September 30, 2022 -
To mark the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking protests against North Carolina's plans to dump toxic waste in a rural Black community, we reprint from the 1988 Southern Exposure book titled "Environmental Politics" an essay and photos about the struggle by Jenny Labalme, who reported on it as an undergraduate at Duke University.
September 29, 2022 -
As election season gets underway, voters in communities across the South are finding in their mail unsolicited print copies of The Epoch Times, a pro-Trump news outlet that traffics in conspiracy theories and other disinformation. We look at who's behind the publication and what they're trying to accomplish.
September 29, 2022 -
Workers at dozens of Starbucks locations in Southern states have unionized despite the region's harsh anti-union laws and the coffee chain's intimidating tactics, which have included terminations, surveillance, and mandatory anti-union meetings. This week the company announced it would begin bargaining with Starbucks Workers United in October.
September 28, 2022 -
The famed civil rights leader who coined the phrase "environmental racism" in a North Carolina jail recently delivered the Robert R. Wilson Distinguished Lecture at Duke University Chapel in Durham. Titled "Environmental Justice: Past, Present, and Future" and shared here, his talk commemorated the 40th anniversary of protests over toxic waste dumping in a rural Black community that sparked the environmental justice movement.
September 16, 2022 -
On the heels of a 2020 legal settlement with the Georgia city of LaGrange, human rights and immigrant advocates continue their fight against local utility policies in communities across the South that deny service to people who lack Social Security numbers.
September 15, 2022 -
Speaking in response to Jackson's latest drinking water crisis, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) has said that privatization of the city's system is under consideration. But many U.S. communities that privatized their water reconsidered after encountering problems including shoddy maintenance and a lack of promised savings.
September 15, 2022 -
This November voters in Kentucky will weigh in on a proposed constitutional amendment that would deny any state right to an abortion, similar to the one that recently failed in Kansas. We look at the players and money behind Kentucky's anti-abortion ballot measure and the effort to defeat it.