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"OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE IS AT STAKE"
We are at a breaking point. Not just in Durham—but across this country, working people, Black and Brown communities, elders and children are being pushed out, priced out, and policed out of the places they call home. Durham, our Durham, is not for sale. Not to developers. Not to corporate interests. Not to those who only show up when it’s time to secure your vote.
It’s time to fight back—with our voices, with our dollars, and with our unity.
I am running for mayor because I am tired. Not the kind of tired that goes away with rest—but the kind that comes from hearing the same tired rhetoric every election cycle while our communities suffer.
I’m tired of watching our neighborhoods be dismantled, our families displaced, and our people policed and punished while developers get tax breaks and outsiders reap the benefits of our labor and culture.
If we do not stand up now, there will be no more Durham as we know it. It will become a playground for the wealthy and privileged—while the rest of us fight for scraps. I did not come from wealth or privilege. But I came to Durham, and it became my home. And I will not stand by while it is stripped of its soul.
I’m 81 years old. I have marched, protested, and been arrested with revolutionaries many only read about in history books. We understood something then that we must remember now: our vote is a tool of liberation, not the whole struggle.
I’m running this race for the people who feel forgotten the moment the polls close. For the families who only hear from politicians when it’s campaign season. For the children not yet born, who will find no affordable housing by the time they enter this world. For 2-year-old Manariah, whose life was stolen in a senseless act of gun violence.
This is not about politics. This is about people. This is about power. And this is about protecting the future of Durham—for all of us.
In love and struggle,
Rafiq Zaidi
Dear Durham,
The Issues
There are many issues in Durham—and their roots run deep. Our struggles are not random. They are the symptoms of a system built on capitalism and colonialism. Three urgent issues we must confront now are:
1. Violence
We cannot address the issue of violence in Durham without telling the truth about where it comes from.
Gun violence is devastating our communities. Our youth are dying at an alarming rate. But the conversation too often stops at statistics or punishment—and never goes deeper.
We have to ask the real questions:
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How are guns getting into our communities in the first place?
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Why are our young people turning to violence?
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Why do some neighborhoods in Durham have parks, libraries, and community centers—while others have none?
Violence is not just about individual choices. It is the outcome of disinvestment, displacement, and despair. When children grow up in neighborhoods with crumbling schools, no after-school programs, food insecurity, and constant police surveillance—what future are we giving them to believe in?
We are not just experiencing violence in Durham. We are experiencing horizontal violence—a tactic employed by the colonial system to pit oppressed people against one another so they remain destabilized and divided—thus preventing unified resistance. Efforts focused solely on combating horizontal violence—without addressing the broader colonial system producing it—are inadequate for liberation. Any attempt to ‘fix’ our communities without challenging the system that produced these conditions, will only reinforce the lie that the people are the problem.
We Need Tangible Solutions:
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Political education-especially for our youth
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Community-based child care that lifts the burden off working families and creates support networks.
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Youth-led programs that give our children and teens spaces to explore, learn, and grow—with access to skill-building, mentoring, and arts.
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Intergenerational organizing—because elders carry wisdom and strength, and must be active in shaping the future with our youth.
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Direct resource investment into families: housing support, food access, mental health care, and income stability.
If we want peace, we must create the conditions for it.
2. Family Policing
In Durham and across the country, the child welfare system is not a system of care—it is a system of surveillance, punishment, and separation.
Too many families—especially Black, Brown, low-income, and unhoused families—live in constant fear that a knock on the door could mean losing their children. Durham County has one of the lowest family reunification rates in North Carolina, meaning that when children are taken from their homes, they are often never returned.
This is not accidental. It is by design.
The system does not respond to poverty with support. It responds with removal. A parent struggling with housing insecurity or mental health doesn't get help—they get investigated. Families in crisis don’t get protected—they get criminalized.
And as the number of unhoused families rises in Durham, the conditions for even more separations are being created. When a mother doesn’t have stable housing, the state may label her "unfit." But it’s not the parent that failed—it’s the city, the county, and the system that failed to provide resources to ensure their people survive.
We need real solutions rooted in care, not control:
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Guaranteed income programs that help parents meet their basic needs—because no child should be removed from their home due to poverty.
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Community-based resources that address concerns before they become crises: access to diapers, food, housing support, mental health care, and respite services.
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Education campaigns to inform neighbors and communities about the harms of family policing—and to build a shared understanding that we can be the village that keeps children safe, not the system that tears them away.
We must end the myth that removing children from their families makes them safer. The data says otherwise.
Nationally, children who are removed and placed in foster care experience higher rates of trauma, instability, and incarceration than those who remain with their families and receive support.
Durham must choose a new path—one where we stop punishing poverty and start investing in our people.
To learn more about the movement to end family policing and keep children with their families, visit:
3. Housing Crisis
Durham has a deep and painful history when it comes to land, housing, and who is allowed to belong here.
Hayti is an example of this painful history. Hayti was a thriving Black community built by and for Black people. Durham was a place where Black families owned businesses, homes, and land. But instead of protecting that legacy, the city destroyed it.
In the name of “urban renewal,” highways were built through the heart of Hayti. Generations of Black families were displaced, their homes bulldozed, their wealth stolen. That theft didn’t stop in the 1960s—it never stopped. It just changed its name.
Today, it’s called gentrification.
Today, it’s called “redevelopment.”
But the result is the same: the people who built this city are being pushed out, again.
Developers now own Durham. They don’t just build here—they run the city. The current leadership continues to rubber-stamp luxury projects while families are priced out, evicted, and erased.
Every week, new buildings go up, and every week, more people pitch tents in the woods, under bridges, or on sidewalks. Durham is in the midst of a housing crisis—but it is not a natural disaster. It is a policy choice that is killing our people.
There is currently an 81-year-old Black woman sleeping in a tent at the corner of Duke Street and Morehead Avenue—a block away from empty high-end apartments she can’t afford to enter. If that doesn’t cause our current leadership to question the effectiveness of their policies, something is deeply wrong.
We are watching elders—our historians, our caregivers—be left to die in the heat while developers cash checks and city officials look away.
We must fight for a Durham that houses its people, not profits:
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Immediate investment in deeply affordable housing, not "affordable" units that only serve middle-income earners. We need housing for people making under $30K a year—the working class.
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Rent control and anti-displacement protections for long-time residents, so no one is forced out of their home due to rising costs or developer pressure.
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Utilize city-owned land to build community-led housing developments—not hand it over to the highest bidder.
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Support for encampments until housing is available—including sanitation, medical care, and safety resources—because no human being is disposable.
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Ban on developer lobbying and backdoor deals. The people of Durham should decide what gets built here—not real estate firms and out-of-town investors.
"The vote is only a part of the struggle. The real power is in the people and the streets."— Assata Shakur
Voting is one act in a much longer struggle—one that includes organizing, protest, mutual aid, direct action, and community-building. We invite you to do more than vote—we invite you to get involved. But first, make sure your vote is counted in this critical election.
Mark Your Calendar:
Primary Election
Early Voting: Thurs. Sept. 18- Sat. Oct 4. 2025
Election Day: Tuesday, Oct 7, 2025
General Election
Early Voting: Thurs. Oct 16- Sat. Nov 1, 2025
Election Day: Tuesday Nov 4, 2025
Unsure if you are Registered?
Get Registered Today
Use Your Voice
This campaign is not just about electing a mayor. It’s about elevating the voice of the people.
What are you facing in your neighborhood? What struggles are impacting your family? What do you want the next mayor to know?
Let’s get civically engaged. Let’s unite in struggle. And let’s remind Durham that real power lives with the people.