Voting within the Carceral System: A Conversation with Shaun Smith on the Future of Democracy

By Catherine Maddox|August 25, 2022|7 min

When Shaun Smith, founder of the Black Push organization, whose core mission is advocacy for society’s most vulnerable, with a focus on ex-offenders, talks about becoming a minister, he speaks at once of a vocation he loves and of an internal conflict born from a life…

Not Just Telling Stories: Forsyth Coalition for Education Promotes Student First Amendment Rights

By Catherine Maddox|August 24, 2022|7 min

Before her current role as organizer and board member of Forsyth Coalition for Education, an organization that has successfully reversed a book ban despite having existed for less than a year, the biggest book controversy Pat Wall contended with in Forsyth County…

The Right’s Silent Coup: GOP tactics to maintain control of a diversifying country, one county at a time

By Catherine Maddox|July 15, 2022|7 min

Although the events of January 6th, 2021, were eventually subdued- after blood was shed and much of the country was horrified – Republican state legislators nationwide persisted in a concerted effort to subvert the will of voters in their own backyards. Georgia, the…

Unprecedented: Reproductive Justice Activist and Lawyer Megan Gordon-Kane, on the Dobbs Decision

By Catherine Maddox|July 7, 2022|9 min

In the years leading up to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Megan Gordon-Kane says that she and other reproductive justice activists felt like Kassandra, the mythological priestess gifted with predicting the future, while at the same time cursed, never to be believed….

Who’s Regulating Who?: Facing climate disaster, Georgia activists and constituents urge, plead, and demand for the Public Service Commission to do their job

By Catherine Maddox|June 24, 2022|6 min

Amidst a U.S. national crisis in which the highest court in the land is restricting the regulation of carbon emissions at the federal level, the public interest advocacy staff of Georgia’s own regulatory body, The Public Service Commission, has declined Georgia…

Able Mable Thomas, Founding Mother of the Reproductive Justice movement, tells her story

By Catherine Maddox|June 16, 2022|9 min

The first time Representative Mable “Able” Thomas boarded an airplane, she was 25 years old and heading from Atlanta to the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. She would represent Jesse Jackson as a presidential delegate. As the five-star hotel rooms…

One Thousand Georgians Rally for Abortion Rights in Downtown Atlanta

By Catherine Maddox|May 4, 2022|5 min

“I’m here today to tell you that it is okay to be angry,” one of the speakers, who declined to provide their name, told the crowd, who gathered in Atlanta Tuesday night to protest a draft Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the day after its unprecedented…

Georgia lawmakers continue to defund schools in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic

By Catherine Maddox|April 29, 2022|6 min

The significant presence of children from private Christian schools at the signing of Kemp’s education bills Thursday, was notable for two reasons, according to progressive activists who showed up to sign the wave: firstly, because these religious institutions showed…

Universal Free Lunch Comes to a Screeching Halt

By Ariana Daniels|April 18, 2022|5 min

June 30th, 2022 is the last day that students across Georgia and the United States will receive free lunch. Free lunch waivers were distributed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and it was a big help to families struggling during the pandemic. These…

A Closer Look at “Divisive Concepts”: – A Term Coined by the Georgia GOP

By Catherine Maddox|April 14, 2022|9 min

Q&A with Senator Elena Parent on HB 1084 Interview took place on April 11, 2022 Around midnight on Sine Die, and just a few blocks away from where the Walking Dead zombies once dragged themselves around Georgia State University campus, a zombie bill was in the…