Posts by Democracy Summer interns and others.
In early July, two of our Democracy Summer interns, Alyssa and Bradley, attempted to get a photo ID that would work for voting in 2016. They are both originally from other states – Texas and Georgia, respectively – but have been students in North Carolina for the last 3+ years and neither plan to return [...]
North Carolina made history this week. Not in the way I would have wanted, but this is history, nonetheless. Gaining national attention, our state ushered in a new era of voting restrictions late Thursday night. Under the guise of ensuring ‘integrity’ in our elections with Voter ID, the General Assembly passed one of the most [...]
This week, we visited the Samaritan Ministries in Winston-Salem, NC to register more homeless people to vote. We want all social classes to be fired up and ready to vote in the municipal elections this year. We also want voters to be excited and eager to vote in the 2014 state elections. It was interesting [...]
This past weekend, Rediedre and I had the opportunity to attend and aid with the Pathways to Power in Training in Wilmington. The two-day training was packed with issue-based conversations and creative team building activities designed to translate into tangible skills which advocates use to activate and mobilize their communities. One of the things I [...]
On July 17th, Democracy North Carolina hosted a creative, youth-oriented, political event called Speak it Loud! The event was very well attended and the performers were talented. We were able to get 9 artists to come and either sing, rap, or do spoken word about the dysfunction of our current political system. It was very [...]
This week Martina and I had the joy of participating in and assisting with the Pathways to Power Training in New Bern. For those who don’t know, Pathways to Power is an intensive, two-day training that helps local activists become true democracy advocates and leaders within their community. Omisade, Democracy NC's fabulous training director, did [...]
Through our work this summer, I have come to realize that the two key components to effective organizing are: education and exercise. From the film festival we held a couple weeks ago on voting rights and money in politics to distributing thousands of legislative report cards, I have seen first-hand the power of education. On [...]
After interning for almost 6 weeks with Democracy NC, I have become more dedicated to getting North Carolina Central University, the school I attend, more involved with state government issues. To this end, The Winston-Salem team traveled to Durham on July 3, 2013 to talk to students at NCCU about issues currently before the state [...]
This past Monday marked the 10th wave of Moral Mondays. Since Cassy and I have attended our fair share of Moral Mondays already, we decided to switch things up a bit and set up a voter registration table. We envisioned registering an overwhelming number of people, but that did not happen. But who knew having a voter registration [...]
Yesterday we spent a rainy afternoon in the gathering place of the Intertribal Native American Counsel in Shannon, North Carolina. This was a follow-up to an initial meeting, so we saw familiar faces as well as several new ones. The gathering was unique in the fact that we essentially talked about similar issues as the [...]