The South

Black Organizers Are Preparing For A New Era Of Voting Rights Battles

July 19, 2026 Brandon Tensley, Capital B News. Strategize! Black America, Racism, Supreme Court, The South, Voting Rights

The mobilization effort was swift once it became clear that Black Georgians stood to lose political representation. LaTosha Brown and other voting rights advocates sprang into action after Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on May 13 called a special session to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative maps in ways that could erode Black voters’ ability to shape election outcomes. “Ultimately, pain births new possibilities,” said Brown, the co-founder of Black Voters Matter. “What we’re experiencing right now are possibilities, and we have to shift from seeing ourselves just as citizens of this nation and start seeing ourselves as mothers of the new nation — we’re the architects.”

Crushed 1891 Strike By Black Farmer Cooperatives Holds Keys To Economic Justice

June 17, 2026 Shivank Pandey, Nonprofit Quarterly. Create! Black Farmers, Cooperatives, History, Strike, The South, Unions

Houston County, TX, December 11, 1886. Sixteen Black men gathered on a farm and started something that would grow into one of the most ambitious economic organizing efforts in US history. They called it the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union (CFNACU). Within five years, it had spread across the South and claimed 1.2 million members. Then, in 1891, it was violently destroyed. Most Americans have never heard of it. That is exactly the problem. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, a political economist and scholar of Black cooperative economics, described this endeavor in an interview with NPQ.

Unions Make Slight Gains In South, Mirroring National Trends

June 2, 2026 Chris Kromm, Portside. Organize! Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights

The share of Southern workers in unions slightly increased in 2025, mirroring a small uptick in unionization nationally, according to government data released in February. The Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers showed that 14.7 million workers belonged to a union in 2025, an increase of 463,000 from 2024 and the highest number of unionized workers in the U.S. since 2009. Labor unions added 166,000 workers in 13 Southern states, with Georgia registering by far the biggest gains: 62,000 more Georgia employees belonged to a union in 2025 than in 2024.

In Bus Factories, A Triple-Decker Win

May 29, 2026 Keith Brower-Brown, Labor Notes. Strategize! The South, Transportation, Unions, Worker Rights

What does it take to unionize factories today, especially in the South? In the last two years, bus manufacturing workers secured first union contracts and a national master agreement across New Flyer facilities in three states. Their strategy shows how, with pressure from transit agencies that buy the buses, union members from organized sites leading outreach to non-union workers, and fighting stewards on the line, workers can unionize plants across a whole company. New Flyer, North America’s largest bus-making company, expanded heavily in the South during the last decade, a common employer strategy to move to areas with few unions, sharp poverty, and racial splits to exploit. About a quarter of its production is electric or hydrogen buses.

Race To The Bottom: Prison Labor Exploitation In The South

May 13, 2026 Sumona Gupta, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Exploitation, Hyundai, Kia, Prison Labor, The South, Worker Rights

In November 2025, non-profit Jobs to Move America (JMA) filed a lawsuit against Korean car companies Hyundai and Kia in a California state court for the companies' reliance on incarcerated workers' labor, despite the alleged unsafe and exploitative working conditions. JMA claimed that the companies' use of incarcerated workers' labor in Alabama and Georgia is in violation of California state laws and California public purchasing standards, that incarcerated workers are working under forced labor conditions, and that the alleged underpayment and mistreatment of workers provides Hyundai and Kia an "unfair competitive advantage in the California automotive sales market."

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.

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