On Wednesday, nearly 200 supporters of the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign traveled to Raleigh to remind lawmakers returning for the legislative short session that low-income voters make up more than 41% of the state’s electorate.

If low-income eligible voters voted at the same rate as higher-income voters, campaign leaders warned, they could control the outcome of elections.

“That is a sleeping giant that is ready to be activated,” said Rev. Rob Stephens, Repairers of the Breach North Carolina Organizing Committee coordinator and member of the NC Poor People’s Campaign. “If we could just turn out 19% of that group who haven’t voted before, we could fundamentally shift the entire landscape of elections in North Carolina.

Rev. Wayne Wilhelm, one of the chairs of the NC Poor People’s Campaign, said lawmakers need to know that North Carolinians are watching them.

“Your vote is your voice, but showing up before the vote lets them know we’re serious about the changes we need to see,” Wilhelm said. “Poverty is a policy choice. To allow poverty to continue when there is really more than enough for everyone is a moral failure and we will stand up and call it out.”

Before marching to the Legislative Building, speakers rallied outside of the State Capitol to criticize the Republican-led General Assembly for what they called excessive tax cuts, spending millions of tax dollars on private school vouchers, and not increasing the minimum wage in more than a decade.

Instead of addressing the crises of poverty and low wages, lack of healthcare, underfunded public education, voter suppression and environmental collapse, the General Assembly slashed taxes for the wealthy and corporations, promoted a culture of fear and hate, failed to fully fund public education, and cut protections for the most vulnerable North Carolinians, the speakers said.

They also took lawmakers to task for not supporting legislation to improve pay for child care workers. The state will soon spend the last of $1.3 billion in federal grant money that helped child care providers make it through the pandemic. Some of the money was used to increase worker pay.

NC Newsline’s Lynn Bonner reported recently that a February North Carolina Child Care Resource and Referral Council survey found that 88% of childcare providers will need to increase parent fees when the federal money runs out. Forty percent said they would have to raise parent fees immediately. About half said they would lose administrative and teaching staff and about two-thirds said they would have trouble hiring new employees with comparable experience and education.

Nearly one-third of the programs surveyed said they would have to close within a year. That’s equivalent to more than 1,500 programs and close to 92,000 childcare and early education slots.

During the 2023 legislative long session, lawmakers took no action on legislation asking for $300 million this fiscal year to extend the compensation grant portion of the federal Childcare Stabilization Grant. Supporters said the money would reduce teacher turnover, improve the quality of child care and keep rates affordable for parents.

Without state funding, Emma Biggs, a Charlotte child care advocate and provider, said the coming year will be a tough one for families.

Biggs said all of the state’s 100 counties are considered “child care deserts,” meaning there are not enough child care centers or teachers to accommodate children and families.

“We don’t have a shortage of children,” Biggs said. “We have a shortage of teachers due to a broken system where parents cannot afford to pay more, and teachers cannot afford to make less.”

On Wednesday, Gov. Roy Cooper’s recommended budget for fiscal year 2024-25 called for a $745 million investment in child care and early education. The investment would help to avoid the “fiscal cliff in child care funding” and keep child care centers open with $200 million for Child Care Stabilization Grants. It would also provide $128.5 million for child care subsidies to increase reimbursement rates for providers in rural and low-wealth communities.

Private school vouchers were also a top target for speakers at Wednesday’s event. Last year, lawmakers expanded the state’s controversial voucher program to make it accessible to the state’s wealthiest families. The program was created a decade ago to help low-income families in struggling schools pay private school tuition.

Yevonne Brannon, a Public Schools First NC board member, noted that House Speaker Tim Moore said he will ask for $300 million more in the short session to fund private school vouchers.

“They had already planned to spend $5 billion on school vouchers over the next few years, so that’s not enough,” Brannon said. “Now they’re going to make sure that the wealthy families — that $300 million is not for low-income or struggling children — it is for wealth families that are already in private school and can afford private school.”   

Sangria Noble, an organizer for the NC Poor People’s Campaign, said poverty is a policy choice. For example, she noted, that the state hasn’t increased the minimum wage since 2008.

“We cannot survive here off of $7.25,” Noble said. “We will end up homeless. We will end up dead.”

Noble was one of the activists assisting unhoused people forced to move from an encampment off of U.S. 70 near Garner on Tuesday. The inhabitants were ordered to move or face arrest after police deemed the encampment unsafe, citing an uptick in crime.

Noble spoke with one man and his pregnant girlfriend who lived in the encampment. He told her that he could probably save enough money in three months working a $10 an hour job to find a place for him and his girlfriend to live, but only after he pays a fine for loitering for sleeping outside.

She said homelessness, poverty and low wages all go hand-in-hand.

“We don’t really have a solution for that man right now,” Noble said. “It looked like the solution yesterday would have been jail. If helped had not come down for protection, it would have been jail.”

In a statement, Bishop William J. Barber II, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign said the United States loses 800 people a day to poverty-related causes.

“Poverty by America is an abolishable and unnecessary reality that can be eradicated by enacting policies that address the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation and the denial of healthcare, militarism, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism,” Barber said. “When our politics makes it easier to get a gun than to get food, quality education, living wages, or healthcare, then there’s a problem with the soul of our nation.”