In a teleconference with supporters last week, North Carolina NAACP president Rev. Dr. William J. Barber (whom our own Denise Oliver Velez has called "a fiery prophet for social justice") previewed plans to call on civil rights supporters around the nation to join him and thousands of us on July 6th 13th in Winston-Salem, NC for what he called "our Selma." Why Winston-Salem? Why July 6th 13th? And why should you plan to join us then? Because it is time to say 'no' to Republicans' efforts to do away with our right to vote.
In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina
Can't you see the sunshine?
Can't you just feel the moonshine?
Ain't it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind?
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind.
In August of 2013, less than two months after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, North Carolina's governor and notorious Koch-puppet, Pat McCrory (R), gleefully signed into law House Bill 589, the Voter Information Verification Act (note the ironic acronym: VIVA), declaring:
North Carolinians overwhelmingly support a common sense law that requires voters to present photo identification in order to cast a ballot. I am proud to sign this legislation into law. Common practices like boarding an airplane and purchasing Sudafed require photo ID and we should expect nothing less for the protection of our right to vote.
Like most political speech, there's at least a tiny grain of truth here, albeit encrusted in an impenetrable shell of obfuscation juggled with sinister legerdemain. For, in 2011, Public Policy Polling indeed found that 66% of North Carolinians supported a voter ID requirement in principle. But what McCrory's signing statement failed to note was that, according to a contemporaneous PPP survey,
only 39% of Tarheel State voters supported the very bill he was signing.
To understand the reason for this dramatic difference between Carolinians' apparent support for the Platonic ideal of voter identification on the one hand, and their opposition to the harsh reality of the law enacting it on the other, is to appreciate why Rev. Barber and the NAACP will ask supporters of civil rights nationwide to converge on Winston-Salem this July for the crowning action in this year's Forward Together Moral Monday demonstrations.
A silver tear appearing now I'm cryin', ain't I?
Goin' to Carolina in my mind.
Leave aside for the moment the fact that here, as throughout the U.S., voter ID per se is a solution in search of a problem. There are, I suppose, days when even I might grudgingly agree, at least in a moment of inattention, that requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls might not be entirely unreasonable...even if only on days when I had somehow managed to forget the awe-inspiring struggles of Mrs. Rosa Nell Eaton, whom such a requirement might well disenfranchise:
But let that go, if only for the moment. For the plain truth is that voter ID is only the tip of the dagger to the heart of democracy that is NC's voter nullification law - a law cynically engineered, from the ground up, to raise one impediment after another, in depth, to voting by the poor and the working poor, by minorities, by youths, and by the disabled - in short, by precisely those demographic segments which the legislature's Republican majority knew full well do not vote for Republicans in significant numbers.
Hey babe the sky's on fire,
I'm dyin' ain't I?
Goin' to Carolina in my mind
VIVA ostensibly began life as a voter ID bill, but in the waning days of the 2013 legislative session as Republicans rushed it through the General Assembly they piled on amendment after amendment, none having anything to do with voter ID - but having the combined effect of barring the polling place door to 'those people:'
- VIVA engineered dramatically longer lines at polling places - a daunting impediment to the working poor who must struggle to find the time to vote (unlike the retirees who constitute the GOP's base). It did this by cutting the number of Early Voting days nearly in half while eliminating the 50 year-old one-checkbox 'straight party ticket' voting option without increasing the number of voting booths or polling places provided. It's inescapable physics: slow down the voting process (by requiring voters to mark many more boxes) while simultaneously reducing the number of voting days, and lines at the polls must lengthen accordingly.
- VIVA did away with encouragements for 18-year-olds - already a missing demographic segment at the polls - to vote. It did this by repealing the right of pre-registration by 16 and 17 year olds, as well as by repealing an existing mandate for election officials to regularly conduct high-school voter registration drives.
- VIVA did away with the state's successful same-day voter registration during Early Voting, thus further paring the number of eligible voters in any one election.
- VIVA laid the groundwork for frightening vigilante networks by empowering any voter registered in the state to challenge any prospective voter's registration
- VIVA made it much more difficult for county boards of elections to provide satellite voting sites for disabled and other low-mobility voters
- VIVA voids provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct. This is a mistake I myself have nearly made in the past. With redistricting, one's assigned polling place may change from one election to the next. Or if you vote during the early voting period one year, then attempt to vote on election day in the next cycle, you may well find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time (it's permitted to vote anywhere in your county during early voting, but only at your assigned polling place on election day). In the past this was no big deal...one could simply vote a provisional ballot at the wrong polling place, which would be counted after your voter registration was confirmed. But with the advent of VIVA only folks like me, lucky enough to have a car plus all the time in the world to drive around the county, will be able to recover from a slip like this without being disenfranchised.
Combined with blatantly gerrymandered districts designed to herd North Carolina's African American citizens into isolated gulags, VIVA has established our once fair state as America's hands-down leader in the suppression of minority voting rights. Your own state may already have a voter ID law in place, but in this ALEC-networked world of today you ain't seen nothin' yet if the NC GOP prevails in what many observers have termed the most extreme voter suppression effort in America. As Democratic Representative G.K. Butterfield observed shortly after McCrory signed the bill into law:
Governor McCrory and his party members have destroyed the progressive reputation for voting inclusion this state has long held. With one stroke of his pen, McCrory has effectively reversed 30 years of progress and reinstated practices similar to the discriminatory 'Southern strategy' adopted by the Republican party in the 60's and 70's.
With a holy host of others standing 'round me
Still I'm on the dark side of the moon.
And it seems like it goes on like this forever.
You must forgive me
If I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind.
Within minutes of VIVA's passage into law, a host of organizations began filing federal suits to overturn it, including the NAACP, the ACLU, the Advancement Project, the League of Women Voters, and the U.S. Dept. of Justice. Their quest has subsequently seen numerous ups and downs. First, U.S. District Court judge Thomas Schroeder (a Bush appointee) declined to issue an injunction against the law's provisions in the weeks leading up to the 2014 general election. Next, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth District reversed Schroeder's decision, granting the injunction. Then, ruling on an appeal by the state, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of the Court of Appeals' order, allowing the law's provisions to take effect for the 2014 election. And in the most recent whipsaw decision, just weeks ago the Supreme Court denied the state's request for a full review of the Fourth Circuit's ruling - in effect allowing the previous injunction to now stand...but without immediate effect, since the election is now past.
Next up on the VIVA rollercoaster: Judge Schroeder will begin hearing oral arguments in the case on the morning of July 6th 13th in Winston-Salem. And thus Rev. Barber's anticipated call for civil rights supporters nationwide to join us in that fair city...our own Selma for the 21st Century...on that day. For while the lawyers battle in the court of law, so too it is up to the rest of us to prosecute our case in the court of public opinion, by the tens of thousands.
Dark and silent late last night,
I think I might have heard the highway call.
Geese in flight and dogs that bite.
And signs that might be omens say I'm going, going
I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind.
Postscript: I do not speak for the NC NAACP, and that fine organization has not yet publicly issued its call to Winston-Salem, nor has it yet revealed in detail its plans for the July event. For official news please stay tuned to its web site. In the meantime, you might wish to study your calendar and begin to reflect upon whether you have more pressing matters to attend to on July 6th 13th than to stand for democracy shoulder to shoulder with embattled Tarheels, black and white alike. That, plus maybe help spread the word, with a tweet or a Facebook share.
[Carolina In My Mind lyrics by James Taylor. Copyright: EMI Blackwood Music Inc., Country Road Music]