As Goes the Global South, So Goes the World

“As goes the South, so goes the nation,” WEB Dubois said, and this statement is absolutely true. 

In addition to growing up in Korea, I also came out and became more politicized as a young queer Korean immigrant in the Southeast US organizing with Black trans queer and movement organizers. 

A lot of the country always talks about the South as backward, but it is in fact the South that foretells the direction and sentiment of the country. 

Some of the most radical, profound, and lasting organizing has come from the south. Not only during the civil rights era but also look to the organizing during the Movement for Black Lives. Look to the organizing against some of the most conservative right politicians today, and those movements continue. 

All of the organizing movements you respect have their roots in the South. For example, many of the movements you are familiar with in NY, Chicago, LA, or the Bay Area, have organizers that got their roots and training in the South. 

The same can be said of organizing movements globally that have the first waves from the Global South. 

I would expand it to say: As goes the Global South, so goes the world.

From the capitalist colonial human-induced climate catastrophes that we are witnessing in the southeast US, Hawai’i, to the continued settler colonialism happening to Palestinian people, the exploitation of the DRC, the long-standing crisis in Sudan to create one of the largest displacements in history, all of it connected. 

So in fact, it is not that what happens in the big cities of the north will inevitably happen everywhere else in the world. It is that the south informs the boundaries, alerts the world to the most urgent issues, and leads the rest of the way there. 

So when you witness the bombings, the hurricanes, the flooding, the starvation, the displacement, know that all of that is everywhere. Know all of it is making its way up. 

As I often say, there is here. 

Everyone is us now.