organizing

July 28, 2017 - As a Mexican-American who grew up in an overwhelmingly white state, Mireya Reith experienced bigotry that inspired her to become an advocate for vulnerable communities. Through her work with the Arkansas United Community Coalition, Reith empowers immigrants and amplifies the voices of the most marginalized in the public policy arena.  

July 19, 2017 - The historic link between workers in the South Carolina city and the organizer training school in Tennessee was revitalized when a group of Raise Up for $15 activists from Charleston traveled there recently with others from around the South to strategize about what's next for the movement.

May 19, 2017 - For more than 50 years, Bob Hall has been a central force in the struggle for a more just and democratic South. On the cusp of his retirement, he speaks with Facing South about his history in the movement and his advice for today's organizers and activists.

March 30, 2017 - At the time of his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis, Tennessee, preparing to march with the city's striking sanitation workers. Labor protests on the anniversary of his death next week will continue the work he was doing during his final days to connect race and class.

October 19, 2016 - Seventy years ago this week in South Carolina, the Southern Negro Youth Congress convened the largest human rights gathering the region had ever seen. The S.C. Progressive Network is holding a public symposium on Oct. 22 looking back at that historic event. To mark the occasion, we share author and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois'  convention address, one of his last major speeches and considered one of his best.

October 4, 2016 - This Oct. 5 marks 100 years since the birth of Stetson Kennedy, the Florida writer and human rights activist who died in 2011 at the age of 94. The nonprofit foundation he launched while still alive is marking the occasion with a series of events that start this week with a biographical drama of Kennedy's life — and what a life it was.

September 16, 2016 - Forty-five years to the day after the Attica uprising in New York, inmates across the United States organized a strike that spread to dozens of states. Prisoners in Alabama played a key role in planning the groundbreaking action against low-paid and unpaid labor and poor conditions.