The Southeast Cluster

Frank Sanchez, Senior Program Officer

The Southeast Cluster consists of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Applicants located in this area should apply by the January deadline.

Hollis Watkins, a Civil Rights veteran of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and founder of Southern Echo in Mississippi, challenged Needmor’s Board to remember the South is different, requiring more patience of expectation, and our commitment to the region should reflect that. The Needmor Fund Board officially approved a ten-year commitment to a sustained strategy to fund the development of strong social justice movements within Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

The legacies of slavery and the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and, on the positive side, the Civil Rights Movement characterize the southeastern region, especially the Deep South. The highest rates of poverty and economic distress in the United States continue to be found in this region. Racism persists as the primary “wedge issue” that divides poor and working communities and serves to maintain the status quo.

The political processes in these states are not easily transformed by individual electoral outcomes or single policy gains because there are obstacles to democracy imbedded within their systems. The economic and political structures of the Deep South echo the systematic structural obstacles that typify the colonized Third World. Organizing must be systemic – must focus on changing structures, not just rearranging players.

The Deep South state governments are underfunded and have cut budgets at a time when other state governments have enjoyed budget surpluses. Further, as Joe Givens of Louisiana Interfaiths Together has stated, “The scarce public resources at the state level are targeted for such questionable activities as corporate subsidies and tax breaks for the affluent.” Louisiana has its notorious Ten Year Industrial Tax Exemption. Mississippi, which pioneered industrial tax exemption, has recently attracted a huge Nissan plant through state tax giveaways. These states are looking to gambling to offset their deficits. Organizations within the cluster are developing long-term strategies to address state tax reform. Alabama Arise is proposing an income tax reform that lifts the burden from the poorest and least able to pay.

Recently released data from the 2000 census shows population shifts within the cluster that will result in the redistricting of local and national legislative districts through the process of reapportionment. Since this process is an opportunity to ensure that voting districts are in compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1964, it is a strong tool to overcome the structural barriers hindering democracy within the region. Southern Echo effectively used reapportionment after the 1990 census to gain structural political power in Mississippi by crafting electable black districts. However, the 2000 census may result in the potential loss of black electoral districts at state and local levels in Alabama and Louisiana as well as Mississippi. Southern Echo is gearing up for the reapportionment struggle and will provide leadership within Mississippi and throughout the South.

In the Deep South cluster, The Needmor Fund has found many opportunities to work with and fund community organizations whose work is a resolute response to these new and old challenges. Base-building, long-term organizations are active in key arenas such as leadership development in African American communities, workplace issues, environmental justice, public education, and statewide coalition building. This organizing reduces fragmentation, develops grassroots leadership, and builds a base of power for equality and justice throughout the region.