Down Home North Carolina
Template:TOCnestleft Down Home North Carolina is a rural North Carolina socialist organization.
Beginnings
According to Brigid Flaherty.
- Down Home North Carolina is a member-led grassroots organization. We believe in building power for working communities in small-town and rural North Carolina. We actually were formed right after the election. Todd Zimmer and I have been friends and organizers for many years. When we saw the results of the 2016 election, we felt really inspired to do something different and make big changes in our lives, because it felt like the political realities that we were facing required that of us.
- We were looking at the political makeup of North Carolina and what had happened since 2010 and the far-right takeover of the state. Moving into 2016, we watched that happen at the federal level. It felt like the best offense that we were going to have was to make sure that we were building strong local leadership in places in North Carolina that weren’t necessarily the places that had a lot of infrastructure. For us, this felt like a long-term project that needed to happen in order to make sure that working people get what they deserve.
- We said in November that we were going to start Down Home and then actually got off the ground in June this year. We have been around for about six months. Originally, it started out just Todd and me doing the organizing. I moved back to the mountains where my mother lives, and I was actually living with her for the first few months and Todd was organizing in Alamance in the central part of the state. We went door to door using a listening survey. We went with three broad questions: What are the issues that matter most to you and your family? Who or what is responsible for those issues? What are your solutions?
- One of the things we learned from the 2016 election is that a lot of working people don’t feel listened to. The parties have never contacted them. It felt like a lot of people were speaking for them and yet they were like, “Y’all have never come to our door. You have never sat in our living room.”[1]
Leaders
Down Home North Carolina leaders include;[2]
- Brigid Flaherty is the co-founder and co-director of Down Home North Carolina, and lives in Balsam, North Carolina.
- Juan Miranda is an organizer with Down Home North Carolina, and lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.
- Kischa Pena lives in Nevin, North Carolina, and is a member leader of Down Home North Carolina.
Down Home North Carolina October 28, 2017 ·
Staff
- Brigid Flaherty, COFOUNDER AND CODIRECTOR
- Todd Zimmer, COFOUNDER AND CODIRECTOR
- Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR
- Gayle Schwartzberg, POLITICAL DIRECTOR
- Carrie McBane, JACKSON COUNTY ORGANIZER
- Chelsea White, HAYWOOD COUNTY ORGANIZER
- Jasmine Wright, CABARRUS COUNTY ORGANIZER
- Laura Marie Davis, DEEP CANVASS TEAM LEAD[3]
People
Beautiful day, beautiful people out for the Down Home NC community canvas in Alamance County!
https://www.facebook.com/events/229431140921194/?ti=cl — with Kristen Powers, George Fowler, Todd Zimmer, Kischa Loree Pena and Dana Courtney.
"Freedom in the Fall"
According to Janet Tucker "Freedom in the Fall" was held October 3-8 2020 virtually in North Carolina.. This was sponsored by the Left Inside/Outside Project. While initially planned as an in person event, as many other things, had to go virtual.
This event was hosted by Durham For All, Carolina Federation, and Down Home North Carolina. A broad array of members and friends of the sponsoring organizations came together to do deep canvassing phone banking. Saturday October 3 was a day of orientation, presentations from the hosting groups, and small group discussions of sharing experience.
Whitney Maxey from Liberation Road and the Left Inside/Outside Project opened the day with a moment of silence for those lost to COVID and police violence. People were encouraged to put the names in the chat.
After this she went on to explain that the Left Inside/Outside Project is looking at what a longer term impact would look like by creating more space for the left to develop strategy and tactics. The goals of the program are:
- Provide theoretical skills and praxis training for the broad left
- Working to build independent political organizatioons (IPO) and defeat the far right.
- Freedom in the Fall"Serve as a basis of shared praxis for putting the inside/outside ideas into practice
- Freedom in the Fall"attract new layers of politically active organizers and activists to the strategic importance of the electoral arenas
- Part of a larger plan to cohere the socialist left and advance electoral strategy[4]