‘Matters of life and death’ The debate at Tuesday’s school board meeting highlights the ongoing cultural wars going on across North Carolina and the nation. It led to state lawmakers adopting the “Parents’ Bill of Rights.” The law’s provisions include barring...
Renee Sekel
North Carolina School Privatizers Are Subverting Democracy
North Carolina was one of the last states to expand Medicaid, delaying for nearly a decade after the federal government made expanded coverage available under the Affordable Care Act. Finally, in 2023, the General Assembly opted North Carolina into the expanded...
Parent’s Bill of Rights moves through legislature
The legislative session in Raleigh is approaching its end, but that doesn’t mean the work of lawmakers is slowing down. Over four months after the State Senate passed the Parent’s Bill of Rights piece of legislation, the House has taken it up. Renee Sekel was at the...
GOP bill to limit topics of discussion in public schools wins state House approval
A controversial bill that would restrict how the state’s public school teachers discuss race, gender and sexuality was approved by the state House by a 68-49 party line vote on Wednesday, and is now headed to the state Senate. Several Democrats from the state’s urban...
Transgender youth: ‘Forced outing’ bills make schools unsafe
When Renee Sekel’s nonbinary teenager first requested a different name on their Christmas stocking, she responded with “absolutely not” in what she now considers “the wrong reaction.” The mother of three and local activist in Cary, North Carolina, said she took about...
It’s Black History Month and NC Republicans Introduced a Bill to Limit Teaching of Black History
Renee Sekel, a Cary mom who works for the NC chapter of Red Wine & Blue, a group that seeks to mobilize suburban moms to get involved in politics, also opposes the bill. “I think most parents—and most kids—want our schools to teach accurate and complete history. ...
Recent Posts
Watch This: Heather Cox Richardson’s Midterm Election Advice
Midterm Election Day is just around the corner on November 3, but early voting has already started, or is starting in many states soon. In other words, the election is now! We know it’s important to vote in the midterms, but we also know that many of our friends and...
Okay, But Why Should You Vote for Attorney General?
Americans don’t talk about attorneys general very much. Many of us don’t even know who our state attorney general is or what they do, but attorneys general have the power to shape our daily lives. Read more to learn what state attorneys general do, and why it’s important to vote for them!
Read This: Five reasons to vote in the midterm elections
We are just 26 days away from midterm Election Day, so let’s spend the next few weeks getting ourselves and everyone we know ready to vote. Voters usually turnout more in Presidential elections than they do in midterm elections. For example, 66% of voters cast a...
Do This: Participate in Banned Books Week
Unite Against Book Bans, an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA), hosts Banned Books Week every year. This year’s Banned Books Week starts in just a few days and runs from October 4 to 10. More than 4,200 books were challenged in 2025, and we need to...
Watch This: How book banners are threatening librarians
If you were asked to list dangerous jobs in America, you might think of firefighters, power line workers, or maybe people in construction. But librarians? In a recent survey, U.S. library workers reported more than 8,200 traumatic incidents in their jobs, ranging from...