Events

As veteran state education policy analyst Kris Nordstrom detailed in his recent report, The Unraveling—Poorly-crafted Education Policies Are Failing North Carolina’s Children, North Carolina has lost its way when it comes to public schools:

Join us on Tuesday December 5, as we welcome American Immigration Council Executive Director Beth Werlin to North Carolina and hear her update on (and assessment of) the immigration battles in Washington.

NC Policy Watch presents a special Crucial Conversation luncheon: Hurricane Matthew one year later: What happened, what hasn’t and how can we do better in the future? On October 8, 2016, Hurricane Matthew made landfall on North Carolina. The resulting flooding impacted 50 counties in the eastern part of the state, damaging more than 800,000 homes and over 300,000 businesses, while displacing 3,744 residents, and causing closures in 34 school systems. In all, the storm caused $2.8 billion in damages and another $2 billion in lost economic activity.

For those too young or too new to North Carolina to remember, the horrific 1991 chicken plant fire at imperial Foods in Hamlet, North Carolina killed 25 workers and injured another 55. Workers were unable to escape the blaze because the plant’s owner, Emmett J. Roe, kept the doors padlocked and the windows boarded because he thought his low-wage workers might steal chicken.

Please join us August 15 for a very special Crucial Conversation – The silver tsunami: What’s on the policy horizon for North Carolina’s seniors? In one of the brighter and under-reported developments of the 2017 legislative session, North Carolina lawmakers took some important steps to secure consistent, quality care for seniors. Among the important accomplishments:

NC Policy Watch presents a special Crucial Conversation luncheon: Prof. Nancy MacLean on her provocative new book, “Democracy in Chains” Nancy MacLean is an award-winning scholar of the twentieth-century U.S., whose new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, has been described by Publishers Weekly as “a thoroughly researched and gripping narrative… [and] a feat of American intellectual and political history.” Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.”

Amazingly, Thursday, March 23 marks the one-year anniversary of HB2 – the LGBTQ discrimination law that will forever be known by the name it received during a special one-day kangaroo session of the General Assembly.

NC Policy Watch presents our first Crucial Conversation luncheon of 2017: What is the true state of the economy and how do we make it work for everyone? Featuring special guest, Dr. William Spriggs, Chief Economist for the national AFL-CIO. Register below As new administrations take office in Washington and Raleigh, there is much debate about the true state of the national and North Carolina economies. While many regions and population subgroups are experiencing good times, large segments of our state and nation continue to fall further and further behind.

With one of the most contentious elections in recent American history soon to be complete, North Carolinians will no doubt be confronting some important lessons — some painful and some encouraging — from the results. Please join us for a very special Crucial Conversation as NC Policy Watch Director Chris Fitzsimon discusses the election results, where things stand and what’s on the horizon for the progressive movement in North Carolina with a panel of four knowledgeable experts:

Join us October 5th as N.C. Policy Watch presents a special Crucial Conversation luncheon - Karen Hobert Flynn, President of the national nonprofit watchdog, Common Cause: How do we repair our broken democracy? Has American democracy reached a crisis point? If the 2016 election campaign is any indication, this seems a fair assessment. Between the toxic combination of big, dark money, rampant gerrymandering and voter suppression, weak ethics laws and an often dysfunctional news media, the situation can sometimes seem rather bleak and, perhaps, even beyond repair.

The 2016 election is headed into the homestretch and absentee voting by mail is already underway. Join us as we learn the details of where things stand and what the political world is likely to look like on November 9 with one of America’s premier pollsters, Tom Jensen of Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling.