Shorter, on-the-ground observations from North Carolina.
This site has been running in the background since March. The work has been happening longer than that. We’re making it public now. Ground Truth NC is a civic intelligence practice based in North Carolina. We help communities, institutions, and coalitions understand the operating environment — what’s actually happening, what it means, and what options … Read more
The phrase is descriptive, not nihilistic. It is a description of the conditions a North Carolina community is operating in right now — federal withdrawal, climate transition, institutional pressure — and a framing that makes space for the practices BIPOC communities have always had to know.
Ground Truth NC describes its work as safety, not security. The choice is operational, legal, and values-driven — in that order. A note on why the language matters and what changes when you change the word.
Civic intelligence is intelligence work in the service of civic life. The same craft — collect, evaluate, structure, present — calibrated for community clients and held to a different set of values than the IC version that produced the discipline.