“We cannot wait for a miracle. We must be our own miracle.” – Ella Baker

The Southern Institute for Peace emerged in 2025 from the work of The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation and The Alluvial Collective. We are carrying the legacy of more than 25 years of work, relationships, and lessons learned into a very tenuous, uncertain future in the life of our country.

We believe the South is a portal for understanding how to create effective and inspiring community-driven initiatives that foster cultures of joy, resilience, and hope, in the midst of regimes that have always been authoritarian.

The historic organizing movements for freedom in the South provide pertinent and effective models for a nation that is finding itself unprepared to meet the unfolding threats exacerbating polarization and undermining hard-fought safety nets and democratic institutions.

We believe this is the right time for the right fight and that we and our networks must come together now to both stem the tide of destruction and also begin anew to imagine and create a world where all children thrive.

This is a challenging time for democracy in general, and the US in particular. It will take decades to undo the damage that has been done. But as the freedom movements of the South remind us, the arc of justice is long and we are committed to be benders of that arc, and not mere observers of it.