They're fighting for progress in the rural south — and winning
So many bullies, so little time until Election Day
Welcome to a big Monday evening edition of Progress Report.
Our big story tonight is about a promising development rippling across North Carolina, but before we get to that, I want to briefly touch on an ongoing firestorm.
I have at times questioned whether this newsletter’s very frequent coverage of the malignant reign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis might be overkill, but the events of the past week have affirmed what we here at Progress Report have long argued: Ron DeSantis is the most dangerous elected official in the United States.
It’s become abundantly clear that the 47 desperate, asylum-seeking migrants from Venezuela that DeSantis had shipped to Massachusetts were kidnapped at the governor’s behest. It was done without hesitation, because the prospect of public accountability has long since disappeared.
The national political media cannot help but see DeSantis’s stunts through the prism of partisan politics, leading to irresponsible and nauseatingly cynical stories like the one published in the New York Times tonight. The story declared DeSantis a political winner for the cruel stunt, normalizing mass kidnapping as a PR strategy in a shadow presidential primary.
Meanwhile, few people are listening to the heartbreaking testimony of the actual victims, because human interest doesn’t drive conversation in DC. Anticipating that pivot to horse race coverage, a few collaborators and I have been working overtime to keep focus on DeSantis’s crimes; we’ve already taken action and have bigger stunts planned for Tuesday.
Keep your eyes peeled for an email tomorrow night for more details about our very purposeful antics. And check out my new hard-hitting report at More Perfect Union, which puts DeSantis right at the center of Florida’s biggest corruption scandal.
Now let’s get to tonight’s big story.
The conservative siege on public school boards has played out in this rural North Carolina county in much the same way that it has in municipalities and states all across the country.
Since late 2020, right-wing activists have forcibly reshaped Johnston County’s school curriculum, its Covid protection policies, and its mission. The playbook has been textbook: Drumming up protests in front of public meetings, launching aggressive campaigns for sleepy nonpartisan board seats, and generally overwhelming the community with a small, fervent group of zealots and help from well-known Republican agitators such as Madison Cawthorn.
The results have been typical thus far, including the end of mask mandates, accusations of stalking, and a ban on “Critical Race Theory” that forbids portraying any American historical figure as anything but a hero. Even scarier than those specific outcomes is the possibility that these extremist policies could enjoy majority support in places like Johnston County, something that the nonprofit organization Down Home North Carolina is actively working to ensure never comes to fruition.
“People are scared regardless of whether they’re liberals or Democrats or Republicans,” says Todd Zimmer, the co-director of Down Home North Carolina. “They know that that stuff is not actually about the safety of their children, and they don't like a far-right presence at their school boards and threatening [them]. So there's a backlash movement against the right here that needs support to organize.”
Down Home is one of two anchor groups behind H.E.A.L. Together NC, a coalition aimed at creating long-term advocacy networks for public schools and their students. The coalition, launched at the end of June, hit the ground running thanks to the year Down Home has spent deep canvassing rural communities and organizing concerned parents, who have by and large expressed a deep desire for full funding of fair schools.
This is not an attempt to manifest a majority opinion where it does not exist. When Down Home canvassers spoke with local residents in their eight rural counties, they heard over and over that people were concerned about the attacks on public education. In rural counties especially, the public school system represents a promise and a lifeline, connecting people with community and opportunity. Now, there are regular calls and in-person organizing sessions designed to prepare members to counter-protest and run in school board elections in rural counties throughout the state.
Breaking through the purple stalemate
Shifting demographics once made it seem inevitable that North Carolina would eventually become a solid Democratic mainstay, but the state’s geography is largely responsible for that not yet coming to pass. North Carolina's statewide elections have flipped back and forth between parties for nearly two decades, a stasis preserved by the shifting politics of the state’s rural communities offsetting the changes in the cities and suburbs of its Research Triangle.
No matter how blue those suburbs become, in a state where 80% of counties qualify as rural, there’s no real path to a durable blue coalition without making significant inroads again with communities far beyond the urban hubs.
Down Home is focused on rectifying those years of disinvestment in the rural regions of North Carolina, and in doing so, building power for working people that have all but given up on government. Founded after the 2016 election, Down Home now has a permanent chapter in eight counties scattered throughout the state, as well as a presence in many others.
“We're working to build, county-by-county, member-led infrastructure that's highly responsive to the needs of working class rural folks so that they can get their needs met locally,” Zimmer says, “and shift power in North Carolina so that they have the ability to make laws that protect our communities and give us what we need.”
The organization launched after the catastrophic 2016 election, which laid bare the degree to which both Democrats and the unaffiliated left had allowed their community networks to grow sclerotic and wither away outside of major cities. Down Home began in Alamance County, in the center of North Carolina, and commenced year-round deep canvassing and listening sessions to better understand the priorities and concerns of local residents. Conversations on porches and in Walmart parking lots continue to serve as both information gathering and prime recruitment opportunities.
New members take the lead in organizing events, protests, and electoral efforts.
“We've worked on everything from opposing local partnerships between police and ICE to advocating for against the expansion of a local jail in favor of substance abuse treatment programs, to stuff like eliminating dumping fees at the dump that make it inaccessible to poor people,” Zimmer explains, rattling off a list of tangible victories that have made people’s lives materially better.
“What we tend to do is focus first and foremost on whatever issues are locally pressing that we think we can move around and win,” he adds. “The process is basically helping people get a sense for their own power and agency.”
Perhaps most prominently, Down Home launched an Alamance County bail fund in 2019 and helped pressure the county into making significant reforms to its pre-trial bail system in 2020. It did not come easy, as advocates faced fierce pushback from the institutional leeches that subsist on the racist carceral state; one event was even crashed by a gang of bail bondsmen, who perhaps didn’t realize that they’d previously benefited from payments made by the organization’s fund.
The bail bondsman confrontation was tense, but instructive to many members and organizers. “[They realized that] there must be power in this room if there's an opposition group that's going to move around us like that,” Zimmer adds.
Over time, Down Home been able to take on statewide issues, including the extended fight to finally expand Medicaid in North Carolina. Relentless pressure from Down Home and other organizations have pushed the Republican legislature to the brink of passing it, though there will now be no vote until after the elections. Zimmer is motivated to hold the Republican lawmakers accountable for their decade-long refusal to expand the program to 600,000 North Carolinians while using the prospect of its enactment as a key campaign point.
The home stretch for Down Home
Down Home has active members in 33 counties and this summer opened new chapters in seven of them, a major expansion that underscores the growing breadth of the organization’s work. It also speaks to the slow-but-steady success of a long-term plan that could have been waylaid by a disappointing 2020 election cycle that began with hopes of a Democratic takeover of the legislature and ended with Republicans expanding their majority.
Now, Republicans hold a 69-51 advantage in the state House and a 28-22 edge in the State Senate. Democrats hold the governor’s mansion, attorney general’s office, and maintain a narrow 4-3 edge on the state Supreme Court, which has been essential in rectifying the gerrymandering that Republicans had imposed on residents after the 2010 election. Should Republicans regain the court, there’s every chance that they would green-light a new round of gerrymandering; should they retain the legislature, a favorable US Supreme Court ruling on the absurd Independent State Legislature doctrine would allow them to create a permanently skewed map.
To avoid this fate, Down Home has endorsed the Democratic candidates in the statewide races and is working to ensure that the party markedly improves on its dismal 2020 performance. Instead of relying on the trickle down from the top of the ballot, a strategy that has regularly failed Democrats, the organization is hustling to turn out people for local elections and hoping it creates a ripple effect up to the statewide races.
With the expanded footprint, Down Home has endorsed 34 candidates across its eight counties, from US Senate all the way down to sheriffs, schools boards, and county commissions. A fair number of those candidates were recruited by Down Home members, and several members have jumped onto the ballot themselves — state Rep. Ricky Hurtado, one of 2020’s success stories, is a Down Home member.
Some of these candidates are decent bets to win their elections; others are longer shots, but important to run nonetheless. For far too long, Republicans ran unchallenged on the ballot, allowing them to drift farther and farther to the right and turning Democrats into bogeymen more than an actual viable presence.
There’s no better example than Alamance County’s virulently racist sheriff, Terry Johnson, who has gone unopposed in his past two elections. Often compared to disgraced Arizona cop Joe Arpaio, Johnson gained some notoriety with his treatment of Black Lives Matter protestors in 2020, which was indicative of his treatment of the county's communities of color. Now, he’s being challenged by Kelly White, a long-time law enforcement vet running on a reform-minded platform. Down Home has endorsed White’s campaign and is actively working to get him elected.
Whereas 2020 was a year with little ground game on the Democratic side, Down Home has already kicked off its door-to-door election canvassing. The organization’s Super Saturday door-knocking events send members out into the community each weekend to have in-person conversations aimed at engaging with and educating residents about the choices on the ballot.
Deep listening sessions conducted all spring and summer indicated that voters are most concerned about education, the cost of housing, the cost of health care, and low wages, issues right in Down Home’s populist wheelhouse. The first step is reminding people that they have the power to change their material conditions, then empower them to do it.
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