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.