Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

So many bastards, so little time.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Bark louder, little dog.

In my day, never was longer.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, it’s door #2)

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

“woke” is the new caravan.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

You are here: Home / Political Fundraising / Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24 / It’s Up To Us – Kicking Off Our North Carolina Fundraising!

It’s Up To Us – Kicking Off Our North Carolina Fundraising!

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You guys know that we are always on the lookout for new groups that share our goals and mesh with  our strategic fundraising criteria.

Now we are heading into North Carolina for the first time, with a dynamic youth voter registration / turnout group that is focused on people of color.  I can’t say it enough; we are super excited about this group we’ll be supporting in North Carolina!

If you want to know why we are headed into North Carolina for this cycle, please check out yesterday’s post:

It’s Up To Us Now, Next Stop, North Carolina!

What group are we supporting in North Carolina?

With your help, we are supporting the  NC Black Alliance Campus Engagement, a project of the North Carolina Black Alliance.

For the last ten years, they’ve been registering, inspiring, training and engaging students at North Carolina’s 11 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), including the largest HBCU in the country: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

Fun fact:  While Alabama has the most HBCUs, North Carolina has the most enrolled HBCU undergraduate students, according to the United Negro College Fund.

Here’s the big-picture goal of the Youth Voter Engagement Program in their own words:

Then there are the people, the rising tide of young voters across the state, engaged through protests against law enforcement, mass shootings, funding for education, women’s rights, and environmental issues, all of which are direct assaults on their rights as citizens.  Cycle after cycle has proven that engaging these [young] voters helps to fight back against the forces of opposition that seek to regress our state and nation.

Exactly what are we supporting in the Youth Engagement Program?

In typical Balloon Juice fashion, we’re going to help fund the expansion of their mission.  In short, we’re helping the organization take their engagement and registration template on the road, so to speak, to reach NC student voters of color outside the HBCU environment.  The plan is to do this in two distinct phases.

Specifically, our goal is to help them hire 2 field organizers – one field organizer for each of their two new efforts – just as we did with Voce de la Frontera to fund a field organizer, where we said we could fund half of a field organizer if they could find a match to fund the other half of the position.  So our goal is for Balloon Juice to  raise $30,000 now for the first field organizer, and then raise another $30,000 for the second field organizer, a bit closer to the election.  The external matches will fund the other half of the two field organizer positions.

To be clear, these new efforts would not be funding their efforts with HBCUs,  Instead, they will be working with other 4-year colleges with predominantly black students (Phase I) and expand their reach into 2-year colleges (Phase II).

Phase I: two 4-year colleges that are not HBCUs

Phase 1 involves an expansion into two separate four- year colleges – that is is what we’re funding in this month’s campaign.

The first, and smaller of the two colleges, is Chowan University, traditionally a predominantly white institution that has transformed into a predominantly Black institution.  As a bonus, Chowan is in NC CD-1, a seat held by an African-American first term Congressman named Don Davis.  Once a predominantly Democratic district, it was ultimately gerrymandered – through a convoluted history – into an R +1 district.  It’s a toss-up race according to the Cook Political Report.  Don Davis could use the help (and he may well be on our Fall candidate fundraising radar).

The second institution is the much larger University of North Carolina (UNC) at Pembroke, with over 6,200 students.

The UNC Pembroke component of Phase I also has some fortuitous Balloon-Juice fundraising synergy:  the school was founded in 1887 as a “normal school” (teacher training) for Native Americans.  Mid-century, it was the only state-supported four-year school for Native Americans in the US.  It gradually opened up to the general population, and is currently has a roughly 60% minority enrollment (12% Native American).  Pembroke sits in Robeson County, the home of the 55,000- member Lumbee tribe, the largest tribe east of the Mississippi and the ninth largest tribe in the nation.  Yes, we’ll be reaching out to Four Directions to see if there’s any potential partnership opportunities.

That’s Phase I in a nutshell.  We’ve set a goal of $30,000 – and with the $30,000 outside match, we’ll raise at least $60,000 to cover the staffing and expenses for this expansion.

Phase II: NC Community Colleges

Phase II, if all goes well, will get underway later in the summer.

We plan to extend our reach to 10 county community colleges, broadening our impact and ensuring that even more young voices are heard.  By targeting these institutions, we aim to engage an additional 10,000 students, preparing them to be active participants in the electoral process and equipping them with the knowledge and tools necessary for effective civic engagement.

Phase II, of course, is a more ambitious expansion goal, and they will need the support of other funding sources besides Balloon Juice.  But we want to be a major factor in the growth of this extraordinary organization.  Details for Phase II are a little looser and will be firmed up as the summer progresses.

Here’s a link to a summary of the expansion plan the Program provided after talking with us about how our goals with their organization might mesh.

Youth Voter Engagement Program Summary Document  (pdf)

Are you inspired yet?

At our zoom with one of the other organizations we support, they talked about research that shows  that if you can get young voters to vote in  the first two elections, they become lifetime voters.

Oh, and in addition to the external match that NC Black Alliance found, we have already have a BJ Angel who will match up to $100 per person, up to a total of $1,500.  You guys know the drill; that means your donation up to $100 gets multiples by 4x.

$1,200 remaining on our current Angel match!

Let’s do this!

Out-raise them.  Out-organize them.  Out-strategize them.  Out vote them.

Update Wed at 9 am:

Thanks for your generosity!

I’ll be checking this post for donations throughout the day – until the next fundraising post goes up this evening.

$1,200 left on the new Angel match from last night!

Update at 9pm: We have a special $1,500 Angel match for the night shift.  

Up to $100 per person will be matched 4x.  (Your donation + Angel match, matched by the external match)

Let’s kick do our part for North Carolina!

I will check in the morning for donations in the comments to be matched.

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    As always list your donation in the comments or send me an email in order to be matched.

  6. 6.

    karen marie

    This could not come at a better time.  NC Is a hot mess.

    ProPublica reports:

    The North Carolina Supreme Court’s decisions not to publicly discipline the two judges, which have not previously been reported, appear to be the only instances in more than a decade in which the Supreme Court did not follow the commission’s recommendation to issue punishment. Those decisions come at a time of accusations and recriminations about politics influencing North Carolina’s high court. Last year, Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, sued the commission after it launched an investigation into comments she made suggesting that Republican justices were influenced by conservative ideology, remarks that she defended as free speech. And a Republican justice personally attacked Earls in a Supreme Court order in September. In addition, the year before, outside groups sought recusals of more than half of the court’s justices over various conflict-of-interest accusations.

  7. 7.

    RaflW

    Cool! I’m in for $100 as well.

    The organizer is gonna do some driving. UNC Pembroke and Chowan are 190 miles apart. But that’s what makes sense, and big picture the windshield time is NBD compared to the impact they’ll have engaging young POC voters.

  10. 10.

    RaflW

    @karen marie: Unsurprisingly, the courts are being f*kked with royally by conservatives. I’ve been loosely following Law Dork’s Chris Geidner as he covers a rogue Federal court in Alabama. (Of course it’s in the South!)

    The two-year investigation into the lawyers has raised as many, if not more, questions about the behavior of the federal judges in Alabama than it has about the lawyers involved — questions about the judges’ actions, the lack of due process they have given the lawyers, and the factual conclusions reached — but it is the lawyers who now face an apparent likelihood of sanctions if something doesn’t change.

  17. 17.

    Jackie in NC

    I’m in for $100, I’m an incomer hoping to help NC  be more purple.  The mountains are beautiful but very red except for our islands of new folk. My congressman will always be useless but adding my bit for statewide elections

  19. 19.

    H.E.Wolf

    Black students today will be the leaders of the future – and some of them may be the political leaders of our future, if they’re inspired by the outreach from North Carolina Black Alliance.

    Thank you WaterGirl for this inspired choice of a GOTV organization, focused on young voters! The potential synergy with Four Directions Native Vote is *chef’s kiss* brilliant.

  25. 25.

    Betsy

    @Jackie in NC: actually, it’s the black women who are already here that make it a purple state. Very often, northern transplants are part of the right-wing problem in NC come in and try to change the school districts back to segregated ones. Look at what happened in Wake County where newly arrived northern reactionaries tried to re-segregate the nation’s most successful and diverse large public school district.  And a lot of the legislative right wing leadership has been  transplants   out of New Jersey, Ohio, and other northern states.  Many northern Republicans move here because they think it’ll be OK to be racist in the south.

    It was homegrown NC Democratic governors and legislators and organizers that did so much good here in the 60s 70s and 80s — making NC the only “good” southern state.  I’m so so sorry that’s been lost in the last couple of decades.

  32. 32.

    BlueGuitarist

    Robeson County shifted 36 points to the right from 2012 to 2020!

    Robeson County (and statewide vote)
    2012 Obama +17
    2016 Clinton -4
    2020 Biden -19

    NC statewide presidential vote:
    2012 Obama -2
    2016 Clinton -4
    2020 Biden -1.3

    This article describes the dedicated Republican ground game largely invisible to us, and credits Trump showing up for part of the big R advantage on federal recognition of the Lumbee tribe:
    https://prospect.org/politics/rncs-ground-game-of-inches-convert-minorities-into-republicans/

  38. 38.

    AM in NC

    @BlueGuitarist:  Yep, I was just going to post that Democrats have A LOT of work to do with the Lumbee people, because they got tribal recognition under Trump, and that was their number 1,2, 3 & 4 top issue.

  39. 39.

    BlueGuitarist

    Speaking of Don Davis’s district, in addition to Chowan, Elizabeth City State University, a middle sized HBCU, is also in NC-01.
    Both those universities are also in NC House District 5, one of several seats in the Northeastern NC Black Belt lost in 2022 due to low Democratic turnout.
    Some other state legislative districts overlapping NC-01 lost in 2022 could also be won back. Looking forward to reporting on down-ballot candidates if folks are interested.

    Democrats must gain at least 1 NC state house or state senate seat to be able to prevent a veto override. (Veto overrides in NC require 3/5 vote, as in 5 other states)

  40. 40.

    Paul W.

    I’m in for $100, thought to do just $50 but the earlier this is funded the better and every voter is going to count up and down the ballot.

  46. 46.

    Lurker Dan

    I can do $50 this month and thanks for organizing a fundraiser and NC Black Alliance for doing the work. NC politics have been corrupt for decades, but Obama winning in 2008 sent the R’s to comically over the top levels of corrupt. Like, moustache-twirling silent-movie-villain levels of corrupt. It would almost be funny if the consequences weren’t so severe.

    I live in a blue island and it’s a pretty welcoming and tolerant place, but rural NC as red as, well, the rural South. Let us hope this effort and the new D leadership make a difference.

  49. 49.

    WaterGirl

    Hey guys, working with a client this morning, just adding donations to the spreadsheet now.

    But a new angel came forward this morning, so we’re still good even if $1,500 has already been matched.  Back in a couple of minutes with an update.

  52. 52.

    WaterGirl

    Okay, we just hit $2,500 in matches, which is awesome, and our first match this morning is happy to cover $2,500 instead of the $1,500!  Thank you to our first anonymous angel today!

    So the angel who wrote offering a $1,000 match this morning is up now!  He will be anonymous for now, until I can verify whether I can use a name.  :-)

    Anyway, you guys rock!

    *This match is the same as the first one – matching up to $100 per person until we reach $1,000.

  56. 56.

    Jackie in NC

    @Betsy: I do not doubt the state wide perspective, here in the mountains the majority  of Dems  I seem to meet came from other places.

  57. 57.

    Sphex

    This is amazing! In for $100. And WaterGirl, I know you don’t do this work for the recognition, but I really want to commend your efforts, on this and… everything.

  61. 61.

    Maxim

    Okay, we just hit $2,500 in matches, which is awesome, and our first match this morning is happy to cover $2,500 instead of the $1,500! Thank you to our first anonymous angel today!

    Thank you, angel, for your generosity! And thanks to our follow-up angel as well.

  63. 63.

    TooTallTom

    This is SUCH a smart strategy. NC was sooo close to changing color last time. NC has had consistent population growth, mostly around two cities: Charlotte, and Raleigh (State Capitol). As we know, metropolitan areas are areas that trend blue. From a demographic trend, NC is headed the same way that Virginia changed from red to blue.

  64. 64.

    Glidwrith

    In for $100. Gods I hope we can gain some ground in NC. I remember when the thugs took power and promptly began dismantling the state.

  66. 66.

    Betsy

    @Jackie in NC: No doubt. Do you know one interesting thing about the mountains, is the Republicans there used to be quite moderate — were even practically speaking the state’s liberals. It dates back to antebellum times when few people in the mountains were invested in the slave economy as deeply as in the rest of the state. Now today with the population overwhelmingly white in western North Carolina it tends to vote Trumpy.

    Not to mention many locals, whose forbears might have been opposed to secession, have since Jim Crow come to think of themselves as proud Southerners, and therefore have a kind of a false history in mind that centers them with today’s  reactionary Republicans.

  70. 70.

    WaterGirl

    Update at 9pm: We have a special $1,500 Angel match for the night shift.  

    Up to $100 per person matched 4x.  (angel match + external match)

    As always, when there’s a new match, everything resets.

    I’ll check the comments in the morning for donations to be matched.  Or you can send me an email message!

    Goodnight, everyone.  Big thanks for the great start we got today!

  78. 78.

    WaterGirl

    Good morning!  Thanks for all the generosity overnight.  I’ll be checking this post for donations throughout the day – until the next fundraising post goes up this evening.

    $1,200 remaining on our current Angel match!

  86. 86.

    WaterGirl

    Okay, that completes the (almost) latest match.

    But a lurker came forward offering a match, so we are starting a new $1,000 match right now.  Up to $100 per person, add a comment or send me an email message in order to be matched.

    Thank you, Total Lurker!!!

Comments are closed.