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

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

CPS Budget Cuts: Lane Tech Takes Protest to Alderman Pawar's Office 

Susan Dobinsky, Lane Tech parent

"It's anti-democratic," she said of what she deems a "clear effort" to "dismantle" public schools. -- DNAInfo

Kathi Thomas, Texas parent

 “These few kids that would be able to get out of taking the test, they will still get all of the wasted time prepping. And on the day that they don’t take the test, they are going to be warehoused in a library, and they still won’t getting any learning out of it.” --  NYT, Texas’ Bid to Ease Mandatory Exams for Public School Students

Barack Obama

 “If we don’t do anything, then growth will be slower than it should be. Unemployment will not go down as fast as it should. Income inequality will continue to rise... Racial tensions won’t get better; they may get worse, because people will feel as if they’ve got to compete with some other group to get scraps from a shrinking pot.” -- NYT, Obama Says Income Gap Is Fraying U.S. Social Fabric

Chaka Kahn

Chaka Kahn

"Well the trial, number one was a travesty. Racism is still very much alive and well in this country. It has gone to more of a cerebral state. But it’s alive and well. The new slavery is keeping black men in jail." -- Chaka Khan Boycotts Florida 

John Wilson

Once known for having the most innovative and progressive public school system in America, North Carolina is now a trajectory of backwardness. -- Edweek

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.