Closer to the People: An North Carolina Black Alliance Podcast

🗳️ Voting is one tool, not our entire toolbox.

🧰 It'll take all kinds of tools to rebuild America into something that works for Black people.

💡 "But if you don't know what you're working on, a tool is useless," North Carolina Black Alliance executive director Marcus Bass said.

Residents in the historically Black McCrorey Heights neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, are among folks who don't like what they're hearing about the proposed expansion of Interstate 77. It's an opportunity to use people power to hold politicians accountable.

Just 23 votes stand to loosen the grip of North Carolina's most powerful politician. North Carolina Black Alliance has eyes on the race between state Republican Senate leader Phil Berger and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page. The sheriff holds the lead. The senator could ask for a recount. What that illustrates is the importance of every single vote — including yours — a topic explored in the latest instalment of the "Closer to the People" podcast.

Lean into your lived experiences in this episode of the “Closer to the People” podcast. You’ll hear Sacoby Wilson, Ph.D., place a lot of value on anecdotal evidence — that from a credentialed scientist who relies on hard data. What he understands is real science is rooted in real people whose stories absolutely matter.

North Carolina residents in Edgecombe County's Kingsboro community are fighting off a data center.

North Carolina's educators aren't furloughed like federal workers. But the way folks who work in our public schools are doing creative math in order to keep up with the cost of living, the insufficient funds in their paychecks kinda hit like a furlough. It's because state lawmakers won't pass a budget that even puts a salary increase on the table. Meet some of those educators in this edition of the "Closer to the People" podcast.

⛔️ COMING SOON to a state near you — maybe yours — is the political pandemic that started in Texas and is spreading across the country sickening already fed-up voters. This edition of the "Closer to the People Podcast" draws the line on redistricting with perspective from NC Counts Coalition, North Carolina Black Alliance and Common Cause North Carolina.

North Carolina Black Alliance was among the first organizations in the country privy to HIT Strategies’ 2024 Black Values Survey, a national look at registered and unregistered Black adults that put data behind the oft-repeated notion that Black voters are not monolithic. The research revealed five values clusters bookended by Black voters on opposite poles, from those who lean in to the struggle for civil rights to those with conservative mindsets whose views on race are neutral. Within those poles were Black voters with views somewhere in between yet distinct. The research ultimately underscored the complexity of the Black vote and why wise politicians shouldn’t take it for granted. Dig in to that in this installment of the “Closer to the People Podcast.”

In North Carolina, Martin County residents are at the intersection of health care and equity waiting to see if they'll get a hospital where they live.

We're having real conversations with OUR people, like this exchange in Dare County, North Carolina, where just 2.8% of the population is Black. Not a lot of melanin down there by the beach. But Black people are there, so there we were, exploring proposed legislation that would further minimize their presence.