The Massive Protest You Missed This Weekend

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

10 February 14

 

omewhere around 100,000 people got together in Raleigh this weekend in order to petition the newly insane state of North Carolina to stop being insane any more. You can be forgiven if you missed the whole thing because so did the entire courtier press, which was too busy rubbing its hands in greasy glee over the possibility that we might all get to talk about Monica Lewinsky again. After all, it wasn't like Sarah Palin once again had attempted on Facebook to get from a subject to a verb without turning an ankle.

They were there to hear The Rev. William Barber of the state NAACP. At the end of the street in front of an American flag that snapped over the old State Capitol building, Barber preache..his voice thundering through speakers.
"We are people, we are natives and immigrants, we are business leaders and workers and unemployed, we are doctors and the uninsured, we are gay, we are straight, we are student, we are parents, we are retirees," Barber said. "We are North Carolina. We are America. And we are here, and we ain't going nowhere."

And what was the response of the local Republican party? Let's talk to the man whose family owns it.

"Make no mistake, tomorrow's event is a political rally," Pope said, "and the national left-wing groups like MoveOn.org and Planned Parenthood have been recruiting liberal activists from across the country to attend the rally. "They support Rev. Barber's radical left-wing agenda to fully implement 'Obamacare,' raise taxes and take us back to the days of double-digit unemployment," he added. The NAACP has called on Republican leaders to accept federal funds for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and to rescind deep budget cuts to education and social services. Republicans say the latter would require a tax increase, which they argue would slow the state's economic recovery. "Barber's use of inflammatory, divisive and offensive rhetoric has no place in the public arena of ideas," Pope said. "We need to have a respectful, political discourse here in North Carolina."

Nothing says respectful discourse to me like calling an appeal for voting rights "radical" and "left-wing." Nothing says respectful discourse to me like trying to get an anchor whose opinions you don't like fired from his job. Claude is a cousin of Art Pope, the wingnut sugar daddy who bought the N.C. Republican party lock, stock, and vestigial conscience, and who has financed the gradual transformation of The Smart Carolina into a functional twin of its idiot cousin to the south. And, no, that is not respectful because Art Pope is worthy of all the scorn we traditionally heap on the grifting class. William Barber is right to yell into his ear, and into that of his cousin.

Another ad depicted Heagarty, who has dark hair and a dark complexion, as Hispanic. (He is Caucasian.) The ad was sponsored by the North Carolina Republican Party, to which Pope had contributed in 2008. Heagarty said, "They slapped a sombrero on a photo of me, and wrote, ‘Mucho Taxo! Adios, Señor!' " He said, "If you put all of the Pope groups together, they and the North Carolina G.O.P. spent more to defeat me than the guy who actually won." He fell silent, then added, "For an individual to have so much power is frightening. The government of North Carolina is for sale."

I'm sure, very soon, we'll start hearing about how the Moral Monday movement has no "focus," no "single message." Nevertheless, at the moment, this seems to me to be a considerable example of what we used to call a "news story." People are pushing back against what is, for all intents and purposes, the establishment of a one-party oligarchy operating at the whim of one man. At least Huey Long had to stand for election once in a while. Now, thanks to Citizens United, you don't even have to bother.