When discussing the future, The Deep South is rarely the first region to contribute to this conversation. To the untrained eye, the long historical trail of systematic marginalization and traditionalism of the region makes any talk of tomorrow feel like a lost cause. However, to the change makers living in the region, this narrative offers a ripe opportunity for cultural, social and innovative transformation.

In these regions, the people actively generating the power to shape the future aren’t tech billionaires; they’re community organizers. Individuals like Stacy Abrams, Special Sanders and Osyrus Bolly of Arkansas, and Nsé Ufot of the New Georgia Project exemplify the people making a significant change in our communities today. They are the people addressing communities themselves, recognizing the impacts of larger power players, and making sure the most affected people have a voice in the future.

As the demographic shift happens rapidly across the country, in Arkansas, where the population is still nearly 80 percent white, power shifts remain stagnated. The creation of ArkansasMovement Collective brings that spirit organizing to life. Birthed and built in Arkansas, Rosa built a program based around the core knowledge:By convening organizing, grassroots, and nonprofit leaders at the margins across the state of Arkansas, we came up with a powerful idea that supports the needs of everyone: Black, Brown, BIPOC lead Power Building Organizing Movement Collective (AMC) to change that.

TMI is building leadership, teaching organizing principles, and working towards changing the representation and priorities of our elected officials, boards, and commissions for inequity.In 2020, we built momentum and community. In 2021, we manifested the ideas. AMC’s work for 2022 has orchestrated a six-month leadership development and organizing principles program, which aims to activate 11 of Arkansas’s Black, Brown, Immigrant, essential workers, and other marginalized communities. These leaders will create community-building efforts that create systemic change that advances social, ethnic, and racial equity in Arkansas.

Like its namesake, The Arkansas Movement Collective is built on the principles of moving people. Movement building, or organizing, refers to the practice or means whereby people join a common cause from geography, issue, or otherwise, and form an organization that acts in a shared self-interest. The Movement Institute, in its current form, convenes around this principle: “We can do more together

than we could ever do alone.”By convening and organizing grassroots and nonprofit leaders at the margins across the state of Arkansas, The Movement Institute represents the powerful idea all stakeholders agreed on supporting: aggressive, community-centered, BIPOC-centered mentorship. The initiative is an organizing accelerator, a curriculum, a community, and a collective vision of superstar organizers learning about organization praxis that they can apply to their own initiatives.