This essay is the fourth in our CAROLINADAZE series, a joint project with Common Cause North Carolina featuring the voices of young North Carolinians and their visions for a better future for NC and the South.

Like the story of the South, my own history is complex. I grew up in rural eastern North Carolina. My relationship with the region is filled with contradictions. This is the place where policies of discrimination systematically marginalized my foreparents. But this is also a place with a deep, yet often forgotten, history of grassroots organizing and activism. It is here where I learned of my own familial roots and connection to the region. It is my home, my place of belonging, and my own special piece of history.

Some of my most important experiences learning about my community come from traveling with my father, Reverend William Barber II, across the state of North Carolina to unite with people impacted by poverty and systemic discrimination and to deepen the cross-racial, cross-religious, cross-generation “fusion coalitions” needed to confront this systemic violence. Navigating these spaces and witnessing the power of coalition-building as a teenager taught me the vital role of grassroots organizing in cultivating new expressions of democracy.

Small rural communities like my hometown of Goldsboro, North Carolina have served as powerful engines for democratic engagement and political activism. In the summer of 2014, I volunteered alongside dozens of my community members to register and educate voters as part of the Moral Freedom Summer campaign ahead of that year’s midterm elections. This initiative was inspired by the Black-led grassroots organizing efforts of the 1960s, like Freedom Summer.

Learning this history as a 17-year-old taught me the significant role that young people play in social change efforts to fight for democracy and reshape the South. By connecting history, policy, and grassroots organizing to large ideas about justice, community, and solidarity, we inspire and fuel local organizing efforts.

That 15-week nonpartisan voter empowerment initiative served as an extension of the Moral Monday Movement, the broad grassroots campaign launched to protest the regressive policies of the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly and then-Governor Pat McCrory. We worked on issues including voting rights, economic justice, criminal justice, education, and human rights. Weekly nonviolent protests at the legislature began on April 29, 2013. Seventeen people were arrested........

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