north carolina

May 24, 2020 - Durham, North Carolina-based peace, labor, civil rights, and human rights activist and organizer Raymond Lee "Bro Ray" Eurquhart died on March 30. In this excerpt of a 2002 oral history interview, he recounts his early political education and organizing while serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War.

May 22, 2020 - Dominion Energy's and Duke Energy's need for gas was in decline even before the COVID-19 outbreak, which has further cut energy demand. But the companies are still pressing ahead with what critics warn could turn out to be an $8 billion-plus stranded fossil-fuel asset, even while the urgency of addressing climate change becomes clearer.

May 6, 2020 - Previous COVID-19 federal relief bills left out the essential workers most at risk in the pandemic. Those workers are fighting to make sure that doesn’t happen again. 

May 4, 2020 - The decision is the first time the court has ruled against prosecutors on a claim of discrimination against black jurors. The court's only Republican justice dissented.

April 10, 2020 - The Southeast Crescent Regional Commission was created in 2008 to provide economic development assistance to Black Belt states but has never received its full appropriation from Congress — even while its counterpart covering whiter, richer Northern states has. With Black Belt communities being ravaged by the pandemic, it's past time for action.

April 8, 2020 - Calls have grown louder for states to allow more voting by mail as the coronavirus pandemic spreads. North Carolina recently made it harder to request an absentee ballot in response to fraud in a congressional race, but a group that works with black voters wants a court to strike down the changes as discriminatory.  

March 24, 2020 - The campaign laid off hundreds of staffers this month, despite its promises to keep them employed through the November election. Now several organizers who worked in states including Florida and Georgia are suing.

March 6, 2020 - The 2016 election made it clear that neither political party was going to invest in rural Southern communities for the long haul. So the people living there decided to do it themselves.

February 26, 2020 - Ruling that a 2018 voter ID law could disenfranchise black voters, the North Carolina Court of Appeals put it on hold last week. A federal court had already blocked the law through the state's primaries, and this latest decision means it's likely to be blocked through November.