SPLC hosts first training for individuals to teach advocacy and organizing

Participants in the SPLC Advocacy Institute listen to introductions on Thursday June 20, 2024 in Montgomery, Alabama. (Ralph Chapoco/Alabama Reflector)

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Alabama office Thursday began work with 19 people selected to be part of an inaugural cohort receiving advocacy and organizing training.

For the next four months, the group will be given tools for how they can better engage the public, publicize their concerns and voice their opinions to elected officials who set policy. The individuals will focus on everything from poverty to water access.

The move expands the civil rights organization’s work to include grassroots organizing.

State offices elsewhere in the country will also be hosting advocacy training for people in their areas.

“What we wanted to do was really reach out to individuals, gatekeepers, who were organizing in communities,” said Tafeni English-Relf, director of the Alabama state office of the SPLC. “Some are with smaller grassroots organizations, but they do a variety of things in their communities.”

The SPLC’s Alabama office solicited applications in April. The organization will continue with the training annually with a new group of participants.

Almost 50 people applied to participate from throughout Alabama.

The organization paid particular attention to people working in rural communities.

“Oftentimes, when we do these types of institutes, it is usually very heavy in urban areas,” English-Relf said. “You have people in Birmingham, Montgomery, even some from Huntsville, who are often the participants in the advocacy institutes.”

The goal was to recruit individuals who hailed from throughout the state and represented various problems happening in Alabama. Those issues ranged from democracy and civil rights to poverty and environmental justice concerns.

Warren Tidwell, who works in the Camp Hill area, focuses on poverty and its impacts.

“There we have food scarcity issues,” he said. “We faced a disaster last year in the form of a horrific hailstorm where 90% of the town was affected . We lost 80% of our cars. There is no grocery store, there is no pharmacy and there is no laundromat. We do not get a FEMA declaration. They claimed the damage was not enough. It is an incredibly impoverished county.”

Another is Lasonja Kennedy who is working to provide water to Chestnut, Alabama.

“We have gone to the county commission for several meetings and got the runaround,” she said. “We were told to complete one task, then complete another task, and no progress was made. We brought letters showing the reasons other utilities or towns said they couldn’t extend water to this community.”

SPLC recently announced the layoffs of several dozen employees, spurring anger from the union representing its workers.

English-Relf said that the initiative was planned before the decision to terminate employees.

“The layoffs were to restructure and align our work so that we are more impactful in what we do,” English-Relf said. “Our immigration work is being integrated into other areas. We are structuring to align with the community-centered work.”

SPLC established the state office in February 2023, hiring English-Relf as the state’s first director, as part of a new strategy to develop grassroots organizing in the state. SPLC made itself known as an organization through its efforts and victories in the legal area.

“The intention here is to recognize that we are not seeing the opportunities to defend civil rights in the judiciary anymore,” said Margaret Huang, president and chief executive officer of the Southern Poverty Law Center in a statement announcing English-Relf’s hiring. “Instead, what we are seeing is the opportunity to engage with communities, and to build political influence on behalf of communities that don’t have a lot of influence at the moment, so that they can advocate for their needs and priorities to local city government or with state government.”

The group received training on Thursday in structural racism and how it affects communities. Next month,, the focus will be advocacy and organizing, with a focus on the legislative process, the decision makers at the state and local level and the issues. The topic for August will include the well being of people in the social justice movement.

The training culminates with the participants developing advocacy plans they will implement after they complete the training.

SPLC will provide them with access to experts and resources to assist them in implementing the plan they developed. They will also receive financial resources in the form of a stipend.

“I am really hoping that they all take their plans and work with us to ensure they are implemented in their communities and take advantage of the resources that we will be providing in the next couple months,” English-Relf said. “It is also building that capacity in the community, because you don’t actually need an advocacy institute to do that, but taking what they learned to train others.”

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