CAROLINADAZE Essay Series

September 12, 2024

This essay series is a collaboration between Facing South/Institute for Southern Studies and CAROLINADAZE, a music, arts, and civic engagement project organized by Common Cause North Carolina. The series features the stories and voices of young everyday North Carolinians and their visions for a better future in North Carolina and the South.

Articles in this series

Benjamin Barber CarolinaDaze Illustration

Democracy at the grassroots

By Benjamin Barber

November 1, 2024 - In the fourth story in our CAROLINADAZE series, Benjamin Barber explores the history of Freedom Summer and the growing importance of local organizing and youth engagement in cultivating democracy in North Carolina and the South.

‘Heirs to a powerful inheritance’

By Bryce Cracknell Trey Walk

October 17, 2024 - In the third story in our CAROLINADAZE series, Bryce Cracknell and Trey Walk revisit their experiences organizing for racial justice in college, and the power of a politics rooted in their shared sense of a Carolina home.

'Things fell into place'

By Sonia A. Rao

September 27, 2024 - In the second story in our CAROLINADAZE series, Sonia Rao explores her search for community in North Carolina and the growing importance of Asians and Asian-Americans in shaping the state's political landscape.

Justice

'Committed to our neighbors, whoever they may be'

By Barbara Sostaita

September 10, 2024 - In the first installment of our CAROLINADAZE series, a partnership with Common Cause North Carolina, Barbara Sostaita explores how NC's Latinx communities and churches are creating spaces for people to organize and chart a new vision for the future.

Introducing the CAROLINADAZE essay series

By Victoria Bouloubasis

September 10, 2024 - The editor of the CAROLINADAZE essay series introduces this new collaboration between Facing South/Institute for Southern Studies and Common Cause North Carolina to feature the stories and voices of young everyday North Carolinians and their visions for a better future.