The North Carolina General Assembly, firmly in the grip of closet theocrats, libertarian extremists and corrupt corporate shills, is engaged in a full-on attack on our state’s underprivileged communities. In the past few months we have seen young people, women, people of color, the LGBTQ and the poor targeted by punitive legislation that comes from a place of distilled hatred for society’s historically disadvantaged.
Those of us from or in solidarity with these groups of human beings—our family and neighbors—have been forced into a real, urgent binary: Resist or be run over.
The most recent story was one that was long promised. House Republicans last Thursday introduced House Bill 589, a strict voter ID law requiring photo identification to vote. At Duke, where most students are out-of-state, this adds a significant new hurdle to the ballot box. In broader terms, the legislation is an effective poll tax, costing voters $10 just to receive an ID in a state where roughly a third of African Americans and Latinos live in poverty and more than 600,000 North Carolina voters, disproportionately poor and of color, lack photo identification. A free ID can be obtained only by signing an affidavit citing “financial hardship” under penalty of perjury. And the underlying motive of sweeping disenfranchisement is plain. Advocates cite concerns over confidence in government, but the data show only two cases of in-person voter fraud over the past decade.
The photo ID bill is only part of an enormous disenfranchisement program in planning. North Carolina is now leading the country in efforts to shut down democracy. Fortuitously numbered Senate Bill 666 nearly halves the early voting period (other proposals cut further) and allows votes cast only at the county board of elections office. Senate Bill 667 would impose an added $2,500 tax burden on the parents of college students who vote where they attend school. Same-day registration, straight-ticket voting and re-enfranchisement of ex-felons are also under attack. In maybe the most Orwellian of these proposals, persons adjudicated “incompetent” by the state would be banned from voting, even if their mental health has nothing to do with their ability to understand voting.
Sadly, voter disenfranchisement is hardly alone in cementing North Carolina’s national infamy. A George Wallace-style nullification bill, the Rowan County Defense of Religion Act, was a briefly-lived national embarrassment for the state, gaining the support of 14 House members before withering under public scrutiny. Seeking to express solidarity with the Rowan County Board of Commissioners, being sued by the ACLU for publicly invoking sectarian prayer, the resolution freed Rowan County from First Amendment constraints, would immunize North Carolina from federal court rulings and establish a state religion.
Proto-fascist aspirations to impose bigoted moral stances on the general population have also been expressed in proposals to criminalize the exposure of women’s breasts (HB 34), introduce lies about the risks of abortion into public sex education curricula (SB 132), impose a two-year waiting period for divorce (SB 518) and strike down gender-nonspecific housing at UNC (SB 658), among others.
Complementing these suffocating social policies are an economics deeply rooted in racism and class hatred. Gov. McCrory’s new budget proposal, engineered by Koch-associated libertarian millionaire Art Pope, cuts social services to levels not seen in 42 years. Proposals to eliminate the income tax in favor of a regressive sales tax would radically shift the tax burden onto the backs of the poor. Lawmakers have already denied federal funds for the jobless and uninsured, punishing more than 170,000 long-term unemployed and 500,000 uninsured poor. Slashing all social benefits also signals that everything is for sale, including judicial races and the state’s Medicaid system.
The message being sent to those of us without the blessings of historical social privilege is clear: The state does not want you. My friends at already underfunded public universities worry over discussions of closing entire campuses, while Latino comrades have expressed outrage over the closing of the state’s tiny Latino affairs office, which has a whopping one full-time employee.
Attacked from all sides, our only hope is to form solidarity within and across communities and engage in resistance. Actual resistance that has the power to create material change in people’s daily lives only begins with op-ed columns, research briefs and scholarly panels. Aristocratic power-brokers like state Deputy Budget Director Art Pope, North Carolina’s single largest political donor and the man largely behind the dark money groups that have seized our institutions, hardly care that their political programs are being explained in public.
If we are to create positive change to counterbalance the devastation we face, we need to take the next step, putting bodies in the streets, adding voices to public hearings. What is at stake is not just the passage of isolated bills or the résumé issues we’ve outlined as our “passions.” Our basic notion of what constitutes a community of human beings bonded by respect and common dignity is under attack. Silence is no longer an option.
Prashanth Kamalakanthan is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Monday. You can follow Prashanth on Twitter @pkinbrief.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.