Fellows for Freedom: First graduates of SPLC's Advocacy
Institute eager to help fuel change in Mississippi communities
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Esther Schrader | Read the full piece here
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Friend,
If you told Rasheid Davis when he was 23 and serving six years in
prison for marijuana possession that he would become not only a
successful small businessman but would lead marches in his town
calling for criminal legal reform, he would have shaken his head.
If you told Saletheo Perez when he was a teenager with a gun that a
quarter of a century later he would be a published poet, a furniture
store owner and a local leader with the power to lift up his
community, he would have scoffed.
And if you told Gail Wright Lowery, a 64-year-old public defender,
that at her age she would find herself not only taking classes again
but studying alongside the sort of people she had spent a career
representing, she would not have been able to imagine just how much
she would learn, not just from the classes, but from her classmates.
The three are among 22 fellows who will graduate this weekend from the
first-ever Advocacy Institute
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, a series of education seminars created by the Southern Poverty Law
Center to build advocacy skills among those most affected by systemic
disenfranchisement. Selected for their desire to bring change to
Mississippi, the fellows each have journeys to the classroom doors of
the Institute that vary broadly. But their goals are the same: to
wield their new skills at leveraging individual and collective power
to fuel much-needed change.
"I didn't really know, to be honest, that there was help
out there for people like me just trying to change things in our
neighborhoods," said Davis, 44. "I thought it was all
groundwork. When I see people around me with the same passion for
helping people in the community that I have, well, I feel like I have
found a family. Now that I've learned there are a lot of other
people advocating for their communities, it's opened doors to me
that I didn't know were there."
The seminars, held on the campus of Tougaloo College
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near Jackson, Mississippi, are designed to open just those sorts of
doors. Fellows receive stipends to participate and are taught by
prominent policymakers, elected officials, advocates and attorneys the
skills they need to grow their efforts in their communities. The SPLC
plans to grow the Institute into a lasting training ground for new
organizers, first in Mississippi and then throughout the Deep South,
focused on community education and transformative change.
"The goal of the Advocacy Institute is to help grow and
strengthen the capacity and network of advocates here in the state of
Mississippi," said Waikinya Clanton, the SPLC's
Mississippi state office director. "Through our program we offer
the education, access and training needed to empower communities to
effectuate change at a local level."
Focusing on felony disenfranchisement
The Institute is one of a number of new initiatives and partnerships
the SPLC is undertaking, as the organization founded more than 50
years ago builds on its landmark legal victories against
discrimination, inequality and white supremacist groups to work more
closely than ever in partnership with local communities.
With more than one in 10 adults in Mississippi denied the right to
vote because of Jim Crow-era criminal disenfranchisement laws
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, this first series of seminars was geared toward increasing activist
skills among formerly incarcerated people.
The SPLC's Voting Rights Practice Group
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has been working to dismantle felony disenfranchisement in
Mississippi
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and across the Deep South, marshaling its teams of lawyers to file
lawsuits and its policy arm to support legislation to dismantle the
laws that prevent many formerly incarcerated people from voting. But a
deep need was seen by activists on the ground for instruction in
pushing for change through protest, advocacy and organizing.
READ MORE
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,
working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
all people.
Friend, will you make a gift to help the SPLC fight for
justice and equity in courts and combat white supremacy?
DONATE
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