The New Poor People's Campaign for 2018

Last night, on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's launch of the first Poor People's Campaign, Rev. William J. Barber II announced a new Poor People's Campaign which will climax next June 21st with a mass mobilization in Washington, DC.

“We must transform the moral narrative in this country,” Barber, who led N.C.’s Moral Monday efforts, said in a statement announcing the plan ahead of a Monday news conference. “We went through the most expensive presidential campaign in U.S. history in 2016 without a single serious discussion of poverty and systemic racism. Now we are witnessing an emboldened attack on the poor and an exacerbation of systemic racism that demands a response."

“This is not about saving any one party or policy agenda but about saving the soul of America.”

Amen to that.

You too can join this movement for the soul of America: https://poorpeoplescampaign.org.

A New Wrinkle in NC's Voter Photo ID Law

Yesterday, and completely out of the blue, the NC Senate, followed quickly by the NC House, voted overwhelmingly to soften the photo ID law.

Assuming that Gov. Squishy will sign this new wrinkle into law, it will set up "a process for voters to use a 'reasonable impediment declaration' outlining why they couldn’t provide a photo ID at the polls. Voters could claim one of eight reasons, including a lack of transportation, disability or illness, lost or stolen photo ID, or a lack of a birth certificate or other documents to obtain a photo ID."

The Rev. William J. Barber II, the head of the state NAACP who was arrested on Wednesday while protesting the N.C. voting laws at the N.C. General Assembly, wasn't impressed by this sudden weakening of what had been the most draconian photo ID law in the nation: “These legislators try to distract us from the full bill implications by minimally fixing a leaky faucet but keeping the whole foundations of the bill intact. The pressure of protest and legal action are exposing their actions and forcing them to adjust. If they were truly interested in change and the tenets of our democracy, they would repeal the entire bill....”

Meanwhile, the grandees at Art Pope's Civitas Institute, who had pushed hard for photo ID, were forecasting the end of Western Civilization. Susan Myrick, elections policy analyst for Civitas Institute, said that she was caught off guard by the Senate vote. “To say the least, we were surprised,” Myrick said. The provisional ballot addition, she said, “guts” the ID rule. “It demolishes it,” Myrick said. “There’s no voter ID in North Carolina. It’s over.”

Well, we could hope, but Myrick's hysteria is no more impressive than the small change to the law that they voted on yesterday.

But why this sudden reversal? Astute observers are pointing out that this sudden move comes just two weeks before a federal trial over the constitutionality of the entire new voter laws will begin in a Winston-Salem courtroom. Changing the rules on the eve of trial seems just a little ... too ... transparent. Especially as Republican bosses in the General Assembly -- not to mention their "amen corner" out in the wilds -- have contended for years now that stringent photo ID laws were necessary to squelch widespread and prevalent voter fraud.

“One of the things we’ve been doing over the past two years is getting feedback,” Senate leader Phil Berger, the hardliner's hardliner said. “So what that provision represents is some of the feedback to try to make sure everyone who is eligible to vote has the opportunity to vote and have their vote count.”

Wow, commented someone. "Republicans have ears?"

This Crux in History

Rep. Mickey Michaux appears at about the 2:30 point ... footage of the representative trying to discuss the history of voting rights in North Carolina on the floor of the NC House but being ruled out of order. Thom Tillis is at the Speaker's podium.

You're out of order, NC GOP! And you're on the wrong side of history.

Wendy Davis and William Barber

I light a candle for my native state, Texas, where hope for sanity after a few eons of Rick "Oops" Perry and the dominance of a Republican legislature looks actually possible. You don't piss off Texas women without getting a two-by-four upside the head. From the Texas Monthly:

...on the morning of June 25, the petite fifty-year-old Democratic state senator [Wendy Davis] from Fort Worth fixed herself a single boiled egg for breakfast. It would be her only meal of the day. She slipped on a pair of pink tennis shoes, headed over to the Capitol, and stepped up. As Davis began what would become her internationally memorialized eleven-hour filibuster of a Republican bill that would severely restrict a Texas woman’s ability to obtain an abortion, she calmed her jittery nerves by thinking of the assurances made to her the previous afternoon by former Democratic state senator Gonzalo Barrientos, himself an old hand at filibusters: It’ll be fine. You can lean on your desk, keep some candies in your pocket, read anything remotely related to the topic—no one will call you on any of that.
Once it became clear that the opposite was true—that in fact the Republicans intended to challenge every syllable and muscle twitch—she started getting mad. As the day wore on, her lower back began to hurt. “It was probably because of stress,” she told me two days later. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, what if I collapse during hour six?’ ” Her fellow Democrat Rodney Ellis helped her put on a back brace, but this led to the second point of order of the afternoon against her (after three points of order are sustained, a filibuster can be stopped). From then on, Davis knew she had to be error-free. She began to draw both strength and focus from the legion of supporters who had packed the Senate gallery. She was unaware that outside the chamber, the halls of the Capitol were filled with even more people rooting her on or that, by the end of the evening, more than 180,000 people around the world were watching a livestream of the proceedings, with many more following along on social media. Davis learned all this only later, after midnight, upon the defeat of the bill, when the evening’s takeaway seemed best expressed in a tweet by another emerging Texas Democrat, San Antonio mayor Julián Castro: “When Texas turns Blue, tonight may well be looked upon as the beginning.”

No one knows for sure, of course, but we can imagine that the first Moral Monday back on April 27th, and those first 17 arrests for civil disobedience, was the beginning in North Carolina of throwing off the oppression of Teapublican rule, the skewed values and mean-spirited attacks on the poor and the unemployed, the micro-managing punishment of our cities, the triumphalism of fundamentalist religion hell-bent on destroying the social contract.

We can certainly thank the Rev. William Barber for his leadership in rallying the opposition. Without him, nothing would have happened. He's our Wendy Davis.

"The Only Marriage We Should Be Concerned About"

Though the Republican leadership in the NC General Assembly trotted out some black ministers months ago to preach against committed relationships having the right to marriage, the North Carolina NAACP has stood steadfast for marriage equality and against Amendment One. NAACP President Rev. William Barber reiterated that position this past weekend at the EqualityNC "Foundation Conference" in Greensboro. We like this excerpt (full video below, courtesy of Pam Spaulding):

…The marriage we should be concerned about is the marriage of corporate money and politics. Ultra-conservative corporations have tied the knot with an ugly set of anti-public policies that undermine public education, voter protection, workers rights, protection from payday lenders, health care reform and other programs established for the public good....

Thom Tillis: "You Must Respect My Authori-tie!"

Rev. William Barber, head of the NC NAACP, was arrested yesterday in the gallery of the NC House, along with six others after quoting Micah 6:8 rather loudly:

"Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly With God."

So far the venerable leader has been at every public protest we've attended in Raleigh, and at a lot more that we didn't get to, and so far he's the only leader in the state willing to be arrested rather than sit silent and watch this new thuggish Republican majority in Raleigh take us all back to the 19th century in one single session of the General Assembly.

Rev. Barber has asked for a meeting with Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis, who is now playing Aunt Pittypat, fanning himself furiously and pursing those lips at such disrespect for his Exalted Highness.

Mark Binker adds detail:

...In one particularly awkward moment, police were holding Barber in front an elevator preparing to escort him out. Tillis came down the stairs and was immediately confronted by a protestor asking about a meeting with Barber.

“When I have a respectful request I'll be happy to meet with people who treat my House with respect,” Tillis said.

One protestor replied, “Your house? We're paying for it. It's our house.