In early 2016, Chris Brooks, a young agitator for the working class, beloved by some and despised by others, left his hometown for the Big Apple.
By then, his grassroots efforts, noted by academics, had helped awaken bold dissent among Chattanooga’s most vulnerable, and his writing about the United Auto Workers’ failed 2014 attempt to organize the Volkswagen plant had gained him the ire of union leaders, as well as the attention of labor organizers worldwide desperate for a strategy to topple the South’s low-wage economic model.
Still, he hadn’t accomplished all he’d wanted.
Brooks’ push to recall Chattanooga’s mayor had turned into a legal dead end, and VW workers didn’t have a union, yet.