What We Do
Defending Democracy
Emancipate NC defends our State’s core democratic institutions from partisan interference. Our strategic communications, educational programming, and powerful advocacy efforts put a spotlight on the racial dimension of voter suppression, gerrymandering, and legislative interference with other branches of government. Black citizens are the canaries in the coal mine: our rights get attacked first, but they won’t be the last. We work in coalition with pro-democracy partners to protect all of North Carolina’s most essential rights and freedoms.
Supporting Base-Building & Organizing
North Carolina has a vibrant ecosystem of grassroots leaders mobilizing in their work places, neighborhoods, schools, and more. We provide expert policy guidance and direct legal support to many base-building groups in North Carolina, including unions, immigrant rights’ organizations, tenant organizations, students, and more, supporting organizers with the critical legal and policy capacity that they need to thrive.
Ending Youth Confinement
Hundreds of kids are confined in North Carolina–despite the evidence that this practice is harmful, unproductive, and inhumane. The majority of these kids are Black and Brown. We fought to Raise the Age in North Carolina leading up to 2019. We have won parole rights for juvenile lifers in the North Carolina courts. And we continue to fight to beat back efforts to criminalize our youth in the General Assembly.
End Reliance on Incarceration
When a judge sets bail for an arrested person, she is putting a price on freedom. For Black, Brown, and working-class people, this price may be too high to pay. We will stay locked up pre-trial – perhaps for months or years – while wealthier individuals stay free. Jailed defendants are more likely to lose our jobs and our homes. Our children may be displaced from school settings. We are more likely to plead guilty just to secure freedom, regardless of the evidence against us. In North Carolina, rural counties are driving mass incarceration in our jails. Emancipate NC is working on concrete bail reform and arrest reform policies to curb pre-trial detention.
Authentic Community Safety
In our community education work, we collaborate with Black communities that are suffering from criminalization, incarceration, and structural racism. Their neighborhoods are over-policed and their members are over-arrested. Magistrates set high cash bail for the simplest crimes. Then they are coerced into pleading guilty so they can secure freedom from jail. They are also disproportionately punished to harsh sentences, and they are displaced from their friends, families, children, jobs, and homes. They are traumatized in body and in mind. Prison is state violence and it magnifies pain for all parties. Through restorative justice education, we are committed to replacing criminalization and incarceration with alternative approaches that address violence and repair harm.
Defending Families
Our foster care system is broken. Research demonstrates that forced family separation of any length imposes life-long trauma on a child. And yet, in the current “child welfare system,” reunification of children with their biological families often remains a distant hope. The maze of bureaucracy, shifting requirements, and underfunded support systems that characterize foster care have a disproportionate impact on Black children from families experiencing poverty. We envision and are fighting for a new system that prioritizes rehabilitation and reunification. Whenever possible, we need to give families the support they need to keep children safe with their parents, rather than rupturing family bonds and imposing increased attachment wounds.