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10 YEAR IMPACT REPORT 2016-2026

North Carolina’s Black Leadership & Organizing Collective

Art by Nico LeBlanc

Over the past decade, North Carolina’s Black Leadership and Organizing Collective has worked diligently to inspire and protect the freedoms of our beloved communities. Everything highlighted in this report has been made possible through the labor, leadership, and stewardship of BLOC coordinators, our Advisory Councils, hundreds of BLOC members, and countless BIPOC organizers, community leaders, organizations, formations, and residents across North Carolina. To every individual and organization—named and unnamed—that chose to spend their time, efforts, resources and energy trying to love on Black people and build up our beloved poor and workingclass communities- we extend our deepest gratitude. Your willingness to show up and be transformed in service of the work, and commitment to win over the hearts and minds of our people has not gone unnoticed. We see you, we thank you, we love you. To our Donors, Founders, and Sustainers – named and unnamed—that chose to invest in building Black organizing infrastructure when others were unwilling or hesitant to, we extend our deepest gratitude. Your willingness to believe in this vision made this work possible and your commitment to addressing anti-blackness increased our ability to support and sustain our folks. Thank you Borealis Philanthropy, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, The Movement for Black Lives, Cypress Fund, HeisingSimons Foundation and the many others, we truly appreciate your contributions. To Freedom Fighters, near and far- We give thanks to you. To every individual, organization, and community that has chosen to invest their time, resources, wisdom, and love in the struggle for liberation and the vision of Freedom for all humans around the world. We know this work isn’t easy, but it is necessary. So we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. This report is a testament to what becomes possible when we choose to build together, beyond fear and oppression. Towards Liberation Your comrades in struggle,

NC BLOC 2

NC BLOC IMPACT REPORT TABLE OF CONTENTS 2- Letter from the team 3- About NC BLOC 5- Our History 6- Primary Functions 7- Strategic Areas

8- Section I : Building Collective Vision, Strategies & Alignment 9- Collective Vision & Strategies 12 -Political Alignment

14- Section II: Building Power 16- Local 18- Statewide 19- Electoral 21- Economic

24- Section III: Identifying Opportunities for Joint Practice & Mass Engagement 26- Leadership Development 30- Mass Engagement 32- Joint Practice & Cross Movement

34- Section IV: Building Alternatives 36- Economic Alternatives 38- Community Alternatives

40- Section V: Building Shared Culture: Healing as Movement Building 42- Shared Culture 44- Health & Healing

46- What’s Next for NC BLOC 47- How to donate

About NC BLOC

“True community is based upon equality, mutuality, and reciprocity. It affirms the richness of individual diversity, as well as, the common human ties that bind us together” - Pauli Murray

4 Art by Nico LeBlanc

NC BLOC’s Black Story Dreaming for the future

What’s possible when Black, poor, and working-class leaders come together to share resources, collaborate, and build movements that center the dignity and humanity of our beloved communities? What can we accomplish together, that we cannot do alone? These are the fundamental questions that grounded co-founders Erin Dale Byrd and Blu Lewis’s journey to create North Carolina's Black Leadership and Organizing Collective (NC BLOC). It started as a vision and a commitment to North Carolina’s Black Radical Tradition. In 2014, Erin Dale, the first Black woman Executive Director of Blueprint NC, envisioned a space where Black-led organizations could commit to experimenting together in pursuit of shifting the social, political, economic, and material conditions for Black, poor, and working class communities across NC. From this vision, the concept of NC BLOC was born. Hiring Blu Lewis to help coordinate the budding formation, they spent all of 2015 convening Black-led organizations from across North Carolina to get buy-in and develop a shared vision for this new statewide infrastructure. After a year and 100 + hours of conversations and relationship building, the decision to establish what is now known as NC BLOC was approved on February 15, 2016, thanks to the thirteen founding Black-led organizations and first advisory board of NC BLOC who are: The Tribe CLT, Black Lives Matter Greensboro, Beloved Community Center, Books & Black Youth (Greensboro), Ignite NC, SAFE Coalition, All of Us or None – Durham Chapter, Advance North Carolina, SpiritHouse, Inc., North Carolina APRI, Black University, NC Fair Share CDC, BPY 100 Durham Chapter. These formations spent a whole year developing the political foundations, values and commitments of BLOC. While some of these organizations no longer exist, the intention, spirit, and vision they poured into creating NC BLOC continues to guide us. Their leadership helped establish our North Star, which has sustained us through moments of uprising, natural disasters, rapid-response organizing, shifts in philanthropy, a global pandemic, and countless other challenges. Ten years later, NC BLOC continues the work of transforming and uplifting our beloved communities across North Carolina. We are honored to share the impact of this work and the lessons we have learned along the way.

NC BLOC’s Primary Functions Creating the conditions to make mass movement possible NC BLOC is a member-led, statewide collective rooted in collaboration and shared governance that brings together publicly active, progressive-to-leftist, BIPOC-led grassroots organizations, movement leaders, community organizers, cultural workers, researchers, healers, and other changemakers to strengthen local organizing. Our members are committed to shifting the conditions of poor and working-class communities across North Carolina, advancing Black liberation and creating opportunities to practice selfdetermination. Grounded by a transformative organizing model, shared vision, resources, and culture, we work to advance community-driven solutions, build the long-term infrastructure needed to protect and expand our collective freedoms, and engage in experiments that develop alternatives and new systems that allow our communities to reduce their dependency on capitalism. We believe lasting change is built through deep relationships, shared leadership, and the collective wisdom of people most impacted by injustice. All of our priorities, strategies, campaigns, and experiments are shaped by the experiences, vision, and leadership of our members. Rather than organizing for communities, we organize with communities—cultivating the relationships, trust, leadership, and collective power necessary to transform our material conditions. Nothing about us, without us, and we mean that. Event though BLOC is Black-led and focused, we are not Black-only. Our work intentionally seeks to create as many pathways into community organizing and movement building as possible. We know and believe that we cannot do this work alone.

NC BLOC’s Strategic Areas We are committed to building the capacity of local, grassroots, and statewide formations that work with and alongside their communities through relational and transformative organizing. As a capacity and movement building organization, our work is centered on strengthening the leadership, capacity, and infrastructure of BIPOC-led organizations, formations, and organizers across North Carolina. Our primary functions and strategic areas are:

Gaining Political Alignment & Power Creating shared visions and strategies Identifying and creating opportunities for joint practice and mass engagement. Mapping and re-distributing resources Working towards deep political alignment

This report is broken down into these 5 areas. Each section includes our strategic goals from Project BUILD - Black Unity, Infrastructure, and Leadership Development, a narrative for what we accomplished or attempted, and an impact page- with specific metrics. The breakdown is as follows: I. Building Collective Vision, Strategies, & Alignment Developing a shared vision & strategy Testing and implementing political alignment. II. Building Power Local Power Statewide Power Electoral Power Economic Power (Mapping & Redistributing resources) III. Building opportunities for joint practice and mass engagement. Leadership Development Mass Engagement V: Building Shared Culture: Healing as Joint Practice Movement Building IV: Building Alternatives Shared Culture Economic Alternatives Health & Healing Community Alternatives

I. Building Collective Vision, Strategies, & Alignment “The freedom movement is not about securing limited civil rights; it transforms the entire country." She also noted, "I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” - Angela Davis

8 Art Work by Nico LeBlanc

Collective Vision & Strategies

Build’n a shared vision that can help win over the hearts and minds of our people.

Strategic Goals Articulate a shared Big BOLD Vision Develop a shared vision and set of values, commitments, and principles, along with a strategic plan to build power across the state. Create and implement a collective process that helps to gain consensus and input along the way to ensure we have as much buy-in as possible. Meet with at least 100-250 people from local and statewide black-led formations and leaders for feedback, a vote of final approval. Develop a set of key issue areas dictated by our communities.

The Road to Building a Collective Vision & Strategies

2016-2019- NC BLOC’s advisory and coordinators tasked with creating the political foundation, shared values, logo, commitments, and other things that would serve as our political foundation. We met over 20162017 to create a set of shared values and commitments working to

create something that was accessible to BIPOC people and organizations, no matter what part of the political spectrum (progressive to leftist), creating points that could be shared and tested with the broader NC formations, create points of accountability, and serve as the groundwork needed to build political education, campaigns, influence 1 movement culture, and movements themselves.

Collective Strategy 2017- 2019: NC BLOC, officially joined the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) in 2016, after supporting and responding to the Charlotte Uprising. Shortly after, we were introduced to Black Power Rising, a five-year strategic plan for building Black power on multiple fronts. In alignment with M4BL’s process for refinement we got approval from our advisory and toured the Strategic Plan across the state with the intention of adapting it to fit the context and landscape of NC. Between April 2- August 15, 2018- we met with 294 local leaders during the first dinner & strategy tour, gathering virtually and in Greensboro, High-Point/ Winston-Salem, Charlotte (2) , Raleigh, Fayetteville, Asheville, Durham, and Greenville, NC. From August 15 -December 15, the advisory met to synthesize the feedback and developing on full collective plan, incorporating alternatives, arts & culture, and healing, which was the primary feedback from local leaders across the board. Finally on February 2, 2019 we invited the individuals we met with and our members to gather and vote on our Strategy Plan, Values, Commitments, and Theory of Change. 95 folks showed up and the vote was unanimously passed, so we began the work.

Shared Vision- In 2019 we were introduced to the Dream Defenders Freedom Papers and were inspired to use them as a model to convey the collective vision of NC BLOC. After meeting with some of the Dream Defenders and getting approval, NC BLOC led two collective drafting sessions led by Juju H. and Dasan Ahanu. More than 50 leaders joined the drafting session to create the shared vision and poetry that would serve as the text. Once Complete, they made one request, that we center our vision and not the oppression we are experiencing, by using headings that name the Freedom we desire as the primary title, and the freedom we want as a subheading. To complete the collective process of the NC Freedom Papers, we launched a call for art from Black artists from North Carolina and commissioned Destiny Hemphill to create accompanying videos for each freedom, making the vision come to life, ensuring that they would be beautiful, accessible, and approachable.

Collective Platform (2020-21) - In 2020 we convened The Ella Baker Convergence to solidify our platform and create inter-sector relationships, working alongside our members and participants to develop a set of political statements and demands, building them into a collective platform we’ve amplified and invited people to engage with. Now we are in our active campaign, Protect NC Freedoms, to more deeply share our vision, goals, and activate our base around protecting our collective freedoms and fighting the rise of right-wing fascism. 2022- 2025 We used the shared vision, platform and political statements to anchor all of our projects and campaign work. We supported our members in adapting the platform to fit into their local context, keeping what fit, adapting for the conditions, and removing what they didn't need. We also used the platform to support four weeks of actions, over two years, and embedded the priorities into the statewide formations we created, provided them as a starting point for all new coalitions we joined as members or leaders ,and used them to help prioritize which collaborations and partnerships we agreed to. Overall, what we created supported our members in having a solid base to start or further advance their campaigns. 2025- 2028 - Ready’n the Ground: Resist, Reimagine, Readiness, Resiliency. The last phase of this work is to test our ability to activate a mass base through our Protect NC Freedoms/ Black Freedoms Campaign, that falls under our resist bucket of work . Unbeknownst to us, we would be launching this campaign during a time when supporting DEI and other minority work has become taboo or high risk (so right on time). We expanded the framework to include general language ( Protect NC Freedoms) In order to create more opportunities to engage and support our partners who are unable to be as pro-black as we are.

Accomplishments

Vision: NC Freedom Papers ( 2 1 Shared Versions)

11 Freedoms - 1 Platform Created 10 Freedom Videos

55 Folks informed the Freedom Papers

& Strategy Sites for the creation of the 10 Dinner collective Strategy 5 Dinner & Strategy bi-yearly tours 1,050 Local leaders engaged in tours

7,800 Freedom Papers Distributed

2,800 Pledge Cards Collected

Black-led formations and leaders engaged in creating the vision, values, commitments of NC BLOC

163 / 384 formations

individuals

Political Alignment

Aligning across sectors, movements, regions, & geography

Strategic Goals

Align Black communities, leaders, institutions, representatives around a shared set of political values by: Hosting Political Education Series that are grounded in our values and vision Launch a pre-and-post alignment survey to test alignment of NC BLOC Values with membership Launching an alignment process amongst our members and their communities to move towards a shared understanding with the goal of collecting 150-500 responses Hosting 4-5 convergences engaging at least 35 local and statewide change-makers Have at least 100 Black-led institutions, sign on to support our values, commitments, and agreements. 25-50 POC and White-led orgs sign on to support our values, commitments, and agreements.

Accomplishments & Impact

To make our culture and politics more accessible and popularized and to build deeper alignment, NC BLOC approaches building political alignment in a number of ways (1) Membership: We embed our values and commitments into our membership application process to assess initial alignment, their growth, and their commitment to moving into practice. Our goal here is to welcome everyone who is willing to learn, using the self-assessments as a guide to help prioritize what political education we embed into our yearly programming and monthly membership meetings and introduce political concepts, questions, and debates.

(2) We’ve hosted an average of three statewide events each year—including convenings, summits, and gatherings—that bring together change-makers from across North Carolina. These spaces have strengthened relationships among BIPOC organizations and formations while creating opportunities to test alignment around shared values, political commitments, and strategies. Rather than allowing political differences to become points of division, we use our

shared North Star to identify areas of collective action, help organizations understand their role within the broader ecosystem, and adapt shared commitments to meet the needs of their bases. These gatherings also create space for participants to exchange best practices, build relationships, and develop new organizing skills together. We intentionally remove barriers to participation by covering housing, childcare, and food and providing registration scholarships, ensuring that financial or logistical constraints do not prevent people from participating. Over time, these convenings have become an important part of building the trust, relationships, shared analysis, and collective infrastructure needed for stronger statewide organizing. (3) Political workshops, Education Series, and Ecosystem Calls- We use the expertise of members, staff, and partners to create public offerings that are open to our broader ecosystem. Yearly we host 4 quarterly ecosystem calls; and at least six virtual political education sessions or one-month-long series (which are usually a month long or at least 5 workshops), and teach-ins as needed. Each is designed to create more opportunities to politicize and base-build more individuals into our member organization bases. One of our most utilized offerings is NC Organizing Essentials, a virtual, self-guided training that introduces participants to the values, commitments, culture, and organizing approach of NC BLOC. (4) We host a Dinner and Strategy Tour every other year to meet community members and changemakers where they are, convening and presenting strategy offerings for feedback over food, in culturally relevant and communal spaces. These gatherings give us the opportunity to build with both returning and new local leaders, test alignment, sharpen strategy, deepen our ability to coordinate statewide, and create more opportunities for local collaboration. (5) We co-create and launch community needs and wants surveys to test alignment with the broader masses and make sure our demands, visions, and what we are working towards are actually what the communities we represent want, identifying contradictions and making changes as needed. Here are the political alignment metrics we’ve tracked:

Alignment

3 Alignment Surveys Survey 1,247 Alignment Participants 1,098 In commitment of values

Political Education

Education Series 6 Political Created Led Political 62 BLOC Education Trainings Member-Led Political 35 Education Trainings 845 In practice of BLOC values Member-hosted Political Not in alignment 241 Education Trainings 149 with BLOC values Politicized through 2,832 Non-black formation BLOC 63

sign-ons Civic Leaders Signed on

6,593

Politicized through BLOC’s members

Convenings Leaders 20 Black Convenings Statewide issue 20 gatherings

Local Dinner & Strategy Sessions

1,759

BIPOC Leaders Gathered

II. Building Power Creating the conditions that make it possible to create, shape, self-determine, & influence agendas

Black Power is an ancestral memory and manifestation of an intrinsic and embodied desire to return back to our most free and liberated selves and actualize our destiny. Honing Black Power requires us to keep and improve the systems and resources our ancestors have developed, as well as return back to the harmonious connection we had with nature, the earth, and each other; a reminder that we are living and are directly connected to the vision of our ancestors. - NC BLOC Power Study Group

14 Art Work by Nico LeBlanc

The Road to Building Power

As a statewide formation that centers transformative organizing —charged by our members and wider base—we understood the concept of building power had to be broken down into areas that represented the various levels of geographic area, existing organizing work, and priorities of our membership organizations. First we hosted the Black Leadership and Movement Convergence Greensboro, NC (2019), 83 Black leaders in attended ,representing more than 20 counties across the state, we mapped the ecosystem, both power and relationships, and worked to gain a deeper understanding of the experiments needed to help us practice, contest, and create the power we desired in the areas we represented as a collective. Then to gain more clarity on how and what types of power we desired, we hosted a “Power Defined” Strategy and Power Study (2019) meeting and collectively defined power as it relates to our work, our whole selves, and our vision for the future. We engaged in a shared power analysis, scenario planning, assessed the types of power we were expressing and flexing, and developed a vision for where we wanted to go. The primary finding of this study group was that, as a collective, we wanted more opportunities to flex more people power, governing, and relational power. We’re strong in expressing cultural, narrative, political, and civic power; and needed to strengthen our ability to unearth economic, mass engagement, spiritual, healing, and cultural power. Finally, we brought these concepts back to Black leaders, at Franklinton Center at Bricks (2019) to share our new collective definitions and frameworks of power. We engaged 78 folks who voted on the definitions, assessments, and agreed on our five power areas of focus: Local Power, Statewide Power, Electoral Power, Economic Power, and Cultural & Healing Power and identified 14 issue and identity areas that 1 naturally existed or were forming: Housing, Environmental & Climate Justice, Healing, Youth, Women, Trans & Queer, Workers, Educators, Land & Farmers, Creatives, Communications Specialists, Alternatives & Mutual Aid, Men, and Police Accountability. From there, Project B.U.I.L.D.—Building Black Unity, Infrastructure, and Leadership Development—was created as an overarching framework to hold all of our networks, projects, and programs together. This allowed us to build a shared culture grounded in our values and principles; create a way for our members to practice building local power and agendas; support the BUILD Local Power Squad development of alternatives and community-based campaigns; create ways to Ella Baker Project integrate statewide and national campaigns; and track our progress and ability BLOC Squad Storytellers Academy to reach our collective goals. As a collective we started with our wildest dreams Black Freedoms Fellowship and allowed them to build our experiments. The following are some of what we Rest & Play Retreat were able to accomplish under Project B.U.I.L.D.: Black Caucus Project North Carolina 4 Black Lives NC United for Black Lives Stone Soup Collaborative NC Defense League POC Pipeline Project Local Power Project Build’n In Black August Malcolm X Liberation University Dinner & Strategy Tours (5) Phone Banking Fellowship NC SPAN

BLOC Power Rising Insight Voices BLOC Power Rising Skills to Protect our People (SKILL POP) NC Freedom Network NC Coordinators Fellowship Power, Protection, & Encouragement (PP&E) NC Freedom Freedom Fellowship Black University

1| Shout out to Charlene Carruthers for providing us with the framework title.

Request for Support & Collaboration Fund Black August Political Education Fund Juneteenth for Black Joy Fund Build’n Black Movements Fund Community Safety & Alternatives Fund Black Economics Table Sovereign Underground One Nation Under a Groove Action Camp (5 years) The Peoples’ Post Election Space Pay Black Femmes Survey

Building Power

Build’n Local Coalitions, Collectives, and Power

Local & Statewide Power: Strategic Goals Establishing self-determined Black communities on the city, state, and regional levels, where we are in governing power in at least 5-10 locales and have launched a statewide Black-led movement formation. 5 Year Objectives: Functioning alternative in each locale Weaken the power of the carceral state Build effective coalition of representatives from Black formations in each locale 5% of city’s Black population is engaged/ touched by local organizations in the ecosystem

Building Local Power Build’n Local Coalitions, Collectives, and Power

We understood that building local power as a statewide formation meant we had to approach it on both a statewide level and at the local (city, county, and regional) levels. As members of M4BL, in alignment with Black Power Rising, we applied and were accepted to the national Local Power Project, working and growing alongside other formations across the country to test experiments geared toward building power. The Local Power Project was a true experiment. We tested best practices, new models, and tactics to help amplify the work of our supported and membership formations. We led learning cohorts, independent organizing campaigns, coordinator fellowships, etc. No matter the shape, we worked to meet the needs and build the local capacity of our local leaders. Local: In total, we supported 33 local formations spanning 19 counties, built 28 collectives and coalitions of 15+ organizers and organizations, and reached more than 350 organizers. Yearly, we were able to (1) reach anywhere from 1,000–5,000 community members in each locale, (2) support the launching of 3– 5 campaigns or projects, (3) build and test at least 10 alternatives, and most of all, (4) build lasting relationships. Thanks to M4BL’s Local Power Project, we were able to provide more than $250,000 in foundational and organizational grants to new and developing local coalitions trying to shift the conditions of and build alternatives for their local communities. Here are some of the formations supported by the local power project:

Village of C.A.R.E.

Conditions Shifted: From 2019- 2024, through the Local Power Project, NC BLOC members and Local Power partners were able to transform organizing into concrete shifts in power. We supported wins for community-led alternatives, challenged problematic civic leaders, District Attorneys, and judges, organized and won the end to some local 287(g) agreements, built rapid-response systems for deportations and raids, and advanced police oversight and civilian review boards with real power. We also built durable coalitions that shifted narratives around Black issues and strengthened local organizing capacity. During the 2020 uprising, NC BLOC provided critical skills, relationships, resources, and infrastructure that communities could mobilize immediately. Our impact was not only in the campaigns we supported, but in strengthening communities’ capacity to organize, win, respond to crisis, and exercise power for themselves.

19 Counties Engaged 33 Supported Legislative/ civic Alternatives built, 8 wins 21 won, or operated engaged 12 Active Coalitions 146 Leaders 2+ years 3 Collective Platforms 5 Statewide Actions Local Formations

to $275,000 Re-granted grassroots formations reach / 23,541 Reported mass engagement Movement 10 People’s Assemblies

Building Statewide Power Build’n Statewide Networks and Power

One of the goals of the Ella Baker Convergence was to identify the issue and identity priority network areas, as well as the individuals, organizations, and formations that had the desire to build those networks. During the event, existing statewide formations identified themselves, while some organizations stated that they had strategic goals to launch a statewide network, while others began to naturally form. So, we decided to launch the Ella Baker Project through an application process, with the goal of starting in 2020. We received 15 applications, and 13 were ready to move forward. The program used a cohort learning style, with the hope that the networks would be able to cross-collaborate and coordinate around connected issues. Each network had the same governance and base-building baseline requirements: a leadership council of five or more people and a statewide network of 30+ people. The programming, strategic goals, and outcomes were set by the individual formations. During this project, they all launched experiments, local organizing programs, and political education trainings; developed alternatives; engaged between 50–150 people; launched their own campaigns and fellowships; and so much more. When COVID-19 started, we were able to pivot and use the networks to re-grant over $300,000 in mutual aid directly to community members, leaders, and organizations who needed financial support. Each network re-granted $10,000 individually and through a larger call, we were able to distribute another two rounds totaling $150,000. This unexpected shift helped each network reach more than 250 people and formations and helped alleviate financial burdens, even if temporarily. Through it all, they switched to online engagements and were able to accomplish their programming and organizing goals. During the three years of the Ella Baker Project, we were also able to support and co-create four other statewide networks and coalitions that were not counted toward the program: Black and Brown Policy Network, Peoples Power Coalition, Social Justice Emotional Response Collective, and the HB370 Coalition. Here are the EBP Networks:

Statewide: In total, we granted $160,000 as foundational grants to support the development of 13 issue or identity statewide networks: Amplified Voices, Araminta Society, Black Trans Network, Black University, Black Women's Round Table, Currency, League of Intelligence, NC Statewide Police Accountability Network, Sovereign Underground, Ella Baker Organizing Collective, Sanctuary in the City, Center for Racial Equity in Education. size of 17 Statewide $375,000 Mutual Aid Dollars 105 Average formations statewide network formations 35 Counties Engaged 5 Statewide $160,000 Project Support still existing 18 3 Collective Actions

Building Electoral Power Build’n Opportunities to create the conditions that make it possible to create, shape, selfdetermine, & influence agendas

Electoral Strategic Goals Attempting to capture clear electoral victories with an eye toward preventing the rise of whitenationalist and authoritarian rule, and moving us towards an anti-racist democracy by: Providing or partnering with organizations that host leadership development and political education to BIPOC individuals interested in challenging the current electoral process by engaging in local races that position us to govern and shift the balance of power statewide. Signing on 50-100 Black elected officials and civic leaders who support our values to ensure we move towards governance that champions our vision. Launching and supporting campaigns that help mitigate harm and producing our own offensive legislation Shared Messaging: Developing and sharing integrated GOTV messaging that articulates our vision and what we are seeking to accomplish, and measuring their effectiveness across election cycles. Launch at least 2 shared messaging mailers, and other tactics, that increase voter turnout and engagement by 3-5%.

Accomplishments & Impact For NC BLOC, electoral engagement has never been simply about turning out voters. Over the past ten years, we have used elections as opportunities to build relationships, develop leadership, expand civic participation, and strengthen the capacity of poor and working-class communities to shape the decisions that affect their lives. To us, voter engagement is only one part of a larger cycle of organizing: organizing people, building political consciousness, participating in elections, and holding those elected accountable between election cycles. Through Integrated Voter Engagement, we embedded voter turnout and civic engagement across our organizing work. Community members were invited to participate in local actions, events, People’s Movement Assemblies, political education, campaigns, become members of local organizations and NC BLOC, in addition to turning out to vote. This approach allowed electoral engagement to serve as an entry point into deeper and more sustained organizing. Over the past ten years, NC BLOC has helped shift GOTV from a transactional activity into a yearround power-building strategy, moving people from being contacted to becoming participants, organizers, leaders, and members of a broader movement. Through this work, electoral engagement has become a pathway for building durable community power and creating stronger connections between elections, organizing, and long-term accountability.We trained Action Fellows and member leaders in relational organizing and voter engagement, building the skills and confidence of community members to engage their families, neighbors, and broader networks. We hosted civic education brunches, collaborated with barbershops and HBCUs, and other activations, and sent out vision and issue-focused mailers. During high-stakes election cycles, we scaled voter outreach while continuing to invest in off-year and midterm engagement, building lasting relationships, voting habits, and civic leadership. As well as, expanded the concept of Election Protection, to go beyond just the ballot, deploying more than 60 armed security guards to protect parties at the polls and voters at locations with high white supremacist intimidation activity. Lastly, we hosted culturally engaging watch parties and post-election spaces focused on helping our communities process outcomes and, if desired, move into strategic planning for the organizing response needed.

52 Orgs Supported 65 Re-grants made $10,000 Average size of regrant folks trained on what it 42 BIPOC takes to be come a civic leader

11 BLOC Members ran for office BLOC Members who became

9 civic leaders

Member led Civic

52 Engagement trainings Bloc led Civic

25 Engagement trainings attend civic 4,325 Folks trainings & PE 375,000 Voters Engaged 125,000 Calls Made 150,000 Doors Knocked 39 Counties Engaged

average 87% Yearly turn out rate

5 Lobby days led or co-led Electoral 13 Clear Victories 6 Mailer Campaigns 5 Post-Election Events Party at the Polls, PP&E, 52 town halls, other community events

Building Economic Power Build’n our ability to resource ourselves to do the work we want

Mapping & Redistributing Resources Strategic Goals Research & Assessments: Launching or supporting 5 community needs-based assessments that help to inform our strategic plans, agendas, and build alternatives. Launch a Movement-Mapping survey: Identifying what resources, networks, relationships, alternatives, politically-aligned Black institutions, etc., already exist, and bringing those entities into BLOC's network (100 participants). Identifying what resources are needed to ensure self-sustainability (i.e., best practices, existing models, trainings, etc.). Mapping the power of the capitalist system that creates profit and accumulates capital, which is used to influence political parties and the state. Map Presence: Mapping where there is an abundance of Black folks so as to intentionally build there; namely, places where we are more than 50% of a city or county's population, and also historically Blackled-and-incorporated towns.

Accomplishments & Impact

Mapping and redistributing resources is not simply about collecting information or moving money—it is a strategy for building collective infrastructure, investing in our futures, and helping to actualize our wildest dreams. Through member assessments, community surveys, statewide convenings, relationship mapping, political education, and direct engagement with local formations, we have mapped needs, identified assets and opportunities for collaboration, and surfaced gaps in funding, research, leadership development, technical assistance, communications, organizing capacity, and relationships. Our funding model prioritizes people power and grassroots leadership, recognizing that communities closest to the issues are best positioned to identify solutions and build lasting change. Over the past decade, we’ve launched 4 statewide and 6 community-led, wants-and-needs assessments, facilitated countless power and collective resource mapping sessions, and intentionally moved resources into the hands of people doing the work, helping build the leadership, relationships, infrastructure, and community-controlled alternatives needed for long-term transformation.

Mapping: The first step in our resource allocation has been mapping—identifying the resources, power, expertise, relationships, materials, and other assets already present in our ecosystem. This helped us build collective capacity, strengthen movements, and identify gaps we could fill. Collective assessments during statewide and local gatherings have deepened collaboration, strengthened strategies around shared demands and targets, and enabled us to fundraise collectively when needed, reducing competition and increasing collaboration. At the hyper-local level, we’ve mapped not only community needs, but also offerings, wants, desires, and visions for the future. This has helped us identify priorities while creating “offers and needs” lists that communities can use to meet their own needs and share their own resources. Our mapping practices have helped us see opportunities, gaps, and collective possibilities—and use that knowledge to guide strategy, investment, and movement building. Community Investment: Over the past 10 years, we’ve intentionally redistributed resources to build leadership, capacity, collective power, and community-controlled alternatives. To date we have regranted more than $2.5 million directly to grassroots leaders, community members, businesses, cultural workers, and local formations. These resources have supported communities through disasters, sustained organizations and grassroots businesses, and advanced community-led alternatives. Conferences, Scholarships, & Membership Funds: We also invest in people power by providing honorariums and compensation for member-led trainings and co-facilitation. For every training and gathering led by BLOC, we cover childcare, food, housing, materials, transportation, and have a sliding scale registration cost starting at $5, and if folks can’t exchange currency, we accept time baking. We do this to ensure most barriers are removed so anyone who wants to can participate. For members we have a Scholarship Request Fund that can be used to attend conferences, trainings, and skill-building workshops anywhere in the country, so they can bring new knowledge back to BLOC and their communities. We have a Request for Support and Mutual Aid fund that has a rolling deadline and support our members in collaborating with each other, host local events, and help in an emergency. Last, in addition to program specific funds, we have annual funds- Juneteenth for Black Joy, and Black August fund- all of which support our members in practicing what they’ve learned and bring statewide initiatives to their local communities. Emergency Funding: Providing raid-response and emergency relief funding was not initially in our goals, but after being called in to support and responding to multiple moments, even before the official vote, we’ve made a commitment to fundraising and re-grant monies directly to members and local organizations who are supporting communities directly on the ground.

Charlotte Uprising & HB2 (2016), Hurricane Florence (2018), COVID-19 (2020), Hurricane Helene (2024), and countless other rapid response moments to police injustice, arrest/jail support, and bail funds. Since 2016, and led by directives from the individuals coordinating or impacted, we’ve been able to fundraise and regrant at least $50,000 of support during these moments. Educational Materials & Resources: In addition to re granting money, we’ve created and shared learning materials, guides, and mapping results so that members and partners can use these resources to strengthen their own local and statewide strategies. This approach ensures that we are redistributing not only financial resources, but also knowledge, tools, and information that build collective capacity and support stronger organizing.

$2,662,767 Total community investment request for support and $175,450 partnership funds and grants for $192,850 scholarships learning and mobilization paid to business and service

$496,457 providers

explicitly re-granted to fellows,

$385,495 contractors, cultural workers, healers, trainers, facilitators, for honorariums,

mutual aid direct to the ground a

$789,635 after uprisings, rapid response

moments, and natural disasters

er led Re granted to BIPOC

$655,780 formations and organizations 5 Movement mapping surveys Assessments & 7 Community Surveys

Publications & Training Resources

III. Identifying Opportunities for Joint Practice & Mass Engagement

“The mandate for Black people in this time – to avenge the suffering of our ancestors, earn the respect of future generations, and be willing to be transformed in the service of the work.” - Mary Hooks; Atlanta, GA

24 Art Work by Nico LeBlanc

The Road Towards Joint Practice & Cross Collaboration What can we do together that we cannot do alone to win over the hearts and minds of our beloved communities? This question has shaped how we approach collective power, joint practice, and mass engagement. For BLOC, joint practice and mass engagement are not simply about partnership or how many people we can reach. They are about building relationships, developing shared capacity, and creating the conditions for our communities to survive, thrive, and imagine beyond what currently exists. We recognize that the struggle for freedom and liberation is fought on many fronts—and that no single organization, sector, or tactic can meet the moment alone. Our work brings people and formations together to practice, learn, and act collectively, strengthening the relationships and political alignment needed to move from individual efforts toward shared power. By investing in this collective practice, we are building an ecosystem capable of responding to immediate needs while advancing a longer-term vision for liberation. Cross-Movement Work- We’ve connected our members to other local, statewide, regional and national movements, bringing resources, relationships, strategies, and lessons back to North Carolina while ensuring that our local experiences inform broader movement work. We connected organizations, organizers, and movements across sectors and geographies to move beyond isolated campaigns and build shared infrastructure. This cross-sector work has created opportunities to align strategies, pool resources, share political analysis, and respond to emerging threats and opportunities with greater speed and coordination. Our members have gone on to lead campaigns and hold leadership roles beyond NC BLOC, including the Movement for Black Lives, while helping to build and shape emerging formations such as the Rising Majority. Through this participation, we have worked to embed our political commitments, democratic decision-making practices, and community-centered priorities into broader movement spaces while translating national actions into local context. Joint Practice- NC BLOC leads at least 4 days of action – Juneteenth for Black Joy, Political Education and Action for Black August, and two actions, either on the ground or virtual – to encourage folks to participate in organizing or civic engagement. Additionally, we’ve deployed to other states to help door knock, campaign, respond rapidly to unrest, providing voter education, and committing to volunteer efforts. We’ve partnered with other local statewide formations like Advance NC, Black Voters Matter, Common Cause, Democracy NC, and others, on their campaign efforts, and most of the time, connect national formations to our local members, bringing and organizing effort to their communities. Also, Action Camp, our annual mass organizing training, has one full day committed to joint-practice, moving our participants from learning into implementation. Leadership Development- Through leadership development, peer learning, and shared campaigns, we have developed and trained more than 5,000, expanding their skills and relationships beyond their individual organizations. Providing opportunities for our folks learn beyond NC and bring it back to NC, and also being trained up to train others. Over the past decade, we’ve been able to go beyond simple partnerships— we’ve created an ecosystem where organizations are better connected to one another, leaders have greater access to resources and relationships, and movements are better positioned to act collectively when the moment demands it. We have invested in the relationships, trust, and shared political foundation that make collective action possible—and have helped build the infrastructure to sustain it beyond any 25 single campaign or organization.

Leadership Development Building a Leader-full Movement, one training at a time

Strategic Goals Provided opportunities to engage our community members, organizations, and network partners in skill-development and skillshares, and joint political education by: Supporting organizations, community members, etc. in hosting 10 community skill-share opportunities. Identify 10 institutions who are aligned with our values and are committed to providing training to domestic workers, elders, youth activists, strategists, students, farmers, business owners, community members, etc., and support the political development of associated institutions. Political & Civic Education: Collectively educating 5,000 BIPOC organizers and community members on key issues related to our campaigns. Developing the facilitation skills of at least 25 local leaders

Accomplishments & Impact Interwoven into all of our programs, projects, and strategies is the goal of training at least 5,000 North Carolinians across class, sector, occupation, education level, and political spectrum. To meet this goal we deployed a couple of tactics (1) when hosting statewide gatherings we always offered 3-5 skill shares, tactical skills, and political or civic education; (2) support our member leaders in developing and facilitating their own trainings or train them to facilitate and lead trainings; (3) host large (40+ people) summits and series geared towards sharing tactical skills, best practices, and increasing everyone’s political alignment; (4) collaborate with other local, statewide, and national partners to bring trainings to our members and communities - so we can train and engage more folks; (5) host virtual teach-ins, during moments of unrest or action, to provide a deeper political framework and support and streamline calls to action; and (6) create fellowships and cohort learning style programs (BLOC Squad, Skill P.O.P) In total: NC BLOC and our members have developed more than 80 trainings and teach-ins and politicized and trained more than 7,500 individuals from across the state of North Carolina. We’ve provided various topics and themes from traditional organizing and relationship building, to resilience trainings like water filtration, stop the bleed, herbal medicine making, to alternative trainings, like how to advocate for a HEART program, conflict mediation, creating intergenerational spaces, innovative fundraising and so much more. The folks who’ve gone through BLOC trainings have taken what they learned with and applied it beyond NC’s organizing ecosystem, from teachers, healers, social workers, and even to national organizers.

62 Member-led Skill Shares 7,853 20 SKILL POPs 85 5 Virtual Series X Liberation 145 Member-led PE & LD Trainings 4 Malcolm universities 1,025 Black University Youth Politicized 6 Years of fellowships & cohorts Sectors: Health/ Healers, Fellowship programs 13 6 North Carolinans politicized or trained by BLOC & BLOC’s Members Trainings and Political education led and created by BLOCs team

Creatives, Workers, Youth, Black Women, New Organizers, Comms

5 Yearly Action Camps

Freedom Fellowship Accomplishments & Impact The NC BLOC Protect Black Freedoms Fellowship has allowed dedicated BLOC members to amplify their impact across the state. This multi-month fellowship was designed to support leadership development, community potential, and the ability of campaigns to make Black liberation more possible. Participants joined forces with other committed organizers to push forward strategic campaigns, while also gaining skills and experiences to further support their work. Participants left with essential organizing skills, deepened political understanding, and effective base-building techniques.

Goals

1. Develop a leaderful NC, rooted in our values, prepared and practiced essential organizing skills and politics. 2. Train, develop, and strengthen base-building and mobilizing Black-led organizers to work across North Carolina. 3. Maximize the ability of the BLOC ecosystem to do shared work on a local and state scale. 4. Deepen relationships within North Carolina in order to build power, weaken the carceral state, and strengthen local coalition work & alternatives. 5. Increase collective capacity to create and advance campaigns that win.

Impact

5 years of fellowships 250 fellows developed 7 fellowship programs facilitated 75 host organizations Age

Geography Northeastern NC 8.1% Sandhills (Southeast) 8.1%

49+ 3%

Charlotte / Mecklenburg 22.6%

39-49 17%

Purpose Feedback Overall, what impact would you say participating in the Black Freedoms Fellowship have on you or your organizing journey?

88%

Positive Impact

Do you still utilize some of the skills you learned during the fellowship?

88%

Yes

Do you still reference the materials shared with you during the fellowship?

70%

Yes

Would you like to be plugged back into NC BLOC in the future?

91%

Yes

$100,000 granted to fellows $300,000 granted to host sites

Highlights

16-18 5%

“The fellowship is front and center in my other advocacy or community spaces. I feel proud. It has become a model for how I may interact with others.” -2022 Freedom Fellow 19-24

Eastern NC 8.1%

35%

“The fellowship allowed me, as a leader...to offer to those with lived experience the opportunity to be included in a way that was equitable, in a way that takes care of them first.” -2021 Host

31-38 15%

Piedmont/Triad 19.4% Triangle 33.9%

25-30 25%

Action Camp

Accomplishments & Impact

Durham, NC - Durham Community Bail Fund

Action Camp is a multiracial, intergenerational, and interactive training weekend designed to help participants improve their organizing skills, practice skills they want to grow, and deepen relationships between community members, local leaders, and organizations. It’s a space for people, organizations and collectives that are aligned with or committed to aligning with NC BLOC’s liberatory values, those who believe culture and relational organizing are the heart of social change, and those who are committed to cocreating equitable campaigns that work to dismantle systems of oppression and build liberating alternatives.

Over the last five years we’ve hosted Action Camp, an annual training where we partner with our members to support them in and utilizing the expertise of our members for trainings and partnering with local members to help them reach their local campaign goals. This training embodies all of our BUILD goals into one event, bringing together new and seasoned organizers, to practice, learn, and lead together. Action Camp’s workshop Carrboro,NC - Activate IFC! tracks include: Survival and Disaster Preparation, Culture & Healing, Intergenerational & Relational Organizing, Fundraising & Resourcing, Community Defense, and Healing & Alternatives.

Activate IFC! Carrboro, NC -

45 Workshops & Trainings 4 Cities/ Counties 5 Collective Dinners 220 Total Participants Knocked, 3,750 Doors 8 Community Partners Conversations Had 22 Member Led Workshops $6,000 Support Funds Granted

2025

Asheville, NC- M ultiple P a rt ne rs ic Concord, NC - Community Civ Activist

Identifying Opportunities for Mass Engagement Build’n with our people, where they are

Mass Engagement Strategic Goals Mass Engagement: Attempt to engage at least 10% (20,000) of Black people within the state of North Carolina and 20,000+ working-class individuals Develop a Black communications network of 10 or more, Black-led organizations or entities that work together to amplify Black stories and campaigns. Create or support a platform that would amplify shared messaging of our narrative and help us to build a joint culture around Black liberation and freedom Training 50 storytellers or communications specialists who can shift the current anti-Black narrative and spread a new, Pro-Black narrative that aligns with our vision of creating an anti-racist and Black-led democracy. Developing a popular education tool that helps to share and amplify our big, bold vision for Black people

NC BLOC’s Engagement Map

Engaged 2 or more folks

Accomplishments & Impact Amount of cities engaged in top 63 counties

To reach our Mass Engagement goals of reaching and building relationships with 20,000 black, poc, poor, and working folks, we set a digestible base-building collective goal to reach, on average, any where from 2,000-5,000. With a focus on supporting our members in engaging folks where they are locally. Our framework consisted of building both wide (statewide) and deep (locally), creating pipelines and actions for the folks who wanted to continue to be engaged or were interested in joining a local or statewide formation. Through our mass engagement, we have been able to build lasting relationships with community members and leaders, increase our members bases by 15% yearly, test political and strategic alignment across a wide age, geographic, and political spectrum to spread our politic far and wide, and most of all move folks into action on local, statewide, and national issues. Relational organizing takes time and consideration and we have a commitment to ending transactional organizing with every knock, conversation, and interaction. Over the past ten years, we’ve met folks where they are, in their communities, on their porches, fed their children, laughed, cried with them, honored their humanity, dignity, and worked to meet a need before asking them to take action with us, building trust and recuperation. Our organizing has helped to keep North Carolina Purple, engaging folks in the small towns and counties that get overlooked because they don't historically show up as progressive. Supporting and training local change makers to build a base of 50 or more people, to help move the issues their communities care about, has helped to build lasting community change. We have engaged more than 470,000 folks from across NC and all of our projects. That’s more than 45,000 folks a year, and way beyond the goals we set, but together with our members, everyone was able to do their part. Most of all, when we say statewide - we mean statewide. Over the past ten years, through our programming, projects, membership, base-building, and organizing, we’ve been able to touch folks in 73 of NC’s 100 counties- engaging folks from over 166 cities. We are so proud of our members and communities.

networks 476,567 Engaged across all projects 1 Communications created- Amplified Voices 50% Base-building, Civic Engagement developed through 62 Storytellers trainings, workshops, and fellowships 20% Fellowship & trainings, programs, Digital

73/100 Counties reached 166 Cities Engaged

networks who 7 Statewide engaged 150 or more people

Engagement, In-person gatherings, etc. 10% Rapid-response moments & Disaster relief 10% Assessments and surveys 10% Joint Practice

Identifying Opportunities for Joint Practice & Cross Movement Identifying opportunities for collaboration around short-term campaigns, political education, actions, and messaging.

Joint Practice Strategic Goals Collective Action: Launching one intersectional, issue-based platform that amplifies key problems affecting Black communities in North Carolina, with the intention of positively impacting the overall cultural, social, economic, and political power of said Black communities. Statewide Campaigns: Supporting or launching 5-10 statewide or local campaigns that amplify the collective platform, but specifically center on local, or issue-based demands. Launch Political Education Teach-Ins: Hosting and coordinating days and weeks of action. Base-Building: Supporting at least 5 statewide and local organizations in their attempts to base-build with community members to develop their networks, partners, campaigns, skills, political education, etc., by providing tools for engagement and tracking. Increasing NC BLOC’s paid membership base by 10% each year.

Cross-Movement Provide short-term support to build a statewide formation that is committed to addressing anti-Blackness, with a focus on ensuring that local & statewide organizations are working more deliberately with each other. Platforms & Campaigns: Launch at least one intersectional, issue-based platform that amplifies key problems affecting Black communities in North Carolina, with the intention of positively impacting the overall cultural, social, economic, and political power of said Black communities.

Accomplishments & Impact Over the past ten years, NC BLOC has worked to build the connective tissue that allows organizations, campaigns, and communities to move together. We have helped create spaces for organizations to identify shared challenges, develop collective platforms, coordinate campaigns, and build relationships across issues, geography, and movements. Our approach recognizes that no single organization can address the conditions facing Black communities alone; lasting change requires collective action and cross-movement alignment. NC BLOC has supported statewide and local campaigns, political education, days of action, base-building, and shared communications that connect local demands to broader movement goals. We have provided organizations with tools, relationships, and infrastructure to strengthen their community engagement and build deeper bases of support. Our cross-movement work has also created opportunities for organizations working on racial justice, economic justice, environmental justice, civic engagement, workers’ rights, and other issues to work more deliberately together. Through these relationships and formations, NC BLOC has helped move the field from working in parallel toward greater coordination and shared strategy. Over ten years, this work has strengthened a statewide ecosystem capable of sharing resources, amplifying local struggles, coordinating action, and building collective power. Our impact is not simply measured by the campaigns launched or organizations convened, but by the relationships and shared infrastructure that enable movements to act together, respond to changing conditions, and advance a collective vision for Black communities across North Carolina.

platforms created to engage 5 Collective Platforms 3 statewide folks into action Movement formations led or 2 National developed 3 Statewide coalitions (non-EBP) led

8 Collective Weeks of Action engaged through Collective 47,557 Folks Action & Base-building

7 Member-led collective Platforms Statewide Campaigns

6 Supported or launched 12 Political education series

IV. Building Alternatives Creating the conditions that make it possible to create, shape, self-determine, & influence agendas

Art Work by Nico LeBlanc

“Building anti-capitalist economic systems and alternatives is an imperative.” -Esteban Kelly, MXLU 2021

The Road to Building Alternatives

When touring M4BL’s Black Power Rising across the state and meeting with organizers in each location, one of the primary pieces of feedback we received was that we could not have a strategic plan focused on building power without also centering the work of building alternatives and creating opportunities for healing. The case was clear: if we do not create opportunities to heal and build the things that can help us become less reliant on the State, we will be doomed to repeat old habits and will not provide folks with tangible options to practice new ways of being. As a new formation, we could lead with the intention of resourcing our people and institutions so that they have the support they need to be present, thrive, and withstand the political moments we so often find ourselves in. For NC BLOC, building and practicing alternative systems is about more than creating alternatives to capitalism—it is about building the collective capacity, relationships, resources, and political consciousness necessary for our communities to create, sustain, and govern different economic systems. We believe our communities already hold many of the practices, knowledge, relationships, and imagination needed to build economic liberation; our role is to help connect, strengthen, resource, and expand those efforts. Over the past ten years, we were able to support farmers keeping their farms, get materials they need to deliver directly to communities. We’ve created spaces for practicing anti-capitalist ways 1 to exchange and barter, like free or low cost-markets, hosted offers and needs sessions, training

on alternative economic systems like susus, bartering, and time banking. We sustained a twoyear network, Sovereign Underground, that was able to gather folks with the intention of collectively study and develop anti-capitalist principles to anchor our work. The impact is both practical and political. We have helped communities move from simply resisting economic injustice toward building the economic relationships, institutions, and alternatives our communities need to survive and thrive. By connecting local experiments to a broader statewide and global solidarity economy ecosystem, NC BLOC is helping build the infrastructure for economic self-determination, racial justice, and lasting movement power.

Building Economic Alternatives Build’n our ability to resource ourselves

Economic Alternatives Strategic Goals Building systems to support Black folks in maintaining ownership of Black land, supporting cooperatives utilizing existing funding to aid business development and different income generators. Create a collective of formations and individuals committed to studying anticapitalist practices, developing shared values and principles. Provide trainings on community economic alternatives, and spaces to actually practice them.

Accomplishments & Impact Through B.U.I.L.D.’n Alternatives & Economics, Sovereign Underground, the NC Black Economies Table, re-grants, and leadership development programs, we have worked to strengthen Black-led and BIPOC solidarity economy infrastructure and support communities in divesting from extractive systems while reinvesting in community-led ones. This work has included popular education on anti-capitalist economic practices, worker-owned cooperatives, time banking, mutual aid, reparations, food sovereignty, offers-and-needs sessions, political education, and alternative approaches to community investment. We have connected Black-led cooperatives, mutual aid groups, farmers, organizers, and community institutions while creating spaces to exchange practices, resources, and strategies. The NC Black Economies Table connected solidarity economy efforts across nearly 20 counties, helping local experiments become part of a broader statewide ecosystem. Our Building Economic Alternatives work has helped to strengthen our members’ ability to sustain themselves, develop their own solutions, and build long-term economic power.

2 Economic Networks Created of anti-capitalist 1 Set Economic Principles & Values Stone Soup Program Trainings

Underground 18 Sovereign Participants to work on Black 6 Projects Economic Alternatives

& Alternatives 13 28 Economics formations engaged 3 Successful farm protections $75,000 Re-granted to alternatives 3 Alternatives Funds

Some of our BET Community Partners:

Family Farmers Market, High Point, NC

Building Community Alternatives Building the foundation that supports a Just Transition

Strategic Goals Support Existing Alternatives: Supporting Black infrastructures and establishments that provide alternatives to harmful institutions in NC. Support the Development of Institutional Alternatives: Building alternative structures to counter harmful institutions, by supporting the development of new economic, cultural, and educational systems (including trade schools) that allow us to feed, clothe, and house ourselves so as to combat hunger, homelessness, and hopelessness; to take care of our communities.

Community Led- Alternatives: Build programs that support local community members and leaders create the alternatives they need Create programs that support members and local leaders share their skills to build resilience. Develop 20 leaders and train 500-1,000 folks. Emergency preparations - support at least 100 community members prepare or respond to emergencies Create a network for local organizers to share best practices on alternatives to policing and the carceral state

LOC'D & LOADED SAVING OUR SELVES

Accomplishments & Impact Over the past ten years, we have invested deeply in our beloved communities and members by creating spaces to imagine what alternatives need to exist and then building, training, and supporting our members in making them a reality. We have provided financial support to individuals and formations working to build the alternatives communities envision. We’ve hosted trainings ranging from altar building and medicine making to how to launch co-operatives and other community banking models, co-developed economic principles and practices to ensure we did not replicate capitalist ways of being when it comes to money and sharing resources. This work reflects our broader commitment to building power not only through traditional political organizing, but also by investing in the institutions, relationships, skills, and infrastructure that allow our communities to sustain themselves. Farming, housing, and land: We’ve supported our members and partners in creating farmers markets, Black farmer networks, community and urban farms, and land acquisition programs. We’ve supported our members in reimagining and building towards housing alternatives for folks returning home from incarceration and creating safe spaces for our homeless community members and supported neighborhood associations with pooled resources to buy empty neighborhood lots. Emergency preparations: We’ve provided supplies for community sharing and distributions to clean and store water, to clear roads and remove dampness. Created and distributed emergency Go Bags and emergency contraceptives. Hosted trainings on how to Stop the Bleeding, street medics, legal observing, creating blockades and unarresting community members when needed. Anti-carceral and community safety alternative: Our members have participated in Mommas Day Bail outs, created and shared best practices on how to win and set up independent, city and county-funded Deescalation and Reconciliation Teams (DART) , HEART programs, Dial-A-Dula and other community response networks and hotlines, in addition to funding and amplifying bail funds and court watches, Accessible Healing: We’ve supported our members in building networks of healers, social workers, doulas, and therapists that offer free or low-cost services, funded rest and artist residencies, cemetery care projects, and community apothecaries. Unionizing: Although we did not approach unionizing ourselves, we did partner with and support local union organizations like UEA 150, CMAE, and Black Workers for Justice, amplifying their projects and campaigns and sending folks their way to increase their membership. to support $345,000 Granted alternative Development

& existing alternatives 56 Local supported

Focused 10 Rapid response moments 31 Alternatives Trainings alternatives won 5 Institutional 26 Black Farmers Supported by members 48 Existing Alternatives Supported 1 NC Greenbook Project Black Business Supported preparation kits 350 Emergency 182 by BLOC Distributed

20 Skill P.O.P.s Hosted

on emergency 175 Trained preparedness

V. Building Shared Culture: Healing as Movement Building

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas” - Shirley Chisholm:

Art Work by Nico LeBlanc

The Road to Building a Shared Culture & Opportunities for Healing Collective Culture, Healing, and Sustainability: For us, shared culture and access to healing are essential to building sustainable movements. Over the past decade, NC BLOC has worked to build a movement culture that recognizes that people cannot sustain long-term organizing without addressing trauma, harm, relationships, and collective well-being. We have intentionally invested in spaces and practices where people can process harm, build trust, repair relationships, and imagine new ways of being together. We have named internalized anti-Blackness, white supremacist culture, patriarchal violence, misogynoir, fatphobia, homophobia, and transphobia as inconsistent with our vision of liberation. We ground this work in the understanding that everyone has work to do to challenge these systems within ourselves and our movements—and that no one is immune from reproducing them or from experiencing new and compounded harm as BIPOC, poor, and working-class people living under racial capitalism. Rather than treating healing as an add-on or a “healing room” at an event, we have worked to make it part of how we organize. We have created workshops and spaces for people to develop tools for addressing conflict, understanding relationships and attachment, processing trauma, experiencing bodywork, and repairing harm. We have also built lasting relationships with community-based practitioners, healers, artists, and cultural workers, expanding access to practices that support individual and collective well-being and making healing less dependent on professional systems. This work has helped shift our organizing culture away from one that glorifies sacrifice toward one that recognizes care, healing, and well-being as conditions for lasting collective power. By caring for the people who make movements possible, we strengthen our ability to build relationships, confront injustice, sustain struggle, and create the liberated communities we are fighting for, today.

Building Shared Culture Shifting Culture & Investing in Cultural workers

Strategic Goals Cultural & Social Engagement: Hosting or supporting 5-10 Black Joy celebrations, events, or campaigns that encourage our community members to be unapologetically Black, work towards alignment, and highlight and amplify Black Culture. Helping our communities by gaining a deeper understanding of all forms of oppression, and strategizing to combat antiBlackness. Black Radical Imagination: Supporting the development of 1-5 local spaces or campaigns that carry the Black Radical Imagination so that we can envision, dream, and work towards creating the world we want to see. One where we heal our communities, provide resources to help address key concerns and needs around food, housing, alternatives to policing, and the healing of families (chosen and birth) and our relationships with each other as Black people. Build with Black Creatives: Supporting the development of a statewide network for Black creatives to be proactive about infusing culture into our strategies when building campaigns, which will help generate art and content that inspires Black liberation, without engaging in extractive capitalism. We will seek to work with NC based cultural workers and artists to bring experiences of visual and performance art into more community-accessible spaces.

Accomplishments & Impact A shared culture creates the conditions for people to remain engaged, build trust, navigate conflict, and develop the relationships necessary to exercise collective power. No matter what space, formations, coalitions, organizations we partnered with, we made sure to be grounded by our values and our own ability to be whole. Our shared culture is built on our shared politic, transparency, honoring the dignity and humanity of all folks, principled struggle, collective values and commitments. Underwritten by an immeasurable vibe and the accessibility we seek to create throughout all of our programming, projects, organizing, and broader strategies. Overall, we’ve been able to test how strongly our members resonate with, commit to, and practice our shared culture by having a self-assessment when opening our membership process, building workshops, trainings, and programming, like our ecosystem-wide calls, to invite folks into practicing more deeply the commitments. As a result, we’ve built a shared expectation and practice of leaning into discomfort to address the issues at hand, practicing the values of principled struggle, calling folks in with love and curiosity, not being liberal for the sake of comfort, most of all, creating and making space for all folks to show up as their fullest selves. We made and implemented the commitment of proactively and intentionally cultivating spaces and opportunities for cultural workers, artists, and various other practitioners to be collaborators in our movements, long before it became a trend. Inviting them to build strategies alongside us, and not simply show up after the agenda has been solidified, which helped our members and their communities build their radical imagination mindsets. All in all, our culture and impact has gone beyond what we could have imagined. BLOC members have been able to cultivate a shared culture with their bases and communities, and most places our members go, they are met with reverence and held to the expectation of naming what needs to be named, creating alignment to our values, and being principled organizers. Which is a great honor for us. When we started BLOC, we didn't consider ourselves , or set the intention to be, a movement home for folks. But as time went on, our members named us as such, and we are so grateful to be a political home for hundreds, if not thousands, of North Carolinians.

for community & $150,574 Regranted Cultural events 103 BLOC Essentials Trainees 3 Black Creatives & Healers Networks 18 Black Radical Imagination Events 48 Black Creatives Engaged 56 Black Joy Events held & Supported Shared Culture trainings & 15 BLOC workshops 52 Cultural Events 15 Ecosystem Wide Calls 33 Cultural Facilitators 43

Health & Healing

Investing in Cultural workers & supporting the healing of our communities

Strategic Goals Developing networks and deploying communitybased service practitioners, healers, and artists who are committed to addressing existing trauma and providing techniques and art to help move towards healing. Advancing community-based resources that members can use independently to help each other heal. Prioritizing building spaces that include aspects of health, healing, and artistic-visioning, and not as an afterthought. Developing practices that help us heal by addressing and processing previous harms that have happened both in our own communities and in other spaces. Legislative Reforms: Support and build with organizations that are committed to fighting for access to wellness services, including, but not limited to, mental health and reproductive services, childcare.

Accomplishments & Impact NC BLOC has helped move healing from the margins of movement work into the infrastructure of organizing. The goal is to make health, healing, and radical visioning part of how we gather and organize—not an afterthought. The outcomes are stronger relationships, the ability to dream and imagine bold futures, increased capacity to address harm, expanded peer-support networks, and more sustainable leadership. We’ve garnered deeper connections between healers and organizers, which has increased our collective ability to care for one another through crisis and struggle. Through our work, healing has become not simply something we provide, but a collective practice that strengthens our ability to organize, remain connected, and build toward liberation. Over the past decade, we’ve integrated healing into movement work by providing political education and programming that incorporates healing intentionally year-round. We host a Rest and Play retreat, a space for organizers to heal and recharge; include at least one type of spiritual or healing modality in our ecosystem-wide calls; support folks in mapping systems of care; host new years openings, quarterly gatherings, and end of the year closing circles for our members so they can start and end each year grounded; make space for folks to show up as their whole selves by asking a simple question before diving into work, “How are you arriving?”; and provide no-cost care packages to folks. We’ve connected community-based healing work to broader efforts by developing various networks of healers, practitioners, artists, and organizers who are committed to creating free and accessible care and who are willing to take on legislative reforms. We partner with these networks and other organizations advocating for expanded access to economic, racial, gender, and bodily justice, including mental health and reproductive health services, childcare, medication, and gender-affirming care. Taking what they learned and extending it to their organizations and communities, our members and partners have developed and led local initiatives, developing peer-support networks, mutual accountability, and their ability to remain engaged through conflict, crisis, and grief. Examples of their work include healing gardens, abortion defense and protection, community dinners, community apothecaries, grief and peer-support circles, domestic violence support groups, COVID-conscious spaces, and other community-based resources that people could access and use independently.

4 Black Creatives & Healers Networks 32 Black Radical Imagination Events 42 Black Creatives Engaged 40 Black Joy Events held & Supported 45 Cultural workers Engaged campaigns partnerships 5 Legislative and wins member hosted community healing 35 packages events 68 Care distributed 2 Rest and Play Retreats $65,000 regranted 10 Practice Guides and Workshops

What’s Next for BLOC? As we look toward the next chapter of NC BLOC, we are building on ten years of lessons, relationships, and movement infrastructure with a continued focus on power, alternatives, and infrastructure building. We know that lasting change requires more than responding to the conditions of the moment—it requires building the people, relationships, resources, and spaces that allow communities to exercise power and create alternatives for themselves. We will continue advancing our Protect NC Freedoms Campaign (25-28), stewarding the NC Freedom Network and creating spaces where people can deepen their civic engagement, build relationships, develop skills, and organize for the long term. Through SKILL P.O.P.s, People’s Movement Assemblies, political education, and other community-led spaces, we will continue helping our folks engage civically while building and advocating for the alternatives our beloved communities need to survive and thrive during, beyond, and past this political moment. The vision for whats to come next will be solidified through a collective process and we are starting the process of collective proposal and decision-making with our membership now. Some of the things we are considering at this moment are: We also want to deepen our role as connective infrastructure for organizers and organizations across North Carolina and the Southeast. In 2028, we would like to host the Southeast Community Action & Alternatives Conference in collaboration with other statewide and regional formations to create a space for organizers and organizations from across the Southeast to learn, build, share strategies, and strategize together. Movement Center - we desire to have a permanent physical space for movement building in North Carolina. We envision a convening, training center, and retreat space located in the Piedmont Triad. A space that can serve as a place for people to gather, learn, strategize, heal, and build relationships.

What we will become has yet to be decided, but we still need your help The shifts in philanthropy over this past year have impacted our work greatly, we’ve lost four major donors, which has caused a ripple effect internally. Due to funding cuts and budget shifts, we’ve had to lay off staff members in order to ensure our programming and members are not affected, which is only a temporary fix. Moving into next year we are concerned about our ability to exist, so we need your help, Here’s how: Individuals, please consider becoming a monthly sustainer, no amount is too small, and invite 10 others to contribute as well. Large formations, businesses, and others who have economically secure formations, consider sponsoring or partnering with us as an organization. Donors, foundations, program officers- if you have it, make a one-time contribution, or connect us to other funds and donors that could support our work.

How to donate: Scan this QR Code and select the sustainer option Visit www.ncbloc.black and click the support button Checks and money orders can be mailed to: Name: Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs Memo Line: NC BLOC 23564 Calabasas Road, Suite 201 Calabasas, CA 91302

Sponsorships, Partnerships, One-Time Large Donations ($5,000+) Please reach our development team at Grants@ncbloc.black Or use [this link] to schedule a time to check-in