Time and time again, the South has shown the world that it is nothing to play with, and in North Carolina, history is still being made.

The state has become a stronghold for the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), a first-of-its-kind cross-sector union offering membership to fast food, retail, warehouse, care, and other service industry workers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. In a region of the country where historically racist right-to-work laws and preemption laws silence low-wage service workers and keep them unprotected and mired in poverty, it is no easy feat to organize a multiracial, multigenerational labor movement. Yet, the movement continues to gain steam, organizing strikes; sounding the alarm on wage theft committed by chains like Waffle House; supporting Garner, North Carolina, Amazon workers in their effort to organize the first unionized warehouse in the South; and broadly fighting for fair wages and safe workplaces. After an onslaught of racist, xenophobic, and downright deadly executive orders from the Trump administration, USSW’s summit felt like the most hopeful place in the country.

Inside Greensboro’s Meridian Convention Center, workers shared how they were gaining traction or otherwise winning fights against multinational corporations and billionaires. Despite harassment and intimidation from Amazon, a North Carolina employee voting in the union election later this month told summit attendees that the corporation “didn’t have a chance” against his union because it was organized by “a preacher who fights demons and a 70-year-old woman who fought cancer.”