NEW: The Repairer's Brief

Septima Clark was born into American authoritarianism in Charleston, South Carolina. More than three decades after the end of the Civil War, some of the same people who’d rebelled against the United States of America were in charge of local government and representing the people of South Carolina in the US Congress. As a student in segregated and unequal schools, Clark learned the power of education and the promise of democracy. After completing the education available to her in local schools, she became a teacher on John’s Island while continuing to pursue further education for herself at Benedict College and Virginia’s Hampton Institute. By her example and in her lessons, Septima Clark practiced the truth-telling that is a direct challenge to any authoritarian regime.

When the state of South Carolina passed a law in 1956 that said no state employee could be a member of the NAACP, Clark resigned her teaching post in the South Carolina public schools after more than three decades of service. By that time, she was already teaching adults during summer breaks at the Highlander Folk School. The previous summer, one of her students, Ms. Rosa Parks, had spent two weeks learning the tactics of nonviolent direct action before going home to Montgomery, Alabama, where she refused to give up her seat on the bus and catalyzed the first city-wide boycott against Jim Crow segregation. Clark could see the power of education that gave people the tools to challenge authoritarianism wherever they are. She went to work full-time at Highlander and started the Citizens Education Program that would train thousands of Black Southerners to take direct action to register and vote in a system that was designed to silence their voice.

When we celebrate the civil rights movement in American public life, we often remember the soaring rhetoric of the March on Washington or the legislative achievements of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. But we too easily forget the empowerment education that made mass demonstrations, voter participation, and legislation possible. Without Septima Clark and the thousands of people she taught to defy authoritarianism where they were, there would never have been a movement. People needed a place to learn what was really going on and what they could do to bring about change.

While we face a different authoritarianism in 21st-century America, our basic need is the same: everyday people must have a place to go where they can get trusted facts about what’s really going on and focused instruction about what they can do to make change in the places where they are. This is why we are launching a new podcast series called The Repairer’s Brief: Facts and Focus to Empower the Fight for a Third Reconstruction.

For anyone committed to resisting authoritarianism and building a movement to reclaim the tools of our government, this live show and podcast is the place to come every other Monday for:

• a moral analysis of the headlines and the facts that aren’t being reported by mainstream news outlets.

• a deep-dive into the policy behind the pain that people are experiencing on the ground.

• a clear vision for how things could be different if we changed priorities in state and federal budgets.

• practical and actionable steps that everyday people are taking in their communities to bring about change.

Like a Highlander workshop with Septima Clark, The Repairer’s Brief will be accessible to the people who are most directly impacted by the policy violence authoritarians have imposed on our communities. We have partnered with the Institute for Policy Studies to provide an up-to-date fact sheet with each episode, empowering communities with the information they need to explain to their neighbors what’s happening and why. We are also partnering with The Save America Movement to provide a clear moral challenge to abuses of power that is not about right versus left, but right versus wrong.

You can watch the first episode of The Repairer’s Brief live here on Substack or YouTube tomorrow Monday, August 10, at 7pm ET. In “More Than An Affordability Crisis,” we will be looking at facts about the cost of the war in Iran and talking about why a moral movement must connect the dots between rising prices, the costs of war, and the poverty that this nation has tolerated for far too long. While people continue to lose access to healthcare as a direct result of this Congress’s single largest legislative action, we will hear from Elaina Hurley in West Virginia who is organizing her community to take back what was stolen from her. And, as always, we’ll have space at the end of the program to engage with those of you who are able to join us live.

Be sure to subscribe for free to get each episode delivered to your inbox, with a downloadable version of the week’s fact sheet. All episodes will be available from Repairers of the Breach and wherever you get your podcasts.

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow evening for the first episode of The Repairer’s Brief.