Working Class Love Notes #13: Solidarity From Appalachia to D.C.
Plus some ways to take action and lots of things capturing my heart
“Nothing is more important than stopping fascism because fascism will stop us all.” — Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and co-founder of the Chicago Rainbow Coalition
“Kill all the rednecks you can.” — Don Chafin, Sheriff of Logan County WV during the Battle of Blair Mountain
Dear friends,
It’s the end of summer, and thankfully in Kentucky, the temperature has cooled down to a perfect week in the 70s. I’m harvesting tomatoes and some herbs from my first real garden, a very modest harvest, which feels amazing. I made my first caprese salad with my own tomatoes and basil which was the only goal I set for myself upon starting my garden, and it was delicious. Also, turns out, I’m better at gardening than I ever gave myself credit for. I guess the Appalachian green thumb my family has didn’t skip me after all. I’m new, and learning, making mistakes, trying again, but overall feel at home with my plants in a way that has surprised me. I love thumbing through the The Old Farmer’s Almanac like my Dad did. Being in the dirt makes me feel connected to my ancestors in a new way, my family, but also all of those from my place I never knew, but who grew their gardens for survival, to share food with their community, or even flowers to have a little more beauty in their lives.
I’m also thinking of my ancestors as I’m watching the news about D.C. and other cities with Black mayors being targeted by the Trump administration. Trump sent in the National Guard to patrol Washington D.C.’s streets in the name of “controlling crime”, ordering additional troops to join the already deployed, so over 1,500 federal cops to occupy D.C.’s streets. It’s a similar playbook to what the Trump administration did in LA, but this time with federalized troops. And now, Trump has named Chicago as the next city.
As I said in a SURJ video last week, it feels like the mainstream media has moved on to other headlines, but we all have to stay focused. These attacks are ongoing and incredibly dangerous. D.C. is a diverse city with a majority Black population and a rich Black history, so it’s no mistake that Trump is targeting it. This racist rhetoric and fear mongering is one of the main tools in the authoritarian playbook. We’ve seen it time and time again across the world, we’ve seen it in parts of the South, but now it’s here at all of our doors coming from the executive branch of the federal government.
My organizing work over the past five years has been focused on organizing my own people, working-class white Appalachians and rural Southerners, to see our shared interest in being part of a multiracial movement for justice. There’s a lot of white people in America who need to be organized, especially as MAGA targets our communities and uses our economic suffering to try and recruit us to their side by telling us to blame Black people, immigrants, and even trans kids for our pain, but it’s so clear to me, and clear to so many of us in our region, that out of all the white people in the country, we have such a clear shared stake in fighting back against authoritarianism because of the way our communities have been oppressed, exploited, and terrorized, and, yes, even occupied by the national guard.
When I see the footage of militarized police forces, masked ICE officers, and now the national guard, deployed to terrorize people in LA, DC, and other cities with Black mayors, all I can think of are the West Virginia Mine Wars. I can almost hear our ancestors urging us to get out in the streets, on the phones, and anywhere else we can be in solidarity with those fighting back.
When I visited the WV Mine Wars Museum a few years ago, a few quotes from the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the country’s largest 10,000 strong multiracial labor uprising, jumped out at me and have stayed with me ever since. These two quotes specifically stuck out to me because of the ways the coal barons and police characterized the miners, the “Redneck Army” who were named after the red bandannas they wore around their necks, to justify the violence they unleashed upon the “rednecks”to break their solidarity.
“Kill all the Rednecks you can.” — Don Chafin, Logan County Sheriff during the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921
“At any turn, you were liable to run into a colored man with a high powered rifle. I had no idea what terrorism could be until that anarchy came there without anybody to check it… It is impossible to describe the terrorism that prevailed.” — Jackson Arnold, Coal Operator in West Virginia during the Battle of Blair Mountain
Just as we see racism used today to try and frame Black people, Black cities, and Black organizers as violent terrorists, along with other groups like Palestinians and immigrants, it’s the same playbook those in power used to do the same in Appalachia in 1921. As we can see in these quotes, coal barons tried to use racism to divide white workers and white people away from Black and immigrant workers, but also to use racism to justify their violent actions as the state’s attempt to “control crime.” The “Rednecks” were a multiracial group of coal miners, and largely white workers who picked up arms, yet we see in the quote from coal operator Jackson Arnold above how he chose to point out the Black miners specifically to invoke racism and fear in white people to justify the hell they were unleashing on the organized workers.
However, given that the Redneck Army was multiracial with a strong contingency of white workers who chose the side of multiracial solidarity, that meant that when the bosses’ racist divide and conquer tactics failed to break the union, the Sheriff then gave the order to target them all, Black, white, and immigrant: “Kill all the rednecks you can.”
While DC, Chicago, LA, or rural Appalachia have our own specificities and differences, largely our struggle is the same. Those of us here in Appalachia have a shared stake in siding with our friends in cities to fight fascism because of our own history and because we know that this administration is set on killing us, too. Whether it’s by kicking millions of people off food benefits and medicaid, closing rural hospitals, or if they decide to send the national guard in on us when we fight back, we’re in this together. For us working-class rural white people, let’s put on our red bandannas because this fight is ours, too.
This Labor Day, as we celebrate working-class people and unions, let us here in Appalachia and the South find common cause with our working-class siblings across the country, in cities that are under attack, and fight back with them in whatever way we can from wherever we are. Solidarity with Free D.C. who is fighting back and all the folks in Chicago organizing to say a big hell no. As Chicago organizer, co-founder of the Rainbow Coalition, and Chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party Fred Hampton said: “Nothing is more important than stopping fascism because fascism will stop us all.”
Take Action:
Monday: Join a local Labor Day action to show solidarity as Workers Over Billionaires! Check out the May Day Strong coalition’s map to find an event near you.
Join the SURJ webinar Rising Fascism, Rising Resistance with Rep. Jamaal Bowman on Wednesday Sept. 3rd at 7 p.m. EST to make the connections between what’s happening in D.C. to the importance of getting Zohran Mamdani elected in NYC, and others like him, to push for an alternative to the failings of the mainstream Democratic Party
Check out this worksheet on Mapping Community Defense and Care from writer and organizer Kelly Hayes that was developed as organizers in Chicago are preparing for Trump’s military occupation. I highly recommend Kelly’s newsletter Organizing My Thoughts. It’s excellent.
Socialism 2025
Loved being at my publisher Haymarket Books’s Socialism 2025 Conference in Chicago this past July 4th Weekend. I got to feel like a real writer amongst writers AND I got to join up with my friends and Rural Defenders Union co-founders Rae Garringer of Country Queers, Shawn Sebastian with RuralOrganizing, and Stephen Smith with West Virginia Can’t Wait for our panel “The Same Ol’ Tools Don’t Work Here: The Role of Rural Organizing in Defeating Authoritarianism”. Our panel was based on our article in Convergence magazine “From Rural America With Love: An Invitation to Bravery”. We had nearly 70 folks in our panel and had as many sign up to keep in touch with us!
Also, y’all, more on my memoir is coming soon! Keep your eyes, ears, and hearts open.
Y’all! My mentor Jerome Scott’s new book is here right in time for Labor Day! Get your hands on Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries: The Story of The League of Revolutionary Black Workers from University of Georgia Press. There are discounts for booksellers and organizations, plus ask your local library to order it!
Read my beloved and brilliant bestie writer friend, fellow Scrappalachia Write Club member, Lora Eli Smith’s poignant, skillful, supernatural, and thoughtful essay “Gobsmacked! Supernatural Sightings After a Flood” published in the Fall 2025 issue of Oxford American. This essay blew me away and it’s exactly the kind of writing I want to read right now.
I just read Trouble! At Coal Creek, a graphic novel by Austin Sauerbrei from Haymarket Books and I loved it. The illustrations are beautiful and the story is captivating. I’m so grateful Austin captured this powerful working-class history that we all need to hold so close right now. Well-done!
Loved seeing my friend and director of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum Kenzie New Walker giving Bernie Sanders a tour of the museum during his “Fighting Oligarchy” West Virginia tour stop. Y’all, support The WV Mine Wars Museum because they are doing such powerful work. Also, LOVED seeing all my West Virginia socialist friends out there organizing during that tour. Let’s go y’all!
My writing group The Scrappalachia Write Club is full of brilliant writers, and you can follow a few here on Substack. Be sure to subscribe to
’s “Pleasant Living” and ’s “Home in the World”My tarot teacher
is starting a new tarot circle in December. I really really recommend Shea’s tarot circle and classes whether you’re new or a seasoned taroist. I met some of my besties in my tarot circle and I’m still slinging cards with them weekly. It changed my life in the best way! Sliding scale and donation based pricing options are available.For my fellow knitters, I’m OBSESSED with Savannah Rose Handmade’s spooky hand-dyed yarn collections. I have multiple skeins from the David Lynch Collection and some inspired by Nightmare Before Christmas and Midsommar.
And, even though it’s wrapping up today, I want to acknowledge the powerful organizing that has gone into Katrina20, a week of action across the Gulf South during the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Until next time, friends! Solidarity forever! Let’s get into action. See you out there! Love, Beth
Solidarity forever and hallelujah for caprese salads from the home garden! Love this reminder that working class people have a long history of multiracial resistance in rural places and big cities. <3
Thank you for all your posts! Great!