Our ‘Southern Synergy’ value has become ‘Building Southern Power’ — here’s why.
Southern Synergy has been an essential ingredient to our development over the last decade. We embodied this value by building a network of principled collaborations to more fully support our communities. Reflecting on the deep relationship building of the past decade, we realized we’ve generated a space to foster collective power, liberation that connects the local South to the Global South. This shift is why when revising our values after 10 years of funding abortion, we are composting Southern Synergy as Building Southern Power blooms in its place.
You can read part one of this series here and check out all of the updated values here.
Check out how we define Building Southern Power and what it means in practice below.
How ARC-SE Defines Building Southern Power
Throughout history, from slavery and Reconstruction, to Jim Crow and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, infrastructure was built outside of the state to take back power and access care. This happened on the very soil we serve. The current concentration of abortion bans and discrimination in the South only sharpens our work.
We honor the lineage that taught us how to fight for our rights, that challenged state violence, as we dismantle the status quo to achieve liberation. In 2024, 84% of our callers were forced by abortion bans to travel from the Southeast for care. Southerners traveled an average of 319 miles one-way. ARC-Southeast’s Healthline offers list of local resources to ensure they have access to aftercare or other community services where they live, for when they return home to the South.
Southern states continue to chip away at bodily autonomy. In Mississippi there are zero abortion clinics. In Georgia, abortion bans are increasing the dire Black maternal mortality rate. In South Carolina, working class people are bearing the brunt of the complex web of restrictions, with new ones being proposed every day. For Florida, Black and Latin communities are navigating difficult cultural and political terrain. In Tennessee, access for minors is especially being targeted, and poverty in Alabama makes reproductive access a nightmare for all people who can give birth.
None of this is random. The reason the South is where we see a concentration of reproductive oppression and abortion bans, is because the South is historically where we have the highest concentration of Black people, from chattel slavery to today. It is also where we see the highest concentration of low wage workers, prisons and military bases, the least amount of protections for mothers and children, the highest rates of poverty, and the highest maternal mortality nationwide.
This is because the “Black Belt South” remains the political home for liberation struggles on one hand, and the testing ground for oppression on the other. Does this mean that we only help Black Southerners? Of course not! As an abortion fund and reproductive justice organization, we help everyone who needs support accessing reproductive care regardless of race, gender, sexuality, identity, or creed. However, this context and history is important to understanding that everyone benefits when we are intentional to lift up the most marginalized among us.
Despite this, abortion bans and reproductive restrictions can never truly erase or dismantle the long-time legacy of community-based care for everyone across the Southeast.
Solutions For Us, By Us
Building Southern Power means equipping Southerners to lead in the struggle and design solutions to work towards true reproductive justice. In ARC-Southeast’s programming and community offerings, we have this principle value in mind at all times. For example, our Sow.Now.What. program is designed to offer monthly peer-to-peer support for ARC-Southeast callers who have had an abortion and are seeking community.
Many advocates and organizations outside the South want to help us achieve reproductive liberation, but may unintentionally hold paternalistic or condescending notions about “saving” us. The truth is, the solutions for the South will come from the South. The best thing that our siblings elsewhere can do is to listen to us, engage with our calls-to-action, and provide organizations on the frontlines like ARC-Southeast with material support.
Who knows the situation the best than those going through it, and who knows what it takes for liberation more than those who’ve spent many years organizing community care?
Believing Building Southern Power means we move in solidarity for collective liberation with the Global South. We recognize that “The South” is not just the U.S. South, but what is known as the Global South: The nations and communities of the world who are colonized, occupied, economically subjected to imperialism, and struggling for liberation.
The connections between the U.S. South and the Global South are not forced. They are the reality of our context and rooted in a profound solidarity. The conditions of reproductive oppression, occupation, state violence, labor and economic exploitation, cultural erasure, misleadership, military control, and denial of bodily autonomy are shared experiences that connect us. Some even refer to the Black Belt South as an “internal colony,” and we understand that the same system that oppresses us at home oppresses others abroad.
The local U.S. South and the Global South are both a powerful and historically significant home to Black, Indigenous, and Queer communities seeking self-determination, and daring to struggle to achieve it.
What Building Southern Power Means for ARC-SE Staff, in Practice
“The South is the most significant part of the country politically, culturally, economically, and historically. That’s why they work so hard to keep us oppressed down here, and why we’re working twice as hard to build power. As Du Bois said: so goes the South, so goes the nation.” — Musa Springer, ARC-Southeast Communications Director
As an organization, we plan to put this into deeper practice externally by continually collaborating with other Southern-based organizations, building and sustaining cross-movement relationships with Southern partners, connecting Southern reproductive justice to other social justice movements. And of course being unafraid to communicate solidarity with liberation movements that are local, national, and global.
At the same time we intend to internally embody Building Southern Power internally by creating a values-alignment checklist and be accountable to it when creating partnerships—this is most important. Also by continuing political education through teach-ins, programming, and communications, ensuring the majority of staff are culturally connected to the South by deepening connections outside of just metro areas, building relationships with existing networks of support in rural areas, and regularly assessing that the direct resources we provide meet the needs of the community.
If you’re based in the local South or Global South and have an idea for how to build with ARC-Southeast, or maybe you just want to drop us a note to tell us how much you appreciate us, please reach out to [email protected]. You can make a donation at arc-southeast.org/donate.