Featured photo: Members of Down Home NC’s staff pose in front of the Double Oaks B&B in Greensboro. (courtesy photo)
Situated in an unassuming strip mall with red roofing in Burlington, buttressed by a hair salon and a spa, Down Home NC’s first office is easy to miss. But that’s after the previous tenant’s sign was taken down.
“Before we had it, it was a Dixie Outfitters, a Confederate apparel store,” explains Down Home NC’s co-founder and co-director Todd Zimmer inside the office. “They used to have a flag up on the masthead and everything. They sold shirts that said things like, ‘Robert E. Lee did nothing wrong.’”
That was eight years ago. The replacement of a white-supremacist apparel shop with a statewide coalition that works to increase engagement in rural areas of the state is almost too perfectly symbolic. Since starting their work in 2017, Down Home NC has grown to nine chapters and organizes in 25 counties — many of them in rural parts of North Carolina. They’re as far west as Transylvania and Watauga County, as far east as Pitt County. Their goal? To bring together poor and working people in forgotten parts of the state together to fight for everything from voting rights to housing affordability to funding for public schools to abortion access.
“Part of our vision has always been that we need to organize in all of rural North Carolina to win the changes that we all need,” Zimmer explains.
That’s why when the organization bought a nationally registered mansion built in 1909, known to locals as the Double Oaks Bed and Breakfast, at a $1.5 million price tag, it caught some community members by surprise.
On Facebook, locals like Tal Blevins, owner of Machete and Yokai and Westerwood neighbor, defended the move as others, like former Greensboro City Council member and current city Neighborhood Development Director Michelle Kennedy, argued against it. That prompted the organization to eventually publish a blog post on its website explaining the reasons behind the purchase of the location, which will be called the Reclaim Carolina Center.
One of the biggest reasons for buying the property, according to Zimmer, is that the location is perfect. Due to being in the center of the state, Greensboro acts as a halfway point between many of the organization’s chapters. Then there’s the layout of the property itself.
Since 2016, the historic Harden Thomas Martin House has been operating as a bed and breakfast after being bought by James and Amanda Keith. In 2021, a local coffee business, Borough Coffee, partnered with the house to offer coffee and eventually breakfast options. (Disclosure: TCB webmaster and Managing Editor Sayaka Matsuoka’s husband, Sam LeBlanc, has worked at Borough in the past).
A few years later, Borough opened a permanent coffeeshop inside the house’s sunroom. According to Zimmer, the plan is to keep Borough Coffee in the house as a business partner and tenant. In October, they’ll stop taking reservations for the bed and breakfast and turn the rooms into offices. Downstairs, in the small library, they’ll expand the book selection to include books related to movement work, Zimmer says. The outdoor space, where several weddings and other events have been held in the past, was also a selling point. The plan is to gather staff from Down Home’s chapters across the state to meet at the house to organize and to also host events.
“It’s very common actually, for base-building organizations to do this,” Zimmer says, “to find a movement center to anchor our work.”
And while many people may not know, the organization already had a temporary office inside Transform GSO downtown. Now, it will have its own headquarters.
“We know that we’re going to need to organize probably 30 years, 50 years, really forever right?” Zimmer says. “To actually win and secure and defend the changes that Down Home envisions. And for that we have to have a center that anchors that work where we can bring in the history of what we’ve done, the history of what other movements have done.”
Prior to buying Double Oaks, Zimmer says they looked at other locations across the state. From old farms to church buildings, Down Home staff had been searching for the right place since during the pandemic. And when the bed and breakfast was listed for sale in 2022, they felt they had found the right fit.
“Bringing people together over and over again in the same space provides a ton of value for the organizing itself,” Zimmer says.
‘At the forefront for the fight for justice’
Rev. CJ Brinson has been busy. On Wednesday morning the Greensboro native drove out to Raleigh to speak at a press conference warning against Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign for governor. By noon, he was still driving around looking for somewhere to sit for an interview.
“I think it was rooted in the desire to be in connection with Greensboro’s civil and human rights culture of activism,” Brinson explained on the phone about Down Home’s purchase.
Brinson has worked for Down Home NC for the last three and a half years, first as a regional organizer manager and now as the Black constituency organizer. As an activist and faith leader, Brinson says that Down Home’s creation of a movement center in Greensboro makes a lot of sense.
“Greensboro has always been at the forefront for the fight for justice,” Brinson says.
He lists off the city’s history: how Battleground Avenue is named after events of the Revolutionary War; how downtown was Confederate territory; how stops on the Underground Railroad ran through the city including Guilford College’s campus; how some of the first public golf courses and hospitals to be integrated were in Greensboro; the Woolworth sit-ins; the A&T Four; the 1969 A&T revolt; the 1979 Greensboro Massacre; the creation of the Beloved Community Center where he and others found their calling for justice work.
“If not Greensboro, where would you do it?” he asked.
As the new organizer for Black constituents, Brinson says his focus is on getting Black communities engaged in politics. This year, that’s looked like engaging with Black men and “ensuring their politics is in alignment with working-class struggles,” he explained. He noted how candidates like Robinson and former President Donald Trump have been reaching out to Black men through issues like economics.
“We are doing programming that speaks to the needs of the Black communities that we’re serving,” Brinson says.
And it’s not just Brinson who’s doing the work.
‘The human part of it’
In Down Home’s Burlington office, Jaynna Sims, Ebony Pinnix and Faith Cook sit around a table to discuss the organization’s plans for action. They mention deep canvassing, boot camps and trainings happening across the state.
The model that Down Home uses is fairly straightforward: Each chapter has an organizer who meets with members of that chapter to determine what efforts they’ll focus on for the next six to seven months. The chapters’ members, who pay anywhere from $1 to $20 per month to have a say in how they organize, choose an issue like public education, transportation or housing, and work to campaign on those issues at meetings by city and town councils, county commissions and school boards.
According to Zimmer, last year, the organization helped members in 16 counties get more than $34 million in public investment into their priorities.
The organization also puts together political endorsements for candidates who align with their work and campaign for them during election years. Some of the organization’s biggest wins include working towards the passage of Medicaid Expansion, getting Cabarrus County commissioners to fund an anti-eviction program and working to elect former Rep. Ricky Hurtado, the first Latino to serve in the state legislature back in 2020.
And while the goals can often seem lofty when first conceived, the work itself is of the simple pavement-pounding and door-knocking variety.
On a hot Monday afternoon, paid canvassers stream out of Down Home’s Burlington office as staff see them off with lines of support.
“Good luck out there!”
“Stay safe!”
“Stay hydrated!”
Twenty-year-old Parris Patterson, who wears a Carolina-blue Down Home T-shirt, black basketball shorts and black Crocs, walks out the door and into his car. He then drives three minutes down the road and turns into an apartment complex.
He looks at the list on his phone and approaches the first door. An older black woman answers after Patterson knocks on the door and tells her who he is.
“Hi, I wanted to see if I could talk to you about your vote for governor?”
She cracks the door open and tells him that she’s busy cleaning.
“Sorry to bother you,” Patterson says with an easy smile and wave. On to the next door.
Patterson, who used to sell solar panels door-to-door, says that he’s been working for Down Home for the last six months. His favorite part of the job is talking to people.
“This is my favorite job I’ve ever had,” he offers.
Today, Patterson’s script includes asking identified voters who they’re planning on voting for in the gubernatorial race — Republican Mark Robinson or Democrat Josh Stein. He carries postcards that let voters write down their intentions and little cards that explain when the election is.
This work, which Down Home calls “voter mobilization,” is the more streamlined, straightforward kind of door-knocking that staffers engage in. The other kind, called “deep canvassing,” can be a little trickier.
But it’s also Alamance County Board Chair Faith Cook’s favorite kind of work. Cook got involved with Down Home years ago when her daughter’s father had been charged with a felony for attempting to vote. She learned about the organization’s efforts to help defend those who became known as the Alamance 12. Since then, Cook has engaged in canvassing efforts during her time with the organization.
“I love being out on the grounds doing the work,” Cook says. “Boots on the ground.”
With deep canvassing, staff go out and talk to people about one specific issue, usually something a bit controversial like abortion. They approach people by having an honest conversation.
“I know that I’m going into a conversation already with somebody who may not agree with what my beliefs may be,” Cook explains. “So you have to understand that, and you have to be ready to expect some pushback. But then you have to listen. It’s important to listen to why they care or don’t care, or why they feel like that.”
The conversations aren’t party-based or race-based, she says.
Part of the work of canvassers is to share their own personal experiences and ties to the topic. When they do that, they find that people are more willing to open up and share their own.
“When you give people your story, you make them really vulnerable, and they feel safe,” Ebony Pinnix, an Alamance County organizer says. “They feel like they can tell you about their story.”
“It disarms the political rhetoric on these issues and really takes it back down to the human part of it,” adds Jaynna Sims, a Piedmont regional organizing manager.
Zimmer explains that the work of canvassers isn’t to debate the people they encounter. Rather it’s about deep listening and establishing connections.
“We’ve found that that’s a really effective way to reach folks who wouldn’t be reachable any other way, because honestly, even if they disagree with us, we care about them,” Zimmer says. “We want people to have rights. We want them to have healthcare, even if they disagree with us on some issues.”
So far, members and staff of the organization have knocked on more than 100,000 doors this year, Zimmer says.
At the apartments, Patterson continues to knock on residents’ doors. Some people don’t answer, others say they’re too busy to talk. But at the fifth apartment, a Black man wearing a biker shirt answers the door.
Patterson goes through his script, asking Leroy Smith who he’s planning to vote on for governor.
“I’m not voting for no Robinson,” Smith replies quickly.
Wearing a silver chain and a black veterans cap, Smith starts up a conversation with Patterson who asks him more questions about his voting location, whether he’s registered and is aware of the election dates.
Smith explains how he used to be a registered Democrat, but for the last several years, he’s been an independent. Even so, he says he tends to lean Democratic in his politics and this year, he sees Robinson and other right-wing candidates as dangerous. That’s why he’s telling his inner circle to vote.
“I tell my kids, grandkids, that people died for this,” Smith says as he fills out one of Down Home’s cards. “So get up off your butt and go vote.”
After leaving Smith’s doorstop, Patterson reflects on his work over the last several months. He reflects on how he’s spoken at length with people — like older white men — he would typically not strike up a conversation with.
“I’m talking to different people, getting different views,” he says. “It’s so cool.”
And at the end of the day, that’s the simple goal of Down Home, Zimmer says, wherever they are.
“Our project is about building a bigger ‘we’ that can include everyone for the benefit of all.”
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