T.H.R.I.V.E.

What does it stand for?

  • TRANSFORM

    Transform our economy to reflect fairness for vulnerable communities during economic transitions.

  • HEAL

    Healing our relationships with our planet and sovereign Native Nations.

  • RENEW

    Renew the dignity of workers by fighting inequality. Renew the vitality of our planet and its resources by fighting environmental injustice.

  • INVEST - IN - A

    Investing in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, as well as local leadership. Re-invest in public institutions that promote a regenerative economy and make transformation, healing, and renewal possible.

  • VIBRANT

    Black, Brown, Indigenous, and historically marginalized communities must be at the center of our investments and leadership.

  • ECONOMY

    The economy must be centered around community, public institutions, and a vision rooted in a sustainable future.

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Vision One - Creating Millions of Good-paying, safe jobs with access to unions

We have the right to livelihoods that serve our communities. We must invest in creating thousands of long-term, well paid, jobs. We assert the need to grow the number of pre-apprenticeship and union-registered apprenticeship programs to increase access to skills training and expand pathways into union trades. We must recruit more women, nonbinary people, and people of color into apprenticeship programs. We must ensure high labor standards for workers and invest significant resources in order to:

  • Promote wind and distributed solar energy with battery storage

  • Upgrade our infrastructure, including increasing broadband access

  • Build sustainable public transportation

  • Weatherize and upgrade buildings to cut pollution and costs

  • Protect and restore wetlands, forests, and public lands

  • Support BIPOC farmers, agricultural workers, and rural communities transitioning to regenerative agriculture

  • Create high-skill, high-wage manufacturing jobs by expanding manufacturing of clean, renewable technologies

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Vision Three - Invest in Black, Brown, & Indigenous Communities

We recognize that BIPOC and low wealth communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental injustice, climate chaos, and polluting industries. Particularly in Eastern NC, disproportionately Black, Indigenous and Brown communities have been devastated by outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, pollution from coal ash, CAFOs, wood pellets, fracked gas facilities and PFAS, and accelerating forest destruction. Such communities are the most vulnerable to extreme weather events made worse by climate change. We need to require that these communities are prioritized for projects such as clean water access and public infrastructure improvements and connect them to resources on the municipal, state and federal levels. It’s key that the most affected communities have the right to self determination - to democratically plan, implement, and administer these projects.

  • Invest at least 40 percent of all federal, state and municipal funds in low wealth BIPOC communities

  • Create jobs in clean and sustainable industries, pollution reduction, and climate resilience

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Vision 5 - Combat Environmental Injustice & Ensure Healthy Lives for All

All North Carolianians deserve clean air, water and land. Yet Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low wealth communities across our state have consistently been denied the right to access these necessities for life. Polluting corporations have dumped coal ash in our water, spewn dangerous particulates into our air, and released toxic chemicals into our soil. Our communities know their needs best, and we must empower them to take the lead in planning and implementing the projects they choose. We must lift up the voices of impacted communities, fight to end this pollution, and ensure our communities have direct access to everything we need to live the healthiest lives possible. This includes access to green spaces, outdoor recreation, locally-grown food, fully-funded schools and hospitals, child care, senior care, and care for individuals with disabilities.

  • Assert the need for North Carolina to stop issuing permits for polluting projects in overburdened Environmental Justice communities

  • Make polluters pay to clean up their messes

Vision Seven - Ensure Fairness for Workers & Communities Affected by Economic Transitions

Workers have always borne the brunt of changes in the economy -- from free trade agreements, out-sourcing jobs, and automation -- in ways that exploit labor to provide unfair advantage to corporate executives and shareholders. We’ve seen these devastating social and economic costs of hundreds of thousands of lost manufacturing jobs in North Carolina since the 1990s. Now, workers impacted by the pandemic, climate and other economic shocks must be prioritized; those reliant on extractive industries must not be left behind.

  • Include workers’ guaranteed pay and benefits, severance packages, pensions, healthcare, education and training, early retirement, and equitable job placements in Just Transition plans

  • Create sustainable livelihoods by retooling and conversion of factories, supporting net-metering and community energy democracy, and reclamation and remediation of closed facilities

  • Ensure that businesses locating in NC must uphold workers rights and environmental protections to be eligible for taxpayer funded subsidies & grants

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Vision Two - Building the Power of Workers to Fight Inequality

We all deserve to be treated with dignity and respect in our workplaces. Worker power through unions has created the American middle class through collective bargaining for higher wages and greater benefits. North Carolina has the lowest unionization rate of any state in the country, and consistently ranks as one of the most hostile states for worker organizing. North Carolina was one of the first states to pass a right to work law in 1947, and it was a Jim Crow state at the time. This law has always been aimed at weakening the rights of all workers, but especially BIPOC workers. We assert the need for all federal and state construction projects to use union labor, and/or enter into Project Labor Agreements on projects where collective bargaining may not otherwise exist. We cannot have a thriving economy that works for all of us if businesses succeed at the expense of workers.

  • Call for the repeal the 1947 right-to-work law

  • Restore the right to collective bargaining and the right for public employees to strike against unfair working conditions

  • Call for the repeal of the 2013 H.B. 110 law which prohibits government entities from requiring Project Labor Agreements between contractors and labor unions in projects that use taxpayer dollars

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Vision Four - Strengthen & Heal the Nation-to-Nation Relationships with Sovereign Native Nations

The governments of the United States and North Carolina must honor the self-determination and sovereignty of Native Nations and indigenous peoples. The recent Supreme Court decision of Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta enables states to infringe on tribal sovereignty, underscoring how crucial it is to uphold nation-to-nation relationships. The North Carolina state government needs to affirm local tribal governments’ leadership in economic transformation by recognizing their right to operate their own renewable energy projects outside of the monopoly energy utility, invest taxes from tourism back into their communities, and create indigenous pathways for Just Transition.

  • Assert the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) as a legal system so that Indigenous peoples can be fully engaged in any decision-making that affects them

  • Acknowledge and respect the work that Indigenous leaders have been doing for decades to prevent the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure and polluting industries

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Vision 6 - Avert Climate & Environmental Catastrophe

North Carolina must do its part to keep global warming below 1.5° celsius. Our state can lead the way in climate change mitigation and adaptation to prevent worsening climate disasters. In addition to eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from our energy, transportation and agriculture sectors, we can create thousands of green jobs by investing in climate resilience projects. We place community leadership at the center of the new economy through participatory planning.

  • Expand conservation and protection of forests, which will protect valuable carbon sinks like wetland forests

  • Transform our state’s agriculture sector so that our farming communities are fairly paid for locally grown and distributed healthy foods

  • Call for revocation of Duke Energy’s monopoly status to enable the rapid expansion of community & distributed solar with on-site battery storage

  • Invest in a statewide energy efficiency program

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Vision Eight - Reinvest in Other Institutions that Enable Workers & Communities to THRIVE

We must reclaim, defend and expand the Commons. For too long, NC public institutions and local governments have been under attack, systematically defunded and stripped of decision-making power by an undemocratic, gerrymandered state legislature. Our state legislature must fairly represent all the people of North Carolina. We must ensure that communities are able to self-determine how to transition to long-term economic and ecological sustainability. We assert each community’s right to reject polluting industries and support new, green industries. We will mobilize strategic investments to tackle the interlocking crises of racial, economic, and climate injustice by ensuring real universal access to critical resources:

  • Call for the repeal all pre-emption laws that undermine the authority of municipalities in NC

  • Strengthen our public healthcare institutions to address service inequities for low-income and communities of color;

  • Strengthen and expand access to all public utilities (such as water and sewer) and create a public electric utility under democratic control;

  • Fully fund all public educational institutions and prioritize apprenticeship programs to incubate talent for green jobs;

  • Fully fund all public planning departments to create equitable climate adaptation plans at every level