The South

Tennessee Volkswagen Workers Get Their First Union Contract

February 26, 2026 Stephen Bisaha, Portside. Resist! Contract Negotiations, Tennessee, The South, UAW, Unions, Worker Rights

It's been a long road to this contract. Workers initially voted twice against joining the union before casting ballots in favor in 2024, making this VW plant one of the few to unionize in the South, and the rare one that's not a member of the "Big 3" auto companies: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. That was nearly two years ago and negotiations have dragged on since, with workers at one point granting the union the ability to call a strike if necessary. But contract talks were resolved in early February when the UAW and Volkswagen struck a tentative agreement, which the workers have now voted to approve, with 96% of them voting yes.

UAW Volkswagen Contract Is A Win For Unions In The South

February 9, 2026 Chris Brooks, Portside. Resist! Contracts, The South, Unions, Volkswagen, Worker Rights

The United Auto Workers (UAW) have just marked one of the most important milestones in the union’s history: they have officially reached a tentative agreement on a first contract with Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The agreement, reached on February 4, is the culmination of 502 days of bargaining and a successful strike authorization vote by a supermajority of workers in October of last year. It includes a 20 percent wage increase over four years, reduced health care costs, job security protections, the right to strike over health and safety grievances, the recognition of skilled trades, and many other protections and benefits. It will now proceed to a vote by the union’s members.

After A White Town Rejected A Data Center, Developers Targeted Black Area

January 14, 2026 Adam Mahoney, Black Agenda Report. Organize! Data Centers, Environment, Systemic Racism, The South

In December, on a two-lane road not far from the ACE Basin, a protected ecosystem and wildlife refuge in South Carolina, Paul Black drove past St. Paul AME Church and the cemetery where his wife’s grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-grandmother are buried, then slowed as the trees opened onto the piney tract. Black is an environmental activist who has spent years fighting polluting projects across the South. But now he and Black residents in the rural South Carolina community are bracing for a new fight: to stop a proposed data center complex the size of 1,200 football fields.

Federation Of Southern Co-ops Sets Out Shutdown Support Measures

November 8, 2025 Miles Hadfield, Coop News. Organize! Cooperatives, Food and Farming, Government Shutdown, SNAP Program, The South

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

October 20, 2025 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Featured Campaign, Podcast - Clearing The FOG Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Tech, Data Centers, Energy, Finance and the Economy, Jobs, The South, Water

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

October 16, 2025 Briana M. Bivens, In These Times. Organize! Communism, Highlander School, Labor Movement, The South

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

September 22, 2025 H. G. Reza, Scheer Post. Educate! Customs and Border Patrol, Police abuse, Racism, The South

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

September 11, 2025 Media Justice. Educate! Big Tech, Data Centers, Environment, Environmental Justice, 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

June 23, 2025 Nina Mast, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Privatization, Social safety net, The South, Wages, Worker Rights

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

June 17, 2025 Diane Mathiowetz, Workers World. Strategize! Local Assemblies, Poverty, Racism, The South, Worker's Rights

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

April 17, 2025 Deborah Scott, Portside. Strategize! Black Working Class, Labor Movement, The South, Worker Rights and 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.”

Lessons On Trans Liberation From The US South

March 8, 2025 Nick Fulton, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Donald Trump, Health Care, The South, Transgender Rights

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

February 13, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Organize! Black Working Class, History, Labor Movement, Racism, Right to Work, The South, United States, Worker Rights and Jobs

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.

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