Our Programs

Safe and racially just communities are created through investments in mental and emotional health support services, after-school programming, transformative justice programming, and investments in public goods. We are creating alternatives to youth arrests, prosecution, and incarceration by organizing youth impacted by school pushouts and/or the juvenile justice system. Safe communities require innovation that should be led by community members and significant investments in student resources and public goods. We are training and organizing young people through our Youth Assembly Training Cohort so they have the tools to practice participatory democracy and organize for power. Additionally, our Youth Assembly Program includes regular youth meetings and youth assemblies with young people across the city. We understand that to win against the school-to-prison pipeline and criminalization of young people, we must work with parents or educators. We have decided to work with both. Parallel to the Youth Assembly is our Black Educators Collective, including educators and parents.

The Southern Movement Committee uses Black-led participatory democracy to address voter disenfranchisement, institutionalized barriers to political engagement and political power, and the structural violence that it creates in Tennessee.

Our work includes Black-led regional and statewide People's Movement Assemblies for community members to collectively analyze issues, develop a collective vision, create solutions, and direct actions to implement those solutions. At the center of this project is creating a statewide political agenda that meets the needs of Black and working-class communities and mobilizing Tennesseans to vote to elect candidates who align with the agenda. Additionally, we host candidate forums and town halls so voters can determine whether candidates align with our political agenda. This project builds on our long-term strategy to develop regional and statewide infrastructure for Black and working-class Tennesseans to practice co-governance and hold elected officials and corporate actors accountable through regular political engagement. We define political participation as voting, holding elected officials accountable, membership inside a base-building organization, and implementing community-driven programs.

The Black Nashville Assembly, started in 2020, is the vehicle we use to build democracy and practice co-governance in Nashville/Middle Tennessee. The Southern Movement Committee, founded in 2021, is the statewide assembly infrastructure expanding the work of the Black Nashville Assembly.

The Block Captain Program is recruiting community members in Tennessee to hold community meetings in their neighborhoods. We are working with Block Captains in Tennessee to hold community meetings in their neighborhoods where they will discuss issues in their neighborhood and come up with policies and programs to address those issues. We invite community members to attend Block Meetings where they will learn about how to use political engagement and participatory democracy to transform their local neighborhoods and the state of Tennessee.

In Nashville, Tennessee, the Block Captain Program is hosted and coordinated by the Black Nashville Assembly, a project at the Southern Movement Committee. In cities outside of Nashville, the Block Captain Program is hosted and coordinated by the Southern Movement Committee.

The Black Educators Collective includes parents, educators, and community members fighting for fully funded education, safe schools that do not rely on policing, and school push out. Members of the Black Educators Collective are building power with students, educators, and parents to stop the school-to-prison pipeline and create a Tennessee where young people are safe, cared for, and celebrated.