Politics

July 15, 2021 - Texas's SB7 anti-voter bill, which was set to be considered in a special session until Democratic lawmakers fled the state to block it, is part of a wave of nearly 400 such measures introduced in state legislatures this year in reaction to 2020's unprecedented turnout by young people. There are several steps they can take to fight back, says Jeffrey Clemmons, a student in Texas and an Andrew Goodman Foundation ambassador.

July 2, 2021 - Last week the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was suing Georgia over its restrictive new voting law, part of a recent wave of such legislation passed by Republican-led state legislatures. But a July 1 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on a Voting Rights Act case out of Arizona makes the lawsuit's future even more uncertain.

July 1, 2021 - Over 2 million adults — including over half a million essential workers — fall into the Medicaid coverage gap in states that have refused to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act, and most are people of color living in the South. Congressional Democrats from Georgia and Texas recently unveiled plans to work around GOP-controlled legislatures' refusal to authorize broader Medicaid coverage even when facing a deadly pandemic.

June 28, 2021 - Joan C. Browning of West Virginia took part in the 1961 Freedom Rides challenging segregated transportation in the Jim Crow South, and she recently welcomed the Black Voters Matter Freedom Ride for Voting Rights to Charleston. We're reprinting the full text of her remarks drawing on history to suggest paths to a more just future.

June 25, 2021 - A report from the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Inspector General found that several Southern states failed to deliver unemployment payments in a timely manner. In Georgia, for example, about 80,000 unemployment applications remain in limbo.  

June 18, 2021 - A 1988 issue of Southern Exposure magazine, the print forerunner to Facing South, reprinted a visionary address by North Carolina-based organizer Mab Segrest calling for an intersectional Southern gay and lesbian liberation movement. We're republishing it in honor of Pride Month.

June 17, 2021 - This Juneteenth, Black Voters Matter will launch a bus tour through Southern states marking the 60th anniversary of the original Freedom Rides that successfully challenged segregation. The tour will promote the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and drive home the importance of confronting voter suppression.