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civil rights movement
North Carolina Students Walk Over a Mile to Vote After GOP Shut Down Campus Polling Places
"Aggies do what is necessary for our rights, for our survival, and for our people,” said one student organizer at North Carolina A&T State University, the largest historically Black college in the nation.
Feb 14, 2026
As early voting began for the state primaries, North Carolina college students found themselves walking more than a mile to cast their ballots after the Republican-controlled State Board of Elections closed polling places on their campuses.
The board, which shifted to a 3-2 GOP majority, voted last month to close a polling site at Western Carolina University and to reject the creation of polling sites at two other colleges—the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNC Greensboro), and the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), the largest historically Black college in the nation. Each of these schools had polling places available on campus during the 2024 election.
The decision, which came just weeks before early voting was scheduled to begin, left many of the 40,000 students who attend these schools more than a mile away from the nearest polling place.
It was the latest of many efforts by North Carolina Republicans to restrict voting ahead of the 2026 midterms: They also cut polling place hours in dozens of counties and eliminated early voting on Sundays in some, which dealt a blow to "Souls to the Polls" efforts led by Black churches.
A lawsuit filed late last month by a group of students at the three schools said, “as a result, students who do not have access to private transportation must now walk that distance—which includes walking along a highway that lacks any pedestrian infrastructure—to exercise their right to vote.
The students argued that this violates their access to the ballot and to same-day registration, which is only available during the early voting period.
Last week, a federal judge rejected their demand to open the three polling centers. Jay Pavey, a Republican member of the Jackson County elections board, who voted to close the WCU polling site, dismissed fears that it would limit voting.
“If you really want to vote, you'll find a way to go one mile,” Pavey said.
Despite the hurdles, hundreds of students in the critical battleground state remained determined to cast a ballot as early voting opened.
On Friday, a video posted by the Smoky Mountain News showed dozens of students marching in a line from WCU "to their new polling place," at the Jackson County Recreation Center, "1.7 miles down a busy highway with no sidewalks."
The university and on-campus groups also organized shuttles to and from the polling place.
A similar scene was documented at NC A&T, where about 60 students marched to their nearest polling place at a courthouse more than 1.3 miles away.
The students described their march as a protest against the state's decision, which they viewed as an attempt to limit their power at the ballot box.
The campus is no stranger to standing up against injustice. February 1 marked the 66th anniversary of when four Black NC A&T students launched one of the most pivotal protests of the civil rights movement, sitting down at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Greensboro—an act that sparked a wave of nonviolent civil disobedience across the South.
"Aggies do what is necessary for our rights, for our survival, and for our people,” Jae'lah Monet, one of the student organizers of the march, told Spectrum News 1.
Monet said she and other students will do what is necessary to get students to the polls safely and to demonstrate to the state board the importance of having a polling place on campus. She said several similar events will take place throughout the early voting period.
"We will be there all day, and we will all get a chance to vote," Monet said.
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The Young Have It Rough in Trump's America, But They're Ready to Fight for Their Future
Tending to real-time crises while preparing for the long haul will require leadership from many in both Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
Feb 08, 2026
Here’s a small suggestion from the two authors of this piece (us): Don’t be young in Donald Trump’s America if you can help it. Being young in America right now means you’ll have to contend with stalling job markets, rampant inflation, deep political and economic instability, and impending climate disaster. If you point these things out, you’re labeled a dangerous (and misguided) radical. If you’re too busy trying to make ends meet for you and your family, you get labeled as lazy, apathetic, and defeatist.
This is not to say that older generations are doing okay. They’re not. But at least they’ll get to receive (and not just pay into) social security, which has to make the fascism go down easier. Before we explain or suggest what the young can do about all that, let us start by introducing ourselves, since one of us is indeed still Gen Z.
The authors of this piece are both co-workers and family members. “Theohari,” as some of our colleagues like to call us. Liz is Sam’s aunt and a long-time antipoverty organizer, mother, pastor, and theologian. Sam is a recent college graduate, student organizer, and law nerd. Recently, we were roommates at The Young Organizers Survival Corps boot camp.
Gathering in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains on a 157-acre farm owned and run by the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), The Young Organizers Survival Corps kicked off a six-month leadership development program to help prepare the next generation of leaders to resist authoritarianism—something all too crucial in Donald Trump’s America. A hundred young people converged from more than 22 states, representing dozens of campuses and grassroots organizations. Most of them had already been struggling around issues of tenants’ rights, peace and militarism, immigrant rights, abortion rights, mass incarceration, homelessness, healthcare access, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and so much more in this increasingly disturbed country.
To stand any chance of successfully fighting back, we must offer a competing and more attractive vision of the future—one in which young people come to believe that they will not only survive, but lead secure, fulfilling lives.
In our days at that farm, we studied the hard-won lessons of past social movements, trained young people in the tactics of nonviolent resistance and grassroots organizing, practiced hands-on skills in arts and culture, and learned new methods for and reasons to reclaim the power of our faith traditions.
Movement Education
Haley Farm was the perfect setting for just such a boot camp. The farm once belonged to Alex Haley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Both of those masterpieces educated millions of Americans about African-American history and the importance of genealogy, as well as radical political organizing and thought. Urging readers to investigate their own heritage, Haley used storytelling to make the country’s history accessible and inspiring.
The educational mission of Alex Haley and his farm has endured for decades, long past the era in which he and so many others struggled to discover their own political bearings in the Black freedom movement. Since the Children’s Defense Fund bought the Haley Farm in 1994, it has hosted trainings for CDF Freedom Schools, deepened and inspired faith-based child advocacy, convened children’s authors and librarians, hosted the “National Council of Elders” (where young activists and civil rights veterans are able to strategize about the future), and gathered working groups for the Black Community Crusade for Children and the Black Student Leadership Network—and that’s just to begin a list of its work. A couple of months back, for instance, movement elders and Black organizers convened there for training in how to resist this deepening Trumpian moment of growing violence and authoritarianism.
For decades, the leafy folds of the Great Smoky Mountains in the southern Appalachians have housed other epicenters of movement training as well. Haley Farm is just towns away from the Highlander Research and Education Center (once the Highlander Folk School), another freedom training ground. Highlander was founded by popular educator Myles Horton, whose thinking has shaped the work of generations of grassroots leaders, including both of ours.
The Highlander Folk School first emerged as a cradle for organizing during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), it became the official education arm of the industrial labor movement in the South. Over the next two decades, it played an even bigger role in supporting the civil rights movement. Highlander was where the “mother of the movement,” Septima Clark, first experimented with the literacy programs that would become its “citizenship schools”—a network of some 900 community-based schools that taught tens of thousands of Black Southerners to read and pass Jim Crow literacy tests. Highlander was also where a young Rosa Parks studied before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, where the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" was popularized, and where generations of organizers and leaders—especially those from the South and Appalachia—discovered the world of activism into which they had been born.
At the Young Organizers boot camp recently, we adorned our classroom with quotes from various movement elders and ancestors, including Black Freedom movement giants who had spent time at Haley Farm and Highlander. One quote from Highlander founder Myles Horton stuck out to us for its prescience. In his autobiography, The Long Haul, he writes:
It’s only in a movement that an idea is often made simple enough and direct enough that it can spread rapidly. Then your leadership multiplies very rapidly, because there’s something explosive going on. People see that other people not so different from themselves do things that they thought could never be done... They’re emboldened and challenged by that to step into the water, and once they get in the water, it’s as if they’ve never not been there… During movement times, the people involved have the same problems and can go from one community to the next, start a conversation in one place, and finish it in another.
At our boot camp, it was clear that, amid much pain in this country, young leaders could start conversations about hope and suggest new strategies for community care and social protest. These conversations were possible only because of the leaders’ clarity around connection. From places like Richmond, Indiana, and Ithaca, New York, to Atlanta, Georgia, and Portland, Oregon, they understood that, no matter their backgrounds, they faced many of the same brutal conditions.
A Turning Point?
Consider the social, political, and economic environment that’s producing the multi-layered crises faced by today’s younger generations. In this rich land of ours, about 45 million people regularly experience hunger and food insecurity, nearly 80 million are uninsured or underinsured when it comes to healthcare, and close to 10 million live without housing or on the brink of homelessness, while our education system continues to score near the bottom compared to the other 37 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Even before Donald Trump reassumed power, young people were affected disproportionately. One year into his second term as president, he and his billionaire lackies have only deepened this suffering.
Indeed, the conditions for discontent among young people are now boiling over. Young workers, students, and children are poised to lose more than any other age group from the Trump administration’s “austerity” policies (which, of course, are anything but “austere” for his billionaire buddies and him). Minors make up 2 in every 5 people currently receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits, and the young will disproportionately go hungry as that program is further eroded. (The Trump administration is already threatening to withhold such benefits from some Democratic-controlled states!) Low economic growth, rising inflation, and deepening unemployment are hurting everyone. However, young workers, regardless of their educational background, are seeing a steeper rise in unemployment than the average worker. Compounded by increasing costs of living, mounting debt, and ever more ecological disasters, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are projected to be distinctly worse off than their parents.
Despite a seemingly endless barrage of think pieces bemoaning the fickleness and apathy of the young, teenagers and young adults have been at the forefront of every significant struggle of this moment.
It’s been this very real pain and insecurity that the MAGA crew and Christian nationalist organizers have successfully leveraged to build a strong base among young workers and students. Organizations like Turning Point USA are now leading massive organizing drives on high school and college campuses, tapping into the real fear and instability experienced by students and other young people. Those groups fob off the real problems of this country (only intensified by Donald Trump) on scapegoats like trans athletes and Somali childcare workers, while offering an alluring vision of an authoritarian Christian future. It matters little that, for most Americans, the vision on offer will be impossible to achieve. And were it to be achieved, it would benefit only the whitest, wealthiest, and “most” Christian Americans. Therein lies both a contradiction and an opening.
Historically, we know that once fascism solidifies power, it can take years of unyielding resistance to revive a democratic society. That means we need mobilization now, while preparing for the fight already at hand that’s likely to stretch on for years to come. Tending to real-time crises while preparing for the long haul will require leadership from many in both Gen Z and Gen Alpha. To stand any chance of successfully fighting back, we must offer a competing and more attractive vision of the future—one in which young people come to believe that they will not only survive, but lead secure, fulfilling lives. And on-the-ground organizing infrastructure must be built up to make that vision a reality.
The Kids Aren’t Alright. But They Could Be.
This moment offers us a heartbreaking reminder of just how vulnerable most young people now are. The young organizers gathered at Haley Farm talked about not being able to afford the basics of life, while some who lived close to the farm asked us to bring leftover food to community members and church friends because so many of them are now living hand-to-mouth.
And such vulnerability and economic precarity are anything but the exception. Dozens of young people indicated that they are hurting in so many ways: by family members being abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), by being unable to acquire the healthcare they need, or even by being harassed by the feds for protecting their neighbors from state violence. Avenues of traditional politics feel inaccessible as a means of addressing so many of their problems and, where accessible, regularly proved critically insufficient.
We were astounded by the diversity of people and struggles in that room, but we were even more surprised by the ease with which those young leaders grasped their interconnectedness. They hardly needed convincing that some lessons one might draw from the difficulty of running an abortion fund in the midst of attacks on women and the right to choose could also apply to the needs immigrants have in facing ICE’s militarization of their communities. They knew such things to be true because many had lived through them.
Despite a seemingly endless barrage of think pieces bemoaning the fickleness and apathy of the young, teenagers and young adults have been at the forefront of every significant struggle of this moment. Indeed, young people have long taken leadership roles in bottom-up social movements because they so often bear the brunt of our nation’s social and economic inequalities, with few avenues for relief in traditional American politics.
It’s an underappreciated reality of this century that young people have been showing up in a remarkable fashion, leading on-the-ground movements to ensure that Black lives do matter, dealing vividly with the onrushing horror of climate change, while defending economic justice and living wages, not to speak of abortion access, LGBTQ rights, and an end to gun violence. Just this month, inside Dilley Detention Center in Texas, hundreds of imprisoned children led their families in righteous protest after learning of ICE’s kidnapping of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his imminent transfer to Dilley.
The stakes are only getting higher for those of us coming of age at a moment when this country is changing from something like a democracy to Donald Trump’s chilling autocratic version of America. Yet if we know anything from decades of antipoverty organizing, it’s that the unfettered imaginations, moral clarity, and capacity for decisive action of young Americans can always triumph over the misguided political liaisons of their elders. As our communities struggle righteously to wrest this nation from the clutches of full-throated authoritarianism, isn’t it time to cultivate the untapped might of those potentially dispossessed generations?
We need their courageous leadership now more than ever. We have no time to lose!
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Tears Alone Won’t be Enough: Dispatch From the Front Lines in Minneapolis
What is unfolding in Minneapolis is frightening, but the response of its people has been inspiring.
Jan 27, 2026
In 1965, as excessive state violence was being unleashed against the Black citizens in Selma, Alabama, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sent out a nationwide call to faith leaders: “The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all America help to bear the burden.”
Dr. King’s call for others to join him in leading a march to Montgomery was answered by clergy from across the country, marking a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement.
Sixty-six years later, in the same spirit and with the same clarity as King’s 1965 call, clergy in Minneapolis asked faith activists from across the country to join them in praying with their feet against the atrocities being committed by Immigration Customs and Enforcement against the good people of their state.
Upon hearing that my presence might be helpful, I immediately packed my tallit (Jewish prayer shawl), and on behalf of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, I jumped on an airplane. Arriving in Minneapolis on Thursday, here’s what I witnessed:
Images of Luis Ramos, a terrified and bewildered five-year-old in a tiny plaid coat and blue knit bunny hat, were dominating local media coverage. Coming home from school, just steps away from his front door, ICE agents took Luis from his father’s car using him as bait to lure his pregnant mother out of their home.
By the time I arrived in Minneapolis, only two days later, Luis and his father had already been whisked away to a detention facility in Texas.
Like Selma, Minneapolis has become this generation’s frontline in the struggle for freedom and justice.
Thursday night, as we were preparing for the next day’s mobilization with nonviolence training, a person with a distressed look on their face asked to make an announcement. Along with informing us that a car full of children had been tear gassed today, they had just received a message from one of the local schools warning people not to be deceived by flyers offering “food assistance” since this was one of the tactics being used by ICE to lure parents from their homes. There were other examples of ICE’s cruelty. Immigrants injured by ICE agents have been taken to hospitals and registered using false names so that their families couldn't find them.
In the face of this inhumane behavior, and given Minnesota’s expected below zero temperatures, it would have been easy to remain home, feeling depressed and yet powerless to help. But I recalled Rev. Jesse Jackson’s words, “both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.”
With this in mind, on the coldest day the Twin Cities area had experienced in seven years, I joined hundreds of other clergy and faith leaders at the Minneapolis St. Paul International (MSP) airport to protest Delta airlines complicity in over 2,000 deportations.
The designated “free speech zone” for legal protest was bursting at the seams with more than a thousand bundled-up Minnesotans who had turned out to support those of us who were to engage in civil disobedience.
Our action consisted of over 100 faith leaders kneeling down blocking the terminal, holding signs picturing the detained and disappeared. We prayed and we sang: “everybody’s got a right to live/love/learn and “before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail.” The assembled supporters chanted “Justice for Renee Good!”
With the bottom half of my face tucked into the bundles of warm clothing, I closed my eyes, and began quietly humming a nigun (wordless melody sung in a repetitive circular manner) to myself.
The man kneeling next to me, who I soon learned was the Community Engagement Organizers (CEO) program at Macalister College, asked if I was okay. He was grateful for our presence and wanted to make sure how we were handling the frigid temperatures.
The police lined up behind us with long clubs and chemical agents they had threatened to use. They arrest us. One by one, many in religious stoles, we stood and offered our bulky mitted wrists for handcuffing.
The crowd’s chants turned from “Justice for Renee Good!” to “Let them pray! Let them pray!” and we began to realize the significance. Our prayers were both exposing and healing the rot to which our country has been subjected for the past year that is now festering like an open infected wound.
While prayer can sometimes be meaningless, hypocritical, or even damaging. There are other times, when it can have a profound impact. As the Jewish siddur (prayerbook) Mishkan T’Filah says “prayer Invites God’s Presence to suffuse our spirits. Prayer may not bring water to parched fields,” but it ”can water an arid soul." The souls and spirits of the people of Minneapolis certainly need watering at this time.
On Saturday, I was preparing to leave Minneapolis when we received the news that Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, had been beaten and shot to death by federal agents. I traveled instead to the site of this murder to join with others who were holding a vigil and turning the crime scene into a holy site. I took the tallit I have been wearing over the last year to mourn the passing of my father off my shoulders and laid it on the pine branches among the crosses, candles, sage brush bundles, mala beads, and kuffiyehs. As the crowd circling the site wiped tears from their eyes, “Somali aunties,” who momentarily felt safe to leave their homes, to provide hot food from their kitchens to their fellow mourners.
Riding the city bus back to my hotel, I noticed that my fellow passengers were carrying gas masks and eye goggles for the tear gas that wafts through the city’s freezing air and one knew not when they might get tackled to the ground and sprayed directly in the face with a chemical agent. It felt more like being in the Occupied West Bank than in an American city.
Picking up a quick lunch, I had to knock on the door to be admitted to the restaurant. In order to check into my hotel, I had to use the doorbell to be let in, and to get into Ubers, I had to show a code. Because everyone is aware that ICE agents could barge in at any moment, they are taking extra precautions trying to keep themselves and their neighbors safe.
Many of the Uber drivers in Minneapolis are of Somali ethnicity. One driver, a US citizen who has been in the country for over 20 years, told me about having to show his naturalization papers (he now keeps them with him at all times) while trying to do his job. Another, a young Somali-American woman, told me that she has just spent days too afraid to leave her house, but then today had to get back to work because she needs to pay her rent.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis is frightening, but the response of its people has been inspiring. Between delivering groceries and supplies to those afraid to leave their homes, to roaming the streets with whistles strung around their necks so they can alert others when ICE is spotted, to rabbis and Jewish activists, including myself this past Sunday, keeping watch outside churches so Latinx communities can worship together, to providing emotional support—the work of care, mutual aid, and resistance, week after week, should fill us all with pride. And what was so moving to encounter was the degree to which everyone—from hotel staff, to restaurant workers, to Uber drivers—all expressed gratitude that so many of us had traveled to support them as they defend democracy for the entire country.
Like Selma, Minneapolis has become this generation’s frontline in the struggle for freedom and justice. And like Selma, it will be the disciplined, caring, and prayerful response of Minneapolis' people and their supporters that will win out in the end.
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