We Keep Us Alive: An Afternoon to Remember Those Executed & Envision a Future of Abolition
This August marks 19 years since North Carolina carried out its last execution, a reminder of how close we've come to ending the death penalty and how far we still have to go. This moment calls for remembrance and embodied, experiential engagement with what abolition truly means.
Since 1984, the state has executed 43 people under its current death penalty statute. Today, 121 people remain on death row, and capital punishment is still legal, upheld by a system that continues to fail the most vulnerable.
We Keep Us Alive is a free, public event hosted by the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty to remember the lives taken, be in solidarity with those still facing death sentences, and call on North Carolina to end capital punishment once and for all. Join us for a day of immersive learning, remembering, community, and collective action. We’ll gather for creative abolitionist workshops using music, poetry, and movement. Then we’ll march 1 mile to Central Prison for a public vigil.
This is both a memorial and a message to North Carolina: executions must never return.
All are welcome.
Event schedule:
2:00 PM | Community gathering & experiential workshops
5:00 PM | Vigil at Central Prison to remember the 43 lives taken
5:40 PM | Closing gathering & refreshments
Location: Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, 1801 Hillsborough Street, Raleigh, NC 27605
Registration link: bit.ly/WeKeepUsAlive
For more information visit https://nccadp.org/event/we-keep-us-alive/.
