April 9, 2021 -
A growing number of companies are publicly condemning discrimination against transgender people and taking steps to support trans employees. But some of the same businesses are also funding Southern politicians promoting policies harmful to the transgender community. One standout is AT&T, the telecom giant headquartered in Dallas — also the top corporate contributor to state lawmakers seeking to restrict voting rights.
April 8, 2021 -
The Texas legislature may consolidate the state's appeals courts, where Democrats have gained seats in recent elections — and watchdogs say the changes could violate the Voting Rights Act. The plan is being pushed by a big business group that has spent nearly $1 million to back GOP judicial candidates. A new West Virginia appeals court also had the support of big business.
April 8, 2021 -
Inspired by the historic organizing work that's transformed Georgia politics over the past decade, nonprofits in the Carolinas, Louisiana, and Tennessee are taking their own unique approaches to increasing voter participation in their states.
April 8, 2021 -
Riggs, an attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, led the successful legal fight against North Carolina's 2013 voter suppression bill. She talked with Facing South about the ongoing attacks on voting, legal strategies for combating new voter suppression bills, and her hopes for the future of voting rights.
April 2, 2021 -
U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the 1940s and 1950s displaced residents of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, many of whom later settled in Northwest Arkansas. Decades later, they're still fighting for justice for the devastation of their health and homeland, now also threatened by rising seas from climate change.
April 1, 2021 -
Young people are among those whose access to the ballot would be limited under a restrictive new voting law passed in Georgia, a state that once led the nation in empowering the youth vote. Congress should act to lift these limits and shore up young people's eroding faith in democracy by passing the For the People Act.
March 26, 2021 -
Facing South recently spoke with Thomas Healy, author of "Soul City: Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia." The book documents civil rights leader Floyd McKissick's pursuit of Black opportunity in the form of a Black-led model integrated community on a former slave plantation in Eastern North Carolina, and the lessons the quest and its failure holds for today.
