Unifying Through Activism
Waving handmade signs and projecting into megaphones, honking horns and holding vigils, North Carolinians turned out in every corner of the state this week to protest the Trump administration and Thom Tillis’ blind support of it.
Over the weekend, thousands of people showed up for the No Kings protests. Winston-Salem and High Point, Jacksonville and Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Cary– pick a town, North Carolinians showed up to protest in it. They spoke out against Trump’s defiance of Congress, the courts and federal law through his executive orders and unilateral slashing of government programs.
On Tuesday, Red Wine and Blue held a Lobby Day outside of the North Carolina General Assembly. Concerned parents spoke out against book bans, a policy that MAGA legislators have used to prevent children from reading classics from authors like Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, or from learning about concepts like anti-racism and gender identity. The parents held a “read in,” handing out banned books to attendees and speaking with legislators about the harms of book banning.
That same day, hundreds of people turned out to the NC Justice Center’s eight Medicaid Vigils– protests that recognized the lives that could be lost if Trump and Tillis cut the program that provides affordable health care to 2.6 million North Carolinians. In the words of one physician who attended, “Any primary care doctor on the front lines in recent decades has watched people die prematurely because of lack of access to Medicaid, and there is no way we can go back to the way things were. We got to fight for it.”
Then on Wednesday, the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters held a press conference at Sen. Thom Tillis’ office in Greensboro, calling on Tillis to oppose Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and to protect clean energy initiatives. Trump’s budget bill is harmful for a lot of reasons– it cuts Medicaid and SNAP while gifting massive tax breaks to wealthy corporations and billionaires– but NCLCV also warned of the job-killing, environment-harming provisions in the legislation. Speakers warned that Trump’s bill would cut tax credits for clean energy, killing a policy that has brought tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of investments to North Carolina.
These protests were varied in their tactics, but unified in their purpose. North Carolina came together to say that they won’t sit idly by as they watch their neighbors lose their health care, their rights, their country. As one protester put it, “It was amazing, it brought tears to my eyes how much unity and love was here.”
Trump and his allies are trying to divide us, but North Carolinians are standing strong and unified. You’re bravely standing up and peacefully fighting back, doing it with love for your neighbors, your country, and future generations. It may take some time, but this is the type of fight that will help us turn our country around. Thank you for being in it with us.
