Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Moral Monday

Protests start up again this Monday at 5:00 at the N.C. General Assembly building in Raleigh. Pat McCrory and Thom Tillis may be trying to keep a low profile in advance of the 2014 elections, but the damage has been done, and we are not going to forget.

The American Prospect has a nice piece up about Moral Monday Round II:
A striking trait of the North Carolina movement, and a key to its potential success, is its deliberate ideological and geographic breadth. The NAACP has tightened its alliances with environmental, women’s, LGBT, labor, immigrant, and religious organizations, some of which have historically been at odds over social issues. Barber himself has modeled this line-crossing approach.
He took a strong stand in 2012 against North Carolina’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriages and civil unions, and more recently showed up at Duke Energy’s May 1 shareholder meeting to protest a devastating coal-ash spill into the Dan River. Likewise, the NAACP has pushed into traditionally conservative regions of North Carolina—including Mitchell County in the Appalachian Mountains, where an overwhelmingly white crowd packed an Episcopal church last fall to listen to Barber’s message and interrupt with the occasional “amen.”
“It is unbelievable,” Gatewood says of these allies in places like Mitchell County. “They’re exemplifying enthusiasm that’s moving faster than some of our traditional NAACP leaders. When you’re coming against teachers, [people in conservative strongholds] have got relatives who are teachers. When you’re coming against people who are unemployed, some of them lost jobs at no fault of their own.”
The reactionary policies enacted by the General Assembly last session have affected us all, and most people here do not agree with what they have done. Whether or not we can get voters out in sufficient numbers is a big question (as it always is in off-year elections), but the Democratic party has been gearing up a good ground game strategy, and, more importantly, outside pressure groups - from the NAACP to the NC Association of Educators, to WomenAdvance NC, to environmental coalitions are ALL working hard and wiring together to educate voters get people registered, and keep them engaged in issues that matter to them.

For the first time in a long time, I am hopeful that we might turn this thing around.

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