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The South

Federation Of Southern Co-ops Sets Out Shutdown Support Measures

With the US federal shutdown entering its second month, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund has set out its effort to support people suffering food insecurity. The shutdown, which began on 1 October, has affected food stamp payments issued through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits. This month, the Trump administration said claimants will be given half their normal monthly allotment, taken from emergency funding. The Federation has pointed to the ”urgency” of the situation and its impact on programmes like SNAP, “which millions depend on for food access”, and says it has “built infrastructure to address crises like this”.

The AI Race: How The Surge In Data Centers Harms Us

There are more than 5,400 data centers in the United States, which is almost half of the number of data centers worldwide. In the past four years, there has been a surge in data center construction, particularly in poor communities in the South. Clearing the FOG speaks with Jai Dulani of Media Justice, who authored a new report: The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South, and Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson, about the harms that these centers are causing in local communities, particularly in their enormous consumption of water and energy, and the risk they pose to the US economy. Akuno also addresses the bigger picture of the deleterious impact of artificial intelligence on our lives.

Weathering Backlash With Care Infrastructure

In 1938, parents in the white, working-class Appalachian community of Summerfield, Tenn., staged a sit-in against an anti-communist school board trying to close a new cooperative nursery school. The chair of the Grundy County Board of Education initially agreed the nursery school could share space in the public school building. Once he discovered it was run by the Highlander Folk School — a leftist social movement school that aimed to grow a multiracial labor movement — the board demanded it vacate, having decided in 1932 to prohibit Highlander from using county school buildings on the grounds that, according to historian John Glen, ​“they taught ​‘political matters’ that were ​‘Red or communist in appearance.’”

Living While Brown In America

Walking through a Home Depot parking lot while being brown raises enough reasonable suspicion in an immigration agent’s mind to cause my detention for a citizenship check, as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and the Five Supremes recently ruled. The 6-3 decision gave agents wide latitude to conduct indiscriminate immigration stops of Latinos suspected of living in the U.S. illegally, even if we are citizens. Concurring with the court’s ruling, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote that ethnicity alone can’t be grounds for reasonable suspicion, but it can be a “relevant factor” when considered with a combination of other factors. But take it from someone who grew up in South Texas and has had interactions with Border Patrol agents throughout his life — a person’s ethnicity is often the only requisite for a citizenship check.

First Comprehensive, Regional Analysis Of Data Centers In The South

Today, advocacy organization Media Justice releases The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South, the first comprehensive, regional analysis of data centers across the South with original research and case studies from Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. The new report reveals how tech corporations like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta, who have spent more than $100 billion on data center construction just this summer, are draining the region economically and environmentally. “While Big Tech wants the public to believe that the AI boom and rapid data center growth marks progress, our communities are being sold out in the process.

Anti-Worker Policies, Capitalism, And Privatization Keep South Poor

The central function of government should be to protect people from harm, exploitation, and abuse. Yet on this core task, many Southern state governments have performed abhorrently—largely by design. EPI’s Rooted in Racism and Economic Exploitation series1 has shown how for most of the past two centuries, Southern state governments have embraced an economic development strategy—the Southern economic development model—designed to undermine job quality and suppress worker power, particularly for Black and brown workers. The model aims to maintain a pool of exploitable, available labor, and preserve the racial and economic hierarchies established during slavery.

Southern Workers Strategize For Future Struggles

From June 13-15 more than 400 workers answered the call by the Southern Workers Assembly (SWA) to affirm an action plan to challenge the systemic racism, poverty and anti-unionism of the South. The dynamic agenda of the summit was held in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with workers mostly from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. All the main sessions were able to be heard in English and Spanish. Workers of all ages participated in very interactive breakout sessions that combined proven tactics for organizing with new ideas and technology.

How The Black South And Labor Can Unite To Create Good Jobs

In far too many places, the struggles for racial and economic justice have become disconnected. Back in 2020, David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote that the Black-White wage gap nationwide was roughly the same as it was back in 1950. One reason for this outcome is the decline of unions. In other words, just as Black workers got stable union jobs, those stable union jobs started to disappear. The need to integrate racial and economic justice and pursue both objectives together is not a new idea. Speaking at the AFL-CIO’s Fourth Constitutional Convention in 1961, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.”

Ongoing Influence Of Slavery And Jim Crow In The South

The Southern economic development model leaves many workers and families across the region struggling to provide for themselves and their families. They have less access to adequate nutrition, safe and stable housing, and fewer other sources of support to nurture the growth and development of their children. Many children and families in persistently high-poverty areas across the South will not have access to opportunities outside their neglected communities, further reducing the likelihood that their children will achieve economic prosperity.

Lessons On Trans Liberation From The US South

In a recent exchange between President Donald Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills, she publicly declined to comply with Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletic participation. The governor’s act of defiance made headlines as electeds, advocates and organizers grapple with how they might respond to the president’s anti-trans agenda. This practice of defiance and dedication to trans lives is nothing new to reformers in the U.S. South who have a message to national organizers: the fight may look different but the endgame remains the same. We have to protect our trans neighbors fearlessly and without exception.

How Black Workers Overcome Historic Obstacles To Labor Organizing

The struggle between Black organized labor and the political establishment has been historically waged with particular fierceness in the US South—a region with the highest proportion of Black workers but with the most hostile laws against workplace organizing. States in the US South have some of the lowest rates of union coverage in the country—meaning that they have a lower share of workers who are organized in a union. The national union coverage rate stood at 11.2% as of 2023, while the rate was as low as 3% in South Carolina, 3.3% in North Carolina, 5.2% in Louisiana, and 5.4% in Georgia.

The Stone Is In Our Hands, Now We Take The Shot

The Philistine warrior Goliath stood over nine feet tall, clad in bronze armor, armed with a spear, sword, and javelin. For forty days, he mocked the Israelites, daring anyone to challenge him. No one would — until a shepherd boy named David stepped forward. He had no armor, no sword, only a sling and five smooth stones. The world saw a young boy facing certain defeat. But David had something Goliath did not: faith, conviction, and the knowledge that justice was on his side. David let his stone fly, and the giant fell. Amazon is our Goliath. It is one of the largest corporations in human history, worth over two trillion dollars.

New Co-op Financial Association For Southern Small Farmers

East Point, Georgia - This past October, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund ("the Federation") joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other partners for the announcement of the historic launch of the Southern Farmers Financial Association (SFFA). This new cooperatively-owned institution was created to increase access to capital for its member-owners to begin farming or strengthen existing small farming operations and agriculture-based businesses in high-poverty areas across the Southeast.

Reproductive Justice Organizers Find New Ways To Help Incarcerated Moms

Reproductive justice advocates in the South can rarely depend on laws on the book to safeguard incarcerated pregnant people. Instead, they’ve learned to create their own aid. Motherhood Beyond Bars, a reproductive justice group in Georgia, was originally centered on helping pregnant people inside prisons. After finding it increasingly difficult to work internally at the Georgia Department of Corrections, the group decided to devote its resources towards helping inmates from the outside. “The number of problems and fires we’re trying to put out has kind of exceeded even our expectations of what folks would need our help with,” said Amy Ard, executive director of Motherhood Beyond Bars, or MBB.

The Black South’s Revolutionary Anti-Fascist Tradition

The Black South has a rich history of antifascist organizing and militant strategy through direct struggle and conflict with fascistic forces. If we are going to study and promote an organizing lineage, it is this one that we should look to. What would it look like for our movement's rallying cry to evolve from "My ancestors died for the right to vote" to "My ancestors died fighting fascism"? This move does not intend to erase nor obscure historic political struggles of The South that center voting; such a reduction is counter-insurgency.
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