Our Incubating Organizations
Poder Popular (Nashville People Power Committee)
Poder Popular (Nashville People Power Committee) is an organization of immigrant workers across Tennessee who work in the construction and hospitality industries and are fighting for better conditions at the workplace, at home, and for workers to have a say in how and what gets built here in Tennessee. Poder Popular helped guide the formation of two tenant unions in South Nashville and LaVergne, Tennessee: Unidos Por Un Cambio and Unidos Por Nuestras Familias. Poder Popular also played an advisory role in the formation of Vecinos Unidos de Wheel Estate in Memphis, TN. Together, these tenant unions collectively represent hundreds of immigrant workers and families across the state.
Tennessee Drivers Union (TDU)
The Tennessee Drivers Union (TDU) is a union of Uber and Lyft rideshare drivers working and living in Middle TN. It currently has around 300 card-carrying members representing over a dozen nationalities, including South Sudan, Myanmar, Kurdistan, Yemen, Haiti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, the DRC, Guinea, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Cuba, Venezuela, the DR, Egypt, plus white and Black U.S.-born drivers (and the numbers grow each week). TDU’s members provide the labor for Uber and Lyft, the main transportation to downtown Nashville. This is the largest effort of this kind to happen in such an anti-worker southern state.
Southern Youth Solidarity Network (SYSN)
Southern Youth Solidarity Network (SYSN) is a youth-led organization aiming to develop youth leaders as long-term political workers. SYSN organizes primarily with working-class students and students tied to strategic institutions across Tennessee looking to engage in power-building campaigns to improve their immediate conditions, the conditions for workers at their institutions, and our region as a whole.
A Luta Sigue’s youth leaders founded SYSN (formerly the Tennessee Student Solidarity Network) after they helped organize a protest at the TN Capitol in response to the tragic Nashville Covenant School shooting, which led to the expulsion of the “Tennessee 3”. These events led to a mass mobilization of young people. In early 2024, they helped organize support for the Free Alabama Movement’s statewide prison shutdown for 16 weeks. SYSN members are also instrumental in supporting other incubation programs like TDU and Cedar Glen.
ALS’s youth leaders founded SYSN to channel this energy toward long-term efforts prioritizing rigorous base-building, strategic campaigns, and leadership development.
SYSN fosters the creation and development of student unions and youth committees, providing them with guidance and capacity support while acting as a central body for groups to build connections, struggle for alignment, share lessons, and coordinate consolidated efforts around citywide or statewide priorities.
