人兽性交

The town of Sandersville sits near the center of Georgia, its rolling hills home to vast ancient deposits of the soft, white powder called kaolin. It is also the hometown of another local find, Yterenickia Bell, who in May launched the new Georgia state office of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

While born of the chalky hills, Bell, like her grandparents who raised her, is made of firmer stuff.

鈥淢y grandma told me that if I saw injustice or felt like something was wrong, then I should use my voice and say something,鈥� said Bell, who at just 35 has blazed a trail of social justice achievements that brought her to the attention of the 人兽性交. 鈥淪he told me, you got one mouth and two ears for a reason. Listen to people, hear people, be passionate about people.鈥澛�

In Georgia, where poverty is saturated throughout the historically neglected southwestern and southeastern areas of the state known as the Black Belt, that voice is deeply needed. It is in those regions 鈥� along with the western edge of Atlanta, where prominent Black institutions took root 鈥� that the 人兽性交 hopes to make its mark.

As one of a vanguard of young leaders steeped in the intersectionality of the racial justice movement today, Bell will play a key role in that pursuit.

鈥淲e are at a pivotal moment for the Civil Rights Movement,鈥� 人兽性交 President and CEO Margaret Huang said in explaining why she chose Bell to lead the new effort in Georgia. 鈥淭he extraordinary leaders in the 1950s and 1960s created a movement that really transformed the entire country. And we continue to celebrate those leaders. But today the challenges are different.

鈥淲e鈥檙e still fighting white supremacy. We鈥檙e still fighting systems and structures that are unequal and discriminatory. But the ways that we need to fight and the people who need to lead are a younger generation. The leaders of our state offices are exemplars of that younger generation, and they are very much at the forefront of redefining the Civil Rights Movement and bringing it into the future.鈥�

New 人兽性交 strategy

The Georgia office will be based in Atlanta鈥檚 Westside, but most of its organizers, perhaps as many as 16, will be spread throughout the Black Belt, Bell said. They will be charged with working with community groups on issues that affect not only Black Americans but members of other racial groups, religions and gender and sexual orientations.

As with her counterparts who have taken the helm at new state offices in Alabama and Mississippi over the past three years, Bell鈥檚 focus will be on building trust in marginalized communities, bolstering community engagement and working to alleviate poverty, injustice and assaults on democracy. The new state offices are employing different methods to face a variety of challenges in each of the three states. But they have a common mission: to learn from and stand alongside local leaders and to bring the skills and resources of the 人兽性交 to help them realize the hopes of their communities.

It is all part of a new era for the 人兽性交, founded in 1971 by civil rights lawyers originally focused on using the courts to enforce the landmark civil rights laws of the 1960s and dedicated today to ensuring that promise of the movement becomes a reality for all. As the organization grew over five decades into a national force deeply respected for its legal muscle in representing disadvantaged people and in fighting hate groups, it became less known for local organizing and advocacy, Huang said. But in recent years, the organization has increasingly been dedicating itself to bolstering its well-honed legal skills with people like Bell who put a premium on listening.

鈥淲e鈥檙e there to listen, not to tell people, 鈥楬ey, this is what we鈥檙e hearing. This is what we think you should be doing.鈥� No, we鈥檙e listening to you, and then we鈥檙e figuring out, how do we come back as a team to say, this is what these folks need,鈥� Bell said. 鈥淗ow do we support them in getting it done?鈥�

Building trust

Central to Bell鈥檚 strategy is organizing and mobilizing.

In 2陆 years at the , a national umbrella coalition of which the 人兽性交 is a member, she worked to promote voting rights across 11 states. Bell said she plans to draw on that background to convene disparate advocacy groups to work with the 人兽性交. Drawing on the strength of, among others, women of color in communities small and large, she is already bringing together faith leaders and advocates for civil rights and sustainability.

While in the past, the 人兽性交 had frequently reached out to local advocates in support of specific lawsuits, now the organization, through its state offices and elsewhere, is seeking to support communities not just through legal representation but through policy, poverty alleviation and economic justice initiatives, Bell said.

It will do that, she said, by making this kind of work in places like the Black Belt its bread and butter, placing full-time staffers in these communities to help local advocates 鈥渉old on to the power that they have.鈥�

鈥淲e are going back to those communities to build trust,鈥� Bell said. 鈥淲hen they know that they鈥檙e going to have people on that ground in those areas 365 days a year, it won鈥檛 be as hard to turn people out or to get people activated, because we鈥檙e not just doing it on a one-off basis, but to be a year-round catalyst for racial justice.鈥�

鈥楲ean into people鈥�

Bell was made for this task. Born to a 19-year-old single mother, she was named by an uncle who gave her the name Yterenickia, which means 鈥渄efender of honor鈥� in Swahili. She was raised by her grandparents in a sprawling house with her eight aunts and uncles, who were mostly still teens while her mother lived and worked in a nearby town. In the close, nurturing, inquisitive family, 鈥淚t was kind of like Thanksgiving every Sunday,鈥� Bell said.

Bell鈥檚 grandfather worked for one of the vast chalk mines in town, and her grandmother worked at the county Department of Juvenile Justice, passing on her passion for criminal justice and supporting young people to Bell.

鈥淪he always told me, 鈥楶eople are not bad people, YT, they just make bad decisions,鈥欌�� Bell said, using the nickname she still goes by. 鈥淪o that is the framing that I see people through. Everybody makes mistakes.聽Some of us get caught and some of us don鈥檛. The only difference between me and you is, you got caught speeding and I didn鈥檛, because I鈥檓 imperfect as well. And so that鈥檚 how I kind of lean into people.鈥�

Despite her happy childhood, the specter of racial injustice was never far away. One town over, Bell recalled, stood trees where her grandparents remembered Black people being lynched. Local norms were such that when Bell was a high school student, she said white people would sit on one side of popular Sandersville restaurants and Black people on the other.

Eager 鈥渢o get as far away from Sandersville and the rural part of the state as I could,鈥� Bell parlayed an excellent high school record into a place at Georgia State University in Atlanta, becoming the first person in her family to go to college.

There, she quickly became a star student, earning bachelor鈥檚 degrees in both criminal justice聽and political science and then two master鈥檚 degrees, in social work and public administration.

鈥淲hy did she stick out amongst my students across 27 years of teaching? My initial answer is that she made sure of that,聽because of her passion and drive she and her ideas stood out,鈥� said Elizabeth Beck, a professor of social work at Georgia State. 鈥淵T has always been a go-getter, and she鈥檚 always been a networker, and she鈥檚 always had brilliant ideas and a profound amount of energy for social change. 鈥� I just saw her as a professional聽and an advocate聽from the start.鈥�

A communicator

At first interested in the law, Bell turned instead to policy and advocacy work, seeking, she said, greater impact than she could have representing individual clients.聽

She was a volunteer for AmeriCorps for a year, working at a school in Brooklyn and forming deep relationships with individual immigrant students struggling to learn English. She moved on to key roles with Planned Parenthood Southeast; GA Engaged, an umbrella of progressive outreach organizations; and at the National Domestic Workers Alliance/Care in Action. Throughout, said Nicole Robinson, political and research director at Fair Fight Action, Bell built a reputation for understanding the needs of the people she battled for, people from a broad variety of backgrounds who faced different sorts of discrimination.

In one instance, Robinson said, she sat in on meetings Bell was holding with an organization that worked in the Asian American community and with another one working to turn out Black voters.

In each case 鈥渟he just kind of asked them, 鈥榃hat are you trying to do?鈥� And then she would go and work on making sure that they had the best field plan, the best voter education plan possible,鈥� Robinson said. 鈥淏ut it wasn鈥檛 like she did the plan and gave it to them. It was, what are you trying to do? How do you want to do it? What are your strengths? What do you feel like you鈥檙e lacking? And then she helped edit their plan, or revise it, not craft a plan for them.

鈥淏eing a communicator means actually listening, and that鈥檚 something I think YT is really great at, actually listening. But the thing about YT is, she listens because she just cares a lot about Georgia.鈥�

Picture at top: Yterenickia Bell, the 人兽性交鈥檚 state office director for Georgia, works to get out the vote on Election Day in Mableton, Georgia. (Credit: David Naugle)