Southerners On New Ground

SONG is a home for LGBTQ liberation across all lines of race, class, abilities, age, culture, gender, and sexuality in the South. We build, sustain, and connect a southern regional base of LBGTQ people in order to transform the region through strategic projects and campaigns developed in response to the current conditions in our communities. SONG builds this movement through leadership development, intersectional analysis, and organizing.

For the year ended December 31, 2018, SONG operated the following programs:(i) Local Campaign Training and Organizing: In 2018, SONG trained over 125 LGBTQ leaders in four local chapters across the South in grassroots campaign organizing and intersectional methodology. Leaders in these sites launched local media and organizing campaigns addressing the use of money bail and pretrial detention. Additionally, SONG members have been comparing organizing strategies and tactics to demand immigrant justice across the Southeast in response to ICE raids and the rising anti-immigrant and xenophobic political climate. Through these actions and organizing, SONG has worked to strengthen our members organizing capacity in the service of a pro-immigrant, pro-Black, and pro-LGBTQ agenda.(ii) Coalition and Alliance Work: SONG brings LGBTQ leadership, expertise, and visibility to key racial and economic justice alliances and organizing fights in the South and incubates collaborative work that helps to connect bases and shared priorities. In 2018, SONG partnered with organizations in the Movement 4 Black Lives constellation; continued work with the National Bail Out Collective, made up of organizations working to end money bail across the country; strengthened SONGs alliance with Mijente and with the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, towards immigrant justice; and with Agitarte to develop SONGs cultural organizing strategy, as well as partnering with other local and statewide coalitions and alliances throughout the South. SONG continued its strong partnership with the Transgender Law Center supporting their work in the southern region.(iii) Regional Membership & Base-building: SONG maintains and builds a base of over 3,500 Southern LGBTQ Black people, people of color, rural, working class, and immigrant people. In 2018, SONG worked to connect and support SONGs base through general membership convenings, training and leadership development, communications work, and regional convenings, including SONG's Gaycation and Bayard Rustin People of Color Gathering. SONG held workshops, trainings, popular education sessions, and presentations throughout the year which engaged over 2,500 people locally, regionally, and nationally in intersectional analysis, visioning, strategizing, and basic principles. In 2018, SONG ran and evaluated the Fellowship program which was designed to support new Black and immigrant leaders. Also, in 2018, SONG launched the Member Initiated Projects (MIPS), where SONGs members could request up to $5,000 in mini grants to support a local project across the South.Through these programs in 2018, SONG brought leadership to intersectional organizing projects; further developed leadership within a multi-racial, intergenerational LGBTQ base; and engaged Southern LGBTQ people in projects and campaigns that directly addressed institutional and social injustice.