Watch: Phillip Agnew, co-founder of Dream Defenders, speaks on the panel, “Contemporary Activists Respond to the SNCC Digital Gateway,” at the SNCC Digital Gateway closing events at North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina, March 24, 2018. Video courtesy of the SNCC Digital Gateway Project and Duke University Libraries

Transcript: But as you look at the website, you see some specific things on there that are indicative. One—as you already highlighted—the main page features people who are not currently in SNCC, right. It features leaders from this iteration of our Movement, and so the identity of SNCC—of elevating, of always being a group that elevated the people on the ground, the people who are doing the work. Of deferring what is the front page of your site to organizers in this iteration of the Movement is one thing that is indicative of the spirit of SNCC that must be acknowledged. It is a chronicle to an organization with the legacy that still lives today. One of the responses I have to the website—and I’ve talked to Ash-Lee and other folks about this yesterday—is that our organization does not do a good job of chronicling what we have done or what we are doing. We’ve exported that to Google Docs, to Facebook Cloud, to—I don’t know—all manner of cloud technology. So an immediate reaction I get upon being in this space and being on the site is one of reverence for the record, for the archive. I know there was a lot of work that was put into compiling it, but the amount of work and diligence and respect you had for the transformational work that you were doing is laid out in the minutes, in the notes, in the pictures, in the archival. As an organization, the notes from SNCC meetings have informed organizing strategies for us, right. The letters written by the women of SNCC have guided the women’s faction in the development of a body within our organization that ensured that organization meets the principles that we have in our practice. And so as someone who’s romanticized SNCC and other groups for many years, it was the true love that I’ve been able to find for SNCC through the Digital Gateway and through my relationship with it, with you all actually happened when I went into the minutia. The eight, the nine, the ten, the eleven hour meetings. These are the things that allow us to have a perspective about where we are, where we’re going, right. And for us to not feel so bad when we’re in a meeting for twelve hours, thirteen hours, fourteen hours. To know that we’re in a long lineage of people who love long meetings. [Laughter] To know that we come from a lineage of people who will debate everything, and debate anything. It is a great honor, so you can see that on the Gateway.

No content provided.