Welcome to Red Wine & Blue North Carolina,

Our reproductive freedom is at risk this November at both the state and national level. 

After the fall of Roe v. Wade, the Republican super majority in our state legislature passed an extreme abortion ban, drastically restricting access to abortion care in our state. And we know they aren’t stopping there. Republican candidates running for office right now — like extremist candidate for governor, Mark Robinson — are trying to ban abortion completely, without exceptions for rape or incest. 

On a national level, Republicans are already coming after birth control and IVF and we fully expect NC Republicans to run with that same playbook. In fact, right now, NC Democrats have introduced a Right to Contraception Act but Republicans won’t even let it come up for a vote! Make no mistake, birth control is on the ballot this November, which is why we have our Save IVF and Birth Control campaign. They’re coming for our rights, so we’re coming for their jobs!

In North Carolina, millions of women don’t have easy access to an OB/GYN. Close to 30% of our counties don’t even have an obstetrician and 18% are considered maternity care deserts, which means they also don’t have a hospital or birth center with OB care. North Carolina’s maternal death rate is higher than the national average and it’s rising. U.S. maternal deaths are at their highest in 60 years. Indigenous women’s maternal mortality rate is 4.5 times that of white women, and Black women’s rate is 2.6 times that of white women.

To improve women’s healthcare and protect reproductive rights in our state, we must break the Republican supermajority in the state legislature, keep Mark Robinson out of the governor’s mansion, and vote in every race on our ballots for candidates that will protect our reproductive rights.

Republicans in our state legislature have been refusing to fully fund our public schools for decades. You may have heard of the Leandro case, where Republicans are actively fighting court orders to fund public schools at the bare minimum level required by our state constitution. To make matters worse, at the same time, they are using private school vouchers to funnel billions (yep, that’s billions with a “B”) of taxpayer dollars away from public schools and into private ones over the next decade, with zero accountability. 

There’s also a national movement against public education trying to take over school boards. Extremist groups like Moms for Liberty are targeting North Carolina schools and spending millions of dollars on advertising for candidates who support their book-banning, anti-LGBTQ+, pro-bullying, anti-public-education policies.

Extremist candidate for North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction, Michele Morrow, has received national attention – and not in a good way. She attended the January 6th insurrection and repeatedly spews hate and QAnon conspiracy theories online. When she ran for a school board seat in Wake County in 2022, Red Wine & Blue Troublemakers mobilized and made sure she was defeated. We need to do it again this year before she’s able to implement her extremist agenda in all our schools.

Our communities and our kids need us to defeat these extremists and elect pro-public education candidates to school boards, our state superintendent office, and the state legislature. Voting is not enough. We also need to talk to our friends and family and make sure they vote, too. Learn how here.

We all want safe communities. We want to be able to go to the grocery store, a movie theater, and to send our kids to school without worrying about being shot. But an average of 1,636 people die by guns every year in North Carolina, and our Everytown for Gun Safety rating for Gun Law Strength is slipping. 

Our college campuses — UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Charlotte, and N.C. Central — have been terrorized by shootings in recent years. Our elementary, middle, and high school students are traumatized by school shooting drills. Parents will never numb to the fear of lockdown alerts coming through on our phones.

So what are our state legislators doing about it in Raleigh? Democrats in both the House and Senate have been filing bills to strengthen gun safety laws in our state, like promoting secure storage of guns (HB53) and extreme risk protection orders (HB281/SB215) commonly known as red flag laws, but the Republican supermajority won’t even let the bills be heard in committee. Instead, as soon as they gained their veto-proof supermajority last year, Republicans made it easier to get a gun in our state by removing the century-old law that required a permit to purchase a gun. And now they’ve introduced HB189, a bill that would allow anyone to carry a gun in public without a permit.

The best way to reduce gun violence in our state and to stop Republicans from further weakening our gun laws is to elect “gun sense” candidates who are committed to keeping our communities safe through common sense gun legislation.

The extremism we see today harms North Carolinians of all religions, races, and ethnicities. We’re seeing attacks on protections for students against bullying and discrimination, and on our access to the ballot box. 

In just the past year, extremists in North Carolina have:

• defunded and removed all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives at all 17 campuses of the University of North Carolina system; 
• ended the full-ride scholarship program for Black students at Duke University;
• passed a slate of hateful anti-LGBTQ+ bills including bans on health care for LGBTQ+ youth, a ban on trans youth from participating in sports, and a “Don’t Say Gay” bill for our schools;
• passed a Voter ID law that’s making it harder for some of us to vote. 
• fought in court to keep voting districts in place to give an unfair advantage to Republicans running for office — a process called gerrymandering.

Suburban women don’t all look the same, think exactly alike, or drive matching minivans. We’re a diverse group of all ages and identities who find strength in our differences. We’re showing up in 2024 to stop extremists from taking over our communities and to rally for candidates who reject discrimination and respect our democrating voting process.