I'm having trouble deciding how to 'look' at the Highlander Center. This community-based adult education center in the Appalachians was also influential in the Civil Rights movement of the 40's 50's and 60's. I know that I want to connect its work and history to contemporary web and social network based organizing, but where else do I go? Whenever I choose a topic, I put it into my hand, turn it around, stretch it and turn it inside out to see what unexpected perspectives it holds. With the Highlander Center, I'm not yet sure how to approach the subject even after all my attempts to unpack its nested 'Russian dolls'. What other issues are embedded in this subject? What jewels are buried in its sands? Music as a social force? Community organizing? Social change? Should I get a scholar on the history of social change and how it happens? Someone associated with Saul Alinsky, the famous Chicago based community organizer? Someone who engineered the resurgence of the right through mass mailings, like for instance, Richard Vaguerie. Or, should I look at 'inter-racial' political collaboration?

Marc Levitt