Olivia Paschal

Staff Reporter

Olivia joined the Facing South in August 2019 as a staff reporter. Her work focuses on democracy, money in politics, the census, and agriculture. She previously worked at The Atlantic and was a Facing South intern in the summer of 2017. Her reporting has also appeared in Scalawag, Southerly, and Civil Eats, among other outlets. Olivia holds a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University.

Email Olivia

Articles by Olivia

Walmart employees organize for gun safety at work

By Olivia Paschal

August 13, 2019 - The recent massacre at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, is just one of many incidents of gun violence that have taken place at the company's stores, which sell guns and allow customers to carry them inside. Concerned for their own and their customers' safety, Walmart workers want the company to change its firearm policies.

The latest challenges to the South's felony disenfranchisement laws

By Olivia Paschal

July 14, 2017 - A ballot initiative campaign in Florida and a lawsuit against Louisiana seek to restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies after they're released from prison. The efforts are parts of a broader movement to overturn felony disenfranchisement laws rooted in white-supremacist politics.

Lessons from South Carolina's overlooked special election

By Olivia Paschal

June 27, 2017 - While much of the country was focused on last week's special election in Georgia's 6th Congressional District, Democrat Archie Parnell pulled off a 17-point leftward swing in South Carolina’s strongly GOP 5th. His near-victory offers insight for the 2018 midterms and raises questions about the kind of candidate who can win in the South.

The rural South defies demographic and political stereotypes

By Olivia Paschal

June 16, 2017 - Rural areas draw the ire of Trump opponents on the left and right who charge that residents voted against their own interests. But in the South, which has the country's biggest rural Black population and growing numbers of rural Hispanics, many of the rural communities most threatened by Trump's policies did not vote for him.

Trump budget would devastate vulnerable Southern communities

By Olivia Paschal

May 26, 2017 - The Trump administration's budget proposal would cut billions of dollars in funding for programs that provide essential services to vulnerable rural and immigrant communities across the South — with no plan for how to replace them.