Democracy defense in North Carolina

The midterm elections are fast approaching and no one knows what to expect. There’s speculation that Trump will send federal agents to polling sites — a claim that the acting Attorney General has not denied. And anti-voter laws on the local and national level continue to pose a serious threat. Just last month, the Republican-majority North Carolina State Board of Elections approved new voter rules that will make it easier to reject ballots. The people I’ve spoken to in the state say that fear is growing, and nothing seems to be off limits anymore.

Voter intimidation in North Carolina runs deep. I sat in on a “Courageous Conversation” among local residents and leaders back in 2022, where I learned about reports of coffins placed outside polling sites and “racial terror as a political strategy,” as Blueprint NC Executive Director Serena Sebring puts it. She says the terror of voter intimidation, the terror of lynching and the terror of the North Carolina coup are one and the same. More than a century ago in Wilmington, an armed mob removed a democratically-elected government by force and reinstated strict segregation and discrimination. Entire neighborhoods were set on fire, hundreds died or fled. New voting tests and rules suppressed the Black vote for years — that’s the kind of racial terror North Carolina has experienced before. And the impacts are still being felt.

“Again and again, we have to say this is terror and this is anti-democracy, this is against what we’ve said we want,” says Sebring.

In Columbus County, North Carolina, when we were there, racial terror looked like a local sheriff (who once identified himself on social media as an Oath Keeper) acquiring $3.8 million in decommissioned military hardware, just a few years after the murder of George Floyd. “It’s targeting a specific group of people,” said one African American organizer. “And for us, I mean, for me, it makes me feel unsafe.”

After our episode aired, Columbus County sheriff Jody Greene was caught making racist remarks about Black employees and resigned during the final weeks of his tenure. Greene won his reelection race in 2022 despite his derogatory statements, but days into his second term, he resigned again. Greene is now under federal investigation and the story seems to have stalled.

Community organizer Carol Caldwell tells us that the new sheriff, Bill Rogers, is working to rebuild the relationship between the community and local law enforcement. And on the voting front, Caldwell and other organizers recently met with the Columbus County Board of Elections to push back on their proposal to reduce the number of early-voting sites from five to one. “We organized the community to keep four sites open,” she says.

It’s not rocket science — or magic, or punditry, or hope — that will defend voters and voting this election. It’s courage, commitment, and caring enough to take action that will stand between us and a fascist coup. It could happen here. It has before. And fear alone does no work.

Find the full episode on public television and radio this week. And on the Laura Flanders & Friends podcast, we’re celebrating worker-owned news outlets like Defector and New York City’s Hell Gate. Subscribe and listen on major podcast platforms.

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Listen here (Premieres Monday, August 10)

Watch: WECT INVESTIGATES: Where the Jody Greene probe stands, 3 years later

Read: “The Voting Rights Act at 61: What We’ve Lost, What Remains, and What Comes Next” by Taifa Smith Butler/Dēmos