Kentucky

Kentucky City’s Unusual Experiment In Citizen-Led Governance

April 13, 2026 Anabel Peterman, Next City. Create! Citizen Assemblies, City Council, Kentucky, Participatory Democracy

Public trust in government is near historic lows. But Americans’ trust in their local government far outweighs trust in the federal government. It’s been this way since the mid-2000s, when the State of the Nation Project began keeping track. Standing on the sidelines of Kentucky’s first civic assembly – and one of the first carried out anywhere in the country – the palpable excitement I saw in that conference room was a far cry from the profound polarization, distrust, skepticism, and fatigue driving American political disengagement.

Two Different Models To Erasing Medical Debt

March 2, 2026 Anabel Peterman, Next City. Resist! Crowdfunding, Health Care, Kentucky, Medical Debt

When Lucy Becker got the letter, she had a hunch what it was about. Just a couple of weeks prior, she had read an article in CivicLex about her local government’s new initiative to erase $90 million in medical debt for residents. “My mom always keeps a little stack of my mail. The first one on top said [Lexington]-Fayette Urban County Government, and I was like, no way,” says Becker, a 28-year-old musician in Lexington, Kentucky, who has racked up thousands in medical debt due to injuries and severe allergies – debt she thought there would be no escape from.

Rural County Takes Notes From Iceland’s Drug Prevention Model

December 22, 2025 Anabel Peterman, Next City. Create! Drugs, Harm Reduction, Health Care, Kentucky, Opioid crisis, Rural

While serving a three-year prison sentence for meth trafficking, Matewood Gerald got the call that she’d soon be a grandmother. Gerald started abusing drugs when she was just 13, and she says everyone in her small town of Irvine, Kentucky, has seen her at her worst. But she had to become the best version of herself for her granddaughter. “I would lay there and think, is she gonna like me? Am I going to be perfect whenever I get out?” Gerald recalls. Less than five years later, she is a peer support specialist with Mercy Health Marcum and Wallace Hospital in rural Irvine.

Another Crack In The Amazon Empire

November 25, 2025 Cameron Harrison, People's World. Organize! Amazon, Kentucky, Unions, Worker Rights

Shepherdsville, KY - Another crack in the Amazon empire has been exposed. This time, in a breakthrough for workers across the world trying to organize the notoriously anti-union monopoly, Amazon CDL drivers at the SDF9 warehouse here have become the first company tractor-trailer drivers nationwide to organize with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The drivers, part of the Amazon Transportation Operations Management (TOM) Team, voted to join Teamsters Local 89 after a year of clandestine organizing to shield their campaign from the company’s well-documented, multi-million-dollar union-busting apparatus.

Kentucky Organizers Fill The Gaps As SNAP Delays Leave Families In Limbo

November 10, 2025 Anabel Peterman, Next City. Organize! Food Access, Food Security, Food stamps, Government Shutdown, Kentucky, Mutual Aid, SNAP

“I was expecting, maybe, four of us?” Willa Johnson remarked, earning a few laughs around the table. She sat among about 20 familiar friends and new faces. Most were residents of Letcher County in southeast Kentucky. All were committed to helping their neighbors through food insecurity amid the federal government shutdown. Two days earlier, Johnson made a post in a new mutual aid Facebook group, ‘Kinfolks Feeding Kinfolks,’ asking for locals to help fill the gap if the shutdown halted food aid benefits. She gave a statement, date, time, location and a plea to leave politics at the door. “After the floods in 2022, we saw the very best of that neighborly love in action.

Kentucky’s Anti-Camping Law Has Pushed Rural Homelessness Into Hiding

October 24, 2025 Anabel Peterman, Next City. Educate! Criminalization, Homelessness, Kentucky, Rural

In many U.S. cities, advocates for America’s growing homeless population say, homelessness itself is being treated like a crime. Last year, the Supreme Court gave cities the green light to ban people from sleeping and camping in public, allowing them to crack down on encampments even when there are no shelter beds available. In July, the White House announced an executive order making it easier for cities and states to remove unsheltered people from the streets and force them into medical facilities and institutions. That headline came alongside news of broad, Trump-backed encampment sweeps in Washington, D.C. and the threat of federal mobilization in other big cities.

What It Takes To Keep Kentucky’s Black-Led Farms Alive

September 29, 2025 Anabel Peterman, Next City. Create! Black America, Black Farmers, Farmers, Kentucky

Near the eastern edge of Fayette County, Kentucky, sits the Coleman Crest Farm in the rural Black hamlet of Uttingertown. That’s where Jim Coleman works the land his great-grandfather tilled as an enslaved person — until he secured his freedom by fighting in the Civil War and returning to purchase the farm more than 130 years ago. Now, Coleman is continuing his family’s farming legacy, but not because it’s easy work. “Yesterday, I was pulling up mulch,” Coleman says, in between administrative calls. “I had harvested hard the day before. Did a little bit of harvesting [yesterday], invoiced it, packaged it, put it in the case, put it in my truck, drove to my customer, and delivered.” Coleman’s 13-acre plot is one of few in the county – and in Kentucky – that’s still Black- owned and operated. And among all farmers, the sheer volume of farmland has fallen, statewide and nationwide.

Kentucky Battery Plant Joins United Auto Workers In Close Vote

August 29, 2025 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Resist! Kentucky, Unions, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

Kentucky battery plant workers at the BlueOval SK Battery Park (BOSK) in Glendale have voted to join the United Auto Workers. The workers make batteries to power Ford’s all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck and E-Transit cargo van. On August 27 at 10 p.m., an unofficial tally showed 526 yes and 515 no votes, with 41 challenged ballots. There were 1,200 eligible voters; turnout was over 90 percent. The UAW called the vote “a major step forward for workers who stood up against intense company opposition and chose to join the UAW.” “We’re feeling pretty confident, I think we’re gonna win,” said battery worker Halee Hadfield via text message on August 23.

Linking City And Countryside To Solve Food Insecurity

August 22, 2025 Anabel Peterman, Next City. Create! Farming, Food, Food Insecurity, Food Waste, Kentucky, Nonprofits

There’s more than enough food to go around, say food access organizers across landscapes. That’s hard to imagine in Kentucky, home to some of the lowest-income and food insecure counties nationwide. The true surplus becomes apparent when a dozen pallets of peaches are loaded in for the Hazel Green Food Project, stretching across the stockyard lot in rural Wolfe County. Someone hollers for volunteers to sort through the haul, so they don vests and plastic gloves and get to work. Good fruit will be sifted into bags and packed into a family’s car later that morning. The rest will become animal feed for local farmers. Drive an hour west, and the words ring equally true in the Commonwealth’s urban centers.

Unions Stand Up To Halt Deportation Of Two Hundred Workers

April 11, 2025 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Resist! Deportations, Immigrant Rights, Kentucky, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Two hundred union workers, out of 5,700 who assemble dishwashers, refrigerators, washers, and dryers for GE Appliances-Haier at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, received notice this month that the Trump administration is revoking their work authorizations. The immigrant workers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela have received a mixed reaction to their imminent deportation—hostility from some co-workers and an outpouring of support from their union and the local labor movement. They’re part of the Communications Workers’ industrial division, IUE-CWA Local 83761.

How Appalachian Towns Are Learning To Help Each Other After Floods

March 15, 2025 Katie Myers, Next City. Create! Appalachia, climate crisis, Disaster Recovery, Flooding, Kentucky

When the rivers and creeks running through eastern Kentucky jumped their banks and flooded a wide swath of the region for the second time in as many years, Cara Ellis set to work. One week later, she’s hardly let up. Ellis has spent countless hours helping friends in her hometown of Pikeville evacuate and delivering supplies to people who have lost their homes. “I’ve been here, there, everywhere in the county,” she said. “It’s overwhelming. There’s been a lot of devastation.” Ellis spoke during a brief moment of rest in the chaos. Her home was spared when storms brought torrential rain to central Appalachia during the weekend of February 15.

Kentucky Activists Bought Land Where Feds Want To Build A Prison

February 16, 2025 Jared Bennett, Louisville Public Media. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Kentucky, Land Reform, Victory

A community building and land restoration group bought a plot of Letcher County land that’s been targeted for a new federal prison. The Appalachian Rekindling Project paid local property owners $160,000 in late December for 63 acres near the community of Roxana, according to a deed of sale obtained by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. The land makes up a portion of the 500-acre site where the Bureau of Prisons planned to build an estimated $500 million prison complex to incarcerate more than 1,300 people.

The Arts Organization Helping Transform Appalachia’s Craft Economy

January 13, 2025 Kristi Eaton, Resilience. Create! Appalachia, Arts, Hurricane Helene, Kentucky, Small Businesses

Makers United supports historically marginalized makers in the craft economy by removing the barriers to accessing business development resources and e-commerce opportunities they need to grow their small businesses. In 2023, that commitment led Nest to expand Makers United to Appalachia, starting with 54 counties in eastern Kentucky, where they identified not only the need for economic investment but recognized the potential for growth in the craft sector, especially in rural and digitally disconnected communities. As a result, the program delivers one-of-a-kind support by working with local and regional efforts to improve makers’ e-commerce readiness and enhance their business’ e-commerce performance to help folk artists market and distribute their work.

Kentucky Battery Plant Workers Launch Union Drive With UAW

November 23, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Organize! Kentucky, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

A majority of the 1,000 auto workers at the car battery park Blue Oval in Glendale, Kentucky, have signed union cards to join the United Auto Workers. The battery park, a joint venture between Ford and South Korea’s SK On, is expected to ramp up hiring to 5,000 hourly workers by 2030. It has twin battery plants. But the second one is on hold due low demand for electric vehicles. At the first plant, workers are testing battery module packs from facilities in Georgia, as the plant prepares to become fully operational next year. Since he started last year, Chad Johnson has seen co-workers suffer mild heart attacks and respiratory problems, apparently from exposure to chemicals.

Mutual Aid Groups Mobilize In Wake Of Hurricane Helene

October 4, 2024 It's Going Down, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Organize! climate crisis, disaster relief, Florida, Food Not Bombs, Hurricane Helene, Kentucky, Mutual Aid, Natural Disasters, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia

A Category 4 storm, Hurricane Helene, one of the largest storms to hit the Gulf Coast in a century, collided into the Big Bend area of Northern Florida on Thursday, before moving into neighboring states of Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and the Carolinas. According to media reports, upwards of 60 people have already been confirmed dead, although the death toll is expected to rise as many municipalities have yet to release official numbers as cell phone service and internet remains down and millions are currently without power. Extreme flooding has been reported in Atlanta, GA and Asheville, NC, as whole communities are left stranded and lacking proper shelter and access to clean drinking water.

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