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Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

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Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

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Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

How working-class white Southerners can help defeat MAGA

Rural whites can be fierce fighters for economic and racial justice — if they are welcomed by progressives

Published April 19, 2026 6:30AM (EDT)

This essay is adapted from the author's book "Song for a Hard-Hit People: A Memoir of Antiracist Solidarity from a Coal Miner's Daughter," published by Haymarket Books.

There’s a big misconception that poor white people are Donald Trump’s base. There’s so many images of “hillbillies,” “rednecks,” “white trash” and “trailer trash” used in the media to portray racism in this country, to make the case that poor white people in the South hold all of the racism in the entire nation. Many liberals like to say we are too ignorant and stupid to vote for candidates and issues that relieve our suffering. But during our work in rural North Georgia in the 2020 elections, we saw gains for the Democratic ticket in the poor white communities where Showing Up for Racial Justice, the antiracist organization I work for, called and knocked for the general and runoff elections, because we talked to them. We engaged people who are often ignored, abandoned and scapegoated around issues that matter to them, and they cast a vote against MAGA and for all working-class people.

We had doors slammed in our faces, people who were tired of election talk, but we also had conversations with people who were proudly already with us and were excited we had knocked on their doors. All of these conversations, along with our partners’ work across the state, added up to Joe Biden making gains in Georgia in majority-white counties among whites without college degrees. Our collective work increased the voter turnout of the white Democratic voters who were the least likely to vote by 20%. By our calculations, In the runoff election for the Senate, which pitted Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock against Republican Kelly Loeffler, and Democrat Jon Ossoff against Republican David Perdue, rural voters and white voters with less education — a common but classist metric for the working class — turned out at higher rates for Democrats than they had in the presidential election. These were the people we called and the doors we knocked on. 

Beth Howard’s “Song for a Hard-Hit People: A Memoir of Antiracist Solidarity from a Coal Miner’s Daughter,” is published April 21, 2026

Roxanne lived in a double-wide trailer with her husband, plus her parents-in-law and brother-in-law. It was during the Covid-19 pandemic, so we sat distanced on her porch to talk. I wore a mask, but she didn’t. Some people might judge Roxanne’s home as messy or unkempt. Her porch was low hanging and served as an open-air storage building. There was an older car in the driveway that was “in need of some work.” Both the car repairs and storage shed were expensive, and they needed a miraculous financial windfall to afford it. But I saw someone who put love into her home, no matter how modest. 

When I asked Roxanne how she felt about Georgia going blue, she said she was confused, and she wasn’t sure how to feel. The people on her social media feed,........

© Salon