we got very lucky this time. it’s around noon when we arrive at the Highlander Research and Education Center – a place that people whom maggie encountered in her journey through Appalachia had spoken highly of. by the time we drove into New Market, just north of Knoxville, yesterday, it was dark, and our attempt to find the Highlander made us go in circles. we also knew that, even if we would have found it, chances to find the center open on a Friday night were slim.
we reach the center at noon today and are impressed by the immense beauty of the landscape. the office does look closed. but wait, there’s one other car and when we knock on the door Tufara shows up. she wasn’t supposed to be there, she insists, but you know how it goes with these kinds of social justice jobs… Tufara is just a wonderful delightful presence who tells us tales about the Highlander and the world. she’s a coordinator for the art and youth programs, and emphasizes how important it is that all the projects have an culture and youth dimension. and she tells us about the African caravan from South Africa to Nairobi, for the World Social Forum, that she’s part of.
trying to understand how the Highlander is connected to its environment, i like how she distinguishes neighbors and community. it comes as no surprise that the relationship with many of the immediate neighbors, after all these years, is full of tensions and hostility. we had a brief taste of the disconnection when we stopped at a bar on the road to ask directions. the woman behind the counter wasn’t sure, and a guy hanging around looked at us with suspicion when we told him what we were looking for. “The private club?” he asked, which made us want to make sure that we’re talking about the same place. an opportunity to poke a bit into his vision of the place – “so what do they do there?” a vile laugh and evasive respons, “well, you’ll just have to use your imagination about the things that go on there.” and Tufara tells us about the time she a dental emergency which forced her to go to the local dentist. while he was putting all the instruments in her mouth, he asked where she was from. (apparently a black woman could not be from ‘here’.) Alabama. “Good, i’m gonna fix you up so you can go back there.”
a widespread and well rooted racism that is so much part of the landscape here. on a number of occasions while driving through this landschape, and usually just after a sensation of beauty, the thought came to me that this is the land where the KuKluxKlan emerged. when looking through indymedia Tennessee before coming, i read reports of an intensification of racist actions in the region, this time specifically against new latino migrants – from actions to ban spanish (and spanish books from the library) to putting a burning cross in the yard of the home of a latino family.
yet then Tufara speaks of the Highlander’s community – some folks in the neighborhood (and with great enthousiasm she’s the godmother of a local girl), many goups in Knoxville and around (too many to start naming them, she says), groups in Tennessee, in the South, in the rest of the country. all kinds of organizations for social justice, poor people’s struggles. the current focus is bringing together white poor folks of Appalachia, black folks from the south and new latino immigrant communities in these regions.
the Highlander is all but an island, it is a node in a dense network of social justice groups. it functions as a place where people and groups gather and work together – they connect, strategize collectively, build networks and campaigns. it is a place of resources and peace to work, but it is clear that whatever takes place here, is meant to be taken (back) to other places.
Tufara also gets other people to come and meet us. Amber, an intern, and Pam, the director. a cup of coffee in the kitchen of the office. i’m impressed by the humanity that speaks through Tufara. when she talks about checking the stories she wants to tell about social justice with her grandma, to know if they are comprehensible. or about bringing together the older folk music people and the young hip-hop kids in a way that they understand why it is important to listen to each other. and when she talks about new orleans – about how the discourses about the opportunity for new ways of organizing, a discourse that i know from in the Bay Area, forgets that it’s about human lives.
Pam takes us around to show the place. the view on the Smokey Mountains is amazing. the house were most of the education takes place. the best idea of the world: the chairs set up in a circle in the big meeting room, are rocking chairs. just imagine how different a meeting must be if everyone is in a rocking chair… a dormitory pavilion with one sleeping room in particular where the beds are aligned with a hugh window opening up to the Smokies. the library pavilion full of precious resources, including a section with the original (marxist) books from when the Highlander was started in 1932. and a small house on the top of the hill, with a working and sleeping room for about 7 people. the board had decided that this spot would remain open but then one day they found that Myles Horton, who started the center, had build the house. imagine the work that one can get done here…
this weekend turns out to be one of the few without a workshop or meeting, so we don’t get to see the Highlander in action. but the gift of having this space for us…
running around in the grass, watching the colours in the sky, mountains and fog as the light fades away – from green and pink, and lots of purple. wandering through the house and reading the posters. an image of a campaign denouncing Dr. Martin Luther King’s visit to the “communist training school” that is the Highlander. Tufara also told us it had been denounced as a place with lesbians. but of course the most scandalous of all was the mixing of black and white people during the civil rights ear.
we go to New Market, to get food to cook for our hosts. while driving through this area we had already noted the presence of money. hills spread with houses and barns and meadows like in the Columbia area of two days ago, but new, big, houses inbetween. New Market is clearly developing. it shows in the supermarket. thinking what to cook, i first come up with risotto (predictable, can’t help it…). it’s unlikely they have arborio rice, maggie says. unlikely, but this super market in a small Tennessee town tells another story, about its development and globalisation of food. there is arborio rice, and an entire mediterranean food section, and a large section of fresh vegetables of all kinds. (and potatoes individually wrapped in cellophane, which i need to get for the small america bookproject…)
a late night discussion after Pam and Amber have left us. maggie describes her observation of how a consciousness of privilege among white (middle-class) kids in this country keeps them caught in guilt, and also a kind of jealously, that life is really going on elsewhere. a discussion of white privilege, once more, and important to keep on having these, perhaps especially in this country. but i notice to what extent the guilt part really irritates me (ay, not a good attitude for organizing workshops… i must find another way to respond…) – it strikes me as yet another strategy of avoidence, of self-indulgence, of nestling in the comfort of the familiar, of simply not doing one’s work.
