Lessons from North Carolina
I read this piece by Reverend Barber the other day and it helped me greatly:
His fundamental argument— providing historical context for what happened with Trump’s victory, reminding us that marginalized groups have been in worse positions than they are today, and did not give up but kept fighting — is that there is reason for hope even in dark times, and that a combination of pragmatism, tenacity, numbers, vigilance, and morality will allow us to move forward and carry the day. His focus on the use of moral language is that what really struck me. We do have right on our side, and it is time to start using direct language that reflects this, and to act in a grassroots and moral fashion that brings change.
A bit of background. Rev. Barber, head of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, is the architect of “Moral Mondays,” — a small protest and civil disobedience movement in North Carolina which drew attention within the state to the immoral attacks on voting, public education, benefits like Medicaid, civil rights, and other anti-democratic and unpopular measures the Republican-controlled legislature and its newly-elected governor, Pat McCrory, began ramming down the throats of the electorate after the GOP swept the state elections in 2012. Among these attacks was a clearly racially motivated roll back of voting rights targeting minority voters for the purpose of disenfranchising them, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found in a scathing opinion this summer, in a case filed by the North Carolina NAACP against then-Gov. McCory:
After years of preclearance and expansion of voting access, by 2013 African American registration and turnout rates had finally reached near-parity with white registration and turnout rates. African Americans were poised to act as a major electoral force. But, on the day after the Supreme Court issued Shelby County v. Holder, 133 S. Ct. 2612 (2013), eliminating preclearance obligations, a leader of the party that newly dominated the legislature (and the party that rarely enjoyed African American support) announced an intention to enact what he characterized as an “omnibus” election law. Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.
In response to claims that intentional racial discrimination animated its action, the State offered only meager justifications. Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist. Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation. “In essence,” as in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (LULAC), 548 U.S. 399, 440 (2006), “the State took away [minority voters’] opportunity because [they] were about to exercise it.” As in LULAC, “[t]his bears the mark of intentional discrimination.” Id. Faced with this record, we can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the district court to the contrary and remand with instructions to enjoin the challenged provisions of the law.
The Moral Mondays movement is largely credited with bringing attention within North Carolina to the systemic and targeted attacks on voting and other rights that the North Carolina Republican party was visiting on the population. As the demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience grew, so did the media coverage, and the fundamental immorality of the legislative assaults became more apparent to more and more North Carolinians. A Democrat, Roy Cooper, was able to beat McCrory in the November election — one of the few bright spots for Democrats.
McCrory at first would not concede, instead indulging himself in baseless claims of potential “voter fraud” straight from the standard GOP playbook:
McCrory’s contest-every-vote strategy came under criticism from election officials and newspaper editorial boards. In one county, a dead person they claimed voted was actually alive. In another county, two alleged convicted felons were not felons at all. In another, an election protest was thrown out after the GOP lawyer who filed it didn’t show up until after the hearing ended.
Eventually McCrory did concede:
But almost immediately thereafter, the Republican-controlled legislature, aided by the lame duck McCrory, stripped the new Democratic governor of critical powers in order to entrench themselves and impede any non-Republican control.
This blatant and disgusting power grab, in combination with the targeted discrimination against minority voters to prevent them from voting, tells you all you need to know about the Republican party in North Carolina: they reject democracy. It doesn’t matter what they say; their actions are clear. Acting to prevent a group that will vote against you from voting is the antithesis of democratic. It’s repressive. It’s totalitarian. It’s cheating. It tells you that they don’t believe they can win in a fair fight, and they are not willing to accept losing. They suppress the vote, and then they ram through policies that are unpopular, and that cause them, even in this suppressed-vote, gerrymandered environment, to lose, and then they lie to suggest the loss was procured through “voter fraud,” and then when even they can’t lie and cheat their way through to victory because their actions are so unpopular and immoral and wrong, they strip powers from the new governor to prevent him from doing what he was elected by the voters to do.
This is not just dirty politics, or playing hardball. It’s more than ratf*cking the other party. This is screwing the people. It’s invalidating the will of the people. It’s saying: we don’t care that more of you voted for person X, unless person X is on our team, we will prevent you from voting, and when that doesn’t work, we will make sure that person X has no power so that you, the people, cannot achieve what you voted for — your vote is in effect worthless. No one who does this can say with a straight face that they support democracy. These people are traitors to democracy.
Increasingly, these sorts of tactics define the Republican party more broadly across the United States. The fact that so many Republicans do not care that Russia interfered in the United States election, simply because they won, tells you just how precarious the entire democratic project is. If the measure of whether the conduct is acceptable is simply whether it benefits your side, you can’t claim to give a damn about democracy.
I have a couple of takeaways from North Carolina. First, the Republican Party there is a disgrace. Second, it was a disgrace before the stripping powers from the governorship, but the grass roots organizing and moral messaging of the Moral Mondays movement, together with a lawsuit, exposed the North Carolina GOP’s fundamental immorality and resulted in change. The Reverend Barber’s movement can and must be a lesson and a beacon of hope for us all. I think this is particularly true in “redder” states — the outcomes here show that small groups of dedicated people can make a difference. Third, the role and power of local organizing to address local problems cannot be overstated. Fourth, our shared sense of values may not be as badly frayed at the seams as I have been fearing. I keep coming back to Barber’s point about messaging, language, narrative. The basis of widespread Republican-voter support for voter suppression targeted at minorities is the specter of voter fraud. Trump uses this false accusation, and other Republicans use it all the time, exploiting racist belief that people who are not white are not legitimate and are cheating at the polls. People don’t like cheaters. So, the key to support for voter suppression tactics is that they are not, in fact, voter suppression tactics, but instead, necessary legislation to prevent voter fraud — to prevent cheating. Racists are of course more likely to believe that people of color are cheating at the polls because they want to believe this, and justify the voter suppression. And so perpetuating lies about voter fraud has been in the Republican party’s best interests for years, and is a primary way that they maintain power. But if we can get the message out that it’s the voter suppression that is the cheating, that people’s votes are not being counted, that the will of the people is in fact being subverted at the state level throughout the country, by the people already in power to preserve their power, to ram through policies that voters do not support, we should be able to build greater support for getting rid of these politicians. And the key to doing that is through the type of moral messaging that Reverend Barber is talking about.
