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North Carolina

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

October 2, 2018 By Junior Walters, Facingsouth.org , , ,
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 ,
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 , ,
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 , , ,
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 , ,
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 , ,
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.

How Durham, NC Became The First U.S. City To Ban Police Exchanges With Israel

May 14, 2018 Zaina Alsous and Sammy Hanf, Mondoweiss.net , ,
Durham, North Carolina became the first city in the country to ban local police exchanges with Israel on April 16, when the city council unanimously passed a resolution opposing any international “military-style” training for police officers. During a heated discussion at City Hall, opponents of the resolutions expressed confusion over the policy’s relevance to Durham, or said they opposed what they saw as unfair targeting of Israel. “There are real problems facing this city, and the Palestinian situation is not one of them,” Richard Ford of Durham’s “Friends of Durham” political action committee said during the public comment period. Durham Mayor Steve Schewel also expressed dismay at what he said were false rumors that Durham had plans to send its police to Israel for training. But Southern solidarity with Palestine has deep precedent. Three years after the famous student Freedom Summer actions in Mississippi in 1964...

Man Led Away In Handcuffs After Protest Outside Duke Energy CEO’s Home

May 11, 2018 Staff, Wsoctv.com , ,
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - One person was arrested after a handful of protesters set up a makeshift fracking tower outside the south Charlotte home of Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good Wednesday morning. About eight protesters with the group Beyond Extreme Energy set up in front of Good’s house around 7 a.m., claiming Duke Energy is putting profits before the safety and well-being of its customers. They are trying to stop the Atlantic Coast pipeline that will go through counties in eastern North Carolina, arguing that the project will wreck the environment. Police were called to the home and spoke with the protesters for a while before issuing an ultimatum to leave or be arrested.

CIA’s Secret Torture Program Sparked Citizen-led Public Reckoning In North Carolina

April 17, 2018 By Alexandra Moore, Activistpost.com , ,
President Donald Trump’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, is reported to have overseen a U.S. site in Thailand where torture of a suspected terrorist took place. Later she allegedly helped destroy evidence of torture. Her nomination, pending congressional approval, is viewed by many as further evidence of this administration’s support of torture and an undoing of Obama-era efforts to end it. Her work was allegedly part of a program the CIA launched after 9/11 called Rendition, Detention and Interrogation. From 2002 to at least 2006, the CIA orchestrated disappearances, torture and indefinite detention without charge of suspected terrorists. What can a small group of committed citizens who oppose these practices do to push back?

North Carolina Tribes Fear Impact Of Atlantic Coast Pipeline Construction

March 24, 2018 Elizabeth Outz, Energynews.us , ,
American Indian tribes in the path of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline are making an eleventh-hour plea to stop construction until regulators can ensure ancient artifacts and their ancestral lands won’t be damaged. The largest tribe east of the Mississippi, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina has rarely weighed in on environmental permits. But its recent resolution, along with one from the state’s Commission of Indian Affairs, reflects growing concern among tribes that the pipeline could destroy swamps and forests that have long sustained their culture. With nearly all the required permits in hand, the project’s developers have already begun felling trees along a 600-mile corridor from West Virginia to North Carolina’s Robeson County. Pipeline foes have mounted an array of legal challenges, and this week showcase the plight of the Lumbee in a new documentary, Robeson Rises.

DA Drops Charges Against Remaining Confederate Statue Protesters

February 22, 2018 Virginia Bridges and Joe Johnson, Heraldsun.com , , ,
District Attorney Roger Echols announced Tuesday afternoon that he is dropping the charges against the five remaining people accused of destroying a Confederate statue in downtown Durham last summer. The announcement follows a long day in District Court Monday in which a judge acquitted one defendant, Raul Mauro Jimenez, and dismissed the charges against two others, Peter Gilbert and Dante Strobino, after an assistant district attorney presented all her evidence. The judge said the prosecution failed to prove the defendants were guilty of three misdemeanors: injury to real property, defacing a public building or monument and conspiracy to deface a public building or monument. Prosecutors presented all of the admissible evidence available, Echols said. Since his office planned to present the same evidence against the remaining defendants, it no longer made sense to prosecute the case...

NC Governor’s Office Occupied By Atlantic Coast Pipeline Protesters

February 3, 2018 By Anne Meador, Dcmediagroup.us , , ,
Opponents of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline filled North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper’s office Friday and refused to leave until he reverses course on the pipeline. About 25 people began their sit-in at about 8:30am and are still occupying the governor’s office as of mid-afternoon. They say they won’t voluntarily vacate the room until Cooper stops the pipeline by revoking a crucial permit. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would run 600 miles from West Virginia through Virginia and North Carolina, has met with strong resistance all along its proposed route. After several requests for more information from applicant Dominion Transmission, North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality just granted the project a water quality certification. Duke Energy, a major influencer in North Carolina politics, has a minority stake in the pipeline.

N. Carolina Municipal Workers Kick Off Bill Of Rights Campaign

January 20, 2018 Sarah Miles, Portside.org , ,
A cold snap the first week of this year took a toll on North Carolina’s cities. In Greensboro alone, 38 water mains broke—and despite near-zero temperatures, municipal workers like Charles French were responsible for fixing them. “We had workers out in frigid weather,” said French, a solid waste equipment operator. “We are the backbone of the city. Without us the city does not run.” Yet North Carolina’s municipal workers say their work and their safety are undervalued by state and local governments. Fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr., stood with striking Memphis sanitation workers who were fed up with low pay and dangerous conditions, United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 150 is launching a campaign in the same spirit. The campaign kicks off on Martin Luther King Day with press conferences and rallies across the state.

Atlantic Coast Pipeline Hits More Delays In North Carolina

January 13, 2018 Elizabeth Ouzts, Southeastenergynews.com ,
North Carolina regulators Wednesday announced the latest round of setbacks for the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline — delaying a decision on the project’s clean water certificate until as late as February and postponing several other environmental permits. Virginia-based Dominion Resources had hoped to break ground last year on the $5.5 billion pipeline, slated to transport natural gas from West Virginia into Virginia and the Tar Heel state. Duke Energy, which seeks fuel for its gas-fired power plants, is the venture’s second major investor. The feds approved the project in October, and just a few regulatory hurdles remain in the Virginias. But in North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration has moved more slowly — soliciting nearly 24,000 citizen comments on the pipeline and repeatedly asking for more information about its impact on air and water quality.

Farm Workers Sue North Carolina To Protect Their Union Rights

November 16, 2017 Brian Hauss, aclu.org , , , ,
By Brian Hauss for ACLU - Dolores Huerta, the legendary civil rights icon and farmworker activist, had it right: “Organized labor is a necessary part of democracy.” Day in and day out, unions struggle to make sure that farmworkers have a voice in in their workplace and in their communities, but they face enormous obstacles. Farmworkers, most of whom are people of color and many of whom are in this country on temporary visas, have long been excluded from federal and state labor laws. That means they don’t enjoy many of the key protections under the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and numerous state minimum wage, workers’ compensation, and youth employment laws. As a result, they face high risks to their health and safety, substandard living conditions, and abuse and exploitation by their employers. Now North Carolina has mounted a direct assault on the state’s only farmworkers union, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), which works tirelessly to protect those workers. A new state law, sponsored and supported by legislators who have a financial interest in suppressing farmworker organizing, would make it all but impossible for the union to operate effectively in the state.
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