RALEIGH, N.C. - A majority of people in North Carolina support ending the death penalty in the state, according to a poll released this week. Of the 600 people polled, 68 percent said they would rather the state replace capital punishment with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

According to Dustin Ingalls, assistant director of Public Policy Polling, the organization that conducted the poll, public opinion appears to be shifting.

"More and more, support for death penalty is decreasing, and that sort of falls in line with opposition on other social issues," he said.

Support for abolishing the death penalty crosses party lines, according to the poll, with even a majority of conservative respondents in favor of ending capital punishment. Another poll result: people said they would rather see the money used to put people to death spent on crime prevention instead.

Tye Hunter, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, said that, while public opinion seems to be shifting, it may take a while for that shift to be reflected in the legislature.

"The death penalty has been a reliable political issue for conservative lawmakers for a long time," he noted. "It's going to be hard for them to believe that things have changed."

If the 152 men and women on North Carolina's death row were given life sentences, Hunter said, they could work the rest of their lives to pay restitution for their crimes. No one has been executed in North Carolina in seven years, and for the first time in 35 years, no new death sentences were handed down last year.

Poll results are at PublicPolicyPolling.com.




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Advocates and leaders are headed to the state capitol next week to voice their concerns over issues affecting Black communities in Tennessee.

The Equity Alliance wants lawmakers to know their human rights are in jeopardy. Seventeen percent of Tennessee's population is African-American and the group says their civil rights are under attack.

Alliance CEO Tequila Johnson said Black Tennesseans, LGBTQIA people and immigrants are being targeted when it comes to education policies, the makeup of the Nashville Metro Council... even drag show laws.

"Our Day on the Hill is our way of bringing everyday Tennessee as most of whom have never stepped foot in the state capitol, to the state capitol because we do believe that is the people's house," said Johnson. "And then the second thing is for them to hear from legislators and lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, we want people to be able to decide how they want to be governed and by whom."

Johnson said The Equity Alliance is also working to be sure people making laws in Tennessee, which are increasingly affecting more Black people, are face-to-face with their constituents impacted by the legislation.

Johnson said people statewide are concerned about what she calls an attack on public education, which heavily effects black and brown students in all parts of Tennessee.

She offered as evidence a 2021 law that requires schools to hold back third graders who don't pass the Tennessee Ready Reading Test, calling it 'extremely unfair and racially biased'.

"They are using the TCAP which there's tons of research that shows that standardized testing is biased culturally," said Johnson. "And it does not effectively measure a student's ability to read or whatever it is that they're testing them on. Standardized testing just measures of student's ability to take a test."

Johnson says the group's April 20 Town Hall meeting will focus on legalizing marijuana. The Equity Alliance is inviting experts and legislators to talk about what that might look like in Tennessee.

Incidents involving white supremacist propaganda reached an all-time high last year in the U.S., including a dramatic surge of incidents across New England.

White nationalist and neo-Nazi groups publicly marched, gathered and displayed hateful rhetoric in Boston, and beyond with some 465 incidents recorded in Massachusetts alone.

Peggy Shukur, New England interim regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, said some hate groups are recruiting new members through often deceptive tactics.

"One group, Patriot Front, uses the Stars and Stripes to appear to be a mainstream group when instead they are a group that is virulently antisemitic and racist," Shukur explained.

In addition to the group's march through Boston Commons last July, groups also targeted bookstores, libraries, theaters and even hospitals with racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-LGBTQ messages. Shukur pointed out the incidents are being carried out by a small number of people having an outsized impact.

Researchers said the groups are increasingly moving from online forums to in-person gatherings, including on highway overpasses.

Shukur noted Massachusetts, known as the cradle of liberty, provides a dramatic flourish for hate groups to utilize, but she added communities are increasingly countering the hate with support for those being targeted.

"If your community instead comes out and said, 'we are with you, we see you', that's a really powerful message," Shukur emphasized.

Shukur stressed it is not recommended to engage or confront hate groups but the Anti-Defamation League encourages the public to report any incidents in an effort to hold them accountable.


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Communities of color in Colorado and across the West strongly support conservation policies, including protecting water supplies and transitioning to clean energy - according to the new "Conservation in the West" survey conducted by Colorado College.

Maite Arce - president and CEO of the Hispanic Access Foundation - said people of color, who are disproportionately impacted by air and water pollution, understand that conservation is linked to health outcomes, jobs and social justice.

"Latino, Black and indigenous voters in the West are not only passionate about the outdoors," said Arce, "they care about protecting our environment and about issues like climate change, pollution, and the impact of oil and gas drilling."

Nearly nine in ten people of color surveyed say oil and gas companies should be required to update equipment to prevent the release of methane and other air pollution.

Seventy-seven percent support transitioning to 100% clean, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. A strong majority expressed concerns about threats to drinking water, drought and Colorado River water shortages.

More than eight in ten people of color support financial incentives to replace lawns with water-saving landscaping, and say new residential developments should not be approved unless there are adequate water supplies.

Most people surveyed were not aware that 80% of Colorado River water goes to agriculture, and pollster Dave Metz - research partner and president of the firm FM3 - said more can be done to educate voters.

"Given how critical public concern is about water shortages," said Metz, "understanding how water is currently used is helpful in making decisions about what policies we need to enact to ensure that we have sustainable supplies for all of these sectors moving forward."

Communities of color are three times more likely to live in places considered nature deprived than their white counterparts, and 80% of those surveyed say it's important to conserve natural areas that connect lower income and communities of color to the outdoors.

"Nature is supposed to be a great equalizer," said Arce. "In reality, however, American society distributes nature's benefits, and the effects of its destruction and decline, unequally by race, income and age."