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RURAL PEOPLE AND THE WORKING CLASS. HERE’S HOW WE UNITE.  
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Beth Howard
November 18, 2024
Barn Raiser
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_ The director of the Appalachia People’s Union on why the South is
ready to stand up to Trump. White people delivered this victory to
Trump. Out of 76 million votes cast for Trump (2 million more than in
2020), 84% of those were white voters. _

Members of the Kentucky People’s Union, an organizing group
co-founded by Beth Howard, pose for a photo after a community meeting
in Ashland, Kentucky, in 2023. Participants wore red bandannas to
honor redneck miners who fought at the Battle for , Blair Mountain in
1921. (Photo: Beth Howard // Barn Raiser)

 

I grew up in a small rural white community on a tobacco farm in
Eastern Kentucky. My dad was a strip miner, my mom was a grocery store
clerk and a factory worker. I am a proud Appalachian. Being working
class has given me a sense of belonging, courage and joy, but it has
also meant a life of economic struggles for me and my family to keep a
roof over our heads, food on the table, to afford medications,
doctor’s visits and to even bury our loved ones.

I have been a grassroots community organizer in the South for nearly
20 years, a region with a long legacy of working-class movements. As
the director of the Appalachia People’s Union, a project of Showing
Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), the largest national group organizing
white people for racial and economic justice, I have committed to
doing what I can to organize my own people into multiracial movements
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The things my community needs—affordable housing, health care for
all, strong public education and nourishing food—depend on
working-class white Southerners choosing solidarity with people of
color. I’m moving my people away from white supremacy _because _I
am a rural, white, working-class woman from Appalachia, not in spite
of it.

One of the most important lessons in organizing is that no matter what
happens, we stick together. When those in power try to divide us, we
have each other’s backs and know who the real enemy is.
Divide-and-conquer tactics are what has led to MAGA’s success and
power. The far right’s ability to successfully tap into the pain and
suffering of working-class white people and divert their anger toward
immigrants, trans kids and people of color instead of billionaires and
crooked politicians who do the bidding of corporate interests and the
ultra-wealthy has once again put Trump in the White House. It has
handed MAGA both the U.S. House and the Senate, as well as many state
and local governments and judges.

Like those who voted for Trump out of a place of fear and pain, those
of us who voted, organized and campaigned to block him from the
presidency are hurting too. Now that he has won, we are still hurting
and also terrified. We are worried about the future of our
communities: our trans loved ones, our immigrant neighbors, students
in public schools and those already struggling to survive every day.

White people delivered this victory to Trump. Out of 76 million votes
cast for Trump (2 million more than in 2020), 84% of those were white
voters. To be clear, urban areas handed some of the largest margin
shifts toward Trump, yet he gained even greater margins in rural white
working-class counties than the last election.  

It’s tempting to blame white rural working-class Trump voters, to
see them as ignorant, hateful or “less than.” It’s tempting to
push them away, to signal to everyone else, “It wasn’t me. I’m
one of the good ones.” That’s human, and it can feel good to lash
out and to surround ourselves with those who think and act like we do.
But we should not fall into this trap.

Those of us who are fighting against MAGA must be crystal clear: the
people to blame are the ruling-class billionaires, the people at the
top. Not other working-class people.

If you are Southern, you know that Southern mothers and grandmothers
love to give you a list of rules for how to behave, whether it’s how
you act in the grocery store, at church or at school. Sometimes it’s
a clear list of things to do, but other times, when the task at hand
is less clear, you can count on a conversation many of us might label
“here’s what we’re not going to do.”

So, in honor of the age-old wisdom of working-class Southern
matriarchs, here’s what we’re not going to do.

We are not going to blame voters, people of color, Palestinians and
Arab Americans or white working-class people. We will not blame rural
people or Southerners. We will not under any circumstances blame each
other.

Instead, we should blame those at the top who are getting rich by
ensuring we all suffer. Let’s blame the richest person in the world,
Elon Musk, who gave over $130 million to Trump,
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whose wealth jumped by more than $70 billion
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Trump’s election, according to estimates from _Forbes_ magazine.
Or let’s blame the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, and the
biggest landlord in Los Angeles,
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both gave millions to Trump’s campaign. Or how about we blame the
billionaires who made their fortunes by taking advantage of the
economic crisis in 2008. These are people who have a vested interest
in ensuring working people do not stand together to win progressive
change.

Fascism is often talked about as something that happened in Nazi
Germany, something over in Europe that people are bringing here, but
that’s not accurate. The Nazis studied the Jim Crow South and used
it as inspiration.
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is American made. And because it is homegrown, SURJ has committed to
the South because we know that if we want to defeat the MAGA movement,
we have to defeat it where it’s strongest.

Through the Southern Strategy
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the far right has spent generations capturing state legislatures and
local governments, cutting funding from public schools, rural
hospitals and other programs for working people, suppressing voters,
and terrorizing queer people. As a region, the South is the poorest in
the country, and the rural poverty rates here are significantly higher
than urban poverty rates. But, unfortunately, the South is also the
region the liberal Democrats have all but abandoned.

Instead of blaming us, let’s look to the rural South for answers,
because of all the people in this country we are some of the most well
equipped to deal with fascism and its origins. From slavery to Jim
Crow, we have lived under and fought against fascist rule for
generations. We can and have always been leaders in this struggle.
Let’s look at our region as a key region to invest in, and know that
when we win the South, we can win the whole nation.

 
Group of striking Union miners in the Lick Creek district of West
Va., in 1922. (Library of Congress)
In this electoral cycle, 3,500 people took action with SURJ. We talked
to over 2.5 million voters, mainly in the South, specifically North
Carolina and Georgia. In the places we organized, white voters came
with us. But this work goes on year round and not just around
elections. We are out here in the rural South and Appalachia knocking
on doors, creating common cause, and organizing white people away from
Klan and other far-right forces into multiracial fights for housing,
health care and education. We are going to continue throwing down for
those who are under attack like immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and
the working class. 

I know that where we go and where we organize, we win and that gives
me enormous hope. In honor of the 10,000 strong multiracial
“redneck” coal miners in the Battle of Blair Mountain in West
Virginia, whose September 1921 labor uprising was the largest in this
nation’s history, you will see me and my folks in rural eastern
Kentucky wearing our red bandannas and contending for our people just
like our ancestors did, one conversation at a time. 

My friends, we cannot be divided. We must turn toward each other.
It’s the only way through.

_[BETH HOWARD is Appalachia Organizing Director of Showing Up for
Racial Justice (SURJ) and the author of Rednecks for Black Lives, a
forthcoming memoir from Haymarket Books. She lives in Lexington, KY,
but grew up in a rural white working class community in Eastern
Kentucky. Beth has been a lead organizer on winning campaigns to raise
the minimum wage and restore voting rights. She's also worked on
winning electoral campaigns engaging white working-class Southerners.
Beth is the creator of the viral narrative campaign Rednecks for
Black Lives
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You can find her on Substack at Working Class Love Notes
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at bethhowardky.com [[link removed]].]_

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* South
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* Appalachia
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* 2024 Elections
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* Donald Trump
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* MAGA
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* Working Class
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* Racism
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* Racial Justice
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* SURJ
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* Kentucky
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* North Carolina
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* Georgia
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* Klan
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* KKK
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* Ku Klux Klan
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* Southern Strategy
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* Rural South
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* Fascism
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* Showing Up for Racial Justice
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