YEO Front Line News- April 2009- Progressive Partner Highlight

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice, (SCSJ) a non-profit advocacy organization in Durham, N.C., promotes justice by empowering minority and low-income communities to defend and advance their political, social and economic rights.

SCSJ uses the combined skills of lawyers, social scientists, community organizers and media experts to help underrepresented people develop strategies to achieve their visions for themselves and their communities, incorporating an international human rights perspective and linking their efforts to broader processes of political, legal, social and economic change in the South.  The 2010 Census will be key to the ability of communities to address their needs and priorities.  When people are left out of the census, their communities lose out on federal funding for a wide range of basic needs.  In addition, their voices are left out of the equation by which political power is reapportioned and election districts are redrawn because the census numbers are the basis for redistricting at every level of government, from the city council to Congress. 

SCSJ will be working with community-based organizations in the South to determine what target populations were left out of the 2000 census, and what barriers they face to being counted.  Using that information, the organization will provide community groups the resources they identify will help them to overcome those barriers.

Specifically:

• SCSJ is offering mini-grants to community-based organizations in the South to conduct creative and impactful outreach campaigns that will encourage full participation in communities most at-risk of not being counted.
• SCSJ will convene two Southeastern regional meetings of representatives of communities most at-risk of being undercounted.  Attendees will identify barriers to participation and ways to overcome those barriers.  SCSJ will use presentation and popular education techniques to share information with communities regarding which groups are most at-risk of being undercounted, and what the costs and impacts are to the community. Together, participants will collectively strategize about what they can do to minimize the undercount.

The long-term goal is to build networks of existing community groups and civic engagement advocacy organizations to increase their capacity, and thereby lay the groundwork for future collaborations in the post-2010 round of redistricting and beyond.

Contact: Anita Earls
Email: anita@southerncoalition.org
Phone: (919) 323-3380, ext. 115
Website: www.scsj.org