Uniting people of faith

Congregations across the state have been listening to each other — in house meetings, one-to-ones and listening events — about what is hurting us and the people we love: healthcare and housing costs, unsustainable utility bills, the lack of resources for our schools, fear in immigrant communities. That's why, at the first public meetings following county commission elections in November, we will tell them what we've been hearing, and ask for their leadership.  We will show up together to tell our commissioners how the budget crisis manufactured in Raleigh is hitting our families, and to ask them to stand with us: call on the legislature to fund what our communities need by ending unprecedented corporate handouts, and join neighboring states in making sure they pay their share. 

On February 4, just after the legislature begins drafting a new state budget, hundreds of people of faith — from churches, synagogues, mosques and temples across North Carolina — will gather with one demand: legislate for our communities, not your corporate donors. Our demand is simple: a budget that works for all of us. It's time for the biggest corporations — the ones posting record profits while our rents and premiums climb — to pay their fair share again. End the corporate tax giveaways that now cost North Carolina $2.75 billion a year, and fully fund what our communities need: health care, food, schools and housing. We come from many faiths, in a season when all of our traditions turn toward sacrifice for the sake of others — just before Lent, just before Ramadan. And every tradition among us teaches the same thing: feed the hungry, heal the sick, welcome the stranger. Unaffordability was manufactured in Raleigh — not carried here by our neighbors — and people of faith, leading together, can unmake it.