In his PBS broadcast last week, Bill Moyers showcased North Carolina as a battleground between the politics of greed symbolized by Art Pope and the vision of a moral society strengthened by our mutual ties to one another, symbolized by the Moral Monday movement. One point to clarify in the video’s important data and interviews: When [...]
On Friday, Democracy North Carolina, the NAACP and other groups challenging the 2011 redistricting plans filed a new motion with the NC Supreme Court to have Justice Paul Newby removed from hearing that challenge. As NC Policy Watch reports, “That’s because the . . . organization largely responsible for the drafting of the redistricting plans, [...]
The Rachel Maddow Show devoted its entire show to the unfolding scandal of Republican efforts to purge student voters from participating in North Carolina elections. The link may begin the show in its second segment; to begin at the beginning, click the first video scene in the upper left of the webpage, the one that [...]
The US Department of Justice last month decided to challenge anti-voting laws in Texas. Here's a petition to sign to encourage US-DOJ to take action in North Carolina, too! North Carolina’s new anti-voting monster law appears designed to make voting harder for groups that Republican leaders think don’t support them. For example, women are 64% [...]
Gov. Pat McCrory is expected to sign the monster anti-voting bill any day now. H-589 began in the state House as a photo ID bill but in the final days of the session, the state Senate rolled out a harsher version of the ID requirement, plus 40+ new provisions, including dozens that had never been discussed [...]
On the same day that the New York Times posted its widely circulating, must-read editorial about the demise of North Carolina as “a beacon of farsightedness in the South,” a more thoughtful column by veteran political reporter Tom Edsall received too little attention. His essay is titled, “The Decline of Black Power in the South,” [...]
The day after the Supreme Court’s disappointing decision on the Voting Rights Act, Portside.org posted an article documenting the less talked-about economic benefits of the VRA. In addition to an increase in African-American elected leaders, passage of the VRA correlates to improvements in the quality of life for millions of African Americans and other Southerners. [...]
Here’s the National Journal's real world analysis of what today’s US Supreme Court decision means regarding the Voting Rights Act – plus one pro-Court overview and a video report from WRAL-TV. The Court’s 5-4 conservative majority did not rule directly on the constitutionality of Section 5’s requirement of preclearance. Section 5 says certain jurisdictions with a history of discrimination must get pre-approval [...]
The American Prospect magazine features a collection of articles about the South's changing political dynamics. Bob Moser, once with the NC Indy and now AP’s editor, writes the lead essay about the “End of the Solid South.” Chris Kromm and Sue Sturgis of the Institute for Southern Studies have a timely article about North Carolina’s [...]
Click here for a video and a narrative overview of the arguments today in the lawsuit challenging the redistricting plans drawn for the state legislature and Congress. The witnesses and attorneys are arguing this week on key aspects of the case related to whether or not the Republicans were justified by law in packing more [...]