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Burlington Reporter

Thursday, November 7, 2024

Black community seeks meeting spaces near Burlington

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Alamance Board of Education candidate Seneca Rogers | Seneca Rogers for Alamance Board of Education Facebook

Alamance Board of Education candidate Seneca Rogers | Seneca Rogers for Alamance Board of Education Facebook

Seneca Rogers says more black community spaces are needed throughout Burlington to serve as hubs for like-minded people to share information and discuss important issues concerning their families and communities.

Rogers, who is currently running for the Alamance Board of Education, is a lifelong Burlington resident and has seen the value of community spaces such as the Mayco Bigelow Community Center in North Park and the CityGate Dream Center. But there is a need for more meeting spaces to encourage civic engagement and the sharing of ideas, opinions and matters that impact their schools.

“You have these parents who might not be able to show up to a board meeting or show up to an actual meeting at the school because of the fact that they're having to work or they're having to take care of a family member,” Rogers told the Elon News Network. “It just seems like nobody cares because we're not the ones loud and yelling at the school board meeting.”

Educating Black community members about politics in Alamance County can also take place at meeting spaces. It’s something Dreama Caldwell wishes she could have utilized while running for Alamance County Commissioner in 2020. Caldwell told the Elon News Network she hopes her personal experience in a county race is something others never have to go through.

“I was fighting in two fights, of not just running and trying to get parts of the community that are not engaged, engaged, but I also was having to deal with these dog whistles and the other stuff coming from the other side,” Caldwell said.

She said she faced threats over social media and other in-person issues during her campaign. She hopes additional black spaces will increase communication opportunities and prevent negative challenges for other future Black candidates.

“One of the things I try to do now is when I hear that black candidates are going to run, I have conversations and say, ‘OK, these are some things you may want to do. These are some things you need to consider," she said.

As the executive co-director of Down Home North Carolina, a nonprofit organization created to build multi-racial power for working people in the state’s small towns and rural regions, Caldwell hopes to use the organization’s space to bring more Black leaders together in the meantime.

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