OUR PARTY
Values
What We Stand For
Democrats from Orange County and across North Carolina share values that define who we are and what we stand for. We fight to ensure that everyone in our communities has a fair shot at a good life, regardless of their backgrounds, where they’re from, what they’re worth, or whom they love.
We stand in solidarity with all those engaged in anti-racist direct action precipitated by racial violence and inequity. We reaffirm our commitment to building a strong, dynamic, pluralistic Democratic community across this county and across the state that centers Black civic leadership and leadership of color.
We believe in strengthening our democracy by having fair, competitive districts. We should maximize the opportunities for all eligible voters to register to vote and cast their ballots.
We support statewide, county, and municipal initiatives for equitable and affordable access to broadband in North Carolina regardless of zip code. We support bringing broadband to underserved areas and address the issues with the “last mile.” We consider broadband to be a utility like electricity and should be broadly available to all communities across North Carolina.
We stand against hate and political violence directed toward transgender and LGBQIA+ Americans; we stand against discrimination and “othering” in all its forms, including within our own party.
We elevate and honor the leadership of our transgender and LGBQIA+ community here in North Carolina in fighting pitched battles for all of us who believe that everyone should have the right to thrive and live free of fear.
Providing a world-class public education to every child in North Carolina should be our top priority. We must pay our teachers enough to attract the best and brightest to our schools and ensure that our well-trained veteran teachers do not leave the state. We must also give our teachers the support they need to help our children succeed in the classroom. Our public school system — from kindergarten through the University of North Carolina system — is our greatest resource, and we support making public education a priority.
We support building a strong economy that works for everyone in the state, not just those at the top. Every worker should be paid a fair wage. Rather than passing regressive sales tax hikes or tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy, we support working toward tax relief for the middle class and small businesses. We support affordable housing, mass transit, and other programs that strengthen lower- and middle-income households.
Everyone in North Carolina should be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water. We support cleaning up coal ash ponds, and we believe that the people who made the mess should pay for its clean up. Corporate polluters should be held accountable for their actions. We oppose the corporate cronyism that allows polluters to make environmental rules and believe the Republican-led General Assembly should answer to our citizens instead of their corporate donors. One of the things that makes North Carolina great is our abundance of livable communities and vibrant wildlife, and we will fight to protect our state’s environment.
As Democrats, we believe in equal opportunity and nondiscrimination. We must work together to create a state where no one is discriminated against for reasons of race, sex, religion, age, national origin, sexual preference, or gender identity. Everyone should receive equal pay for equal work and be able to work in a safe environment.
Affordable and accessible health care is a basic human need essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We support a national healthcare system that provides comprehensive coverage of primary and secondary health care and all other services needed for people to get healthy and stay healthy. We support a system that does not deny care due to preexisting conditions, provides for portability of healthcare coverage, and controls costs. We also recognize that good health insurance coverage is not the only factor that enables and promotes good health and health care, and we support programs that promote education of primary-care providers to ensure their availability in underserved areas.
Statement on the murder of George Floyd, on the routine violence of white supremacy against Black Americans, and on our work as a Party
June 4, 2020
We remember and honor the life of George Floyd, who was born in Fayetteville, NC. And the life of Breonna Taylor. And Ahmaud Arbery. And the lives of the countless Black men and women murdered by police and by others who believe they are entitled to wield lethal force with the assurance that our justice system will protect them.
We express our love for our Black brothers and sisters in a dizzyingly painful moment, a moment made more painful by the fact that murders like these happen routinely, the natural and predictable result of a justice system designed to perpetuate white supremacy and subjugate Black and Brown people.
The Orange County Democratic Party stands in solidarity with all those engaged in anti-racist direct action precipitated by these murders. We reaffirm our commitment to building a strong, dynamic, pluralistic Democratic community across this county and across the state that centers Black civic leadership. We note that this commitment means nothing when we do not confront and address the very real history of the marginalization of Black people within our organization.
Separately, and accordingly, the white officers of the Party ask these questions of ourselves, and of every white member of our organization:
- What actions will we take to address our own racial and ethnic biases head on? Our own white fragility and fear? What have we done to honestly diagnose and treat our own “Amy Cooper” behaviors?
- In what ways do we continue to personally benefit from systems designed to sustain white supremacy? What are we personally doing to break those systems, even when it means losing the white privilege we enjoy?
- Are we interacting with members of the Black community in a way that is “othering,” or that inappropriately pushes responsibility for fixing problems introduced by systemic racism and “whiteness” onto our Black friends and colleagues?
- Are we centering our own feelings about what form protest and direct action should take, and thereby decentering the violence experienced by, and pain felt, by Black Americans?
We, the undersigned officers of the Orange County Democratic Party, care deeply for every member of this organization. We will fight with you to break white supremacist systems, with the understanding that the fight begins at home, here in North Carolina, and here in Orange County.
We will have more, including calls to local action, in the coming days and weeks.
Your Orange County Democratic Party Officer Team
Marilyn Carter, Chair
Jonah Garson, First Vice Chair
John Ferguson, Second Vice Chair
Brian Crawford, Third Vice Chair
Phyllis Portie-Ascott, Fourth Vice Chair
Dennis Swartzlander, Treasurer
Alexandra Allman, Secretary
The Orange County Democratic Party's Statement on Continuing Attacks Against Transgender Americans and on Transphobia within Our Party
July 1, 2020
Pride Month, which came to a close yesterday, saw a stunning victory for LGBTQ rights, with the United States Supreme Court properly recognizing the employment discrimination protections of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect gay and transgender Americans.
This landmark ruling provides reason for all of us to celebrate. It also calls our attention to urgent work that remains to be done. Just days prior, the Trump administration, with characteristic malice, cruelty, and stupidity, erased protections against discrimination for transgender people seeking healthcare. They did so on the four-year anniversary of the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, in the middle of Pride Month, in the middle of a pandemic, and at the end of a week that saw the murders of two Black transgender women, Riah Milton in Ohio and Rem’mie Fells in Philadelphia.
They did so at the same time a prominent white public figure, J.K. Rowling, using her powerful platform to embrace the same sort of transphobic rhetoric in the name of “women’s rights” that regularly exposes transgender people to violence, the same that brought HB-2, the “bathroom bill,” to North Carolina.
The Orange County Democratic Party stands against the hate and political violence of the Trump administration against transgender Americans, and against transphobia in all its forms, including transphobia within our own party.
We elevate and honor the leadership of our transgender and non-binary community here in North Carolina in fighting pitched battles for all of us who believe that we should have the right to live free of fear, and to thrive.
We encourage you to support the organizing efforts of our transgender community locally, and, in particular, of our nascent Chapter of the Transgender Political Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party, which would be the first chapter of the first such caucus in the country. For information on how you can best contribute, email Trystlynn Barber at orangecountytranscaucus@gmail.com.
The Officers of the Orange County Democratic Party
