Politics

December 1, 2017 - Amid intensifying wealth inequality and extreme poverty, Bishop William Barber of North Carolina's Moral Movement and other clergy and organizers will kick off a nationwide effort on Dec. 4 to carry on the work of the first Poor People's Campaign, launched on the same date 50 years earlier by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

November 22, 2017 - A lawsuit that led to judicial elections in Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish being declared racially discriminatory will move to the remedial stage despite efforts by the governor and attorney general — with help from a controversial law firm — to block a fix.

November 21, 2017 - Striking farmworkers in Kentucky recently won a settlement over wage-theft claims, and now a farmworkers' union is suing North Carolina over a new law that curbs the group's organizing power.

November 17, 2017 - This month's elections in Georgia and Virginia showed that Democrats can make inroads in Southern state legislatures, but gerrymandering still tilts the field in favor of Republicans.

November 17, 2017 - Democrats, liberal-leaning independents and a growing number of progressives lead two-thirds of the South's 30 largest cities, but their agenda is under attack from the region's conservative legislatures through preemption and other efforts to limit local control.

November 10, 2017 - A year after Donald Trump was elected president in a campaign that appealed to bigotry, voters across the South rejected the politics of division and embraced trailblazing African-American, Asian-American, Latino and LGBT candidates.

November 9, 2017 - A poll conducted in Virginia on the eve of the Nov. 7 election found that losing Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie's reliance on anti-immigrant race-baiting did not work — and in fact turned off many of the state's voters, most of whom support welcoming immigration policies.