Hello friends!
We are writing to ask you to make a financial contribution to Triangle Blog Blog to help us elect progressive candidates in Chapel Hill and Carrboro during the 2023 municipal election cycle.
As a young organization, this is our first foray into local elections and we need your support to reach a wider audience. Before detailing our plans for the election, we’d like to point out successes we’ve had that make us confident we can have a big impact on the election cycle:
Here’s just a few things we’ve done in the past 18 months:
- We broke the news that a dozen wealthy couples in Chapel Hill are planning to put $120,000 in our local elections this fall, an unprecedented level of spending that threatens to upend our community’s long standing restrictions on local election spending.
- We brought attention to the school board race, and are vetting all of the school board candidates running for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. (We are also interviewing all of the candidates.)
- We drove hundreds of people to fill out Chapel Hill’s survey on splash pads and inclusive playgrounds.
- We launched a petition asking the Town of Chapel Hill to pilot protected bike lanes on Cameron Avenue to make it safer for students, staff, and faculty to commute to UNC. (Please sign!)
- In May, we revealed that the North Carolina Department of Transportation was fast-tracking a plan to build a road on environmentally sensitive land. Our story sparked quick reaction from elected officials, putting the NCDOT on notice that any future plans for roads must take the environment, as well as the needs of people not in cars, into consideration.
- For nine months, we covered the Town of Chapel Hill’s Housing Choices text amendment, a plan to make it easier to build “missing middle” housing in our community. When we saw yard signs opposed to these changes go up around town, we created our own group, Chapel Hill For All, and brought dozens of people to speak at town council meetings, many of whom participated in local government for the first time.
- We broke the news that the Chatham News&Record was sold to Pat McCrory’s statewide newspaper.
- And we’ve had a lot of fun, pointing out stories that make our communities more vibrant and fun – while also covering hard news stories and stories that require deep research.
Over the past 18 months, we’ve published over 550 pieces and featured 40 writers.
Now we’re embarking on another big project, and we need your help.
This Fall, we are planning to mail a progressive voter guide to households in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Our progressive voter guide will explain what’s at stake in this election in both towns, and give voters the tools they need to make an informed decision in the upcoming election for council races, the mayoral race, and school board.
This is where you come in. To print and mail our voter guide, we need to raise $12,000 pretty quickly. If every person on our mailing list contributes just $5 or $10, we will easily meet our goal. (But higher contributions are welcome, in part because we have a lot of readers who are students and can’t afford to donate because 50%+ of their income goes to rent.)
We created Triangle Blog Blog and Chapel Hill for All because we wanted to make a difference. We are all volunteers, and have put a lot of time and energy into building a group civics blog. With your help, we can reach tens of thousands of potential voters.
Please donate, and help us elect progressive candidates in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
Thank you,
Geoff Green, Chapel Hill
Martin Johnson, Chapel Hill
Melody Kramer, Carrboro
John Rees, Chapel Hill
Stephen Whitlow, Chapel Hill