Building rural power with Down Home North Carolina

In this week’s episode, we visited Down Home North Carolina, a non-profit organization that builds rural, multiracial and working-class power across the state through local campaigning and community organizing. 

Guests: 

Taí Coates-Wedde, Director of Communications at Down Home North Carolina

Jon Council, western North Carolina regional campaigner at Down Home North Carolina

Voices: 

Tatiana Jones, operations manager at Down Home North Carolina 

Emily Miller, Down Home North Carolina member and Guilford County organizer 

Kate Daley, health justice campaigner at Down Home North Carolina

Todd Warren, statewide campaign strategist at Down Home North Carolina 

Transcript

SCRIPT – 

TAÍ COATES-WEDDE: all North Carolinians are bearing the brunt of the different decisions that are being made by our local leaders, our state ah leaders as well, who have consistently shown us that they are not necessarily focused on making sure that things are easier for people here in North Carolina. 

LAYNA HONG: Every community depends on systems that keep people healthy. In rural North Carolina, those systems aren’t always visible.

They include clinics supported by Medicaid, disaster response after a storm, and public programs that help families afford food, housing, and care.

When those systems fall short, communities often step in to help each other.

I’m Layna Hong. Welcome to Rural Narratives.

In towns across the state, neighbors organize mutual aid for short-term financial relief. Others work to bring fresher food options into their communities.

But over time, these individual efforts require time, labor, and money that communities often can’t sustain on their own.

That’s where organizing comes in.

In this week’s episode, we’re talking to Down Home North Carolina — a nonprofit working to build rural, multiracial, and working-class power across the state.

The organization connects personal stories with collective action, helping communities turn everyday struggles into campaigns for institutional change.

Narrative Arts traveled to Greensboro for Down Home’s annual bootcamp, where members from across North Carolina gathered to share strategies, build relationships, and plan their work.

Later in the episode, we’ll hear from Jon Council, a regional campaigner based in western North Carolina. He’ll tell us about organizing in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene — and why disaster recovery has strengthened the push for long-term policy solutions.

Rural communities in North Carolina hold a tremendous amount of power. One in three North Carolinians live in a rural area, which makes us home to the country’s second largest rural population. 

Down Home North Carolina recognizes the power of our state’s rural communities, and works to build on it. 

A few weeks before the bootcamp, I talked to Tai Coates-Wedde. She’s the communications director.

COATES-WEDDE: …Small towns, rural communities, they're about 80 different rural counties out of the 100 counties that North Carolina has. And it's really important to us that we're making sure that they're actually well represented.

HONG: Down Home currently has chapters scattered across the state, from the western mountains to eastern North Carolina.

Local chapters run campaigns aimed at making sure public dollars actually reach the communities they’re meant to serve.

In Cabarrus County, for example, a campaign led by the local Down Home chapter helped establish an anti-eviction program in 2023 with an online application process.

Organizers say these kinds of efforts are connected to a broader fight over public programs.

Programs like Medicaid and SNAP help rural clinics keep their doors open and help families afford food and medical care.

When those programs are cut or weakened, the effects ripple through entire communities.

And for many rural families, the pressure starts with the rising cost of living.

COATES-WEDDE: Things just cost a lot.

HONG: And alleviating the cost of living for rural and working class communities isn’t just about local policy reform. Down Home also works on statewide campaigns. 

COATES-WEDDE: all North Carolinians are bearing the brunt of the different decisions that are being made by our local leaders, our state ah leaders as well, who have consistently shown us that they are not necessarily focused on making sure that things are easier for people here in North Carolina.

HONG: These issues were front and center at Down Home’s annual bootcamp. 

Held in Greensboro over Valentine’s Day weekend, more than a hundred people from all over North Carolina gathered to discuss the future of their state. 

TATI JONES: So we are in Greensboro, North Carolina right now. We have statewide members that have come in to join us to learn about what they can do in the next six to eight weeks, gearing up for campaigns. So we've got members from everywhere, as far west as Boone. We've got people east from Granville

HONG: Operations manager Tati Jones is at the front desk greeting and checking people in. 

The weekend was packed full of sessions on planning and discussing campaign strategies in advance of the midterm elections. 

We sat in on a working group session focused on health justice, where federal cuts to Medicaid were front and center. 

Emily Miller is a member who shared her personal experience with Medicaid. She is from Guilford County and has been attending Down Home’s bootcamp for the past two years. 

EMILY MILLER: You never know when you're going to have a health emergency. I could not have predicted that I would fall on my driveway and break my ankle, which would require surgery that out of pocket would have cost $32,000 [...] Because I had that Medicaid expansion, I could just focus on my healing…

HONG: Kate Daley was running the session. She’s Down Home’s Health Justice Campaigner and says she’s concerned about wider implications, not just immediate impacts. 

KATE DALEY: These cuts are going to hurt everyone, because the less money in the health care system, the more strained the system becomes. Insurance prices go up. Out of Pocket, expenses go up, staffing goes down. Clinics and hospitals can close. They can reduce their service lines. 

HONG: The issue isn’t partisan. And Daley says the solution shouldn’t be.

DALEY: We want a system that works for everyone. We don't want blue on one side and red on the other. We want a system that works for everyone. 

And this is the biggest challenge…

DALEY: …Having the capacity to meet with people, to learn their stories, to bring them in, to organize them, to give them a place to plug in, in their own community, because 3 million people in North Carolina have Medicaid, and everyone in North Carolina is going to feel the impact of these cuts. 

HONG: So what do these challenges look like in practice? 

Another topic discussed throughout the weekend was disaster recovery amid climate change. 

This issue became amplified after Hurricane Helene caused major damage in communities across parts of western North Carolina.

I talked to Jon Council, a regional campaigner in western North Carolina. 

At the boot camp, he helped lead a working group on this issue. 

Not only was he impacted by the hurricane, he was raised by rural North Carolina. 

JON COUNCIL: I've lived in rural North Carolina my whole life. [00:43:00] Um, and yeah, I spent my childhood, uh, in, in like teens, early adulthood in, in the southeastern part of the state. And then I've lived, um, in the mountains for most of my adult life. 

HONG: He lives in Watauga County, just a short drive away from Boone. 

Council told me that despite being on opposite sides of the state, eastern and western North Carolina have a lot in common. 

COUNCIL: Very similar problems down there. Hurricanes, you know, apparently we've still got that in common. We didn't realize that either until 2024.

HONG: When Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, it was a huge shock. 

At the time, Council was a carpenter by day and organizing with Down Home on the side. 

He and other members shifted into mutual aid mode in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. 

COUNCIL: …And so right after the hurricane we were filling gaps in supply lines. We were, uh, doing wellness checks. We [00:08:00] were doing, uh, labor cutting trees, um, doing muck outs, which is like getting actual mud and debris, like physically out of people's homes, um, stripping insulation, that kind of thing.

HONG: He said that it was the first time in a while where he saw people united towards a common goal. 

COUNCIL: Things politically in the country were very, very, very heated at the time, obviously. 

HONG: The hurricane hit just two months before the presidential election. 

And all of that, um, just kind of went out the window.

COUNCIL: Even people that like don't agree politically or. Don't agree on social issues or people who generally have different cultures. And you saw, uh, you know, [00:18:00] students at the university in Boone and working class families out in the counties…

HONG: The hurricane has changed the region forever. 

COUNCIL: This is our second winter since Helene and when the leaves drop off the trees and the mountains kind of turn gray, you can see the bones again of what happened.

HONG: After the hurricane, Council started working full-time for Down Home on long-term recovery through community organizing and policy reform. 

COUNCIL: We've kind of shifted that into a lower capacity and we're working on the long-term, uh, recovery that's gonna keep people safe, uh, well into the future, and especially if something like this happens again.

HONG: Council says mutual aid can carry communities through an emergency.

But long-term recovery requires something bigger — strong public systems that communities can rely on.

COUNCIL: …It's people helping each other, [00:36:00] um, within the community. It's, and that's why it's difficult to sustain in the long term because, um, under our current system like aid and supplies and food, like, uh, that type of thing becomes very expensive, very quickly.

HONG: As the Watauga County chapter shifts into long-term solution building, there’s no shortage of action items.

COUNCIL: We're active in the conversation around FEMA reform. We're active in the conversation around home insurance reform. Um, and we're doing a lot of work right now around utility rate hikes.

HONG: FEMA is the federal agency that provides emergency disaster relief to states and local authorities. 

The federal government is currently proposing significant changes to the agency that would cut the staff by half and make it harder for states to get money. 

Council says disaster response is part of a broader agreement people make when they pay taxes.

COUNCIL: If a hurricane doesn't happen in North Carolina next year, that doesn't mean that a wildfire is not gonna happen in California or that, uh, flood's gonna not gonna hit central Texas.

And so my taxes need to go to help those people too.

HONG: The state has also begun to get federal dollars for Hurricane Helene recovery — seventeen months after the fact. 

And people are asking for answers, Council says. 

COUNCIL: We're starting to ask for the receipts, like why is my tax money doing this thing, but when my neighbor's house gets washed down the river, there's no money there to assist.

HONG: Considering that the majority of North Carolina’s counties are rural, what happens in places like the mountain region matter and will have wider impacts. 

Todd Warren says when it comes to organizing, it has to be a 100 county strategy.

He’s a statewide campaign strategist we spoke to in Greensboro. 

TODD WARREN: I think the Republicans know this very well. Democrats have kind of forgotten about that. You have to have a 100 county strategy in North Carolina.

HONG: And building power in rural communities means putting in the work to show up for people. 

WARREN: It's more labor intensive. You need to take the time to go up the country roads, but also find places to meet people. There's less infrastructure in rural North Carolina. So often we're launching a canvas or hosting a meeting at a McDonald's or outside of a Walmart.

HONG: The other part of building power is consistency, Warren says. Showing up even when it’s inconvenient builds trust. 

And that’s where traditional political organizing fails. 

WARREN: Unfortunately, a lot of times the way that the electoral infrastructure, you know, treats rural people is it's parachute in, parachute out. [...] where people only see, you know, people in their county every four years, and some people never see anybody.

HONG: And while rural organizing presents unique challenges, some things are just universal. 

WARREN: The reality is, is, you know, healthcare is not a cultural thing. Schools are not a cultural thing. I mean, they're different in different places, but these are things that everybody needs. Everybody needs housing. Everybody wants, you know, good clean drinking water.

HONG: Warren says it’s about creating campaigns in everyday language that resonate with people. 

After hearing from organizers across the state, one thing becomes clear: The work of building power in rural North Carolina starts with listening.

Coates-Wedde says it’s the first step. 

COATES-WEDDE: It is so important to tell your stories right now. They want us to be afraid. They want us to feel overwhelmed….The very first step to actually making a change is being okay with telling your own story.

I’m Layna Hong. Thanks for listening to Rural Narratives. 

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