North Carolina

Asheville Approves Reparations For Black Residents

July 16, 2020 Joel Burgess, Asheville Citizen Times. Create! North Carolina, Reparations, Slavery, Systemic Racism

Asheville, NC - In an extraordinary move, the City Council has apologized for the city's historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants. The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14. "Hundreds of years of black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today," said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body and the measure's chief proponent. "It is simply not enough to remove statues. Black people in this country are dealing with issues that are systemic in nature," Young said. The unanimously passed resolution does not mandate direct payments. Instead it will make investments in areas where Black residents face disparities.

Raleigh Black Lives Matter Protest Reaches 35th Day

July 6, 2020 By Richard Stradling and Sophie Kasakove, The News & Observer. Resist! Black Lives Matter (BLM), North Carolina, Police violence, Prisons

For the 35th consecutive day, Black Lives Matter protesters chanted, made speeches, waved signs and marched across downtown Raleigh on Saturday. They are protesting SB 168 which lawmakers passed nearly unanimously with no discussion in the wee hours of the morning on June 27, would shield death investigation records from the public when they are shared with the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Those records are now considered public under state law. “The fact that they’re trying to ... pass this over on us and act like it’s no big deal like they’re just gonna ignore us — that is why we’re so much more ready to fight anything that comes our way,” said Lauren Howell, 21, an organizer with the group N.C. Born. “Because we know it’s not right.”

Black Power Through Participatory Budgeting

June 5, 2020 Rossanna Mercedes, Medium. Create! Economic Democracy, New Economy, North Carolina, Participatory budgeting

I’ve spent the last two and half years learning and implementing participatory budgeting in New York City, first from within the New York City Council and now as a staff member of Participatory Budgeting Project. As members of Black Youth Project 100, I and my colleague Maria Hadden have presented on participatory budgeting as a policy for Black self-determination and liberation on various occasions and to varying audiences. Can you imagine my excitement when, on August 1st, The Movement for Black Lives released a robust policy agenda titled A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom and Justice — and included a bold solution for more community control through participatory budgeting? Contained in the policy agenda are some things we want to see get done.

North Carolina Court Strikes Down State Legislative Map As Unconstitutional Gerrymander

September 4, 2019 Joseph Ax, Reuters.com Resist! Courts, Electoral Politics, North Carolina, Reform

(Reuters) - A North Carolina court on Tuesday struck down the Republican-drawn state legislative map as an illegal partisan gerrymander and gave lawmakers two weeks to enact new district lines for next year’s elections. A three-judge panel in Wake County Superior Court said the state Senate and state House district lines discriminated against Democratic voters in violation of the state constitution’s free elections, equal protection and free speech clauses. The decision is a victory for election reform advocates considering legal challenges to partisan gerrymandering in state courts despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year blocking such cases in federal courts.

Report Back From An Anti-ICE Protest In NC

February 9, 2019 Anti-Capital, Itsgoingdown.org Resist! ICE, North Carolina, Protests

Over the last week, there has been a wave of ICE arrests across North Carolina. Perhaps the most notable is a workplace raid that took place at Bear Creek Arsenal, a firearms manufacturing plant, but arrests have also been made outside a high school in Durham, and several dozen reported in Charlotte. The pattern is relatively obvious, ICE is targeting the everyday activities of working-class people and terrorizing them and their families. Thanks, by the way, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for helping to reopen the federal government, the immigrant community really missed ICE, but hey, we all have to make compromises, right?

Paying It Forward: North Carolina J20 Ex-Defendants Pass On Anti-Repression Funds

January 21, 2019 Staff, Itsgoingdown.org Organize! North Carolina, Repression, Resist J20, Solidarity

Two years ago, roughly twenty anarchists, anti-fascists, and anti-capitalists from the North Carolina region were among the 200+ people arrested for disrupting the Presidential Inauguration spectacle, also known as J20). Some of us went to trial. Some of us stuck it out until the final dismissal. None of us accepted their bullshit pleas. Despite the prosecution’s divide and conquer tactics, we stuck together. And we beat them! Along the way we learned valuable lessons, gained stronger relationships, and, thanks to our amazing regional support network, a few thousand dollars in defense funds.

Samuel Oliver-Bruno Kidnapped By ICE: Sanctuary Is Disobedience

November 29, 2018 Anonymous, Itsgoingdown.org Resist! Deportations, ICE, Immigration, North Carolina

The biggest sale this year for Black Friday is deportation. As millions gathered around tables and screens, celebrating their families and purchases, we the folks of North Carolina are in mourning. On Friday morning, August 23rd, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) set a biometric trap for Samuel Oliver-Bruno. After eleven months of living in the basement of City Well Church in Durham, advocating for “prosecutorial discretion,” Samuel Oliver-Bruno unsettled sanctuary and left for an immigration appointment in nearby Morrisville. Held by clergy and spirited warriors, Samuel walked into the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office where he was besieged by officers. His son, Daniel, was swept into a mangle of arms and charged with assaulting an officer.

Read The Moving Letter The Descendant Of A Racist Confederate Leader Wrote In Support Of Anti-Racist Activists

October 16, 2018 By Kali Holloway, Independentmediainstitute.org Resist! Confederacy, confederate statue, North Carolina, Protests, Student Activism

Meg Yarnell, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Julian Carr, is calling for academic and criminal charges to be dropped against Maya Little and other anti-racist activists who have been arrested for protests related to the Confederate monument known as Silent Sam. In an open letter to University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill administrators, including Chancellor Carol Folt, Yarnell notes that she is “grateful for what Maya did to contextualize this statue and advance the cause for its removal.” In the weeks and months following the toppling of Silent Sam on August 20, Carr’s speech at the statue’s 1913 dedication ceremony has been widely recirculated.

Hurricane Florence Highlights The Cruel Reality Of Factory Farming

October 6, 2018 Kenny Torrella, Buzzflash.com Educate! Animals, Factory Farming, Hurricane Florence, Natural Disasters, North Carolina

Broiler chickens (chickens raised for meat) are the top agricultural commodity in North Carolina. In 2015, 823 million broiler chickens were raised in the state. (Photo credit: North Carolina Department of Agriculture). In 1999, Hurricane Floyd tore through North Carolina, killing 74 people and causing $6.5 billion in damage. But it didn't just destroy towns and claim human lives; it also claimed the lives of millions of farm animals. The images are impossible to forget: lifeless pigs floating in flood water, thousands of dead chickens inside a factory farm and a few live pigs huddling on top of a barn almost completely submerged under water.

In North Carolina, Co-Ops Are Building A More Democratic Economy

October 2, 2018 By Junior Walters, Facingsouth.org Create! Cooperatives, New Economy, North Carolina, Revisionism

Nestled at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains in western North Carolina, Morganton may seem like an unlikely place to find a large Mayan community. But since the 1980s, the Burke County city of almost 17,000 people, over 75 percent of them white and 12 percent black, is home to a growing Latino community, including Mayan immigrants from Guatemala. Like other immigrants before them, the Maya came to Morganton in search of economic opportunity. Many found work at the local Case Farms chicken processing plant but grew dissatisfied over low wages, poor working conditions, and unsuccessful labor organizing efforts. Searching for a better way to make a living, some have found it in cooperative economics.

How The Confederate Statue Came Down In Chapel Hill

August 22, 2018 Staff, Itsgoingdown.org Resist! confederate statue, North Carolina

Silent Sam has been a flashpoint for anti-racist struggle for at least fifty years. It was donated to the university and erected in 1913 during the Jim Crow era by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Capitalist, racist, and KKK-supporter Julian Carr, for whom the neighboring town of Carrboro is named, boasted during a speech at the statue’s dedication that he had, just yards away from the monument and under the gaze of Confederate soldiers, “horse-whipped a negro wench, until her skirts hung in shreds” because she had insulted a white woman. Protesters threw paint on the statue when Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in 1968; demonstrators gathered around it to remember two black men, James Cates, who was murdered on UNC’s campus by a white motorcycle gang, and William Murphy, who was murdered by a NC highway patrolman, in 1971.

Make It Right Project Billboards Boost Activist Campaigns To Remove ‘Silent Sam’ Confederate Monument

August 9, 2018 Staff, Independentmediainstitute.org Resist! Activists, Confederate memorial, North Carolina

Raleigh, N.C. — The Make It Right Project has put up two Raleigh-area billboards that support the removal of UNC-Chapel Hill Confederate monument known as “Silent Sam.” The signs, which include a photo of the statue covered by a red “X,” display the message “North Carolina needs a monumental change.” UNC students and Chapel Hill activists have been demonstrating against Silent Sam since 1968. The billboards are part of a larger campaign by the Make It Right Project to elevate and bolster protests by those who have put their lives and livelihoods on the line to remove Confederate monuments. “For five decades, UNC administrators have ignored students’ requests to remove an homage to an army that fought to defend black chattel slavery,” said Kali Holloway, Director of the Make It Right Project.

20,000 North Carolina Teachers Walk Out, Demanding More Resources And Better Pay

May 19, 2018 Ilana Novick, Truthdig.com Resist! Class Struggle, Education, North Carolina, Teachers

Twenty thousand teachers staged a school walkout in North Carolina on Wednesday, demanding better salaries and more money for education. Forty school districts canceled classes in what The New York Times reports is the first walkout for teachers in that state. North Carolina, as The Guardian reports, “stood 39th nationwide in terms of public school teacher pay in 2017 and teachers’ wages have fallen by 9.4% in real terms over the last decade. Over the same period, spending on public schools here has dropped by 8%.” Both the low pay and the lack of resources have taken a toll on teachers’ morale. “I have to work other jobs,” Kaitlyn Davis, 26, a fourth-grade teacher, told The Guardian. “And it’s not fair because it takes away from the energy that I have to put into teaching.”

North Carolina Teachers Just Closed Schools With A Massive Protest

May 17, 2018 Dave Jamieson, Huffingtonpost.com Resist! North Carolina, Protests, Teachers

Thousands of North Carolina teachers poured into downtown Raleigh and marched to the state’s General Assembly on Wednesday morning in the latest in a series of red-state public school teacher uprisings across the country. The demonstration was believed to be the largest teacher protest in North Carolina’s history, with educators creating a sea of red on Fayetteville Street and inside the assembly galleries as they demanded more public school funding and better salaries for school staffers. The largest school districts in the state announced closures once it became clear that not enough teachers would be in the classroom. Roughly a million students were out of school as a result, according to the News & Observer, a Raleigh-based paper.

How Solar Panels On A Church Rooftop Broke The Law In N.C.

May 15, 2018 Dan Gearino, Insideclimatenews.org Resist! Law, North Carolina, Solar Energy

A North Carolina environmental group that tried to challenge the state's utility monopoly by installing solar panels on the roof of a predominantly African-American church and selling the church cheap, clean power has lost its appeal to the state's highest court. Advocates say they are disappointed in the ruling, but they aren't giving up the fight to lift restrictions on clean energy. The case involved an attempt to bust through restrictions that solar advocates face in much of the Southeast. The region has a history of maintaining strong utility monopolies while other states have opened their markets to competition. The result, advocates say, limits rooftop solar in a region with some of the strongest solar power potential.

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