WNC Community Bail Fund

WNCCBF is a community-based, mutual-aid and bail-fund project organized by current and former convicts/drug users in Haywood, Jackson, and nearby counties in Tsalaguwetiyi (so called Western North Carolina), as part of the WNC Harm Redux Co, a grassroots advocacy organization and Drug Users' Union. The project was created to combat the cash-bail system, which through its violence and oppression has caused fear and grief for the good people of WNC in their own homes and neighborhoods. We condemn the weaponization of illegal arrests and imprisonment, upheld by cash bail, which inherently discriminates against people experiencing poverty and, as such, drug users and other intersecting communities. We emphasize that drug users recently released from institutions are 10x more likely to die of an overdose than other citizens due to the effect that imprisonment has on tolerance, implicating policing and cash bail in the growing overdose crisis. We hereby mobilize to protect ourselves, as those whose duty it is to do so have failed and betrayed us.