Author: Chris Brooks

Chris Brooks, a native of Chattanooga, Tenn., is a former organizer for the Tennessee Education Association and currently a staff writer-organizer for Labor Notes in New York City.

Class War by Other Means

Tennessee, Volkswagen, and the Future of Labor

By: Chris BrooksSeptember 12, 2016

In 2008, the governments of the city of Chattanooga, Hamilton County, the state of Tennessee, and the United States all collaborated to provide Volkswagen (VW) with a $577 million subsidy package, the largest taxpayer handout ever given to a foreign-headquartered automaker in U.S. history. The bulk of the subsidy package, $554 million, came from local and state sources. The federal government also threw in $23 million in subsidies, bringing the grand total of taxpayer money that VW received in 2008 to $577 million.

Please Donate or Subscribe to New Politics!

The New Politics Summer 2026 issue will soon be in the hands of subscribers, featuring articles on Democracy versus Degeneration in the United States (with contributions by Dan La Botz, Ellen Schrecker on McCarthyism Then and Now interviewed by Elizabeth Rapaport, Ben Silverman on the fascism debate, Samuel Farber on free speech, Samuel Barney on rural prisons, and Raoul Cansino and Bill Kelly on nativism), Imperialism Around the World (with articles by Lisbeth Moya González on Cuba, Husam Mahjoub on Sudan, Siyavash Shahabi and imperialism and the working class, and Matt Benson on the Mapuche in Chile), interviews on labor struggles and Russian political prisoners, a history of the International Socialists, review essays by Frieda Afary on AI, Javier Sethness on Western Marxism, and Peter Drucker on Molly Crabapple, as well as reviews on Ukraine, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, white rage, South Asia, and Afghanistan, plus a letter on women under the Taliban.

You can help us by making your tax-deductible donation here. Or by subscribing (see options here). Or by doing both. If you’ve already done so, you can close this annoying box with the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve helped us to persist in defending and exploring “socialism from below.”