Our mission:

Our values:

• Liberation rooted in self-determination and solidarity.
• Radical imagination and creativity.
• Moving with care and curiosity.
• Abundance in community.

Our theory of change:

• Right relation: We are in a generative, reciprocal relationship with community, organizers, and movements.
• Community-driven reporting: Our reporting and storytelling are informed and driven by the needs of our community including our partners. Our community trusts us to share their stories and as a source of information because of the relationships we've built with them.
• Outcomes: Storytelling or reporting leads to policy changes, support to movement work, narrative shift, increased solidarity and connection, the nourishing of radical imagination, and the creation of pathways to careers in journalism, literature, and the arts for people who have not traditionally had access.
• Impact: Repeated outcomes from Scalawag and other reporting media makers in conjunction with the work of movements leads to transformational change.

Our team:

Alysia Nicole Harris — Arts & Soul Editor

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Alysia is a performance artist, poet, and linguist from Virginia, and holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from Yale University. She also manages our arts coverage. Religion, travel, and poetry make her heart flutter. Originally part of Scalawag's Atlanta crew, Alysia currently lives and works in Corsicana, Texas.

Alyzza May — Development Officer

Alyzza is an angelic troublemaker, moving in the lineages of cultural workers, popular educators, and community builders alike. Focuses of theirs include: Mutual aid, participatory budgeting, curating community-engaged murals, and, most recently, helping launch Freedom Fridges. Alyzza is a former member of Cakalak Thunder, and a proud Titi to two puntastic twins.

Ari Brazier — Chief Strategy Officer

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Ari is a Black queer feminist and smiley sad mom-girl. She is a play-driven community-organizer and educator who is motivated to raise a joyous, free Black child. Ari received her doctoral degree in English, Critical & Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh in April 2021 and now resides in Atlanta. She has been described by the people she loves as Southern, explosive, abstract, intricate, and awkward.

Brendan Bennett — Director of Operations

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Brendan is an entrepreneur, coach and leader in the world of business and nonprofits. With a deep connection to the South, he provides business acumen that improves the day-to-day-operations of Scalawag. He currently resides between Austin, Texas and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Cierra Hinton — Executive Director-Publisher

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Cierra has an undying love and passion for the complicated South, which she brings to her work at Scalawag where she oversees our operations and big-picture plans. Cierra has found community across the South—from Tennessee to Mississippi—but currently resides in Durham, North Carolina.

Da'Shaun Harrison — Editor-at-Large

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Da'Shaun is a trans theorist and Southern-born and bred abolitionist in Atlanta, Georgia. They are the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, which was awarded the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction, among several other honors. Harrison uses their extensive history as a community organizer—which began in 2014 during their first year at Morehouse College—to frame their political thought and cultural criticism. Through the lens of what they call "Black Fat Studies," Harrison lectures on blackness, fatness, gender, and their intersections. They currently serve as our Editor-at-Large.

Jonah Vincent — Director of Movement Partnerships

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Jonah brings two decades of experience as an organizer, musician, and educator to his work with Scalawag. He got his start in organizing in 2008, when he supported Black civic engagement for the Obama presidential campaign. Later, he served as Eastern North Carolina Field Coordinator for the NAACP and Tennessee State Director for Vote Mob. Jonah is also an accomplished musician, recording artist, and one half of hip-hop duo Beatnam. Raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, he now lives in Durham, where he enjoys spending time with loved ones, building relationships, and grilling a good Tomahawk ribeye.

Ko Bragg — Newsletter Editor

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Ko is a reporter and editor with a focus on justice and the criminal-legal system in the Deep South. She also writes and edits our bi-weekly newsletter, pop justice. Ko is based in New Orleans, where she is always on the hunt for oysters, but will always consider Mississippi home.

Lovey Cooper — Digital Editor

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Lovey is a Scalawag multi-hyphenate, wrangling our words, writers, website, and things in-between. In a past life, she reported on education policy, arts, culture, and music for various outlets; served as a founding editor of 100 Days in Appalachia; and had a brief stint in public radio and podcast production. She currently lives in Durham, North Carolina, not far from her childhood stomping grounds in rural Orange County. You can read Lovey's latest musing every week in This Week in the South, the newsletter she has penned for Scalawag since 2017.

Sherronda Brown — Editor-in-Chief

Sherronda is a Southern-grown gothic nerd and queermongering gender anarchist. As a versatile creator, they lend their talents to multiple spheres as an essayist, editor, storyteller, creative consultant, and artist. They are also the author of Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture. Alongside queer theory and (a)sexual politics, their writing often focuses on cultural critique and media analysis, especially of the horror genre. As Scalawag's first Editor-in-Chief, Sherronda strives to lead our editorial team with empathy and passion to inspire imaginative resistance, radical creativity, and cathartic experience.

Virginia Walcott — Visual Editor

Virginia is an artist, designer, and filmmaker from the Gulf Coast of Alabama. She makes our infographics, designs, and all the other big and small pieces that make up Scalawag's overall look and feel. Virginia graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and lived in D.C. for a few years before switching swamps and moving down to New Orleans.

Zaire Love — Creative Director

Zaire is an award-winning filmmaker, music maker, writer, and educator whose mission is to honor, amplify, and archive the stories and voices of the Black South. She is also Scalawag's first-ever Creative Director. Her life's work brings honor to the Black South, its people, its traditions, and its cultures in the past, present, and future. Catch her living her best life, loving her folks deeply, and leaving trails of flyness in every room she's in 'cause "she from Memphis!"