The Catskill Chronicle

Gadfly by Mort Malkin

During a recent visit to North Carolina, I attended a Moral Monday protest in Raleigh. The North Carolina Legislature has accomplished for protestors who take issue with the state government, what they had not done for themselves – it has given them a wide variety of reasons to come together.

North Carolina has in recent elections voted 51% Democratic and 49% Republican, but courtesy of shameless gerrymandering and voter suppression of the poor, the elderly and students, the Republicans have won 77 out of 120 seats in the Assembly. The Senate story is much the same. Since 2013, the Republicans have gone on a rampage of reactionary politics and free-for-all economics. They have been ably assisted by Art Pope who is a disciple of the Koch Brothers. Pope may seem principled in that he makes his millions by running a retail business (Maxwell Stores) and is not in the oil business as are the Koch Brothers. But, Pope accepted appointment as Budget Director to Governor Pat McCrory and still maintains his CEOship of a private corporation. Or, doesn’t North Carolina count such creativity as conflict of interest?

The “elected” majority of the NC House of Commons, known as the People’s House, has angered just about everyone with an issue, with one exception expressed by a sign that read: “The McCrory Government – of, for, and by Deep Pockets.”

Some 2,000 people gathered at the block-long pedestrian mall across the street from the Legislative Building to hear speeches and songs of protest. A forest of signs added a visual dimension. The diversity of messages was representative of how many ways the government of North Carolina has affronted the people of North Carolina.

– One protestor wore a t-shirt which read “Jailed for Justice.” He was one of the 945 proud arrestees of the class of 2013 at Moral Monday U.

– One woman displayed an executive order on her t-shirt: “Unfuck The World.”

– One man carried a sign that questioned a recently passed NC Law: “Guns in Parks? Guns in Bars?”

– Another sign on the same topic read: “ NC has the 2nd Amendment. What About the Rest?”

– Another sign addressed voting rights: “NC: the Gerrymandered State.”

– A nearby pair of signs spoke about poverty and the misuse of money: “Republican Golden Rule: Whoever Has the Gold Makes the Rules” and “One Day the Poor Will Have Nothing Left to Eat but the Rich.”

– Referring to a recent coal ash spill at a Duke Energy plant: “We Are Not Duke’s Ash Hole.” Another read: “Come Clean On the Coal Ash Spill.”

– A teacher carried a sign pointing to the reduction of funding for public schools and teachers: “Base pay $30,800. No raise in 7 years.”

– Another announced the new regulations targeted to Moral Monday protestors: “New Regulations: No Singing, No Chanting, No Dancing.” [Gadfly notes that NC forgot to ban laughing.]

– Another sign read: “How Many Innocent Lives Is the Death Penalty Worth?”

– Yet another asked why the Governor refused federal funds for the state to expand Medicaid coverage for poor working families.

I stopped to compare notes with a protestor holding a sign that read: “Ban Fracking.” Yes, she knew of Pennsylvania’s battles with the gas companies and the disaster at the town of Dimock, but didn’t know how the 15 million citizens of NY, PA, and NJ who depend on the unpolluted water of the Delaware River convinced the White House not to allow fracking in the watershed of the River.

Part 1 of the Moral Monday event lasted about 2 hours and then, led by six disabled people in wheelchairs, most of the others lined up two-by-two to cross the street to the People’s House. All placed a strip of tape across their mouths to dramatize the new rules of the legislature that forbade “any disturbance or imminent disturbance … loud enough to impair others’ ability to conduct a conversation in a normal tone of voice … including singing, clapping, and shouting.” Hey, North Carolina, how’s a protestor to be heard?

Moral Monday is going national. Alabama has already organized Truth & Justice Tuesday. South Carolina has moved to coalition protest with Truthful Tuesday. Georgia, a third state to follow the North Carolina model, decided not to give their legislators even a single day of the week to prepare and went with Moral Monday Georgia. Whatever name each state chose, the issues are much the same: voter suppression, reduced funding for public education, refusal to fund expanded Medicaid coverage for the working poor, and not a few others.

Alabama State Senator Hank Sanders was in North Carolina in 2013 to learn about organizational strategy that could be used back home in Montgomery. He has since led the effort to build coalitions, as Rev. William Barber had successfully done in NC. Sanders was focusing his energies on attacking extremists, “not Republicans or Democrats, not whites or blacks,” always measuring an issue on the metric of “right or wrong.”

Tim Franzen of American Friends Service Committee in Atlanta was concentrating on relative spending for various public services. “State budgets are our moral compass,” he said.

Additional states looking at coalition strategies are Tennessee, Florida, and Wisconsin. They each apparently have enough inequities to attract a broad coalition of citizens. The Gadfly Revelry & Research team (GRR) has taken notice of the Moral Monday expansion. One member of GRR, a poet by trade, suggested using assonance in addition to alliteration for state movements and came up with Righteous Friday and Ethical Wednesday.

Closer to home in the Northeast, GRR is now working on uniting various groups of petitioners in Pennsylvania, a state which has many parallels with North Carolina and which is no longer the commonwealth it used to be.