Politics
March 24, 2022 -
Despite the urgency of the climate crisis, electric utilities across the South — including Duke Energy, Florida Power & Light, and Dominion Energy — are working in concert with fossil fuel interests to promote policies that discourage consumers from installing rooftop solar systems. Will regulators let them get away with it?
March 23, 2022 -
Arkansas and Florida are the only Southern states that still allow citizens to place questions on the ballot, but Republican lawmakers there want to erect new barriers to this form of direct democracy.
March 18, 2022 -
More than a century after the first anti-lynching legislation was introduced in Congress by a Black member from North Carolina, lawmakers finally passed a bill that makes lynching a federal crime. Advocates hope that the new law will address the generational damage caused by racial violence and prevent modern-day lynchings from going unpunished.
March 16, 2022 -
Satana Deberry was elected as the district attorney for Durham County, North Carolina, in 2018 after running on a progressive platform. She recently testified before a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee to defend the movement to reform law enforcement, explaining how over-reliance on prosecution and incarceration makes communities less safe.
March 11, 2022 -
Thousands of people gathered recently in Alabama for the 57th anniversary of the historic Selma to Montgomery March for voting rights, which was met with police violence as peaceful demonstrators tried to cross a bridge named for a Klan leader. This year's event took place as state legislatures across the South are passing bills to limit voting and protesting.
March 11, 2022 -
A new report from the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center finds that the number of U.S. hate groups fell for the third year in a row — but says that's not necessarily good news, as such views are now moving from the fringe into the mainstream. It also found that hate groups are becoming more concentrated in the Southern states.
March 9, 2022 -
Organizers are frustrated by Biden giving short shrift to voting rights in his first State of the Union address. In response, they're stepping up efforts to secure federal voting protections as state legislatures across the South continue to pass suppressive voting laws.