About Us

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Our Mission

Our Vision

People’s Platform

Our Work

Our Mission

Durham For All, a chapter of Carolina Federation, is building a new majority 10,000 people strong—a multiracial, cross-class progressive movement led by people of color and working-class people. Through grassroots organizing, leadership development, and political education, we fight for a Durham where everyone can thrive politically, economically, and socially. We take action together at the ballot box and in the streets to win back our government and put it to work—for all of us.

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“Most issue-based organizing lacks a path to political power. Most electoral campaigns end after election day. Our goal is to harness the two, building a powerful movement that can both elect officials and hold them accountable.”
— Sendolo Diaminah, 2018 Campaign Manager of Decriminalize Durham

What is the new majority? Durham’s new majority will be a multiracial, cross-class progressive movement led by people of color and working-class people.

Why 10,000 people strong? 10,000 is the number of people a progressive Durham needs to elect local officials we can co-govern with as we organize for our collective vision of a Durham for all and we take on challenges beyond Durham. With 10,000 people, we can create a new, powerful majority in Durham. 10,000 people gives us a mandate for change.

What are we up against and how do we win?

Across the country, corporations and right-wing politicians have rigged the political system, and we’ve had enough. This rigged system only works when the majority of people aren’t taking action together. When democratic participation is small and people are divided, the wealthy and powerful win. To be successful, our movement needs to be massive and fight for all of us.

When this new majority unites at the ballot box and in the streets, we will defeat the politics of division and greed. Together, we will address our biggest problems — the need for affordable homes, quality education, good jobs, and real safety. Together, we will elect people that will use our tax dollars to meet each person’s basic needs and fight for a Durham where everyone can thrive. Together, we will demand that our local, state, and federal representatives serve all of our interests, not just the interests of the wealthy and powerful.

Our Vision

Our movement is guided by our deepest beliefs and a vision of the future we are building together.

Homes for all

Everyone has the right to live in a safe and affordable home. Right now in Durham, decent homes are a privilege of the wealthy rather than a right for all. We know that the rents are too high and that landlords have too much power over our lives. We know that many people — especially Black and Brown people, low-income people, and disabled people are being forced out of their homes and their neighborhoods. This makes it hard to build community and a stable life. We demand policies that support permanent affordable housing as well as food, clean energy, clean water, and internet that everyone can afford.

Education for all

Everyone has the right to a high-quality public education that fully develops their potential. This includes poor children, children of color, immigrant and refugee children, and children with disabilities. However, the reality is that our public schools are segregated and deeply unequal. Education has become more focused on test scores than supporting our children’s growth. Our schools don’t have the resources they need, and it is our kids who suffer. We oppose cutting the arts, physical education, recess, and services for children with special needs. We demand well-funded public schools that educate whole people from preschool to college/trade school and help children develop into happy, healthy and thriving adults.

Economy for all

Everyone has the right to the resources they need to sustain themselves and their families and to live on a healthy planet. Big corporations make a lot of money in Durham, but many keep workers in poverty-wage jobs, harm the environment, and don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Our elders, disabled people, and people with criminal records are often left out of the economy. We need more access to safe, green, living-wage jobs with good benefits for our community to thrive. We want policies that spread wealth more equally by raising wages, creating job opportunities, and keeping money in our community. We want the right to organize unions and fight together for dignity and safety at work.

Sanctuary for all

Everyone deserves to feel safe and secure in their bodies, homes, and communities. Too many people in Durham live in fear of violence at the hands of law enforcement. Too many live in fear of laws and politicians who promote hate and discrimination. Too many live in fear of violence in their homes or neighborhoods. We want an end to police violence, surveillance of Muslims, ICE raids, and policies that harm women and LGBTQ people. We call for policies that promote real community safety by divesting from criminalization and mass incarceration and investing in jobs, housing, healthcare, education, and community-based justice solutions outside of the police & prison system.

Democracy for all

Durham belongs to all who live here: Native, refugee and migrant, Black, Brown, Latino/a, Muslim, white, and Jewish, documented and undocumented, and LGBTQ. We need all these voices at the table to create a Durham for All. Right-wing politicians in North Carolina have used voter suppression to limit whose voice counts, turned hate into law, and made policies that benefit only the wealthy. We must end this attack on the people of North Carolina, and Durham must be a leader in a revolution for real democracy in our state.

People's Platform

In 2019, our 20 core member leaders and our activist base of over 150 volunteers were in deep conversation with more than 2,500 people of color in Durham

We invited those folks, along with our members, to 5 virtual People’s Platform meetings. Together, we’ve developed a list of the policies and values we use to set our agenda every year and to make decisions about candidate endorsements during elections seasons:

Homes For All

CORE POLICIES

  • Issue a moratorium on evictions for the duration of the COVID crisis
  • Expand tax relief for long-time homeowners in neighborhoods facing gentrification
  • Fight state preemption of housing equity tools. 

Click to view the Facebook Live event recording

Justice For All

CORE POLICIES

  • Divest from police and invest in community based-alternatives
  • Eliminate cash bail
  • End law enforcement cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Click to view the Facebook Live event recording

Education For All

CORE POLICIES

  • Provide full and equitable funding for all public schools
  • Address race-based inequities at the school level
  • Remove School Resource Officer and redistribute funding to hire nurses, counselors, and other crucial staff

Click to view the Facebook Live event recording

Healthcare For All

CORE POLICIES

  • Enact Medicare For All
  • Ensure guaranteed paid sick leave
  • Decriminalize drug possession.

Click to view the Facebook Live event recording

Economy For All

CORE POLICIES

  • Raise the minimum wage above $15
  • Enact Medicaid expansion and end the overdose crisis
  • Repeal North Carolina’s preemption laws to expand the powers of municipalities to pass progressive economic policies.

Click to view the Facebook Live event recording

Our Work

We Vote Together

Every local election, we march to the polls to make voting a community practice that shows our power. Join us!

Join an upcoming event!

We take action together

To defeat the far right, we all need to be in. Deepen your leadership and organize across race & class as we win political power.

Sign up for updates!

We Grow Our Movement Together

Political power is won by the grassroots. Become a member and join others as we move out of isolation and into collective purpose.

Become a Member!

Our Staff

Our Staff

Interim Durham Director

Whitney Maxey |  she/her
[email protected]

Whitney (she/her) works collectively with our staff to manage the well-being of Durham For All (D4A) through strategy and campaign development, organizational and leadership development, and long-term visioning. She believes in the power and potential of communities of color and their allies to create systemic change by harnessing the power of elections.

Her experience in social justice organizations began in Florida and spans over more than a decade working in issue areas from anti-gentrification to immigration rights. Whitney enjoys the outdoors and a good book.


Interim Durham Deputy Director

Anthony J. Maglione | he/him
[email protected]

Anthony works alongside the Durham for All chapter staff to implement Durham-based programming for our issue and electoral campaigns. He was a 2016 founding member of Durham for All, where he led fundraising, finances, operations, and HR to grow the organizational infrastructure for staff and members to thrive.

Anthony has nearly 20 years of social justice experience in and around Durham, including student-worker campus organizing, census and redistricting mobilization, care management within community health centers, youth leadership development, and electoral organizing. He finds nourishment in cooking and sharing meals he learned from his Puerto Rican abuela and Southern Italian nonna, being a trickster, and soaking up daily delights from the abundance of nature and the brilliance of kiddos.


Cedric CraigDurham Community Organizer 

Cedric Craig | he/him
[email protected]

Cedric recruits, trains, and manages member leaders and volunteers for D4A’s organizing and voter engagement work. This includes leading door knocking, phone banks, and campaign events, as well as developing members to take on greater leadership in the organization. Cedric cares about D4A because of the commitment, drive, and passion to inspire change for the betterment of all. He is excited about the opportunity to help the Durham community progress toward a better future.

Before D4A, Cedric worked in the retail and service industries, mostly with Top Off Catering. In 2022, he completed Seed the Vote’s Generation Rising Organizing Fellowship. Cedric enjoys staying active, trying and cooking new food, and traveling. He has a love for all things history, comics, pop culture, and politics.


Data & Digital Organizer

Nahid Soltanzadeh | they/them
[email protected]

Nahid manages our data systems and leads our digital organizing efforts to better integrate our data-driven electoral work with our relational organizing work both online and offline. Their obsession with stories and narratives as powerful forces for dismantling oppressive systems fuels their passion for digital organizing, cultural campaigning, and healing justice.

Nahid is a queer immigrant from Tehran, Iran. After moving around the east coast for a while, they found a political home in Durham For All as a member leader soon after they moved to Durham. A Kairos Fellowship alum, Nahid has worked as a digital organizer at the intersections of tech justice, militarism, policing and surveillance, systemic Islamophobia, and prison industrial complex. Before arriving at digital organizing, they have been a teacher, an online facilitator, an educational consultant, a babysitter, a caregiver, and a poet.


Why gender pronouns? Read more here.

Join Durham For All Today

Together, we are building a new majority — a multiracial, cross-class progressive movement 10,000 people

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