An at-large and mayoral candidate town hall sponsored by Siembra NC & Orange County Justice United.

Residents of Chapel Hill are uniting to urge City Council candidates and incumbents to stand for the thousands of families navigating the current crisis: ICE detentions, the fallout of sudden federal cutbacks, policy overreach and a looming healthcare crisis.

• Immigrants and the hundreds of local small businesses are getting impacted: ICE agents have detained immigrants at our local courts, on their way to work and at their workplaces, and the agency is beginning to hire thousands of agents, with $145 billion in new funding

• Store owners, healthcare workers, farmers. The recently passed budget act threatens the ability of 1,400 rural stores to stay in business; along with jeopardizing the financial viability of hospitals and other healthcare settings, cuts and tariffs are also hurting many farmers

• Kids, college students, school workers. The White House has imposed over $850 million in federal funding cuts that will cut teaching positions, force children from their after school programs, make it more difficult for 97,000 college students to stay enrolled; farmers, food banks, substance abuse treatment centers, even Helene relief workers have been fired

• People who rely on Medicaid and SNAP. Up to 700,000 North Carolinians will lose their healthcare, and 1.2 million will struggle to afford groceries

• Local governments. Combined with Medicaid cuts, a conservative estimate from the Commonwealth Fund has North Carolina losing over $3.6 billion in GDP, $254 million in tax revenue, and 35,000 jobs, forcing the state and local governments to take on hundreds of millions in new costs.

Our communities are under attack. It’s time to stand up -- for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors. At this Town Hall, we'll hear about what these attacks mean to us in Chapel Hill, and what commitments local candidates are willing to make to stand up to them.