Welcome to the Progressive South! We are a nonprofit media platform for progressive voices and values in the Southern U.S. We aim to provide news about goings-on in these states and amplify the important work of people and organizations across the region. You can find more information at the “About” tab, and check out our always-growing list of useful links at “Resources.” Our first project is our podcast:
A weekly program featuring a regional news roundup and interviews with people doing good work across the South. Plus, a little arts and culture. Available here as well as on Spotify, Apple and YouTube. Subscribe, like and share!
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Headlights Ep. 49: Who Are the Young Democrats?
The Democratic Party has an identity problem with voters nationwide, and especially in the South. But a rising wave of young party activists is seeking to bring new energy and ideas into some of the most conservative areas of the country — like Knox County, Tennessee, which has been sending Republicans to Congress since the…
More From Headlights
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Headlights Ep. 47: El Paso at the Crossroads
El Paso is a city at multiple borders — not only between countries, but cultures, languages, and histories. This week we talk to journalist Jazmine Ulloa, an El Paso native whose new book about her hometown dives into more a century of its history. Following the stories of five families, she traces the ways El…
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Headlights Ep. 46: The Air in Cancer Alley
Everyone knows the air around Louisiana’s Cancer Alley is bad. But how bad? And what’s actually in it? That’s what two scientists at Johns Hopkins University set out to understand. Their work so far has shown the air in the communities around massive petrochemical plants has as much as 10 times higher levels of toxins…
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Headlights Ep. 45: A Stand for Georgia Immigrants
As minority whip for the Georgia state Senate Democrats, Senator Kim Jackson helped lead the fight in this session for a package of bills aimed at reining in aggressive immigration enforcement in the state. Republicans have blocked them, but this week Jesse talks to Jackson about the proposals and the public outcry that led to…
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Headlights Ep. 44: Primaries and ICE Resistance
A raft of primaries and one special election in the South last week brought some fresh faces into the spotlight and offered tantalizing clues about this fall’s midterms. This week we take a look at the high-profile Democratic and Republican contests for U.S. Senate in Texas, as well as a slate of anti-establishment votes in…
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CoreCivic, Annotated
The private prison company’s leaders are bullish on Trump and ICE. Here’s what they left out of their quarterly earnings call.
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Headlights Ep. 43: The ICE Prison Profiteers
This week, we take a look at CoreCivic, the Tennessee-based company that is one of the two largest operators of private prisons in the United States. We listen in on the company’s most recent quarterly earnings call, full of rising revenue numbers and rosy projections — and we annotate it with context and background that…
About The Progressive South
The Progressive South is a nonprofit media platform for progressive voices and values in the Southern U.S. We want to help inform and connect people across the South doing good work and fighting good fights. We are based in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the headwaters of the Tennessee River.