Gwen
@gwenfulton.bsky.social
Working class storytelling. Race, class, gender, & the South. 🥖🌹 Workingclassstories.substack.com
What do you do when the water in your town is too dirty to drink? You organize. open.substack.com/pub/workingc...
Bad Water/Good Organizing
How the residents of Three Rivers pressured their local government to fix the water and fix the pipes in town. *With updates from our story last year*
open.substack.com
NEW: I wrote for MSNBC about how Madison Square Garden turning off their facial recognition cameras for Taylor Swift is a perfect encapsulation of our dystopian present: where the wealthy can use surveillance to consolidate power, and the rest of us live in a privately owned panopticon.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got to buy MSG's privacy. Her fans aren't so lucky.
Reports that Madison Square Garden temporarily shut off its facial recognition system for Swift’s wedding expose a glaring problem with how the elite wield and control mass surveillance.
ms.now
These data center fights are fascinating because of their scale, but also because they’re successfully bringing out grassroots coalitions of local residents across race, class, and ideological lines. Latest: open.substack.com/pub/workingc...
We didn't ask for any of this.
Working-class people in small towns across America are fighting the construction of data centers. I traveled to Rural Hall, NC, to find out why so many people are showing up over this issue.
open.substack.com
Timely reminder: Authoritarians lie to be repeated - to force us to have their conversation instead of our own. If you're debunking the claims, you're giving them airtime.
"This move is another pathetic attempt to sow doubt in our elections."
'A Pathetic Power Grab': Trump Purges Bipartisan Election Assistance Commission
"This move undermines the integrity of nonpartisan election administration," said Arizona's secretary of state.
commondreams.org
“For all the pandering and blathering on about the 'working class,' there is a telling absence of policy that supports the women who, increasingly, are the rank and file backbones of our economy.” @gwenfulton.bsky.social workingclassstories.substack.com/p/women-are-...
Women are the working class.
Politicians who want our vote should be making policy that acknowledges this.
workingclassstories.substack.com
Americans are paying more for the basics of a Fourth of July cookout: beef, potato salad, strawberries, ice pops, foil and even disposable forks. Reports point to Trump’s tariffs, foreign wars and failure to confront corporate power.
Your 4th of July BBQ Is More Expensive Due to Trump's Policies, Reports Claim
“Thanks to Trump’s tariffs and foreign wars, Americans won’t find any independence from inflation this Fourth of July.”
inthesetimes.com
I don't know if "birth tourism" is or isnt a thing. But I do have an increasing number of friends who who have traveled out of the US to give birth, both because its less expensive to do this with often better care but also to get their children dual citizenship in countries that offer better help.
Want to See Why the GOP Medicaid Work Requirements Are a Disaster? Look to Arkansas | Why wiishful thinking and wildly unrealistic assumptions​ will not magically make a horrible policy a good one.
Want to See Why the GOP Medicaid Work Requirements Are a Disaster? Look to Arkansas
Wishful thinking and wildly unrealistic assumptions will not magically make a horrible policy a good one.
commondreams.org
It's through organizing that we have achieved all our wins. From unionizing textile plants to regulating hog waste to suffrage to Medicaid expansion to the current fights against data centers, organizing has always moved us ahead. Reflecting on the 250th for Beacon Media:
Gwen Frisbie-Fulton: This July 4th, a look back — and forward — at North Carolina’s collective power
North Carolina’s history is replete with examples of how community organizing made life better for so many of our communities. Does N.C.’s past hold the blueprint for a better collective future?
open.substack.com
Over the last year, I've been following the organizing of gamers... yes, gamers. A world I knew nothing about but keep getting impressed by. open.substack.com/pub/workingc...
Gamers band together to protect their digital neighborhoods from corporate profits
Gaming isn't antisocial- in fact, gamers are behind our most rapidly growing third space.
open.substack.com
Revisiting this project in Roswell, NM, where local residents figured out a brilliant solution to the low housing stock for low-income renters. Turns out, community really is the solution. open.substack.com/pub/workingc...
"We never would have come up with this solution if we hadn't been talking to our neighbors and walking through the neighborhoods.
The residents of a small desert city find a solution to the local housing shortage.
open.substack.com
Thomas House of Dublin exhibiting the pro-human solidarity that all of us should demonstrate.
I visited a group of folks in Indiana who had recently put on a Fix-it-Fair. Not only did their neighbors get broken items repaired, but the organizers of the event got to reach out to a bunch of new people to help them put it on. Community organizing at its best. open.substack.com/pub/workingc...
The Fixers of Lake Station
A Rust Belt community in northern Indiana figures out a way to fix what's broken.
open.substack.com
The Ohio Organizing Collective, which does political and voter engagement activities, was raided by the FBI yesterday. They built this website to explain what is happening: www.handsoffohio.org
HANDS OFF OHIO!
Federal agents raided offices connected to the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a leading Ohio voting rights organization. Learn what happened, why it matters, and how you can stand up for democracy and...
handsoffohio.org
A story for all the working class women out there. open.substack.com/pub/workingc...
Women are the working class.
Politicians who want our vote should be making policy that acknowledges this.
open.substack.com
Local election officials fully expect ICE to show up to intimidate liberal voters.
Election Officials Are Getting Ready for ICE to Show Up at the Polls
The Trump administration keeps threatening to send federal agents to oversee elections. State and local officials are preparing, and even gaming out what happens if they're arrested.
wired.com
In a year, The Dorothea Project has grown from 12 women meeting on a Zoom call to over 1000 taking action across 47 states. Even more impressively, they are women across generations, regions, and political ideology. open.substack.com/pub/workingc...
"What we have is a common language."
Women organizing with The Dorothea Project are finding connection through faith and across political divides.
open.substack.com
For my latest in The Nation, I talk about how when the rich rob the poor, it's just shrugged away as business as usual. www.thenation.com/article/econ...
Everything Is a Scam
Our economy allows poor and working people to be shafted every day—does anyone care?
thenation.com
I've always owned my houses and the men I've dated haven't. Can you imagine dating a dude who didn't think you owning a house was awesome?
John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 3mo ago"If she has her own house, what will she need me for?" I don't know, dude, maybe be cool and fun to be around and be happy for her success instead being whiny little sad-ass troll about it? www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
“No one gives a sh*t about housing.” “If [gas prices] rise, they rise.” "I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation." Millions are struggling with the cost of food, housing, and other basic necessities. 70% of U.S. adults say the American Dream is dead. And this is how Trump responds?
In Idaho, a group of moms is carving out time to help each other with chores, to free up time to "do politics" together, too. open.substack.com/pub/workingc...
Build Your Village
"Maybe we aren't as alone as we think we are," says Heidi Borland, who has set out to build a community of moms in her hometown.
open.substack.com
As West Virginia advocate and researcher Cathy Cunkel told me, the data center issue “isn’t about Left vs. Right, it’s about Up vs. Down.”
Virginia's Data Center Alley Reveals Big Tech's Vision for America
​Their behavior reveals an air of entitlement to turn any community they choose into another noisy, polluting data center hub, extracting massive resources and tax breaks in the process.
commondreams.org
“Women are a secret weapon against authoritarianism. They always have been.” @wagingnonviolence.org wagingnonviolence.org/aei/2026/04/...
Why authoritarianism fears women — and why it should
The fact that today’s movements against authoritarianism are heavily women and youth led is grounds for real hope.
wagingnonviolence.org
Every organizing meeting I go to, every protest, every public comment period; On the frontlines and behind the scenes, moms are showing up regardless of how busy they might be. Here it is published in the Nevadian: thenevadannews.com/local/the-bu...
The busiest people in the room are moms, and they’re changing the world -
Gwen Frisbie-Fulton heralds the moms who are packing lunches, paying bills, and powering the community movements that matter.
thenevadannews.com
“Most of the businesses offered to low-income and working-class neighborhoods—and increasingly small, rural towns—are predatory, scammy, and trap us in terrible cycles.” @gwenfulton.bsky.social workingclassstories.substack.com/p/everything...
Everything is a Scam
Our economy allows poor and working people to be shafted every day- does anyone care?
workingclassstories.substack.com
A message from Mary, a 72-year-old Amazon worker from North Carolina projected onto Jeff Bezos’s $120 million penthouse before tonight’s #MetGala, chaired by Bezos.
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." –Justice Louis Brandeis Words spoken many years ago that are just as relevant today. We must continue the fight to get big money out of politics.
My piece on using research to expose your opponent's weaknesses: “…power is more like a web than a monolith, & while your opponent may seem powerful, their power is not intrinsic, but rather derives from other people & institutions they cannot fully control.” wagingnonviolence.org/2026/04/powe...
Why power analysis is key to fighting ICE
Deep research is key to identifying ICE’s pillars of support and building the power necessary to topple them.
wagingnonviolence.org
