A story of struggle and perseverance from an Eastern Kentucky woman who answered Florence Reese's timeless question, "Which side are you on?" by organizing her people with love and class solidarity.
Activist and organizer Beth Howard invites readers to trace her transformational story of growing up in rural Appalachia facing economic hardship, patriarchal violence, and the impact of extractive industries to become a leading organizer of working-class antiracism, engaging in the street protests of the Black Lives Matter movement and the larger resistance to Donald Trump and MAGA racists.
In this deeply personal story Howard tells us about how her place and people, especially her dad, shaped her. She also details a political and systems analysis that shows how billionaires hold power by using racism to convince working-class white people to side with whiteness instead of their class. Howard makes the case that white Appalachians and rural white working-class people have a shared interest in, and a powerful history of, being in class solidarity with Black and Brown people. Howard delves into the rich traditions of organization and resistance in Appalachia, like the ten thousand interracial miners of the so-called Red Neck Army (known by the red bandanas worn around their necks), who in 1921 refused to be segregated and waged the largest working-class insurrection since the Civil War.
Howard's story is particular but not uncommon. Too many of us face the same struggle for the basic necessities of life: somewhere decent to live, good food to eat, health care that doesn't break the bank, jobs that don't kill us. As she reminds us, we havent got a chanceunless we organize. In the best of storytelling traditions, her prose is at once heart-breaking and inspiring, insightful and provocative, and filled to the brim with courageous humanity.
ToC:
Introduction
Section One: Who Are Your People?
Chapter 1: My People
Chapter 2: My Father
Chapter 3: My Mother
Chapter 4: My Place
Section Two: If You Could Change Something, What Would It Be?
Chapter 5: Lifting Our Heads Higher
Chapter 6: Listening to Each Other
Chapter 7: Not Good Enough
Chapter 8: Success and Cancer
Chapter 9: Fire and Rain
Section Three: What Is Holding You Back from Taking Action?
Chapter 10: It Could Always Be Worse
Chapter 11: Something Had to Change
Chapter 12: A New Way of Living
Chapter 13: Reckonings
Section Four: Will You Join Me?
Chapter 14:
Chapter 15:
Beth Howard is the Appalachia Peoples Union Director for Showing Up for Racial Justice, the largest national organization bringing white people into the fight for racial and economic justice. Originally from Eastern Kentucky, she has organized throughout the South for two decades. She currently lives in Lexington, KY.
