WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Charles Blow

There seems to be a new age of activism rising. From Occupy Wall Street, to the “Stop Watching Us” march against government surveillance, to the Moral Monday protests, to the People’s Climate March, to the recent nationwide protests over the killings of men and boys of color by police, there is obviously a discontent in this country that is pouring into the streets. -- New York Times

Jesus "Chuy" Garcia

“I’m hoping we’ll be successful. And if we weren’t, I would go to federal court to change that because I think the right to elect a school board is a constitutional right that comes from the right to elect those who govern an institution so vital to our city. Schools systems are, perhaps, the main government body that affects the lives of a majority of our citizens, especially minorities in Chicago.” -- E & O

S.W.A.T. teams in schools

Ron Avi Astor, a professor of social work and education at USC

 “There’s an illusion that having all these video cameras, metal detectors, sensors, SWAT kinds of people on campus makes the place safer. The problem is from an educational perspective: It doesn’t feel safer. It feels like a prison.” -- New York Times

General Michael V. Hayden

 “We’re not here to defend torture. We’re here to defend history.” -- New York Times

From Twitter

Drones are a popular Christmas present among American kids this year. It's a sign that they want to grow up to be president.
— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) December 7, 2014

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Strawberry Mansion High in North Philadelphia is one of 37 schools the school had slated for closing. 

Philadelphia Superintendent William Hite 

"Alarming. "This diagram suggests that children who are most in need of resources are receiving the fewest amount of resources." -- Philly Public Schools Notebook

Cassie Creswell, More Than A Score board member

“The state must administer the test but that doesn’t mean the kid has to take it. On a legal basis, the parent should have the right to refuse for the kids.” -- Sun-Times

Rev. Barber

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber

"When you look at Moral Monday and our movement, you see North Carolina and America in all of its beauty." --  NC Civil Rights Leader Questioned About Being Featured in Campaign Attack Ads

Danny Glover

 “Harry was a kind of bridge between the blacklist and the actors who were beginning to speak out.” -- Harry Belafonte Receives Humanitarian Oscar

Richard Berman, right-wing media guru

“I get up every morning and I try to figure out how to screw with the labor unions — that’s my offense,” Mr. Berman said in his speech to the Western Energy Alliance. “I am just trying to figure out how I am going to reduce their brand.” -- N.Y. Times

NYT Editorial

The economy is not working for those who rely on paychecks to make a living, which is to say, almost everyone. Steady gains in the October jobs report, while welcome, do not change that basic fact. -- Job Growth, But No Raises

Moral Monday yesterday in Durham

Moral Monday yesterday in downtown Durham

The Moral Monday movement is spreading across N.C. this summer as part of the NAACP’s “Moral Freedom Summer” initiative to get out the vote for fall elections. The focus of the multi-racial weekly protests is the attack on voting rights by the Republican legislature. Thousands have also turned out to protest school re-segregation, attacks on union rights, and the the state’s denial of Medicaid expansion.

MM leader Rev. William Barber spoke addressed yesterday's rally in Durham.

 “Nobody gave us our right to vote. Someone died for our right to vote,” Barber said. He said the legislative majority was wrong to attack Medicaid, the working poor and teachers, but voting is another level. “How dare you,” he said.

Three Durham clergy also spoke in support of voting rights – Rabbi John Friedman of Judea Reform Congregation, Rev. Jimmie Hawkins of Covenant Presbyterian Church and Rev. Ginger Brasher-Cunningham of Pilgrim United Church of Christ.



MORAL MONDAYS – with the slogan “Forward Together” – is not about Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives, says Barber. Republican Mayor Adam O'Neal of Belhaven, NC who is parting ways with his fellow Republicans (this is a big deal for a white southern mayor) led a 273-mile march to D.C. to draw attention to the health care crisis threatening his rural coastal community following the closure of the area's only hospital. He was joined by Rev. Barber who was in the nation's capital to protest his state's the denial of Medicaid expansion.

O'Neal is also raising concerns about wealthy nonprofit hospital corporations like Greenville, NC-based Vidant Health shutting down critical access hospitals like Vidant Pungo.

"Not for Profit companies that make $100,000,000 in a year shouldn't be able to close a hospital like Belhaven's they own for a new immoral business plan," O'Neal wrote in a press release published in his local paper. "We the people need to stand together to protect healthcare for all of us."

O'Neal and the march to D.C. were featured on MSNBC and other news shows yesterday.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Tells AFT delegates, "We will go forward together."

Rev. Wm. Barber II, president of NC's NAACP chapter 

“If they’ve got to fight us this hard, we’ve got to be some bad somebodies,” Barber said eliciting a standing ovation from the crowd. -- Teacher union convention opens with fiery speech

Salim Muwakkil

Chronic poverty is criminogenic; the links are thick and reinforced by rigorous scholarship. In Chicago's communities, rates of violent crime correlate to poverty rates in ways that make that point irrefutable. There is little dispute that if violence prevention is the goal, reducing poverty is the most effective tactic. -- Chicago Tribune

Alex Caputo-Pearl, new UTLA pres. 

The new L.A. union leader framed his remarks around defining “social movement unionism,” which he said is “explicit about fighting for racial and social justice. It’s explicit in fighting against privatization. It’s explicit in taking people on who need to be taken on, including a lot of Democrats.” He added: “It’s a unionism that is willing to strike. It’s a unionism that is willing to build to a strike and strike if that’s what we need to do.” -- At AFT Convention 

Clarence Page

Obama has boosted border security and deported so many undocumented immigrants (a record-breaking 409,849 in 2012) that the National Council of La Raza, a leading Hispanic rights organization, has branded him "deporter-in-chief." No, that was not a compliment. -- Chicago Tribune

For immediate release from N.C. NAACP

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 28, 2014 Contact: Sarah Bufkin, NC NAACP - smbufkin@gmail.com or 404.285.3413 Workers and Clergy Members Arrested in Speaker Thom Tillis' Office for Petitioning to Repeal a Flood of Unjust, Destructive Laws Hurting North Carolina  We Shall Not Be Moved | Tillis 15 RALEIGH, NC - Hundreds of North Carolinians showed up yesterday to lobby their state legislators to repent for the harm they have caused, to repeal the flood of extreme policies passed last year and to restore confidence in our elected officials. Among them were 15 moral witnesses who visited Speaker Thom Tillis' office at 3:30 pm yesterday and who staged a sit-in when the speaker chose not to meet with them. After nearly 12 hours of protest - and numerous warnings from the General Assembly authorities - eight workers from McDonald's, Wendy's and Bojangles; four clergy members; a nationally recognized housing expert and a retired public school employee were arrested in NC House Speaker Thom Tillis' office around 2 am Wednesday morning. "Tonight, we put a face on the real harm these policies are inflicting across our state," said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the North Carolina NAACP. "Our state lawmakers should adhere two fundamental principles: first, that legislators should be governing for the good of the whole, and second, as our state constitution lays out, that 'beneficent provision for the poor, the unfortunate and the orphan is one of the first duties of a civilized and a Christian state.' Speaker Tillis, Senate Leader Berger and Gov. McCrory have broken with both of these principles, particularly in their decisions to deny Medicaid expansion, to repeal the EITC, to cut back unemployment benefits and to pass a tax plan that benefits only the wealthiest few. They pass extreme policies, and then they will not even speak to the people their policies are hurting." The Tillis 15 went to the Speaker's office intending to speak to him about repealing and reversing the measures that are hurting them and their neighbors directly, but they were never able to see him. Speaker Tillis apparently came into the House chamber through another entrance, conducted a short session for about an hour and a half and then left the building through another exit. Crystal Price, a 27-year old worker at a Wendy's in Greensboro, was one of the fourteen moral witnesses arrested today. She is a mother of two children living on minimum wage and also suffers from cervical cancer. Denying the Medicaid expansion and cutting the Earned Income Tax Credit have impacted her ability to make ends meet. Rev. Julie Peeples, another moral witness arrested today, has seen the havoc these polices have wrought in the lives of her congregation at the United Church of Christ in Greensboro. She knows teachers who hold down two jobs to because they make so little in North Carolina public schools and hardworking North Carolinians without health care access because they fall into the Medicaid gap. These arrests will not stop or dissuade the North Carolina NAACP and the Forward Together Moral Movement from pushing our state legislators to do the right thing and repeal these unjust laws. We will return to the General Assembly next Monday, June 2 for a Moral Monday action. More information on the next Moral Monday to come. The list of Tillis 15 moral witnesses is below: Rev. Julie Peeples Minister Rubye Harris Meyshon Payton Jesseia Jackson Amber Matthews* Crystal Prize Randolph Perry Norma Clark Norman Clark Jason McCullen Tyrek Pierce Rev. Dick Weston Jones Stella Adams Fay Daniel Rev. C. Anthony Jones * One of the original moral witnesses, Amber Matthews, left the action shortly after midnight, concerned that she, as a single mother, would not be able to get her son to school in the morning. To see personal testimonies from some of the Tillis 15, check out the new video from the sit-in HERE.   ### Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities. The NC Conference of NAACP Branches is 70 years old this year and is made up of over 100 Adult, Youth and College NAACP units across the state, convenes more than 160 members of the Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) People's Assembly Coalition, and is the architect of the Moral Monday & Forward Together Movement.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"Obamacare makes you lazy!" - Roy Blunt, US Senator, who will only work 126 days this year.

Lorna Brett Howard, N.Y. Democratic activist

...dismissed concerns that the tax increase [for Mayor deBlasio's proposed universal Pre-K] — a difference of $530 for every $100,000 in income over the threshold — was burdensome. “That is one trip on your private plane to St. Bart’s,” she said. -- NY Times

80,000 at N.C. protest 

Rev, William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP

“You may have thought you were going to discourage us, but instead you have encouraged us. The more you push us back, the more we will fight to go forward. The more you try to oppress us, the more you will inspire us.” -- The Nation

Marybeth Beller, a political scientist at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va.

“I don’t think we’re going to have too many people running in 2014 in West Virginia who are going to be talking about anti-regulation.” -- NYT, One Month After Toxic Spill, West Virginians Face ‘Crisis of Confidence’

 Kathleen Ann, Freelance writer from New England 

I used to have a house. I used to go on vacations. I used to shop at department stores, get my hair done and even enjoy pedicures. Now, I don't. I'm a member of the American "Used-to-Haves." -- Huffington

Movement Envy

Protesters rally during "Moral Monday" demonstrations at Halifax Mall near the General Assembly in Raleigh, N.C., in July. More than 1,000 people have been arrested while protesting against policies being enacted by the North Carolina General Assembly. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

By Susan Klonsky

I admit it. We have a great movement here in Chicago, but still, I'm jealous of Mondays in North Carolina.

Reviving the spirit and moral compass of the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘60s, protest has become the Monday Lifestyle in NC.  People  put their Monday evening rallies on the calendar. “Mon. 5:30 pm:  Sit in, get arrested @ State Capitol.” It’s becoming sort of normal.

For the past 4 months in Raleigh, every Monday  is Moral Monday. Late in the day, as people get off work, they surround the Statehouse with rings of protesters. Mass arrests are scheduled, followed on Thursdays by well-organized press conferences by those arrested.  Every Monday the protests get larger—now exceeding 15,000 in Raleigh, with big rallies throughout the state. The movement is multiracial and has spread well beyond North Carolina’s capital out to the mountainous west of the state, to small towns and tiny hamlets.

Reverend Dr. William Barber 

The leader of this movement is a Disciples of Christ minister, the Reverend Dr. William Barber III.  I had the pleasure of meeting Rev. Barber earlier this week. He is the latest in a bloodline of activist pastors who have fought racial segregation and its ugly siblings, poverty and violence, for generations. Rev. Barber, a giant of an orator, is the state chairman of the North Carolina NAACP. With the NAACP as its nucleus,  the Moral Monday Movement is an expansive coalition embracing an impressive number of organizations in all fields, labor unions, religious congregations, professional societies, and even fraternities and sororities. And they are on a roll.

“We’ve got a strategy. We never expected this thing to take off as it has. But we had to sit down and say, ‘where are we going with this?’” Barber explains. “We started off with one rally, and now we’re at the point of having 13 mass rallies in all 13 Congressional districts across the state. We’ve even had one of the county Republican party chairs renounce his own party,” as the result of the backward legislation the GOP has rammed through the North Carolina Legislature.

The Moral Monday folks have put their heads together and done the math. They’ve cooked up a plan for restoring the rights and hard-won protections that have recently been violated and nullified by the NC
state legislature. The Moral Mondays movement seeks to broaden and deepen the fight-back movement within the electorate. This will require a massive voter registration effort designed to boost the percentages of African American registered voters as well as a shift among a portion of white voters.

More than 1,000 arrests for civil disobedience. 

The plan involves mass participation in voter education and mobilization. Unions and professional societies will play a big part, by having their members trained to register voters (and to deal with the new and exceptionally stringent, obstructive regulations about voter identification). “If each of us does 50 registrations, we can make our goal of 45,000 new voters,” Barber explains. “That’s why we must start now. It’s totally attainable.”

Just as important as registering voters is awakening in the public a sense of moral indignation at what has been done by the legislature.  Basic human rights and Constitutional protections have been undone and the full implications and impact of these violations is beginning to be felt. "We seek to force a deeply moral discourse among the public--in every sector--youth and students, senior citizens, and everyone in between," Rev. Barber explains.

I asked Rev. Barber if he feels they can keep these Monday events going indefinitely. He explained that they are building for a few major events this winter. In particular, in December when the remaining major cutbacks to Medicaid in the state kick in, and again in January, he expects an uptick in mass protest against the attacks upon public education, social and health services, including reproductive rights, and state aid to the poor and unemployed.

Last month, Barber told us, the movement spread to some of the whitest, most heavily Republican parts of the state, where the Tea Party had until recently held sway. Now that people are beginning to experience the effects of budget slashing including removal of protections for teachers and other public employees, the picture is changing. “We were invited to speak up in rural Mitchell County, way up in the mountains,” Barber said, “and we found ourselves at a church way up there, in the evening, packed with several hundred people—an all white crowd—waiting for us.”

It used to be  Klu Klux country up there, and Reverend Barber admits he was somewhat apprehensive about what kind of reception he might receive.  He was greeted by the assembled joining together to sing Blessed be the tie that binds/Our hearts in Christian love.  “They were  fired up for Moral Monday.”

What brought them out, at least in part, Barber observed, was the attacks upon teachers. “They have 17 or 18 percent unemployment up there. And the schools are some of the biggest employers in these counties, and now they are having to lay off school personnel because of the state budget cuts to education. Plus, there is no more tenure or job security at all for them. A man got up at that meeting and declared, ‘When they hurt education, they really hurt us mountain people.’”

Moral Monday has lots of religious participants. But it is not a religious movement. “For me, this is a fight to uphold our deepest Constitutional and faith values,” says Barber. It is many things to many people. At public meetings throughout the state, people testify to their worries, anger and intention to be part of the fight in North Carolina.

The issues draw them together:
Voting rights, health care, education, jobs and poverty. The movement stands in defense of  LGBT rights including marriage equality. How does Moral Monday deal with religion and religious differences? “We are tired of the Christian Right which is so wrong trying to dominate the moral high ground,” Barber explains. “We challenge them:  Are you really ready for a moral debate? Are you ready to defend what you have done?  Of course they don’t want to debate. It most certainly is a moral issue. Cutting people off from health care, from their jobs, taking food off their tables. They have no integrity and they hide from debate.”

The budget slashing and violations of basic civil rights are shaped by the ALEC agenda--the same ALEC which we protested less than 2 weeks ago in Chicago. The same ALEC which designed Florida’s murderous “Stand Your Ground” law.  These people are extremists, Barber emphasizes. Their policies are dangerous. And people are beginning to see them for what they are, especially as the social and economic impact of the cuts of benefits and programs is beginning to be widely felt.

At the core of the Moral Mondays movement is a strong principle of anti-racism. It is inspiring to witness this principle beginning to penetrate a broad swath of the population, as people come together to win back the rights that have been denied.

Yes, we have a great movement here in Chicago, but I’m still a little envious.

Immoral Monday in Chicago

Streets and Sanitation workers made a gruesome discovery a half-block from a Safe Passage route this morning: 

Mayor cancels walk with students after confronted by protesters 

Mayor Rahm Emanuel was scheduled to lead a group of children from Cather Elementary School on the West Side to a nearby community center for after-school programs after classes let out this afternoon.

But after protesters from the grassroots group Action Now turned up at Cather with a bullhorn and pamphlets, urging a boycott of Chicago Public Schools, Emanuel abruptly dropped that plan, got back in his SUV and left. -- Tribune Live Blog 

Immoral Monday

What else could you call this day in Chicago when thousands of children were made to walk though a cordon of thousands of armed police, deputized city workers, minimum-wage hirelings and community volunteers, just to get to school safely? It was a scene reminiscent of Little Rock in 1957.

All this, the result of immoral policy decisions by an out-of-control mayor, disproportionately affecting the city's poorest and racially isolated communities and putting children in harm's way.

Reports are coming in of scattered protests, boycotts and acts of resistance across the city to the unprecedented mass closing of neighborhood public schools.

A school boycott has been called for Wednesday, the 28th to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington.

Moral Monday

Rev. Barber

I think, what's needed is the kind of mass protests I wrote about recently from North Carolina on Moral Mondays.

A leader of the Moral Monday movement is Rev. Dr. William Barber III,  the state head of the NAACP in N.C.. Dr. Barber was in town today along with old friend and veteran southern civil rights lawyer Al McSurely. Barber addressed the convention of the United Electrical Workers as did Kristine Mayle, from the CTU.

We got to hang out with McSurely and the Rev. this afternoon and couldn't help but get fired up after hearing more about this multiracial movement that has mobilized tens of thousands across North Carolina. More than 1,000 people have been arrested in acts of civil disobedience in defense of voting rights, public education and economic justice.

More on this to come.

With Tim Tyson on Moral Monday in N.C.

Tim Tyson

Susan and I stopped in and paid a visit with old friend Tim Tyson in Durham, N.C. yesterday. A professor at Duke University, Tim was on his way over to the Moral Monday protest in Raliegh. 

Susan Klonsky reports from Durham:

Tim is a historian with a long view of the current wave of retrograde legislation and its connection to the history of race in North Carolina. He is one of the organizers of Moral Monday and has been arrested numerous times in the sit-ins. His 83-year-old father, Rev. Vernon Tyson, was recently arrested, as have been pretty much all the members of the Tyson family.

At yesterday's protest

Yesterday at the North Carolina Statehouse in Raleigh more than a thousand protestors convened the 12th weekly "Moral Monday" where more than 70 people were handcuffed and arrested, bringing the total of arrests to more than 900. The protests have focused on the draconian cuts in school funding as well as the rampant resegregation of schools in Wake County.  They have also targeted the current assault on  civil rights and social programs currently being rammed through the Republican-dominated North Carolina state legislature. The weekly protests include sit-ins inside the Statehouse, resulting in the arrests of hundreds (nearly 1000 arrests to date).  Moral Mondays were initiated by the NC NAACP and its state president, Rev. Dr.William Barber II. Moral Mondays are now supported by a gigantic statewide coalition of educational, civic, and charitable groups of every description. The protests have focused especially on cuts to education as well as to health care, food stamps, and voting rights.

Tim Tyson (arm raised) at Moral Monday

"Every week we protest all the cuts in every domain," Tyson explains,"but every week we emphasize one area." This week the focus is on the gutting of voting rights in the state. Each week the protest rallies have grown in size and breadth. This week they expected and got the biggest turn-out yet. Gov. Pat McCrory is pig-headedly forging ahead with measures designed to restrict voting rights, especially a voter ID law. McCrory's popularity has plummeted as a result of his cuts to public services, destruction of education and health programs, and the radical move of turning down a no-cost federal unemployment subsidy. "He's trailing slightly behind non-poisonous snakes" in popularity, Tyson notes.

As civil rights protections are rolled back, he explains, the main attacks are against the entire system of public education in the state. Multiple ways are being engineered to undermine the public schools and to incentivize parents to pull out. A voucher bill has just been passed, which will provide $4000 subsidy to any child who is pulled out of a public school and enrolled in a private school. Parents who opt to home-school their kids will receive a sizeable tax break per child. North Carolina, Tyson explains, was the last state to implement school desegregation--17 years after Brown. "They've been waiting all these years ever since for their chance to undo desegregation, and here it is."  Last week's drastic education budget destroyed the jobs of 5000+ teacher's aides. The legislature also removed the limit on the number of charter schools that can be formed, "opening the sluice gates for charter operators to flood the state."  And teacher due process, especially teacher tenure, has been wiped out altogether.

Art Pope (New Yorker)

Much of this action is backed politically and financially by right-wing powerhouse Art Pope, whom Tyson describes as "the third Koch brother." Head of a chain of retail stores,  Pope  has made his fortune in the low-income communities which are now under attack. He is joined in this enterprise by right-wing Raleigh businessman Robert Luddy, president of a company that manufactures kitchen ventilation systems and the founder of a charter school and private schools.

These guys know there's money to be made.

 I asked Tyson if this state of affairs has him down in the dumps. "Absolutely not! We haven't seen a movement like this since the 60s. We're growing a coalition, learning to work it together on all issues. It's true that the poverty is worse right now than it has been in decades. People are really hurting. The conservatives who control the state right now are more virulent than we've seen in years. There has even been a proposal put forth to legislate Christianity as the official state religion of North Carolina! But the point is the resistance. It's a movement. It's growing. It's spreading. It's far from over. We're kicking butt and we're going to win." But not without a fight.

PS:  Be sure to read Diane Ravitch's blog post: A Tragic Day For Public Education in North Carolina, a succinct comment on the education situation by Yvonne Brannan of Public Schools First NC.