Tennessee

Tennessee Rideshare Drivers Call Strike During Country Music Awards

November 20, 2024 People's Dispatch. Resist! Drivers, Lyft, Strikes, Tennessee, Uber, Worker Rights

Tennessee Uber and Lyft rideshare drivers have called a strike on Wednesday, November 20, the day of the Country Music Awards. Drivers, organized with the newly-formed Tennessee Drivers Union (TDU), are demanding fair pay and better working conditions. These rideshare workers aim to use the strike to show that they are “essential to Tennessee’s 30 billion-dollar tourism economy” by disrupting an event that brings in millions of dollars each year. According to TDU, Uber and Lyft take a cut of 60% to 80% from each ride. TDU reports an example of a rideshare driver earning USD 12.58, and a customer being charged USD 52.72.

Hundreds Of Rideshare Drivers Form Tennessee Drivers’ Union

September 2, 2024 People's Dispatch. Resist! Airports, Labor Day, Lyft, Nashville, Strikes, Tennessee, Transportation, Uber, Unions, US South, Worker Rights and Jobs

On Tuesday, August 20, hundreds of rideshare drivers voted to form the Tennessee Drivers’ Union and to strike on Friday, August 30 to address worsening working conditions at the Nashville International Airport. Workers are striking strategically on Labor Day weekend, as they recognize that it is one of the busiest travel weekends of the year. These drivers represent 14 different nationalities and speak multiple languages. “We are many nations working for [a] common goal,” says the co-president of the Tennessee Drivers’ Union. “If we don’t come together as people striving for their rights then we will continue to suffer and [be] robbed by two giants, Uber and Lyft.”

Over 200 Dollar General Workers And Customers Protest Annual Meeting

May 30, 2024 Smithville Review. Resist! Dollar General, Shareholder Meeting, Tennessee, Worker Rights and Jobs

Goodlettsville, TN — Over 200 Dollar General workers and customers gathered for a march and protest at the corporation’s annual shareholder meeting to demand store safety and better pay. The group gathered for a rally where workers delivered speeches to share their stories about the repeated hazards they face while working at Dollar General. The rally was followed by a march to Dollar General headquarters, where chants from the protest could be heard inside the shareholder meeting, according to three Dollar General workers who attended the meeting as proxies. Dollar General headquarters were on lockdown as protesters arrived.

Lessons From A Downtown District That’s Bucking National Trends

May 27, 2024 Rory Thomas, Next City. Create! Community Wealth, Housing, Memphis, Tennessee, Urban Design

While many urban downtowns around the country are continuing to be plagued by office and retail vacancies, a 2.6-square-mile area in Memphis’s downtown is bucking the trend. In Memphis’s medical district, eleven new businesses opened last year — 10 of them owned by women and people of color, and supported by almost $150,000 in targeted grants. More and more district residents are now supporting these businesses, thanks to over 400 new housing units coming online. With dozens of events activating the district’s many public spaces, these new neighbors are welcoming tens of thousands of visitors: The Juneteenth Festival in Health Sciences Park welcomed about 12,000 guests alone.

Southern Autoworkers’ Union Drives Can Reverse Decades Of Job Decline

May 1, 2024 Marc Bayard and Dev Wakeley, Inequality.org. Organize! Alabama, Autoworkers, Tennessee, The South, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

The United Auto Workers recently scored the largest union victory in decades in the South. Their success at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant could be a turning point for labor in a region long known for governmental hostility to unions. The next test will be a UAW election scheduled for the week of May 13 at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama, a state that has attracted so much auto investment it has earned the nickname “the Detroit of the South.” If the roughly 5,000 Mercedes workers vote to unionize, the ripple effects could empower workers nationwide.

United Campus Workers Rack Up Victories In ‘Right-To-Work’ Tennessee

October 7, 2023 Justin A. Davis, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Higher Education, Right to Work, Tennessee, Unions, United Campus Workers (UCW), Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

In recent years, U.S. labor organizing has turned an exciting corner. National headlines have burst with workers putting pressure on far corners of the economy for fair wages and safe, secure jobs — from employees at major logistics corporations like Amazon and UPS to auto workers and Hollywood writers and actors. The world of higher education is no different, and colleges and universities across the country have seen their own wave of new labor campaigns. Last fall, for example, 48,000 workers at the University of California went on a 40-day strike — the largest higher ed strike in U.S. history.

Drag Performers Resist Anti-Trans Legislation

June 6, 2023 Henry Hicks IV, In These Times. Resist! Drag Queens, Illinois, LGBTQ Rights, Tennessee

More than a thousand Chicagoans of all ages, genders and sexualities packed tightly into the Metro for its sold-out “Chicago Loves Drag!” show on April 14. The balconies overflowed with people dressed in exuberant color, eagerly peering over one another to get a view of the night’s 41 performers. Drag kings and queens made the room their own, claiming the audience’s full attention with lip syncs, comedy acts and dance routines, a radiant variety show highlighting the broad — and liberatory — entertainment that drag offers. Proceeds benefited the work of LGBTQ organizations in Chicago and Tennessee.

Overworked And Understaffed Dollar General Workers Rally Against Cuts

June 2, 2023 People's Dispatch. Resist! Dollar General, Dollar Store, Tennessee, Worker Rights and Jobs, Workplace Safety

On May 31, Dollar General workers rallied and marched towards the annual meeting of company shareholders to demand safe working conditions in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. As workers mobilized, shareholders voted to approve a resolution put forward by a progressive-leaning investment firm to conduct an independent worker safety and well-being audit on the company, despite Dollar General advising shareholders to vote no. The company argues that it already performs its own safety checks and audits, while the investment firm claims that Dollar General is unclear if employee feedback at all informs its safety policies.

Memphis Police Chief Trained With Israel Security Forces

February 8, 2023 Alice Speri, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Israel, Memphis, Police, police brutality, Tennessee, Wars and Militarism

The death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers last month once again ignited outrage over the violent, militarized nature of U.S. law enforcement and placed scrutiny on police departments’ bloated budgets . Among the objections to policing that are being revived are criticisms of a controversial series of trainings and exchange programs for U.S. police in Israel. Scores of American law enforcement leaders have attended the programs, where they learned from Israeli police and security forces known for systemically abusing the human rights of Palestinians. Some of the Memphis Police Department’s top brass, including current Chief Cerelyn Davis, participated in the programs. Davis, who previously helmed the police department in Durham, North Carolina, completed a leadership training with the Israel National Police in 2013.

The State Murder Of Tortuguita And Tyre Nichols Are Inextricably Linked

February 6, 2023 Black Alliance for Peace. Educate! Atlanta, Capitalism, Class Struggle, Fascism, Georgia, Memphis, Police, police brutality, Tennessee, Tortuguita, Tyre Nichols

The cold-blooded assassination of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, also known as Tortuguita, Spanish for “Little Turtle,” is a reminder that fascism in the United States cannot be reduced to the political intentions of avowed white nationalists. African/Black and Indigenous people residing in the settler-colonial project known as the United States continue to be subjected to a cycle of state-sanctioned violence and political repression with bipartisan consensus. People of the global majority and their allies must not allow these latest episodes of injustice to go unanswered. The Atlanta City-Wide Alliance of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP-Atlanta) has been working with a coalition of Indigenous people, African/Black people, other people of color, and Euro-Americans to prevent the construction of “Cop City,” as BAP-Atlanta expressed in a recent statement. The statement highlighted the obvious nexus between the proposed $90 million police-training facility site, where Tortuguita was killed on January 18, and the white supremacy-fueled genocide, militarism, and oppression the U.S. empire exercises both outside and within.

Protests Erupt Over Video Of Ex-Cops Beating Tyre Nichols

January 29, 2023 Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams. Resist! Police, police brutality, Protests, Tennessee, Tyre Nichols

People took to the streets across the United States Friday night after the city of Memphis, Tennessee released videos of a January 7 traffic stop that led to five police officers being fired and charged with the murder of 29-year-old Black motorist Tyre Nichols. Demonstrators and the Nichols family have called for disbanding the MPD Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods (SCORPION) team that launched in 2021 and was involved in the traffic stop. The Memphis mayor said Friday afternoon that the unit has been inactive since Nichols' January 10 death. The footage shows that after police brutally beat Nichols—pushing him to the ground; using pepper spray; punching and kicking him; and striking him with a baton—it took 22 minutes from when officers said he was in custody for an ambulance to arrive and take him to the hospital, where he later died from cardiac arrest and kidney failure.

Five Memphis Cops Arrested, Charged With Murder Of Tyre Nichols

January 27, 2023 People's Dispatch. Educate! Black America, Memphis, Police, police brutality, Tennessee, Tyre Nichols

Memphis, Tennessee - Five police officers from Memphis, Tennessee who murdered the 29-year-old Black father Tyre Nichols, were arrested and charged with second-degree murder on January 26. Nichols was brutally beaten for three minutes by Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith following a traffic stop on January 7. He succumbed to his wounds three days later, in the hospital. An autopsy found that he had suffered excessive internal bleeding as a result of the beating. His death provoked mass outrage in Memphis and throughout the country, and many have been demanding accountability for those responsible. Although police violence is prevalent in the US (2022 recorded 1,176 police killings, more than any year in US history), it is extremely rare for police to be held accountable for these crimes. From 2013 to 2022, 98% of police murders did not result in officers being charged for a crime.

Workers At Hooters-Style Restaurant Go On Strike

January 26, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Resist! Immigration, Racism, Strikes, Tennessee, Worker Rights and Jobs

Brentwood, Tennessee - Latino immigrant kitchen workers and a group of racially diverse women servers walked out at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Brentwood, Tennessee, on Saturday, January 14. They say their employer is serving up of a toxic brew of racism and sexism. “We went on strike to fire a manager because he is mistreating my co-workers verbally and physically,” Juan Carlos Mendoza, a barback with six years at the restaurant, told the Spanish-language news channel Nashville Noticias. “The manager is a racist… and that’s why we raised our voices.” Eighteen workers walked out, accusing general manager Andrew “Hunter” Kirkpatrick of racist and abusive behavior, including throwing away their lunches, berating them for speaking Spanish, and threatening to call the police on them. The kitchen workers are indigenous people from Mexico and Guatemala.

Protesters Rally Overnight About Camping On Public Property Law

July 2, 2022 Araceli Crescencio, News Channel 5 Nashville. Resist! Criminalization, Homelessness, State legislature, Tennessee

Starting July 1, people experiencing homelessness who sleep on state-owned land could face prison time and heavy fines. The controversial law has many people concerned about the unhoused community in the area. That’s why several people gathered at Legislative Plaza for a rally and march to Commerce Street Park. Some advocates are planning on sleeping overnight at the park to send a message to lawmakers that homelessness should not be a crime. The group Open Table Nashville organized the protest. The new law makes it a felony to camp on public property and could lead to up to six years in prison and thousands in fine. It also makes it a misdemeanor to camp under state bridges and overpasses.

Tennessee Is About To Take School Privatization To An Extreme

March 15, 2022 Andy Spears, The Progressive Magazine. Educate! Charter Schools, Corporatism, Education, Tennessee

Tennessee - If you are wondering what it looks like when school privatizers are close to total victory, Tennessee is a prime example. Here, the forces that want to take public money and hand it over to private entities are on the verge of completing their conquest. Tennessee’s current legislative session features a range of attacks on public schools. Some of these would have immediate impacts, while others take a longer-term approach to fully privatizing K-12 education in the state. First, it is important to understand that groups backing privatization in the form of charter schools and vouchers are among the top spenders when it comes to lobbying state legislators. For example, the American Federation for Children—an organization founded and previously led by the family of Betsy DeVos, a school privatization advocate and former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education—spent $887,500.

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