The City of Raleigh has been pushing to allow for a waiver of an 80 million dollar fine for allowing widespread groundwater contamination from its sewage treatment plant near the Neuse River.

For years, the City ordered workers to spread sewage sludge residue from its Neuse River Sewage Treatment plant over thousands of acres of land near the Neuse River. The State of North Carolina fined Raleigh around 80 million and ordered it to find a way to clean up their mess. Yet Raleigh believes that this is pointless, and would prefer nature to take its course so that natural processes will eventually clean up the soil.

About twenty miles southwest of Raleigh, there is an historic community that has been struggling to preserve its legacy and future due to the development of neighboring Apex, Cary, and other towns.

New Hill, North Carolina, a former prosperous train stop and later a charming town with a along the bustling US 1, a road that was for decades the main route between Florida and the Northeast, reminds us of an earlier time before the sprawl of the Triangle. Home to the neighboring Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant which was built in the 1980s, New Hill is being targeted by again by local towns for a new 230-acre site for a sewage treatment plant, which its residents cannot even use.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice is proud to announce that we are now representing the University Apartments Residents Association in their efforts to stop the gentrification of their historic, 71 year old apartment complex in Durham’s West End on West Chapel Hill Street.

Agricultural production in North Carolina is 46 billion dollar industry which involves the fifth most farmworkers of any state (Legal Aid of NC). For tens of thousands of farmworkers, it’s an industry which remains seeped in extreme exploitation and, for some workers, modern-day slavery. The issue of human trafficking has become a point of action for the governments across the world, while here in North Carolina, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice is teaming up Student Action with Farmworkers Student Action with Farmworkers to build awareness about and to combat human trafficking on NC’s farms.

The Constitution of the United States requires that every ten years that we have a count of every person and household in the US while recording certain information about each person, including questions about ethnicity, race, relation to other household occupants, and gender. The 2010 Census will be one of the largest civil projects in the history of the US, employing hundreds of thousands of census workers, all in attempt to make sure that everyone is counted.

WHY THE CENSUS MATTERS

HEALTHCARE STORIES- Why we need a Public Option http://www.youtube.com/nchcan

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice has been teaming up with Durham Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) as a part of the national Health Care for America Now (HCAN) Campaign to win quality, affordable health care for all. On June 25th, 2009, tens of thousands of people marched on the capital to demand a public healthcare insurance option. While Congress has discussed many options, it is clear that we need a public option for health insurance to challenge the private, for profit insurers who leave millions uninsured. It has become clear that the time for comprehensive healthcare reform is now, and that we have a right to quality health coverage.

In an effort to build peaceful, nurturing communities, the Beloved Community Center, the Pulpit Forum, and the Almighty Latin Kings and Queens Nation of Greensboro (ALKQN), North Carolina, have been working together for over a year to deal with the problems of gang violence in Greensboro. Taking a grassroots perspective, this collaborative has focused on the positive potential for street groups in low-income and communities of color to be a resource to build peace and unity in their communities. Unfortunately, in the past year the ALKQN has been harassed and falsely charged many times by the Greensboro Police Department’s Gang Unit, who has attempted to complicate the peace process by intimidation, and illegitimate arrests.

Over the past week the Southern Coalition for Social Justice has been ramping up its efforts to train checkpoint monitors, with public training sessions in Guilford Co, Alamance Co, and Durham, NC . Hundreds of community members, students, and immigrant’s rights allies have been trained in how to respond to police license checkpoints, in response to the growing number of checkpoints which lead to the deportation of thousands of undocumented immigrants which have devastated immigrant communities in the past few years.