Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Bark louder, little dog.

Not all heroes wear capes.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Second rate reporter says what?

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

This blog will pay for itself.

You cannot shame the shameless.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

You are here: Home / Economics / Austerity Bombing / Convene a Special Redemption Session, Republicans, before it’s too late

Convene a Special Redemption Session, Republicans, before it’s too late

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Before we all heard about the hippie Pope we were watching North Carolina’s own Reverend Barber. Barber is the leader of an incredibly diverse group of people who support voting rights, health care, public education, civil rights for gay people, rights for women, labor rights, and poor people.

moral_monday_tw_buckner

Rev. Dr. William Barber of the NC NAACP speaking at a June 2013 Moral Monday rally at the state legislature. He and other movement leaders are circulating an open letter asking Gov. Pat McCrory to convene a “Special Redemption Session” to reverse decisions controversial decisions about Medicaid and emergency aid for the long-term unemployed. (Photo by T.W. Buckner via Flickr.)

This is what Barber and his Moral Monday group have been up to since we last checked in:

Hundreds of protesters marched on the State Capitol Monday evening in a sign that the demonstrations that marked the 2013 legislative session will continue into next year.
The march came hours after a Superior Court judge ruled that state officials improperly denied a permit for the protest.
The NAACP organized the rally to protest policies of the Republican-led General Assembly. Several left-leaning groups are trying to pressure Gov. Pat McCrory to convene a special legislative session on expanding Medicaid and reversing cuts to unemployment benefits.
The NAACP and other groups plan to hold a mass march on the Capitol on Feb. 8.
“We want to send a shock wave through this state,” Barber told the crowd of people, many of whom held up electric candles in the rainy weather. “If you thought we fought in 2013, you ought to see how we fight in an election year.”
The fight was in a Wake County courtroom earlier Monday, as the groups challenged the Department of Administration’s refusal to give them a permit for the rally on Capitol grounds.
“The state cannot stand up and say, in good faith, that hundreds of people cannot gather,” Holmes said. “If the people of North Carolina cannot go to the State Capitol after work to pray, when can they go?”
Judge Allen Baddour questioned why the permit application asked what a group plans to do on the Capitol grounds, saying it appears that officials are basing the decision to grant a permit on the content of the activity.
“The concern the court has is that it is either discretionary or content-based,” Baddour said.

Conservatives made their usual well-reasoned argument in opposition to allowing dissenting political speech, where they wondered aloud whether Barber’s group would “roast a goat” or hold “womanless weddings” at the Capitol.

The judge said that he suspected that the administration’s ban on the NAACP was “either discretionary or content based.”

In other good news for democracy enthusiasts, the Obama Administration continues their strong record on voting rights with this pick:

Pamela Karlan, a noted voting-rights expert and professor at Stanford Law School, will join the Obama Administration shortly as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the voting-rights section. Karlan, a favorite of many liberals in the legal world, will join the department as it begins a strong counter-offensive on voting rights following the Supreme Court’s limiting of the Voting Rights Act in a decision earlier this year.

This position does not require Senate confirmation.

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    MomSense

    The Moral Monday movement and coalition is probably right at the top of my personal list of the best things that have happened this year in politics.

  2. 2.

    Botsplainer

    My local Clear Channel station is rerunning a hatefest, featuring their newest RWNJ. It is a long rant against raising the minimum wage, dogging fast food workers the most.

    It makes me want to torch a crèche.

  3. 3.

    Keith G

    …will join the department as it begins a strong counter-offensive on voting rights…

    Praise Hera! Securing the right of all citizens to be able to vote with an absolute minimum of hassle is the next big fight. I am glad the administration is showing more signs of gearing up.

  4. 4.

    c u n d gulag

    I met Reverend Barber several times when I was an anti-war, anti-torture, anti-rendition, activist in Fayetteville, NC.
    He was always gracious, and generous with his time.

    I’m not a religious person, but imo, he’s what I think an activist person of the cloth, should be like.

  5. 5.

    feebog

    While Reverend Barber is with the NAACP, what I have noticed in coverage of these demonstrations is the diversity. You can see it in the picture posted with the post. Young, middle aged, old, black and white. This is a movement that includes a lot of folks who have varied interests, but have come together to challenge the current power structure. Given the Gerrymandered condition of the state I don’t know if they can retake the legislature, but I think McCrory is toast.

  7. 7.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @c u n d gulag:

    [H]e’s what I think an activist person of the cloth, should be like.

    Exactly my view as well. Too few like him, sadly.

    Kay, thanks as always for keeping is informed with insightful posts – in this case good news!

    Happy Holidays to everyone at Balloon Juice.

    ::heads off to grump, a personal holiday tradition::

  8. 8.

    AMinNC

    The Moral Mondays gatherings were incredibly inspiring – a coming together of a wide variety of races, ages, economic classes and faith-based (and non-religious) citizens to say ENOUGH! All credit to Dr. Barbour and the NAACP for shining a strong light on the horrors coming out of the General Assembly, and for just grinding it out week after week all across the state.

    It is going to be incredibly difficult to change the GA enough to make a difference because of GOP gerrymandering, but every seat gets us one vote closer. The Democratic party is active like I’ve never seen it, working on voter registration and ID issues (in case the laws are upheld). It seems as if maybe (FINALLY) the Dems are taking off-year elections seriously.

    It is really horrifying to see the dying remnants of the old confederate strain lash out for all they are worth trying to continue to hold on to their power (allied with the plutocratic strain – AKA Art Pope – of course). I live in one of the liberal enclaves of NC, so my perspective is somewhat skewed, but this state is not nearly as “red” as the current legislature indicates. And in their overreach, I really believe the reactionaries are hastening their demise. Women, students, people of color, the LBGT community, the highly educated (and there are quite a lot of us here between Research Triangle and all the great universities in the state) are all against the GOP. The million-dollar question is how much damage can they do before they are dislodged.

  9. 9.

    Kay

    @feebog:

    but I think McCrory is toast.

    Oh, well, him. He’s not calling the shots.

    If you’re right the unelected plutocrat Art Pope who is actually running the state is toast:

    The most interesting development, however, came last week. Civitas Institute, a think tank based in Raleigh, that dubs itself North Carolina’s conservative voice, published a website that shows the mugshots, profiles, employment, affiliations among others, of those arrested during Moral Monday protests in Raleigh, NC. The website even includes a “Pick a Protester” game that viewers can play along.
    The think tank is funded about 94 percent by the family foundation that Art Pope, Gov. Pat McCrory’s budget director, chairs. It is a well known fact that Pope spent millions of dollars in North Carolina to help Republicans get elected during the 2010 and 2012 elections. Art Pope’s influence in North Carolina has only grown since the Republican supermajority took over in January and may even reach far beyond what was once thought. Raleigh’s News and Observer has reported that, during the discussion of the repeal of the public financing of judicial races, Art Pope may have influenced the vote of the lone holdout, Rep. Jonathan Jordan. Rep. Jordan had offered a compromise to preserve the public financing, but changed his mind and withdrew the amendment after having a discussion with Pope behind closed doors. Jordan had received in excess of $90,000 in funds from Pope during the last cycle.

  10. 10.

    James E Powell

    It says a lot about the right-wing haters that they can’t even take a week off for the holidays. Is there any cure for their disease?

  12. 12.

    Eric U.

    @James E Powell: the fact that Jerry Falwell always tried to make political points because of the “war on Christmas” is what gives me high confidence that if his chosen brand of Christianity is true, he’s in hell.

  13. 13.

    carolinadave

    Conservatives made their usual well-reasoned argument in opposition to allowing dissenting political speech, where they wondered aloud whether Barber’s group would “roast a goat” or hold “womanless weddings” at the Capitol.

    This fun factoid was omitted from the (NOT) local coverage in the local paper. Tarring the protesters as Godless heathens, homosexuals, or radical Negroes. I see what the “special” deputy AG Don Teeter and Gov. McCrory’s spokesperson did there.

  14. 14.

    Cervantes

    Pamela Karlan is an excellent pick. She has a brilliant legal mind. She wrote Justice Blackmun’s dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick. She’s female. She’s gay. She’s Jewish. A great pick.

  15. 15.

    Mike in NC

    @Kay: Yeah, who needs a hippy Pope when you have Koch ally Art Pope? He’s going to make sure everybody in North Carolina gets a nice lump of coal for Christmas. Then again, coal can be burned to generate warmth, so just forget about that, too, you moochers.

  16. 16.

    J.D. Rhoades

    @Kay:

    Civitas Institute, a think tank based in Raleigh, that dubs itself North Carolina’s conservative voice, published a website that shows the mugshots, profiles, employment, affiliations among others, of those arrested during Moral Monday protests in Raleigh, NC. The website even includes a “Pick a Protester” game that viewers can play along.

    And several of the protestors proudly put the mugshots on their Facebook pages. So much for trying to shame and intimidate people.

  19. 19.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Eric U.:

    Falwell and others of his vile ilk should thank FSM that upon death, they’re consigned to oblivion, and not to the punishments their own mythology meets out to the wicked.

  20. 20.

    Mike in NC

    @carolinadave:

    Tarring the protesters as Godless heathens, homosexuals, or radical Negroes. I see what the “special” deputy AG Don Teeter and Gov. McCrory’s spokesperson did there.

    How sad that these Republicans are reduced to putting photos of protesters on a web site. In the “good old days” they were free to attack them with police dogs, tear gas, and fire hoses. If they could get away with that now, don’t think that they wouldn’t.

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    @carolinadave:

    This fun factoid was omitted from the (NOT) local coverage in the local paper. Tarring the protesters as Godless heathens, homosexuals, or radical Negroes. I see what the “special” deputy AG Don Teeter and Gov. McCrory’s spokesperson did there.

    I’m surprised he didn’t work in “outside agitators.”

  24. 24.

    Linda Featheringill

    If the Right Wing Power Circle members had the sense God gave a goose, they would make whatever concessions needed to make this coalition unnecessary.

    Hell of a coalition, guys. Really looks good to me.

  25. 25.

    burnspbesq

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m surprised he didn’t work in “outside agitators.”

    Comsymps, the lot of them. Where is J. Edger Whoozis in America’s hour of need?

  26. 26.

    Kay

    @Mnemosyne:

    They did.

    Simply mind-boggling. North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Claude Pope thinks the Moral Monday protestors shouldn’t be connecting confederates and current conservatives. They shouldn’t be linking a 1963 bombing of a black church by a Ku Klux Klan member that killed four and inspired civil rights protests to today’s more veiled attacks on people of color and protest movements. Pope accused the protestors of using “inflammatory rhetoric,” saying they are trying “to fan the flame that brings up a history of racism or violence perpetrated by folks who are no longer here, no longer around.”
    Funny how this very man called Moral Monday protestors “outside agitators,” echoing the rhetoric of segregationist, southern governors like George Wallace who did all they could to discredit the civil rights movement.

    They also checked their backgrounds to “prove” that they were brought in by labor from out of state. The vast majority were North Carolinians, so that was embarrassing.

  32. 32.

    RepubAnon

    If the Attorney General is worried about “womanless marriages”, this implies that he’s totally supportive of all-woman marriages. Perhaps someone should ask why he supports the right of gay women to marry, but not gay men…

    It’s also amusing that he claims that he’s not denying permits based on the content of the speech. His justification: giving examples of speech content that would not be allowed. This poses an interesting question: how did he pass Constitutional Law?

Comments are closed.