory on the Bridge, Project South . Pg 5 Selma 50 - Sankofa Moment, Spirithouse . Pg. 6 Many Faces of Selma, University Sin Fronteras . Pg 8 Gwen Patton, Alabama SNCC Veteran . Pg 10 150 Year History of Black Political Power in AL . .Pg 11 This weekend restored my faith in people. To come here and see people so intent and caring about other people, that was huge. There were moments when I had to remind myself to be patient and observe what is going on, to take things in and translate things. I’m very Nigerian. I want to go back home and do things there. - Joy Kigawa, Women Watch Afrika, Clarkston GA How soon can we take the Backwards March to all of your communties? We are going to take it everywhere. On the bridge we said, “Educate, don’t incarcerate.” We can’t stop here. - Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, T.O.P.S., Dothan AL It seems like whenever I happened to talk to someone standing near me, they turned out to be ordinary people who had participated in some way in 1965 and had a lot of history to share. I wish there had been programs to hear from them, not only about what they did in 1965, but what they have experienced and done each decade since then. - Cita Cook, Project South & the University Sin Fronteras, Atlanta GA 4 A People’s Victory on the Bridge Reflection by Project South At the 50th commemoration of Selma, it was ordinary people, who do extraordinary things, leading the 75,000 people marching across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge. As rumors and misinformation flew around the internet about what happened in Selma on the weekend of the commemoration, the Southern Movement Assembly delegation has amplified the powerful reasons why there were no big celebrities leading the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge 50 years after Bloody Sunday. While the TV preachers, famous speakers and their handlers remained at Brown Chapel, local leader Rose Sanders Toure made a bold call not to wait. Rose and countless unnamed people have kept the flame of history lit, commemorating the significant moment when state violence attacked the Southern Freedom Movement foot soldiers of 1965 on that bridge. On March 8, 2015, under the gaze of a national spotlight, the people’s movement started with a Backwards March of formerly incarcerated people, youth, elder movement veterans, international refugees, LGBTQ folks, and grassroots organizers. Those who fight on every frontline, resisted being erased by the idea of individual, iconic leadership by wearing bright gold banners that read: “We are the Peoples Movement, Leadership from the Bottom-up.” The Backwards March parted at the bottom of the bridge, and Rev. Glasgow with The Ordinary Peoples Society (TOPS) led the march back over the bridge with Rose, the Southern Movement Assembly, and partner organizations. Representing the rising tide of the Formerly Incarcerated People’s Movement, Rev. Kenneth Glasgow has been organizing a ‘Backwards March’ over the bridge since 2007, a week before the Jubilee Crossing to express the need for our movements to ‘go back, get it right, and go forward with everyone who has been forgotten or left behind.’ In 2015, 50 years later, it was the People’s Movement of today that reclaimed the bridge for the people, for our collective memories, and for the current frontline battles against state violence, economic displacement, mass incarceration, and injustice. As Rev. Glasgow says in a short video highlighting this victory: "The people are tired. We will not wait . Enough is Enough. Unite to Fight." The Southern Movement Assembly recognizes the fierce leadership of local Alabama freedom fighters past, present, and future and is calling for action over the next two years to grow the Southern Freedom Movement of the 21st century with the Southern People's Initiative. See www.southtosouth.org for more information. 5 Selma 50, Sankofa Moment Reflection by SpiritHouse Recently, four members of SpiritHouse Inc., left Durham NC, to join our Southern Movement Alliance (SMA) comrades, in Selma AL, for the 50th Anniversary of the Edmund Pettus Bridge crossing. This historic weekend was a commemoration of the first of three attempted marches, from Selma to Montgomery, to secure voting rights for Blacks in Alabama. The violent, state sanctioned, retaliation on March 7, 1965, by the Alabama State Troopers, led to that march forever being known as “Bloody Sunday.” Upon our arrival, we paid tribute to those who marched and survived unimaginable beatings on that day, and we joined our fellow SMA anchor organization, The Ordinary People’s Society (T.O.P.S.) to lead their annual Backwards March across the same historic bridge. T.O.P.S. whose goal is “to create, build, promote and maintain a better humanity by remaining open to the needs of people in our society,” has been leading the Backwards March, in Selma, since 2007 because, as founder Rev. Kenneth Glasgow says, “we have to go back and get some things right before we can move forward.” As we drove from our hotel through Montgomery we talked about the similarities between the Backwards March and the West African Sankofa proverb. The Sankofa which literally means “it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot,” is symbolized by a mythological bird that is flying forward while looking back in the opposite direction. In its mouth (or sometimes carried on its back) is an egg that represents the future. Black people separated and displaced across the diaspora have been returning to fetch lost pieces of ourselves for generations.
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