Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment

Extraordinary change is rooted in the power of ordinary people.

Founded in 1972 as Save Our Cumberland Mountains — coalfield families standing up to strip-mine abuses in East Tennessee — SOCM has spent five decades proving that everyday Tennesseans can take on power and win. Today, as Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment, this member-driven organization trains, mentors, and organizes communities across the state to identify the issues they feel most deeply, understand who holds the power, and build campaigns to win change together. Its flagship fight right now: Public School Strong TN, defending honest, equitable, fully-funded, safe public schools in 25+ counties.

What SOCM Does

Public School Strong TN

The statewide campaign for honest, equitable, fully-funded, safe public schools — organizing parents, educators, and neighbors in 25+ urban, rural, and suburban counties to stop voucher expansion and demand corporations pay their fair share for our kids' schools.

School Board 101

The on-ramp: orientation calls that teach you how to navigate school board meetings, log notes, and bring friends — then show up together, in Public School Strong shirts, and put your board on the record.

Chapters & Member Organizing

Local SOCM chapters across Tennessee where members learn to build lasting groups, develop leaders, and run winning campaigns — structure, relationships, and leadership development for the long haul.

The SOCM Sentinel

SOCM's quarterly newsletter — stories and updates on the campaigns members are waging and winning across the state.

Five Decades of Ordinary People Winning Extraordinary Change

SOCM was born in the coalfields — miners' families and rural communities organizing against the companies tearing up their mountains. That's labor's story too. Fifty years later the fight has moved from the strip mines to the school board, but the method is the same: train everyday people, build durable local groups, and take on the power holders together. In 2026, with $155 million in new voucher expansion on the table in Nashville, SOCM's Public School Strong campaign is the neighborhood-level defense line for Tennessee's public schools — the schools union members' kids attend and union educators staff.

A Community Partner of Labor Education

Public schools are a labor issue — our members' children learn in them, and our union siblings in TEA teach in them. SOCM's Public School Strong sign-up sheet even asks whether you're a union member and connects workers who want to organize their own workplace. Labor Education is proud to feature SOCM as a community partner and urges every member: take the School Board 101 orientation, wear the shirt, and show up for your schools.

THE SOUTH GOT SOMETHING TO SAY

Educate. Organize. Mobilize. Take the pledge and stand with the Southern movement.

Connect with Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment

Want to get involved, partner, or learn more? Reach out through their website.