International Human Rights Day - in Birmingham

Friday, Dec. 10, 2010:  We're in Birmingham with the Southern Human Rights Organizing Conference. Folks from across the South are coming together this weekend to continue the work building broad southern-based coalitions "to combat human rights violations in the southern region and forge an agenda for social change." 

If anyone can do it,  these folks can.  We're here to listen and learn and help with the work weaving the vital connections across issues and campaigns working for social change.  There is a bus load of folks from the Durham, NC area organized through the Black Workers for Justice movement, and folks from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who marched with us in Fort Benning, Georgia, with SOA Watch at the gates of the notorious School of Americas.

I've seen many familiar faces from southern based organizing, including Pam McMichael of Tennessee's Highlander Center, Jaribu Hill of the Mississippi Workers Center.  We first met this dynamic warrior in Memphis at the Gandhi King Conference on Non-violence in October.

Stay tuned for more as the conference progresses.