Trump’s 10% import tariff increase presents an opportunity to turn towards white working people who will be seriously impacted by soaring consumer prices. We can name our opponents at the top, their racist scapegoating tactics, and set a vision of what is possible if we stand together in multiracial solidarity.
This, however, is not the kind of work that happens in a single Tweet or even a single conversation. It’s long haul work that requires deep investment in communities and people. And it’s the work SURJ’s Southern organizing programs are doing every day.
Our network of local grassroots projects in small towns in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia bring in renters in majority-white areas– the exact audiences targeted by far right propaganda. As we mobilize our tens of thousands of SURJ members in our national work, we’re also fighting back in places at the core of the far right’s strategy.
Thank you for taking action with us this year. Can you give a gift today to keep up the heat in our Southern work?
In Tennessee with our Tennessee Renters United project, we’re bringing working people from majority-white areas into a statewide, multiracial coalition fighting for housing rights. As representatives in Tennessee support Trump’s vision of gutting aid for low-income renters and drive a deadly campaign against trans kids, the skyrocketing cost of living in Tennessee has gone unaddressed.
Earlier this year, our members helped organize the 3rd Annual Housing and Homelessness Day on the Hill where we presented lawmakers with policy proposals to show up for renters in the state. Following this, members– most of whom are brand new to this work– were inspired to take the experience back to their local communities, so they organized a series of public solidarity vigils with low-income and homeless neighbors to bring in new people to the work.
In Kentucky, one of our members of the Kentucky People’s Union came within 140 votes of winning a seat on the city council! And at the Madison County Tenants Union outside of Lexington, we opened a union hall in partnership with an organization that provides critical services to the unhoused community.
Both of our Kentucky projects are bringing members into a statewide campaign in partnership with other organizations to pass a bill to expunge dismissed evictions from renters’ records and to expand KY’s community land trust infrastructure.
That’s just a snapshot of the powerful work our Southern organizers are moving to bring working people in majority-white areas into our work. These states have been heavily invested in by the far right billionaire agenda as strongholds and testing grounds for their strategies. Which means we all have much to learn from them in our strategies of resistance– and building a base there is critical to undermining authoritarian power.
Can you help us grow this work by giving a gift today?
In solidarity,
SURJ
Showing Up for Racial Justice
PO Box 1376
Buffalo, NY 14205
United States