Four years ago, we decided to cut America’s Gordian Knot by starting our Great Economy Project in Whiteville, North Carolina. This led to the creation of the Columbus County Deciders. Now, after years of on-the-ground work, we’re seeing our efforts pay off.
Since we started the Patriotic Millionaires in 2010, we have always believed that if Americans knew the full extent to which the economy was rigged against them, they wouldn’t waste a second in demanding more and better from their elected officials. They could disagree all they want on “culture war” issues like immigration, guns, and abortion, but we know there is common ground—and a lot of it—on bread-and-butter economic issues.
Americans have been spoon-fed fairytales about “trickle-down economics” for years by politicians of both parties. But the reality is that billionaires pay lower tax rates than everyone else, and companies like T-Mobile and Office Depot get away with paying $0 in taxes. At the same time, full-time workers earning the federal minimum wage live below the poverty line, while CEOs can literally make 6,666 times more than their median employee.
All of this leads to precisely why we decided to cut America’s Gordian Knot ourselves with our Great Economy Project four years ago, which we recently renamed “Team Money.” The Gordian Knot refers to an ancient Greek legend involving Alexander the Great. As the legend goes, in 333 BC, when Alexander the Great arrived in Gordium, the capital of Phrygia, he was challenged to untie an impossibly intricate knot connecting an oxcart to a post. Instead of trying to painstakingly untangle the knot, however, Alexander decided to simply cut through it with his sword. Drawing from this legend, the phrase “cutting the Gordian knot” has come to mean using an unexpectedly direct and simple means to solve a seemingly complex problem.
Our thinking in creating Team Money was to meet directly with working-class Americans in small, conservative towns and get the word out about what’s going on with the economy. Through educational sessions, focus groups, and more, our aim was to encourage residents to set aside their differences on social issues and focus exclusively on MONEY so that they would realize their shared political power in creating an economy that works for everyone.
We started our project in September 2022 in the town of Whiteville, North Carolina. Whiteville is situated in Columbus County, which is in the southeastern part of the state, and has a population of around 5,000, about a third of whom live below the poverty line. This upsetting but unsurprising statistic is due in part because North Carolina still follows the federal minimum wage of $7.25 and was decimated by job losses stemming from NAFTA. In fact, North Carolina was ranked dead last in Oxfam’s “Best States to Work” index. Over the last few presidential election cycles, voters in Columbus County have also become increasingly “red” and backed Republican candidates. In 2024, Trump won the county by a 34 point margin.
In the beginning, over the course of several weeks, we hosted a number of educational dinners for dozens of Whiteville residents. Sessions touched on everything from taxes, wages, billionaire philanthropy, exorbitant CEO pay, money in politics, and more. (If you’re interested, you can watch online versions of these sessions yourself here.)
It didn’t take long for residents to realize the power they had to shape the direction of our country. They began to call themselves “The Deciders” and started spreading the word about the rigged nature of our tax and wage systems at fairs, festivals, and other community events.
In 2024, a documentary, aptly called The Deciders, was even released about the Whiteville cohort’s journey. You can watch the movie on demand through Apple TV, Hoopla, Amazon Prime, or Plex Digital. As of this writing, you can also watch it for free with ads on YouTube.
Check out a trailer of The Deciders below:
The documentary spotlights one of the standout members of the Whiteville cohort, Brittany Newton. Brittany is a single mother of two children. She is a nursing assistant who works over 80 hours a week to provide for her family. In the movie, Brittany admits that she didn’t even know what a “living wage” was before participating in Team Money, but by the end, it’s obvious that she is one of the group’s most engaged and committed leaders.
Over three years later, The Deciders are still out in full force. The documentary has been screened in cities and towns across North Carolina. Last year, the cohort opened a headquarters in downtown Whiteville. In the fall, we worked with them to launch a ten-week media campaign, “Flood the Red Zone: Save America,” targeting working-class voters in North Carolina; together, our millionaire members and The Deciders attended fairs and festivals and spoke with Tar Heels about our “Cost of Living” Tax Cut Act, one of the four pieces of legislation that comprise our MONEY Agenda. The group is also planning to do a college campus tour and get the word out about the need for economic justice to local college students.
As for Brittany, she is stepping down from her role as town captain to run for the North Carolina House in District 46 against House Majority Leader Brenden Jones. We are so thankful for her service to our group, Whiteville, and Columbus County, and can’t wait to see what’s next!
The whole point of Team Money is to help working people realize that they have the power to fix our rigged economy. Given how much The Deciders have accomplished over the last three years, we like to think we’ve succeeded. We still have a long way to go on the road to economic justice, but we’re glad to see that we have cut America’s Gordian Knot and that, with patriots like The Deciders, the word is spreading about the need to tax the rich, pay the people, and spread the power in America.