At our July meeting, Brett Bursey gave an update on the Fair Maps SC campaign to create a citizens commission to draw district lines, removing lawmakers from the process. We suspected it would be a challenge to get the bipartisan leadership needed to make our plan viable. We were right.
Category Archives: Network News/Events
Congratulations to the 4th graduating class of the Modjeska Simkins School!
Graduates of the spring session of the Modjeska Simkins School picked up their diplomas on Saturday, cheered on by family and friends who gathered to help them celebrate. If past classes are any indication, the ceremony did not mark the end of their activist education, but a new beginning.
“We have been so impressed with the graduates of the last three sessions,” said Network Director Brett Bursey, who led the class with Claflin University professor Dr. Robert Greene. “Their level of enthusiasm and engagement has exceeded our expectations. The whole idea is for them take what they’ve learned back into their schools, organizations, and communities. And it’s working.”
In the final class, students talked about how they planned to put to good use what they had learned. Some joined existing projects; others will create and collaborate on new ones. Past graduates have gone on to launch a podcast; revive a feminist group in Columbia that is spearheading plans to ratify the ERA in SC; conduct tours that revisit the historical narratives of the monuments in the state’s public spaces; and grow a vibrant youth organization—the New Legacy Project—that has been compiling a State of the Youth Report. Several former students now serve on the Network’s executive committee. Others are volunteering with local nonprofits and community groups.
The course isn’t easy. It includes challenging reading assignments and difficult discussions. Students meet every other week for two-hour sessions, which sometimes go long. This session ran from March 18 through June 29, with optional workshops on certain Sundays. Guest lecturers included Chief Andy Spell, Lewis Pitts, Dr. Bobby Donaldson, and Louis Burke.
The curriculum is both practical and academic. The first classes teach the history of South Carolina that students didn’t learn in school. The last classes offer the practical tools and resources for successful grassroots organizing in South Carolina.
After graduation, Melanie McGehee shared with her friends on social media, “Honestly, of the times I’ve left somewhere with a ‘certificate,’ this is the one I’m proud of. It’s a different sort of feeling, but I like it.”
Her 13-year-old son Ian also earned a diploma. He was the youngest of the group, and we wondered whether he could handle the material. We were wrong to worry; see clip from orientation.
During the last class, when discussion turned to why students took the course and why we do the work we do, Dr. Greene said, “Our story is not over, but it can turn out any number of ways. I used to be an optimist, but then I pursued a PhD in history. What I’ve learned, what I’ve read about and written also gives me a sense of hope, not a plastic, fake hope that everything will be okay tomorrow. But if we do the work that needs to be done here and now, then if I’m lucky enough to have kids and grandkids, I can tell them we did the best we could and we helped make a better world for you. The alternative is that we let you guys down.”
See more of Dr. Greene’s remarks in this clip.
A few students share some thoughts in this clip.
Congratulations to all the graduates (including those not pictured here): Catherine Adams, Preston Anderson, Vivian Anderson, Molefi Askari, Russell Cody, Johnaca Dunlap, Judy Franchini, Chris Gardner, Melanie Griffin, Marjorie Hammock, Eva Keith, Vince Matthews, Ian McGehee, Melanie McGehee, Norman Miles, John Miller, Laura Nicklin. Myllasa Riggins, Tayyaba Sadiq, Jordan Wiggins, and Emily Wilson.
Ms. Modjeska Monteith Simkins would be proud.
See more photos from the spring session in our online album.
Courts won’t fix gerrymandering? We have a plan for that
“We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts,” Roberts wrote. “Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution, and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions.”
US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on court’s ruling on partisan gerrymandering, June 27, 2019
• • •
Those of us working on redistricting in South Carolina expected today’s Supreme Court ruling that found no constitutional argument for ordering the states to end partisan gerrymandering. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution gives feds the power to tell states how to run elections. Its Framers were reasonably worried about that kind of centralized power. They remembered King George.
So what are advocates of reform to do? After all, it is unlikely that the majority party will relinquish its control of state government by giving up its control of redistricting. And with 70% of our legislators facing no opposition, the 2020 election will essentially yield the same results as in 2016. In other words, there is no incentive for incumbents to draw district lines that don’t benefit themselves and their party.
That means it’s up to us. Here’s how we do it.
The Fair Maps SC Campaign proposes a plan to create a citizens commission to draw district lines. The plan was built on our understanding that the court can’t — and the majority party of the state legislature won’t — fix our broken system. In most states, including South Carolina, state constitutions don’t allow for ballot initiatives to let citizens put an amendment on the statewide general election ballot. The six states that have successfully implemented redistricting reforms in the past decade did so through statewide citizen initiatives.
The Fair Maps SC Campaign introduced legislation in 2018 to create a Citizens Redistricting Commission (H-3432 & S-254) and a Joint Resolution for a Constitutional Amendment (H-3390 & S-249) to put the question on the November 2020 ballot.
Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (at lecturn) and Sen. Mike Fanning (seated) are lead sponsors of legislation to create a citizens redistricting commission.
The unique part of the Fair Maps SC campaign is the 46–county plan to get voters to sign a petition to their county councils to direct their county legislative delegation to put the amendment on the ballot. State law empowers 15% of county voters to put a resolution before council that they shall adopt or put on the ballot for voters to consider.
Since the majority of our legislature is elected in the party primaries, and the total primary turnout in the last presidential year election was just 13.9% — 8.6% Republicans, 5.3% Democrats — it follows that a campaign to let citizens draw draw district lines would easily garner more votes than the legislators or county council members got when elected.
A statewide Survey on Redistricting commissioned by the SC Progressive Network Education Fund was conducted in 2016 by the University of South Carolina Institute for Public Service and Policy Research. It found that a majority (64.5%) of respondents prefer that legislative districts be drawn by an independent commission rather than the General Assembly. When given additional information about gerrymandering, they were more likely to believe that the drawing of legislative districts is not done fairly. (Survey Summary.)
The growing momentum for empowering citizens to draw fair maps does not mean that legislators will easily give up power, but when their constituents show that more of them voted for the county resolution than voted for them in the primary, it creates a new political dynamic that they will not be able to ignore.
This campaign must be bipartisan and led by Republicans and Democrats if we are to gather the required 500,000 signatures from voters by the end of September. State and federal laws consider ballot intitatives to be nonpartisan. This campaign may use grant money to promote the fair maps proposal in churches, schools, and to civic organizations.
We are enlisting the leadership of former elected officials from both parties who are ready to admit that partisan gerrymandering is not good for our democracy and will work to fix our broken system with a citizens campaign for fair maps.
Meanwhile, we are spending the time between now and when the legislature reconvenes in January to engage and mobilize individual activists and organizations in communities across South Carolina to fight for fair maps. It’s an idea whose time has come. Please join us.
Details and toolkit at FairMapsSC.com. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
June 2: the U.S. vs. Pitts and Bursey
As part of the Modjeska Simkins School‘s Sunday Social series, the public is invited to hear recovering attorney Lewis Pitts on June 2 at the temporary HQ of the SC Progressive Network, 2015 Marion St., downtown Columbia 4-6pm. Pitts is a dynamic speaker with an impressive resume and a trove of stories from the trenches. He will be joined by his former client and longtime friend Brett Bursey. The event is free and open to all.
• • •
Lewis Pitts was so dismayed by the legal profession that, after 43 years of practice, he asked the NC State Bar to allow him to resign. He was disturbed by the growing tendency of attorneys and law firms to put profit before the people they were supposed to serve.
“My resignation is because I see an overall breach by the Bar as a whole of the most basic of professional conduct and ethics such that I do not want be be associated with the Bar,” Pitts wrote in a 2014 letter to the Bar. “I do not mean to be mean or flippant. The ministry of law has been a powerful force in my life and I have had the pleasure of working with many terrific people in pursuit of justice — lawyers and non-lawyers. I want these parting words to stir your minds and hearts into reflection, boldness, and transformational action.”
The case went to the state Supreme Court, where Pitts was granted the exit he sought.
A South Carolina native, Pitts graduated from Wofford College and USC’s law school. He practiced in DC and spent nearly 20 years at Legal Aid of North Carolina, where he founded the statewide children’s unit and fought the schools-to-prison pipeline.
Pitts was Network Director Brett Bursey’s lawyer after he was arrested for threatening President George Bush with a “No War for Oil” sign. (Read about the case in this blog post.)
Lewis Pitts (from left), Network Director Brett Bursey, and attorney Jay Bender outside the federal court house in Columbia, where they led a “free speech pay-in” to help cover court costs in Bursey’s trial.
Bursey and Lewis go way back. Pitts represented the Natural Guard protesters at the Bomb Plant (Savannah River Site), and decided to go to jail with them. He was an attorney in Karen Silkwood’s wrongful death suit, took part in civil disobedient arrests at nuclear facilities around the country, and was lead attorney in the successful civil suit against the Klan and Nazis for the murder of five Greensboro activists in 1979. (Watch “88 Seconds in Greensboro” on Vimeo.)
“From my earliest days as a lawyer, I have been concerned that the role of our profession has been to serve and protect the political and business establishment and not to uphold rule of law,” Pitts wrote in his resignation letter. (Read the letter here.)
He told a Greensboro reporter that there was no single incident that made him want to step away. “It was like the hypocrisy was eating me physically and psychologically.” He called his appeal “a desperate plea” in “some explosive times when the rule of law really needs to mean something. I guess it’s time for our profession to undergo a moral checkup.”
Lewis is in Columbia to teach a class of the Modjeska Simkins School. See excerpt from his 2017 class lecture on the evolution of corporations in the United States on our YouTube channel.
Brett Bursey and Becci Robbins at the Lexington County detention center Oct. 3, 2002, upon his release after being arrested for protesting President George Bush.
10,000 teachers make history at SC for Ed rally
On May Day, 10,000 educators, students, and supporters marched from the state Education Department down Senate Street to the State House grounds, where they held a spirited rally — and made history. The grounds were a sea of red, a powerful show of unity and stregth, the crowd audible to lawmakers inside.
Sen. Mike Fanning opened the rally on the Network’s Healthy Democracy rolling stage, and closed the rally at the State House with a call to action. A teacher himself, Fanning has championed educators in the Senate and is passionate about advocating for real reform rather than the lip service that’s been given for decades to education in South Carolina.
“For too long in South Carolina, teachers have been sitting back and letting non-teachers set the vision for learning, and that has to stop,” Fanning said.
“We have to speak up. We don’t want something done in 10 years — the time is now!
“You are here today — the largest gathering of teachers in the history of South Carolina — and you have done something my colleages never thought you’d do. We showed up by the thousands, we made noise, and we ain’t done yet.”
Teachers are asking for reduced class size and less mandated testing, and more mental health counseling. (Half of schools have no counselors, and half have them only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.)
Fanning said, “You’ve been bullied this week by the community, by your own state superintendent of education.” Molly Spearman issued a statement two days before the rally decrying the “walkout.”
“Year in and year out we rank 48th and 49th in teacher pay,” Fanning said. “We have a base per-student formula that we haven’t funded one time in 11 years. Eleven years doesn’t sound long to those folks, but that is an entire career of a student.
“This year the General Assembly had 1.1 billion extra dollars. Guess what we did to the base student formula? The House cut it by 18 dollars, the Senate cut it by three dollars. Whatever budget passes, you will get less money next year than you got this year per student.
“Eight people crafted the reform bill, with not a single teacher in the room. The bill passed the House 106 to 4. What’s the magic bullet, people ask: I say: Let teachers teach and students learn.
“You blew people’s minds today. Nobody exptected 10,000 teachers. If you’d shown up yesterday, it wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful as showing up with 9,999 others. I need you to make sure they hear your voice, and you’re not going away.
The rally ended with 10,000 voices chanting: I teach, I vote!
This could be a turning point in the long fight for public education in South Carolina. Whatever happens, the rally was a stunning example of worker solidarity that should inspire people across the state.
The SC Progressive Network offered logistical support at the rally. We look forward to collaborting with educators in the coming legislative session.
Sen. Mike Fanning chats with the Network’s Midlands coordinator Daniel Deweese
What was the secret plan that sparked a civil rights movement?
As part of the Modjeska Simkins School’s Sunday Social series, on April 28, 4-6pm at 2015 Marion St. Post & Courier columnist Brian Hicks will talk about his latest book, In Darkest South Carolina: J. Waties Waring and the secret plan that sparked a civil rights movement. His remarks will be followed by a group discussion led by Robert Greene, a Claflin history professor and guest lecturer at the Modjeska School.
The talk is free and open to all. Questions? Call 803-808-3384.
Four years before the landmark US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, a federal judge in Charleston hatched his secret plan to end segregation in America.
Julius Waties Waring was perhaps the most unlikely civil rights hero in history. An eighth-generation Charlestonian, the son of a Confederate veteran and scion of a family of slave owners, Waring was appointed to the federal bench in the early days of World War II. He had coveted a judgeship his entire life, but circumstance and fate denied him until he was 61. When Waring finally donned the robe, it changed everything he’d ever known.
Faced with a growing demand for equal rights from black South Carolinians, and a determined and savvy NAACP attorney named Thurgood Marshall, Waring did what he thought was right: He followed the law, and the United States Constitution. Shaken by the bigotry and backlash that followed each of his rulings, Waring soon had a moral awakening – and decided to set the world right.
In the midst of rebelling against home and heritage, Waring crossed two lines from which there was no return: He abandoned his wife of 30 years and married an intellectual Yankee divorcee, which led to his ostracism from Charleston’s South of Broad society. Then Waring ordered the South Carolina Democratic Party to allow African Americans to vote in its primary – and the entire state damned his soul.
The Ku Klux Klan bombarded Waring with threatening calls, letters and burning crosses. The Charleston newspapers declared war. Demagogue politicians promised to run the judge from the bench – and out of South Carolina. Waring’s ruling against discrimination in voting booths even inspired Gov. Strom Thurmond’s infamous Dixiecrat presidential bid. But the judge wasn’t finished. By 1950, Waring believed he’d found a way to destroy all Jim Crow laws, so long as he could carry out his scheme before he was impeached … or killed.
This is the story of 20th century America, where Harry Truman and Strom Thurmond carried on battles begun by Teddy Roosevelt and Ben Tillman, where a Clarendon County preacher risked his life for equality, and a gentle Charleston teacher showed thousands how to claim their civil rights. This is the story of Judge J. Waties Waring, his incredible life and the country he changed. And it all began in darkest South Carolina.
• • •
From In Darkest South Carolina: An early winter storm devastated Charleston the last weekend of November. Tat Saturday, three people died of exposure as temperatures dropped into the teens — colder than it had been along the South Carolina coast in seven years. Pipes burst across the city, leaving many residents without water. One woman was found frozen on the waterfront near the Battery and the Fort Sumter Hotel, where the Southern governors were holding their annual convention.
The next day, 125 people set out from Morris Street Baptist church for a nearly two-mile march to 61 Meeting Street. The walk was not unbearable; the temperature ultimately rose to 48, 10 degrees above the forecast. These people — 100 of them black, 25 white — were led by Modejska Simkins, the Columbia activist and state chairman for the Southern Conference Education Fund. The “pilgrimage” had been her idea to honor Judge Waring and his wife for their dedication to civil rights.
The group walked uncluttered sidewalks along King and Meeting streets for nearly an hour before arriving at the judge’s home. There they found an atypical South of Broad scene: a government car parked beneath a palm tree. An armed marshal casually leaning against the house. It looked like a fortified compound in enemy territory. But the Warings stood outside, near their front door, shaking hands with every one of the pilgrims.
It was a simple ceremony. With the group fanning out on the sidewalk and spilling into Meeting Street, Simkins read a citation that praised Waring for his “wise, just and courageous” work, his understanding of democracy, as well as his dedication to protecting the rights of suffrage and the freedom and equality of men.
“Yet it has been seen that many another, in your place, has found it possible, before obdurate prejudices and customs, to avoid the guidance of the noblest guarantees of our constitution,” Simkins said. “Your own faithfulness in this field, despite environmental discouragements others have bowed to, has been exemplary and heartwarming.”
The judge was moved by this tribute more than any other he’d ever received.
• • •
Hicks’ journalism has appeared in national and international publications since 1986, and he has written about Southern history and politics for 30 years. He has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, National Public Radio, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel and in Smithsonian Magazine. His column has won three Green Eyeshade Awards for best commentary in the Southeast from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Hicks is a former South Carolina Press Association Journalist of the Year.
His previous books include Ghost Ship, When the Dancing Stopped and The Mayor. His Toward the Setting Sun and Raising the Hunley were selections of the Book-of-the-Mouth Club, as well as the History and Military Book Clubs.
A native of Tennessee, Hicks has lived in Charleston for more than 20 years.?
Remembering Merll Truesdale, 1954-2019
Merll Clyburn Truesdale died in the first hour of Earth Day, April 22 — a fitting date for the longtime environmental and anti-nuclear activist. He was 64.
The lifelong Columbia resident was the only child of the late Eve Slaughter Truesdale and Lucius Clyburn Truesdale. A 1973 Spring Valley H.S. graduate, Merll studied political science at Midlands Tech, where he served a term as student body president.
He was well read and a history buff, a radical thinker who loved and loathed politics, a harmonica-blowing bluesman with a deep and eclectic appreciation of music. He loved cold beer and red wine, and was an esteemed judge at the annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam.
Merll was part of the “bucket brigade,” taking up donations for George Wallace’s 1968 
presidential campaign. And in 1980, he worked to get the Wallace’s campaign manager and repentant racist, Tom Turnipseed, elected to US Congress. He was a VISTA volunteer during the Carter Administration, and regularly held court at Group Therapy in Five Points.
Merll helped organize meetings that led to the establishment of GROW, the Grass Roots Organizing Workshop in Columbia. He was among a group of hippies that renovated an old, roofless 
building behind the ball park on Bluff Road, and set up shop in 1977. GROW was a self-sustaining headquarters for South Carolina’s radical activists, running a café and a print shop (Harbinger Publications), and serving as meeting space for a host of political and social justice groups for more than 20 years.
Merll helped establish Columbia’s first food bank, 
and volunteered at the GROW Food Co-op on Bluff Road that served Lower Richland for nearly four decades. He also did Columbia distribution for POINT, an alternative monthly news magazine published out of the GROW building between 1991 and 2001.
Over the years, GROW housed activists and friends down on their luck, but Merll was the only full-time resident, occupying an upstairs room until the building was sold in 2000.
While Merll never married, he had a family of friends he collected over the years and sustained across several states. He was also dog father to pit bull rescues Winston, Ruby, and Grendel, who were schooled in “puppy dialectics.”
Special thanks to Brad Hubbard and Michael Lowe for ensuring Merll was loved and well cared for during his years at Heartland Rehabilitation Center. 
Friends and fans will gather on Saturday, April 27, to celebrate Merll’s life with a potluck between 6-8pm in the backyard of the Modjeska Simkins House at 2025 Marion St., downtown Columbia. All are welcome, including children. Bring your stories and a dish or beverages to share.
If so moved, donations in Merll’s name should be made to any no-kill animal shelter in the Midlands.
Playing for U.S.C. Alliance For Peace on Nov. 30, 1987. Featuring Donald Joe Bennett, Michael Moon Heart Davis (Bass), Ward Croft (Drums) and Merll Truesdale (Blues Harp).
Letting citizens draw district maps: an idea whose time has come
Grassroots activists from across South Carolina gathered in Columbia on Saturday for a full day of Census and Fair Maps workshop. It was the “soft” launch of a plan the SC Progressive Network and allies have been crafting for a long time that would empower voters to end gerrymandering in South Carolina while at the same time building a popular movement for social and political change.
The workshops trained a core group of activists to initiate the Fair Maps capaign models and recruit partner organizations ahead of the major launch in April.
Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter and Leroy Johnson, founder of Southern Echo, opened the morning session on the 2020 US Census by stressing the importance of getting a correct count in South Carolina and the inherent challenges of reaching certain populations. Federal US Census coordinator for SC Mary Peeler outlined how the 2020 numbers will affect voting and money allocated to the state. Florida-based Juanita Alvarex Mainster talked about outreach in Hispanic and migrant worker communities, and US Census geographer Wes Flack broke down how federal Census workers will coordinate with local governments and non-governmental organizations. Will Roberts, our State Political Cartographer in charge of drawing districts, reviewed where populations have changed, and how lines will move to accomodate changes.
Vince Matthews, Senior Policy Advisor, SC Progressive Network
Power Point presentations from the Census workshop are posted HERE.
After lunch, participants took a deep dive into our legislative package on redistricting and mapping a timeline for the grassroots campaign to get it passed. Rep. Cobb-Hunter and Sen. Mike Fanning, sponsors of the companion legislation, made the case for meaningful redisctricting while acknowledging how challenging it will be, given the stacked deck that is the General Assembly. Vince Matthews, senior policy advisor for the SC Progressive Network, compared our plan to other redistricting proposals that allow politicians to remain in charge of the process.
The legislation:
Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter
Network Co-Chair Kyle Criminger went over the state maps he created, showing how districts look now and how they could look if citizens were drawing the lines. The number of competitive state political districts could increase by 500% under a Citizens Redistricting Commission. The CRC ACT is the only redistricting bill that includes a mandate to make districts competitive.
See video clips from the workshops HERE.
The level of interest and engagement on Saturday gives us great hope for this campaign. Change will not happen overnight, but will come with a sustained and statewide effort to educate, agitate, and mobilize voters.
We invite organizations and individuals to join the Fair Maps Coalition. Wherever you live and whatever your skills, we need your help. To find out how, see the volunteer opportunities at the Fair Maps web site. We’ll be setting up working groups to take on various tasks. Let us know how you want to be involved. We will schedule monthly conference calls to answer questions from the field and to track our progress.
Keep this contact information handy.
- Phone: 803-808-3384
- Email: FairMaps@fairmapssc.com
- Web site: FairMapsSC.com
- Facebook: SC Fair Maps Coalition
- Twitter: Fair Maps SC, @fair_sc
This is an exciting initiative, and we are confident that with a sustained and serious effort we can change the balance of power in South Carolina to favor citizens over politicians.
Let’s do this!
Workshops launch grassroots campaign to end gerrymandering
The public is invited to participate in two workshops in Columbia on Saturday, Feb. 23, to learn about initiatives to let citizens rather than politicians draw district lines in South Carolina.
The free sessions will be led by Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter and Sen. Mike Fanning, sponsors of the redistricting bills (H-3423 and S-254), and Mary Peeler, SC coordinator of the US Census. The workshops will be held at 2015 Marion St., downtown Columbia.
“This is a rare opportunity for citizens to be part of the process that could literally reshape politics in South Carolina,” said Network Director Brett Bursey. “We are excited about our plan, we’ve been working on this for two years and are looking forward to rolling it out at Saturday’s workshops. Wherever they are in South Carolina, there is a critical role for voters to play. We encourage them to come find out about how we can force legislators to let the voters draw their districts.”
Political gerrymandering has resulted in South Carolina having among the nation’s least representative elections, with 69% of the state’s voters only having one name on their ballot to represent them in the General Assembly.
Unlike other proposals to end gerrymandering in South Carolina, the Citizens Redistricting Commission lets voters rather than political appointees draw their own district lines. Any voter could apply to serve as one of 14 commissioners who go through an anonymous application and appointment process. The commission’s decisions may not be amended or vetoed.
Because it is unlikely that lawmakers will give their power to citizens, our bill calls for putting a constitutional amendment (H-3390 and S-249) on the 2020 statewide, general election ballot to let voters decide.
It is also unlikely that the majority of the General Assembly, elected with no opposition, will allow the citizen to redraw their districts to be competitive. The plan to force the legislators to let the voters amend the state constitution in the 2020 general election entails the state law that empowers voters to pass county ordinances. “I can guarantee legislators who won their seat in their party’s primary that we will have more votes in their district than they they won their seats by,” Bursey noted.
Our bipartisan plan targets the majority of incumbent lawmakers who had no opposition in the general election. If they don’t support putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot, we’re coming for their seats.
For background on redistricting and details on the legislation see scpronet.com/democracy-project.
Lunch available for $10. Must RSVP by Friday at FairMaps@scpronet.com. Indicate any dietary restrictions.
Organizing Workshops Feb. 23
10–noon: Census – Every person not counted in South Carolina diminishes voter strength. It cost 54 federal programs in SC $15,000.
1–4pm: Redistricting – A grassroots campaign to end gerrymandering that does not rely on the legislature or the courts
Facilitators:
Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter
Sen. Mike Fanning
(sponsors of the Citizens Redistricting and Money in Politics bills)
Mary Peeler, US Census SC Coordinator
Leroy Johnson, MS, Southern Echo Ret. Dir.
Brett Bursey, SC Progressive Network Dir.
• • •
SC Progressive Network Education Fund
2015 Marion St., Columbia SC
FairMaps@scpronet.com
803-808-3384
Want to up your activist game? Apply for the spring session of the Modjeska Simkins School
The public is invited to apply for the spring session of the Modjeska Simkins School for Human Rights, which begins March 18 and runs through June 24. The school, a project of the SC Progressive Network, was launched in 2015 as a leadership institute for activists to learn a people’s history of South Carolina, hone their organizing skills, and help grow a movement for social justice in the Palmetto State. This will be the school’s fourth session.
“The school is exceeding even our most hopeful expectations,” said Network Director Brett Bursey. “The students have been deeply engaged in class discussions, and graduates have gone on to do impressive things, from serving on the boards of nonprofits, to researching and crafting a campaign to end gerrymandering in South Carolina, to starting a podcast for young activists, to staging tours of the State House grounds and offering a more honest historical narrative about who the monuments memorialize, and when and why they were erected.”
One of the creators of the monument tours is USC’s Student Services Manager Dr. Sarah Keeling, who attended the Modjeska School in 2017. An activist with the Columbia group Standing Up For Racial Justice, Keeling said, “At the Modjeska School, I learned South Carolina history that I was never taught in school and how that history impacts the lives of South Carolinians today. The school gave me a solid foundation from which to build my organizing skills.”
Kyle Criminger, a graduate of the school’s inaugural class in 2015, now serves as a Network co-chair and is the lead organizer for the organization’s Fair Maps campaign to allow citizens rather than politicians to draw district maps. “The Modjeska School took us on a haunted, enthralling trek through South Carolina’s stolen and denied history, giving me a long view and a wide perspective on the problems here,” Criminger said. “The ongoing practicum I am working on with fellow graduates allows us to carry out a shared commitment to the values and principles that South Carolinians like Modjeska Simkins herself have held and lived by. That’s why I say that the School is a complete program and national model for community organizing.”
Graduates Daniel Deweese and Wayne Borders cofounded the New Legacy Project, the Network’s youth coordinating body, which meets twice a month in Columbia.
The school has attracted students of all ages, backgrounds, and interests. The youngest was Rose, the 10-year-old daughter of Graham Duncan, a historian at USC’s Caroliniana Library and Modjeska School faculty member, who helped run PowerPoint presentations. The oldest was 85-year-old Mary Bolden, a former Army officer and Vietnam War veteran.
Classes are held 6-8pm on alternate Monday evenings at the Network’s building at 2015 Marion St., downtown Columbia. The session also includes Sunday Socials, guest lectures on various historical and political topics that are free and open to the public.
Students of all ages, backgrounds, and interests are welcome to attend the Modjeska School. They must fill out an application, complete a brief telephone interview, and commit to attending all classes – barring emergencies or illness. This is a course for serious students, and includes lengthy reading assignments. The deadline to apply is March 1. Some scholarships are available.
Classes are held 6:30-8:30pm on alternate Monday evenings at the Network’s building at 2015 Marion St., downtown Columbia. Tuition is $210, which includes class materials and a copy of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. The session also includes Sunday Socials, guest lectures on various historical and political topics that are free and open to the public.
Anyone interested in attending is asked to call the Network’s office at 803-808-3384 for an application. Visit the web site for the class schedule, more about the school, and a list of faculty and advisors.
The graduating class of 2017