North Carolina

How To Build A Powerful People’s Movement

June 24, 2014 Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, www.thenation.com Strategize! Barack Obama, Civil Rights, History, Labor, Moral Mondays, North Carolina

How do we build a people’s movement? We start with vision. Prophetic moral vision seeks to penetrate despair, so that we can believe in and embrace new futures. It does not ask if the vision can be implemented—questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The slaves didn’t get out of slavery by first figuring out how to get out; they got out because they were driven by a vision that said, “Oh freedom over me. / And before I’d be a slave / I’d be buried in my grave / And go home to my Lord and be free.” If we are going to have a real populist movement in this country, we have to reinstate an imagination that is not driven by pundits but by a larger vision. Most of the time, your greatest vision comes in your darkest night, because it is then, Martin Luther King Jr. said, that you see the stars. Populist movements don’t build when everything is fine. A populist moral vision is a form of dissent that says there’s a better way, there’s a moral way.

Repealing Tax Cuts Makes Moral Budget Possible

June 23, 2014 William J. Barber II, www.portside.org Resist! Budget Cuts, Moral Mondays, North Carolina

A budget is a moral document. Through it, we can measure a state’s values and its vision for the common good. In North Carolina, we toast ourselves as a place “where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great.” But there is no greatness in our current budget proposals. The draft budgets pushed by Speaker Thom Tillis, Senate Leader Phil Berger and their allies deepen the flood of extremist policies that they unleashed into law last summer. I am no lonely voice crying in the wilderness here. Only 18 percent of North Carolinians approve of the work our state legislators are carrying out this June. This short session, the Forward Together Moral Movement called upon our legislators to repeal huge tax cuts for the wealthy that hurt the most vulnerable among us. Those harmed by these policies – the sick without Medicaid, working families without the Earned Income Tax Credit – spoke for themselves. But the extremists look away. They veil their immoral choices behind the rhetoric of economic necessity. There simply isn’t enough to go around, they say.

1,500 Protest For Worker’s Rights In NC, 20 Arrested

June 18, 2014 NCNAACP, www.naacpnc.org Resist! North Carolina, Protest, Protestors Arrested, Worker's Rights

In a fourth week of peaceful protest at the North Carolina General Assembly during this legislative session, more than 1,500 people from across the state gathered on Monday to challenge the state legislature's extreme agenda and the regressive policies passed last year that have hurt workers. Members of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, labor unions, the fast food workers' organization Raise Up, as well as teachers' and women's groups highlighted the many ways in which budget proposals from state lawmakers are devastating for the poor, working people and most vulnerable residents of the state. Yesterday, the Forward Together Movement introduced youth organizers who are kicking off Moral Freedom Summer - in which 50 trained organizers will be anchored in 50 communities across North Carolina to register and mobilize voters. "The main reason for the short session is to pass budgets, but the budgets that we've seen pass here violate the constitutional principle to govern for the good of the whole," said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, during the rally on Halifax Mall.

Republicans &Democrats May Rue Progressive Awakening

May 30, 2014 Rob Schofield, www.ncpolicywatch.com Organize! Democrats, History, Moral Mondays, North Carolina

There is a bit of mythology percolating through the mainstream news media these days that the Moral Mondays/Forward Together movement led by Rev. William Barber of the North Carolina NAACP is somehow acting as stalking horse for the state Democratic Party and Democratic politicians. Associated Press reporter Katelyn Ferral even “reported” as much in a “news” story this week that several media outlets ran under the headline “NC’s protests are Democratic tool in election year.” This is from the story: “The weekly protesters at the North Carolina legislature call their charge against Republican policies a moral imperative. But it is a moral imperative replete with a Democratic agenda in an election year. The “Moral Monday” movement has become a de-facto campaign tool for Democrats to publicize their platform and recruit volunteers to help them win elections. In a year where North Carolina’s heated U.S. Senate race can decide the direction of the upper chamber, results will hinge on the movement’s ability to translate the voices to votes come November.” Ferral’s conclusion is, of course, plainly and utterly off-base.

NC State Regulators Colluded Against Environmentalists

March 15, 2014 Sarah Lazare, www.commondreams.org Educate! Coal, Energy, Environment, North Carolina

Internal emails released Thursday by environmental lawyers confirm what activists have long charged: the North Carolina authorities tasked with regulating Duke Energy — the company responsible for the Dan River coal ash disaster — have been colluding with the corporation behind closed doors to undermine concerned environmental groups. "These documents reveal a very cozy relationship between the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources and Duke and a deferential approach from DENR to Duke," said Nick Torrey, Associate Attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, in an interview with Common Dreams.

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