Over the past few years, Gino Nuzzolillo has been packing up his car and hitting the road to help put on town halls across the state. Nuzzolillo, 26, works with the nonprofit Common Cause North Carolina; the town halls—which touched down in 25 different counties—first began their push when Moore v. Harper, a case about redistricting in the state, reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
In town halls sprawling from Greenville to Sylva, Nuzzolillo and his Common Cause colleagues regularly laid out the stakes of the gerrymandered congressional maps that the Republican legislature had drawn. People showed up to the rooms of folding chairs and spoke and listened—a heartening demonstration of democracy in action. Not many, though, represented a vital new voting bloc: Gen Z.
And who can blame them?
“People who looked like me…were not coming to a town hall at 6 p.m. on, like, a Thursday night,” Nuzzolillo explains over a Zoom call. “We wanted to put something together that would meet young people like us where we were at; that would recognize and take seriously that nobody under the age of 35 is at all remotely excited about what they have to vote for this year—and that’s especially true after last week.”
Enter CAROLINADAZE, a new music and arts festival series Common Cause North Carolina has just launched. The events, featuring a mix of homegrown and national talent, will take place this fall across the state; earlier today, the nonpartisan organization announced the first installation of the series: scheduled September 14 at Raleigh’s Red Hat Amphitheatre, this first concert will feature Tar Heel heavy-hitters Tierra Whack, Lute, Moses Sumney, and Helado Negro.
Tickets go on sale Thursday, July 11, for $35-$40; access to $25 presale tickets are live from July 8-10. That’s a notably low price point for a multi-artist lineup. Hopscotch, which takes place in Raleigh a few days prior, sells three-day festival passes for $159; one-night tickets for Sylvan Esso’s recent GoodMoon concerts in Durham started at $73.
An Asheville festival will be announced later this month, with more locations and dates to follow.
“I’ve been working in the music industry for decades and CAROLINADAZE stands out,” Raleigh musician Tift Merritt, an advisor for the concert series, wrote in the press release. “Every decision—from the artist lineup to the branding to the vendors to the organizations this concert series will benefit—has been lovingly made with young people not only in mind but also in leadership.”
Characterized as a “movement-building” event, the September concert will also feature remarks from community leaders and tabling from local nonprofits and arts vendors. The goal, Nuzzolillo says, is to advance Common Cause’s mission of driving voter turnout but also to politically mobilize Gen Z beyond the election.
We want to give young people like myself a chance to see a vision of what democracy can look like in North Carolina that goes beyond a slogan, that goes beyond just going to the ballot box.”
“We want to give young people like myself a chance to see a vision of what democracy can look like in North Carolina that goes beyond a slogan, that goes beyond just going to the ballot box, [where we] can actually hear from people who are organizing in different parts of the state and see the diversity of people coming together who want more,” he says.
A new vision of democracy may be welcome to young voters, whose optimism about the future and the Democratic party, as reflected in the polls, does not burn very bright. While protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, on and off college campuses and now inching toward a ten-month mark, speaks to renewed political energy, President Biden’s rigid stance on the issue has proven unpopular with young voters. Polling from April—before Biden’s lackluster debate showing—evidence the president squeaking ahead with younger voters by only a 2-point lead.
In 2020, by contrast, exit polling had a 24-percentage-point Biden lead among 18-29-year-old voters.
But much can change between now and November and as Nuzzolillo emphasizes, Common Cause North Carolina is hoping to encourage voters to turn out for down-ballot races as well, especially with a high-stakes gubernatorial race between Josh Stein and the ultra-conservative Mark Robinson on the ballot.
Sailor Jones, the associate director of Common Cause North Carolina and a longtime activist in the region, ties the organization’s focus on youth voters to previous political struggles in the state.
“Anyone who’s between the ages of 20 and 50 in North Carolina is looking for something to fight for and against,” Jones says. “The biggest rallying cries we’ve had in the state of North Carolina have been Amendment One, HB 2, and the Moral Monday movement. They were all defensive efforts against a repressive legislature and executive branch in a state where we were taking a red-wave turn in a way that was hurting everyone. This is an effort to give us something to fight for, for once, an affirmative vision that goes well beyond 2024.”
A portion of proceeds from the September 14 concert will go to Southern grassroots groups Center for Racial Equity in Education, 7 Directions of Service, Carolina Abortion Fund, Campaign for Southern Equality, Carolina Migrant Network, and the HBCU Student Action Alliance.
“What’s driving a lot of young people is taking care of the people that they love,” says Nuzzollilo, “We see that because that’s the work that we do every day and we just want thousands more people to be able to see and hear that, too.”
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