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to GET THE VOTE OUT!
Republicans are counting on a low Democratic turn- out for the primary due to expectations that Kay Hagan will be the Senate candidate and lack of interest in other races. WE CANNOT SIT BACK! we will do phone banking: Thr Apr 24, 6:30-8:30pm: Colony Hill Clubhouse Thur, May 1, 6:30-8:30: Colony Hill Clubhouse Bring your own cell phone and charger. ------- Or we can send you a call list and script so you can call from home when convenient for you. To Sign Up, email turnNCblue@gmail.com 
Be a Vote Proctor This May!
The upcoming primary is the first election after the major changes adopted by the General Assembly. A lot of voters may be surprised or confused when they go vote. What to do? Democracy NC is co-hosting trainings across the state for volunteers who want to be poll monitors at selected precincts on May 6. Sign Up for Training Here 
Phase one of the 1+1 Voter Registration Drive was a
great success! Go to our Turn NC Blue! Page to learn more. Commit click for PDF form
Help
Durham Democratic Women Turn NC Blue! Sign Up! Many have expressed a desire to do “something” about the NC General Assembly: not all counties are as lucky as Durham with a solid Democratic Delegation. Want to do something besides being mad? DDW has developed a plan, which has been adopted by Democratic Women of NC. This plan provides a road map to retake the General Assembly by 2020. To do this all Democrats will have to be working together towards the common goal: this will take a lot of work. With your help we can do it! To sign up, click for commitment form and return to us attach in an email to turnNCblue@gmail.com or mail to Durham Democratic Women, P. O. Box 377, Durham, NC 27702 
NC Women Vote
is a county by county Get Out The Vote (GOTV) effort to reach infrequent and new women voters who are likely to vote Democratic if they vote. Studies show that the single biggest reason that women do not vote is that they think that their vote doesn’t matter. Our purpose is to reach out to them through personal letters written by Democratic women who are frequent voters. Click here to volunteer with the Durham Women Vote letter writing project For more info email info@womensvote.turningncblue.com Write a Letter To The Editor !
...of your local paper or news outlet. This is a very important and effective tool. We need many different people to write on topics we care about. Everything you need is on our advocacy page.
Thank you so much! And when you send it -- send a copy to us too -- we'll print it on our website… durhamdemwomen@gmail.com 
Write effective op-eds to make your voice heard!
Do you care about issues facing your community? Want to share your perspective with a broader audience? Have you ever wanted to write an op-ed, but didn’t know how to start? From Women AdvaNCe: Guidelines for Writing OP-EDs
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Help Turn NC Blue!
Sign Up Here Vote Today!
Early voting April 24 through May 4 Phone Bank Tonight! 
Next Phone Bank:
Thursday, April 24* 6:30-8:30pm Colony Hill Clubhouse Or we can send you a call list and script so you can call from home when convenient for you. To Sign up, email turnNCblue@gmail.com Republicans are counting on a low Democratic turn-out for the primary. WE CANNOT SIT BACK! This will be an information sharing and reminder to vote. You do not have to persuade anyone to vote for any particular candidate. *(change of date!)
Early Voting Dates:
Thursday, April 24 through Saturday, May 4 Early Voting Sites:
They are all different! 
Go to our
Voting Info Page for:
May Primary
The Candidate Filing period has ended.
Who Are the Koch Brothers and What Do They Want?
by Sen. Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator from Vermont 04/17/2014 Huffington Post As a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, billionaires and large corporations can now spend an unlimited amount of money to influence the political process. The results of that decision are clear. In the coming months and years the Koch brothers...will spend billions of dollars to elect right-wing candidates to the Senate, the House, governors' mansions and the presidency of the United States. ...Here is what every American should be deeply concerned about. The Koch brothers, through the expenditure of billions of dollars and the creation and support of dozens of extreme right organizations, have taken fringe extremist ideas and made them mainstream within the Republican Party... And let's be very clear. Their goal is not only to defund Obamacare, cut Social Security, oppose an increase in the minimum wage or cut federal funding for education. Their world view and eventual goal is much greater than all of that. They want to repeal every major piece of legislation that has been signed into law over the past 80 years that has protected the middle class, the elderly, the children, the sick and the most vulnerable in this country. Every piece of legislation! The truth is that the agenda of the Koch brothers is to move this country from a democratic society with a strong middle class to an oligarchic form of society in which the economic and political life of the nation are controlled by a handful of billionaire families. Our great nation must not be hijacked by right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers. For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, we must fight back. read column 
Experts: North Carolina early voting cuts will hit blacks hardest
04/17/14 By Zachary Roth MSNBC If the cuts to early voting in North Carolina’s restrictive voting law had been in effect in 2012, Election Day wait times would have risen dramatically, a significant number of would-be voters would have given up in frustration—and African-American voters would have been hit hardest. That’s according to two top voting scholars, whose testimony in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the measure was released Thursday by the ACLU, one of the groups leading the effort. read article 
NC gerrymandering takes full effect
Rob Schofield April 8, 2014 Progressive Pulse North Carolina is a large and complicated state with a population approaching 10 million. Still, even the most unrepentant defenders of the the state’s gerrymandered political map will have to admit that the following fact borders on the absurd: During next month’s primary election, there will be 3,069 different ballots... Here’s an idea for combating voter “fraud” (and general chaos in North Carolina elections): Simplify our voting districts by doing away with gerrymandering and enacting non-partisan redistricting ASAP. read article 
click above for website
Art Pope candidate forces runoff in
non-partisan Supreme Court race against Dem on Court by teddy rooseveltp Blue NC Mon, 03/31/2014 The News and Observer reports on a surprise for the May primaries. State Supreme Court Justice Robin Hudson - one of only two Democrats on the state's highest court - thought she was only going to have one challenger for her seat. One of only two Democrats on the seven-member court, Hudson assumed she would be facing a general challenge in the fall from Mecklenburg County Superior Court Judge Eric Levinson, a Republican. But near the end of the filing period, a second opponent emerged, Jeanette Doran. “She came out of nowhere,” Hudson said. Doran is a former general counsel and executive director at the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, a group backed by Art Pope... read article Also see N&O: A surprise primary could cost Democrats a high court seat 
Steinem: Society's not post-feminist
Apr. 15, 2014 Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan The Herald-Sun Feminist icon Gloria Steinem spoke to a packed 1,600-seat Duke Chapel on a rainy Tuesday night. She talked about connections and how “we are linked, we are not ranked.” Steinem recently turned 80... After 50, the person you resemble is more the girl you were at 9 or 10, she said, who knows what she wants and what she thinks. Saying “you’re not the boss of me” is part of every liberation movement in the world,.. Steinem told the audience that the idea that U.S. society today is post-feminist and post-racist couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a revolution and evolution that has barely begun, she said. Steinem also talked about violence and how it is connected to everything else in life... also talked about higher education being underfunded by state legislatures, equal pay for women, and attributing value to work like caregiving, and offering tax deductions for it. “The single most important thing is understanding we are not crazy, the system is crazy,” she said. read article Watch Gloria's talk here: A conversation with GLORIA STEINEM - 4/15/14 
Obamacare "is working," time to move past political fight, Obama says By STEPHANIE CONDON CBS NEWS April 17, 2014 About 8 million Americans signed up for private insurance on the new Obamacare marketplaces, President Obama announced Thursday. "This thing is working," Mr. Obama said from the White House briefing room, scolding the Republican Party for keeping up its call to repeal the law... Mr. Obama said he found it "strange" that Republicans "still can't bring themselves to admit the Affordable Care Act is working. They said nobody would sign up -- they were wrong about that," he said. "They said nobody could afford it -- they were wrong about that." He specifically chided Republican state leaders who have chosen not to expand Medicaid "for no other reason than political spite." read article
North Carolina
Go To Our
Turn NC Blue! Page The General Assembly finished up its work for the 2013 Long Session on Friday July 26 and will reconvene for the 2014 session on May 14 at noon. As we continue our work to turn NC blue, keep an eye on what's happening by going to our "North Carolina" page. Also see NAACP/Moral Mondays Page 
Half Dozen Things You Didn’t Hear at Governor McCrory’s Tax Day Press Event but Should Know
by Alexandra Sirota April 16, 2014 Progressive Pulse If you listened to Governor McCrory’s press event on Tuesday, you might be a little confused about the tax plan that pasted last year and what it means for our state. Tax reform should be about modernizing the tax code in a way that ensures the system can continue to serve its fundamental purpose: providing enough revenue to support core public services. It should also be ensure greater revenue stability while not asking more from low- and middle income taxpayers as a share of their income than from wealthy taxpayers. But all three of these principles of a sound tax system will be compromised under the tax plan passed last year. Here are half dozen things that you should know that you didn’t hear at Governor McCrory’s press event: 1. It won’t help our economy... 2. This experiment didn’t work in other states... 3. It will mean big cuts to services people care about... 4. Very few businesses will benefit under the plan and all will be hurt by the inability of the state to invest in the workforce and infrastructure that supports a strong business climate. 5. There was no sales tax cut in 2013... 6. Everyone is not going to have more money in their paycheck... read article 
Meet the Preacher Behind Moral Mondays
The Reverend William Barber is charting a new path for protesting Republican overreach in the South—and maybe beyond. By Lisa Rab Apr. 14, 2014 Mother Jones ...With Moral Mondays, Barber has channeled the pent-up frustration of North Carolinians who were shocked by how quickly their state had been transformed into a laboratory for conservative policies. "He believed we needed to kind of burst this bubble of 'There's nothing we can do for two years until the next election,'" explains Al McSurely, a longtime NAACP organizer. But what may be most notable about Barber's new brand of civil rights activism is how he's taken a partisan fight and presented it as an issue that transcends party or race—creating a more sustained pushback against Republican overreach than anywhere else in the country. read article 
NC Supreme Court to review Racial Justice Act rulings APRIL 14, 2014 BY LUCY BUTCHER Two cases scheduled to be heard by the N.C. Supreme Court Monday morning may determine the fate of dozens of death row prisoners waiting to appeal their sentences under the now-defunct Racial Justice Act. The law, which allowed inmates to have their sentences commuted to life without parole if they could prove race played a significant role in the decision to seek the death penalty, was repealed last summer. The law permitted defendants to use statistical evidence to prove racial discrimination. Prosecutors are challenging two 2012 decisions by Cumberland County Judge Greg Weeks to reduce the sentences of Marcus Robinson and, later, three other defendants. read article 
Who pays taxes in North Carolina?
by Cedric Johnson April 14, 2014 Progressive Pulse This tax season marks the final year North Carolina taxpayers will file their income taxes under the state’s old tax code. By next year the increased tax load for many North Carolina taxpayers will be apparent as a result of the tax plan passed by state leaders last year. Today, the Budget & Tax Center released a report that highlights how the tax plan passed last year shifts the responsibility of paying for public investments to middle- and low- income taxpayers while providing generous tax cuts to the wealthy and profitable corporations. read 
Editorial:
Extend US benefits to help NC jobless April 9, 2014 ... the U.S. Senate has passed a measure that would extend federal benefits to about 2.8 million people nationwide, including North Carolinians if McCrory will go along with it. He’s not even taking a position, and his office says he won’t until the U.S. House passes the measure. U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat, supported and advocated for the bill. Republican Sen. Richard Burr voted against it. The Republicans’ logic in cutting benefits in North Carolina was just plain mean... It was no wonder that between cuts to unemployment and a refusal to extend Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians, many observers saw a “war on the poor” being staged in the General Assembly... McCrory has a chance to redeem himself and the party. But first, let’s hope the unemployment bill passes the House. The jobless need it, and the country needs it because it will stimulate the overall economy. This is important for everyone. read article 
Governor McCrory is just plain wrong about the jobs picture
4/1/2014 by Allan Freyer NC Policy Watch Governor McCrory has been at it again lately—incorrectly claiming that his decision to dramatically cut unemployment benefits is responsible for turning around the state’s job market. During a visit to Morganton last week, the Governor stated: “There’s nothing worse than if you have a job opening and someone decides to take a government check instead. So we had to bring the two together,” he said. “We made a decision [to cut unemployment benefits]. And that decision alone is the one lone factor, in comparison to any other state, which I think has helped North Carolina lower its unemployment rate drastically in the last five months.” While the Governor is correct that the state’s unemployment rate has dropped over the last year...he couldn’t be more wrong about why the rate has dropped read article 
The Senate’s Discourtesy to Judges By THE EDITORIAL BOARD MARCH 30, 2014 The job of federal judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina has been vacant for more than eight years, one of the longest vacancies of 83 on the federal bench around the country. Last June, President Obama nominated Jennifer May-Parker, a federal prosecutor, for the position, but she hasn’t even received a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee because Richard Burr, the state’s Republican senator, is blocking her. The strange part is that Mr. Burr himself recommended her for the seat in 2009. But now he’s changed his mind and won’t say why, exploiting an archaic Senate tradition to make sure Mr. Obama can’t fill that vacancy. read editorial  click above to enlarge
North Carolina Had More Job Losses Than Any Other State
By JONATHAN HOUSE Mar 28, 2014 Wall Street Journal North Carolina led the U.S. in job losses last month, a sign of stress for a state scaling back its support for its jobless residents. The Tar Heel State shed a seasonally adjusted 11,300 jobs in February from the prior month as it continues to grapple with the decline of its traditional manufacturing, tobacco and textile industries, according to new Labor Department figures released Friday. Employment increased in 33 states, while it decreased in 17 states and the District of Columbia. Nationwide, payrolls rose 175,000 in February. North Carolina’s unemployment rate fell 0.3 percentage point to 6.4%, one the nation’s largest declines, though the fall was primarily the result of a shrinking labor force. The number of people either working or looking for work declined by 64,000 people from February 2013, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Commerce. Some economists attribute North Carolina’s workforce exodus to the expiration in July of long-term unemployment benefits that require the unemployed to continue searching for jobs. A year ago, its unemployment rate stood at 8.6%. North Carolina’s employment data have been scrutinized closely since U.S. lawmakers let a federal program for long-term benefits expire Dec. 28. read article
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click above to print cards (4 per sheet) of Important Election Dates for 2014 and Things We Can Do Now (on back).
Upcoming
Events 
League of Women Voters
Durham School Board Candidates Forum. Tuesday, April 22, 7:00pm, Hillside High School Auditorium District 2 School Board Candidate Forum April 24, 7-8 pm E K Powe Elementary School, Durham 
This year's 16th Annual DOJ event Tuesday, April 22nd 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. William and Ida Friday Center 100 Friday Center Drive Chapel Hill, NC 27517 Register The 2014 honorees are: Legislative Advocacy: Congressman G.K. Butterfield Policy Research & Advocacy: Planned Parenthood in North Carolina League of Women Voters - Piedmont Triad League of Women Voters - Charlotte-Mecklenburg Litigation: Mona Lisa Wallace Grassroots Empowerment: NC Moms Rising NC Raise Up 
League of Women Voters
Discussion of Medicaid Expansion note change of date: Tuesday, April 29 7- 8:30 pm Chapel Hill Public Library Meeting Room A 100 Library Drive Chapel Hill This program is part of the League’s statewide initiative to educate the community about the fiscal realities of Medicaid expansion and to encourage the State Legislature to reconsider expanding Medicaid in North Carolina. The program is free and open to the public. Parking is available. 
“Moral Movies” coming to a screen near you Hosted by the Durham People’s Alliance American Teacher: Tuesday, April 29th, 7pm Motorco, 723 Rigsbee Ave. Durham, NC 27701 American Winter: Thursday, May 29th, 7pm Full Frame Theater in the center of the American Tobacco Campus, 320 Blackwell St. Durham, NC 27701 Freedom Summer: Thursday June 26th, 7pm Hayti Heritage Center 804 Old Fayetteville St. Durham, NC 27701 Inequality For All: Thursday July 31st, 6:30pm Durham County Public Library Auditorium, 300 N Roxboro St. Durham, NC 27701
Links -- Groups
Democracy North Carolina NC Policy Watch Protect Our Vote NC Lillian's List of NC NARAL Pro-Choice NC Planned Parenthood Planned Parenthood NC Roe Is Here For Good Orange Co. Democratic Women NAMI (Mental Health) NAMI Durham EqualRightsAmendment.org MomsDemandAction (guns) Food & Water Watch Links
News and Blogs WRAL 2013 N.C. General Assembly Issue Tracker N&O Under The Dome Indy Week Nation of Change Daily Kos Media Matters 
Durham Democratic
Women Meeting Handouts: New Rules For Voting 2014 Wallet Card NC Legislative Report Card from Democracy NC Monster Law: More Money, Less Voting (provisions of the new voting law) Top Ten Things For Durham Dem Women to Do Oct 2013 Guide for Getting an ID to Vote --------------------------- NC HEALTH REPORT: Health care for kids, grandparents on Medicaid is not a "runaway entitlement" Christensen: 5 troubling ideas for NC democracy NARAL: Legislation to Watch Holding Gov. McCrory to His Campaign Promise Post Card Ideas For McCrory Things We Can Do Now To Turn NC Blue Handout--Write A Letter To The Editor ------------------ Why You Should Join Durham Democratic Women 
THIS AND THAT
 click to enlarge... great shot.
Video Selects from North Carolina
About the Project… Story of America is a web series and feature documentary that explores the polarization that exists in America today along political, economic and cultural lines. Makers: Women who Make America
See Trailer The story of the women's movement told through the eyes of the women who were there. A must-see! Watch it online at makers.com  click to play video
just some inspiration...
 ORGANIZING FOR ACTION: YOU IN?
Organizing for Action will train the next generation of grassroots organizers and leaders, and organize in our communities. click to see video
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Democratic Women of Durham County (DWDC), PO Box 377, Durham, NC 27702 durhamdemwomen@gmail.com webmaster
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