racial disparities
May 12, 2023 -
Some states have taken steps to restore voting rights for people with felony convictions, but Republican officials in places including Florida and North Carolina later reversed the reforms. Proponents of permanent disenfranchisement say it promotes respect for the law, but a growing body of evidence suggests that such policies make their targets more likely to break it again.
April 14, 2023 -
After a shooter recently killed six people at an elementary school in Tennessee's capital city, mass protests demanded tougher gun laws, which are supported by most Americans. But the state's Republican-controlled legislature instead took action to lift restrictions on guns while refusing to debate new ones — and it's not alone in the region.
February 10, 2023 -
While public support for labor unions in the U.S. is at its highest level in a half-century, the portion of Southern workers in unions did not grow last year, even though unions added new members. But strikes and other workplace protests in the region jumped by over 20%, showing growing labor activism.
February 2, 2023 -
The recent deaths of Black men at the hands of police in Memphis, Tennessee, and Raleigh, North Carolina, show that hiring more Black officers and chiefs does not change an inherently biased system.
January 24, 2023 -
The poverty rate for people with disabilities is more than double that of our nondisabled counterparts, and the disparity is being driven by state policy choices that force us into institutions unnecessarily and allow employers to pay us subminimum wages. Some Southern states have already embraced reforms, and others should act now.
September 2, 2022 -
A proposal to build a $90 million police training facility in an area that's been referred to as the "irreplaceable green lungs" of Georgia's largest city has spurred a grassroots resistance movement that's brought together land defenders and police abolitionists.
July 7, 2022 -
A U.S. House subcommittee recently held a hearing on how institutional investors' fast-expanding ownership of single-family rental homes is making affordable housing less accessible for renters and first-time homebuyers. Black neighborhoods and Southern metros are among those with the greatest share of investor ownership of single-family rentals.
