Just as the 50 states are frequently referred to by Republicans as “America’s laboratories of democracy,” so today one state in particular — my own beloved North Carolina — is fast becoming the GOP’s ‘laboratory of tyranny.’ From its ‘monster voter suppression law’ to its ‘not Adam and Steve’ constitutional Amendment 1; from shameful re-engineering of Early Voting plans that locked polling place doors in 2016 to this month’s legislative coup d'état stripping many traditional executive powers from incoming Governor Roy Cooper (D); and, of course, including the loathed ‘bathroom bill,’ HB2, designed to suppress living wage initiatives and anti-discrimination lawsuits under the smokescreen of protectin’ the wimmin-folk from imaginary potty pervs — North Carolina is fast becoming the lawless right-wing tyranny that the GOP seeks to impose on all of America tomorrow.
Democracy is dying fast in the Tar Heel State. That isn’t hyperbole. By a widely respected comparative measure of democracies’ health,
In the just released EIP report, North Carolina’s overall electoral integrity score of 58/100 for the 2016 election places us alongside authoritarian states and pseudo-democracies like Cuba, Indonesia and Sierra Leone [….] Indeed, North Carolina does so poorly on the measures of legal framework and voter registration, that on those indicators we rank alongside Iran and Venezuela. When it comes to the integrity of the voting district boundaries no country has ever received as low a score as the 7/100 North Carolina received. North Carolina is not only the worst state in the USA for unfair districting but the worst entity in the world ever analyzed by the Electoral Integrity Project.
When our votes become worthless, we are left with no option but to fight by other means to restore and defend the rule of law that is the necessary precondition for civilization. Toward that end, Rev. Dr. William J Barber II has announced (perhaps ‘threatened’ is a better word) an upcoming push to persuade the national NAACP to call for an economic boycott of North Carolina. Because if we are to halt the rise of tyranny in America, we must check it first in the GOP’s new laboratory of tyranny, the Tar Heel State. And if we can no longer meaningfully vote with ballots, then next we must vote with our wallets instead.
If you’re like most readers, chances are you can’t name a single corporation of national significance that is headquartered in NC. But North Carolina’s friendly climes, low cost of living, highly skilled workforce — plus the state’s historical antipathy toward unions — render it the home of choice for a very wide range of corporations whose brands you’d recognize in an instant. Here follows a sampling of just some of them. In several cases I know that their products are actually manufactured in North Carolina, while in some others I have no idea, or even have my doubts. But that’s quite beside the point. These are all the products of influential North Carolina-headquartered corporations or subsidiaries. When their executives sneeze, NC Republican pols get double pneumonia.
All trade names, service marks, or registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.
Hanes Brands (Headquarters: Winston-Salem, NC). Annual revenue $5.7 billion
CEO: Richard Noll (Democrat; email richard.noll@hanesbrands.com)
Sealed Air Corp. (Headquarters: Charlotte, NC). Annual revenue $7.0 billion.
CEO Jerome Peribere (jerome.peribere@sealedair.com)
UPDATE: Some commenters below have expressed concern that products listed here under Sealed Air are, in fact, products of SC Johnson, Unilever, or Sun. And in the case of SC Johnson products we now know that to be the case...Sealed Air is the distributor, not the brand owner. But all the better, really. Sealed Air, by virtue of its size and being a Tar Heel native, has a lot of pull in North Carolina. And now the brand owners it answers to have good reason to lean on it to help clean up the mess here in NC. For, as DaddyDawg taught me long ago, “son, fly with the crows, get shot with the crows….”
Butterball (Headquarters: Garner, NC). Annual revenue unknown.
CEO Kerry Doughty (unaffiliated voter; email kdoughty@butterball.com)
Snyder’s-Lance (Headquarters: Charlotte, NC). Annual revenue $1.7 billion.
CEO Carl E Lee (Democrat; email clee@snyderslance.com)
Family Dollar (Headquarters: Charlotte, NC; now a subsidiary of Dollar Tree). Annual revenue $10.5 billion. CEO Gary Philbin (gary.philbin@dollartree.com)
Burt’s Bees (Headquarters: Durham, NC; now a subsidiary of Clorox). Annual revenue unknown.
General Manager Jim Geikie (Democrat; email jgeikie@burtsbees.com)
Mt. Olive Pickle Co. (Headquarters: Mt. Olive, NC). Annual revenue unknown.
CEO Bobby Frye (bfrye@mtolivepickles.com)
Purolator Filters (Headquarters: Fayetteville, NC; now a subsidiary of MANN+HUMMEL). Annual revenue unknown. Top executive: Michael Lipski (email n/a; try info-US2@mann-hummel.com)
Reynolds American (Headquarters: Winston-Salem, NC). Annual revenue $10.7 billion.
CEO Debra Crew (Republican; email n/a; try raiinvestorinvestorrelations@reynoldsamerican.com)
Cree (Headquarters: Durham, NC). Annual revenue $1.6 billion.
CEO Charles Swoboda (Unaffiliated voter; email chuck_swoboda@cree.com)
Food Lion supermarkets (Headquarters: Salisbury, NC). Annual revenue $17 billion.
President Margaret Ham (Republican; email msaul@foodlion.com)
Bank of America (Headquarters: Charlotte, NC). Annual revenue $93 billion.
CEO Brian Moynihan (brian.t.moynihan@bankofamerica.com)
Lowe’s (Headquarters: Mooresville, NC). Annual revenue $59 billion.
CEO Robert Niblock (Republican; email robert.a.niblock@lowes.com)
Personally, I count no fewer than fourteen brands, above, that I patronize more-or-less regularly. Or should I say, used to patronize?
Among business executives I know and respect, the ability to get out ahead of trouble and preemptively avoid it is a highly valued trait. If just half of these fine companies’ leaders picked up their phones tomorrow and had Come-To-Jesus talks with state senate President pro tem Phil Berger, house Speaker Tim Moore, Gov. McCrory, and NC-GOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse, today’s Superfund-class toxic political climate in NC would miraculously heal overnight as those virulent enemies of democracy come to heel. And the GOP nationwide would take note. Because business does business where the rule of law is stable and predictable.
Or else those same executives can struggle to explain to their deeply unhappy shareholders, six months from now, just what the hell is going on in NC...and why they didn’t try to do something about it while they still could.
Postscript
Oh, sure, it won’t be long now before particularly hop-headed trumpistas scurry to Twitter calling for an anti-boycott, encouraging faithful enemies of democracy to buy these brands. But it won’t work, for three very compelling reasons:
1. As Secretary Clinton proved, there are more of us than there are of them. And there’s no Electoral College in a supermarket aisle.
2. While I can’t back it up with hard data, I’m confident that our discretionary income is, on average, significantly higher than theirs.
3. Realistically speaking, we can go without Q-Tips, Mt. Olive pickles, Cape Cod potato chips and Windex a whole lot longer than they can keep stockpiling extras. We have alternatives. They don’t.