Demographics

June 8, 2018 - Muslims and immigrants are among the most vulnerable groups, not just in the U.S., but globally. As a human rights activist and attorney, Azadeh Shashahani has worked for over a decade to combat attacks against these communities and to organize them to build power. 

June 7, 2018 - Two Southern communities that once embraced a federal program that lets local police enforce federal immigration law signaled their rejection of it in recent sheriff elections. To see which communities have been involved in the program, we mapped state and local participants nationwide and over time.

May 25, 2018 - Because 90 percent of those who fall in the Medicaid coverage gap reside in the South, thousands of Southerners have already died because of a lack of health care access. Now Southern states are beginning to adopt Medicaid work requirements that will strip many of their health care coverage. 

May 22, 2018 - Speaking at a protest in North Carolina this week as part of the new Poor People's Campaign, Zainab Baloch juxtaposed her Islamic faith tradition's teachings about empathy with the violence and poverty experienced by her fellow Muslim Americans and North Carolinians.

April 27, 2018 - Armed with a new study documenting the deadly poverty that plagues the U.S., coalitions in at least 40 states — including every state in the South — are preparing for 40 days of direct action to demand an end to public policies that hurt the most vulnerable. 

April 12, 2018 - As Facebook's privacy abuses elicit scrutiny from policymakers, Alice Aguilar of the Progressive Technology Project discusses how a different approach to high tech can help communities of color organize and build power.

March 30, 2018 - In Tennessee, a gun permit is an acceptable form of voter ID but a student ID is not. Students at the state's historically black schools are organizing to change that.   

March 29, 2018 - For years, Southern state legislators have tried to defend racial gerrymandering by claiming that it's required by the Voting Rights Act. Now the Trump administration is pointing to the same law to justify a new census question about citizenship.

March 15, 2018 - For centuries, Black women battled racism and misogyny as they fought for access to the ballot. Having made enormous political strides in recent decades, they are poised to smash through a key barrier this year — and to do so in a Southern state.

February 2, 2018 - A Haitian American who grew up in Miami's Little Haiti, Francesca Menes serves on the Black Immigration Network's steering committee, working to ensure the voices of U.S. immigrants from throughout the African diaspora are heard by policy makers. She discusses how to seize this unusual political moment to build real power.