Greetings, felicitations, salaam aleikum, selamlar, shalom, zdravo, and welcome to Kitchen Table Kibitzing.
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon -- but things haven't been quite as quiet in North Carolina. In fact, things haven't been quiet here since January 2013, when a tea-party-supermajority took office in the General Assembly Building and a stealth tea-party-puppet governor, Pat McCrory, claimed his spot at the N.C. State Capitol under the tutelage of his appointed deputy budget director, Americans for Prosperity king Art Pope (aka "The Third Koch Brother").
For the first time since 1870, partisan balance in N.C.'s government had been overturned. A state that had long been purple, then blue in 2008, suddenly turned red as blood after bizarrely gerrymandered districts whose boundary-drawings were overseen by Art Pope brought a Republican landslide in the 2012 elections. When the dust settled, Democrats composed only 39% of N.C. House of Representatives members and a mere 28% of N.C. Senate members. Add a governor and (deputy in name only) budget director hell-bent on enacting the policies of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and we were in for a bumpy ride.
Within a few days of their taking office, our new state government was making headlines by ripping apart the foundations of North Carolina's laws and even our state constitution. No longer were "the people" permitted to meet with our elected General Assembly lawmakers in what we call "The People's House." Laws were being drafted to suppress the right to vote, force married couples to pay for two years of "spiritual" marital counseling before they could divorce, allow concealed-carry firearms in schools and churches, develop a state currency based on the gold standard, allow for the creation of a state religion (guess which one?), decimate public education, restrict reproductive health choices for women, and a list of other bills that would curl your toes.
More than 2,000 of these odious bills were rammed through the legislative pipeline in just a matter of weeks. Many of them were copied verbatim from the ALEC handbook on "suggested" legislation. Others ... well ... who knows where they came from?
Further, Gov. McCrory and his (deputy in name only) budget director refused to accept federal Medicaid expansion funds to accommodate implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which meant the state lost millions of dollars in federal funds for health care, food and nutrition assistance, Medicare supplements for those too poor to afford medication copays, and much more. More than 700,000 North Carolinians were to be left without assistance to purchase health insurance, and tens of thousands of elderly and disabled citizens were to be turned out of their Medicaid-funded nursing homes and other care facilities.
Something had to be done.
In February and March 2013, many of us began to meet to discuss the new bills coming out of the N.C. General Assembly and the policies enacted by the governor and his (deputy in name only) budget director. The NAACP of North Carolina led the meetings, with Rev. Dr. William Barber II, president of NAACP-NC, firing up the crowds to speak up and speak out about the immorality of the restrictive, oppressive bills. On April 29, uncounted hundreds of people gathered in the grassy square behind the General Assembly Building to protest the odious bills snaking their way through the legislative process, and 17 people entered the General Assembly Building and refused to disperse when asked by GA Police Chief Jeff Weaver.
Those 17 people became the first of more than 1,200 Moral Monday civil-disobedience arrestees.
Upon learning about the protests, Gov. McCrory and the N.C. General Assembly leadership chose to have those protesters who refused to leave the General Assembly building arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the Wake County Detention Center to be processed and seen before a county magistrate. In most circumstances, charges of this level would have brought about a citation, but the Republican leadership wanted to make an example of those who protested inside the building.
Their decision and their refusal to listen to the people of North Carolina who tried to be "represented, not ruled" by the governor and the General Assembly are what changed that first "Moral Monday" from a moment into a movement.
Spurred by outrage over the arrests, people started coming to Raleigh by the thousands each Monday to take part in Moral Monday rallies and protests. By the end of that 2013 legislative session, hundreds of thousands of people had protested at the N.C. General Assembly and in the public squares of towns and cities across North Carolina, and more than 935 people had been arrested for daring to sing, pray, and/or hold signs inside the General Assembly Building, "The People's House."
MsSpentyouth is arrested for peacefully assembling with 88 others on June 10, 2013, inside the N.C. General Assembly.
As of August 2014, the number of arrestees has risen to more than 1,200. Thanks to the leadership of the NAACP-NC in negotiation with local law enforcement, not one person has been hurt during the arrests or the protests, and there were virtually no unintentional arrests of bystanders (with a few notable exceptions, such as a clergy member arrested in May 2013 for sitting on a bench near civil-disobedience protesters, a reporter arrested while interviewing civil-disobedience protesters in June 2013, and a man arrested quite forcibly in August 2014 in Charlotte for passing out pamphlets during a Moral Monday rally there). Instead, we have been privately thanked by law-enforcement and detention-center personnel for standing up for them -- the municipal, county, and state personnel who have been just as affected by these regressive, repressive laws as the rest of us.
A special district court was established in 2013 using state emergency funds to prosecute hundreds of North Carolinians for exercising our right to speak with our legislators.
At first, the two district-court judges appointed by the governor seemed hell-bent on convicting every Moral Monday arrestee who chose to go to court. However, more and more of our very able attorneys -- more than 250 attorneys stepped forward to provide pro bono legal services to the arrestees -- were able to get a few acquittals here and there.
However, most of us whose cases were heard in district court were convicted. My conviction came in December, at which time I and others immediately appealed to superior court. I've made nine court appearances so far, in most cases showing up and waiting for hours merely to find a continuance granted to the district attorney's office, which has been swamped by the more than 1,200 cases.
But within the past few weeks something very surprising happened: "Hobby Lobby." The findings in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case heard in the U.S. Supreme Court have reverberated throughout courts everywhere. Suddenly the very same judge who convicted me despite video evidence and testimony from the GA Police chief that application of trespass laws were not "narrowly tailored" to exclude the exercise of free speech publicly stated that the laws and their application should have been narrowly tailored to permit free speech.
Who knew?
Well, for once, my attorney knew. (Thank you, Charles Putterman!) And the NAACP-NC certainly knew. (Thank you, NAACP!) And we all knew -- we knew we had the right to speak freely inside "The People's House" and to give voice to our legislators about legislative matters that concern us.
Finally, this past weekend, the Wake County district attorney announced that all but 50 of us are having our cases dismissed entirely.
So one fight is over: the legal battle over whether people should be arrested for peacefully assembling in the N.C. General Assembly Building and the N.C. State Capitol Building a block away.
But another is just beginning: the fight to overturn the odious laws that have put a chokehold on the people of North Carolina.
We are working hard to file suit against these laws, to exhort our municipal governments to challenge them, to urge federal intervention against voter suppression, and so much more. We continue to activate and agitate. We continue to resist and, as Rev. Dr. William Barber II stated in his keynote address at Netroots Nation 2014 in July, "to rise above the snake line."
When you have time, please watch this video of Rev. Barber's NN14 address. Yes, it's very long; he's a preacher, for crying out loud! But his words and his passion will have you standing and cheering and rising above the snake line if and when ALEC brings the need for a Moral Monday movement in your state. And believe me -- ALEC will try.
So I and hundreds of others are no longer convicts. But we are not letting go of our conviction to rid our state of laws that made North Carolina a regular feature on The Rachel Maddow Show, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and late-night comedy programs.
Stand with us. Support the Moral Monday movement near you. As our motto goes: "Forward together, not one step back!"
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with Kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.