We Demand the NC General Assembly ‘Cease and Desist’ from Attacks on State’s Poor
Dear Leadership of the NC General Assembly:
This week marks the 58th Anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), a somber reminder that we have less voting rights today because of the infamous Shelby v. Holder U.S. Supreme Court decision of June 25, 2013, than we did 58 years ago. Even after the same Supreme Court rejected this legislature’s extremist attempt to hijack democracy in Harper v. Moore this summer and a decade filled with victories by the people against your voter suppression laws and gerrymanders, you are once again resorting to more Monster Voter Suppression bills to further entrench your power so you can continue the largest transfer of wealth from poor and working North Carolinians to the wealthy and corporations that we’ve seen in generations. It seems you are scared of the North Carolina electorate, among which now over 40 percent are poor and low wealth. But, as our Constitution commands, “all political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.” N.C. Constitution, Article 1, Section 2.
In honor of all those who have given their lives to secure and protect the sacred right to vote, we are delivering a moral indictment of your cynical priorities and immoral policies. Instead of addressing the crises of poverty and low wages, lack of healthcare, underfunded public education, voter suppression, and environmental collapse you have chosen to use “culture wars” that engender hate to camouflage and distract from your true agenda. Your deceptive and deadly attacks aimed against Black and civil rights history, women, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, students, teachers, and everyday North Carolinians, while ensuring more access to guns promotes a devastating agenda that hurts all of us. And you are doing this at a time when poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in this nation, more than gun violence, obesity, homicide, and diabetes, in the richest nation in the world. The people of North Carolina are suffering:
Over 40% of the state are poor or low-income: over 4 million residents.
Over 1 million North Carolinians still lack health insurance.
Nearly 2 million North Carolinians earn less than a minimum living wage of $15/hour, 37% of the workforce.
Average household debt rose 6% in 2022 to an average of $56,590 in North Carolina.
As a moral fusion movement made up of directly impacted leaders, workers, faith leaders, parents, students, teachers, healthcare providers, people of faith and advocates from across North Carolina, we come today to deliver a letter demanding you immediately cease and desist your destructive policies, your campaign to silence the voices of the people of North Carolina, and your decades-long crusade to create an impoverished democracy. These actions do not align with our deepest religious and ethical values which call on societies to care for the least of these; nor our Constitutional values, which command that:
“We hold it to be self-evident that all persons are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness.” N.C. Constitution, Article 1, Section 1.
Your actions have made North Carolina into a State in Emergency at a time when we should be leading the nation in abolishing poverty and expanding the breadth and wealth of our democracy. The new fiscal year started five weeks ago, and you are still unable to provide any raises for teachers and public employees. Thousands of North Carolinians continue to go without healthcare coverage, which you have denied for over ten years. At the same time, you’ve engaged in failed and flawed trickle-down economics in the state, giving millions in dollars to the wealthy and corporations. Your most recent plans for tax cuts give the wealthiest North Carolinians tens of thousands of dollars in hand-outs while giving the poorest 20% of North Carolinians an insulting average of $27 in relief. And instead of following the courts’ mandate to fully fund public education based on our State’s constitution and the Leandro decision, you are now poised to spend hundreds of millions on private school vouchers, subsidizing millionaires to send their kids to private, discriminatory schools and resegregating our schools even further. Rather than making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share, you are now considering casinos to fill in the gaps of your self-induced lack of public funds. You need to stop with the gimmicks.
Because the NC General Assembly has repeatedly been found guilty of intentional racial voter suppression, because in 2020 almost half of all eligible North Carolina voters were poor and low-income, but a much smaller percentage of poor and low-income people have been able to vote in recent years, and because of North Carolina’s long history of excluding eligible voters from access to the ballot,
We demand that the North Carolina General Assembly, immediately:
Protect and expand voting rights.
End the use of racial and partisan gerrymanders.
Urge North Carolina congressional representatives to restore the key protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 now.
Affirm and fully restore the right to vote for the currently and formerly incarcerated in this state.
Stop the undemocratic overreach of the court systems and leave the balance of powers in place.
Because 2 million people in North Carolina make less than $15/hr (50% of our workforce), there are over 9,000 homeless people living in North Carolina, and the minimum wage is $7.25, whereas a living wage in North Carolina in 2019 was $24.80,
We demand that the North Carolina General Assembly:
Provide living wages and economic security for all workers.
Protect the right to form and join a union.
Stop diverting our public resources to the wealthy and profitable corporations and shareholders largely located out of state.
Stop the undemocratic, lobbyist-driven budget process we’ve seen so far.
Because firearms are a leading cause of death for children and teens in North Carolina and the lack of common sense rules on access to guns results in hundreds of unnecessary deaths each year,
We demand that the North Carolina General Assembly:
Ban semiautomatic assault weapons, armor-piercing ammunition, high-capacity magazines and other “weapons of war.”
Require universal background checks for every firearm sale and pass a Universal Background Check law that closes the gun-show loophole.
Create a commission that includes clergy from all faiths, people directly impacted by gun violence and their advocates, to work on common-sense gun control regulations.
Immediately reverse course on the irresponsible and dangerous repeal of the pistol permit law.
Because North Carolina has refused and resisted the expansion of Medicaid until this year, and there are at least 1 million North Carolinians who are uninsured,
We demand that the North Carolina General Assembly:
Immediately adopt and implement universal quality healthcare.
Expand Medicaid with no strings attached.
Because vulnerable communities in North Carolina are at risk from multiple extremist attacks targeting our humanity, our right to bodily integrity, and our right to live,
We demand that the North Carolina General Assembly:
Protect reproductive justice and the right to bodily autonomy.
Reject all proposals to deny the humanity of transgender youth and adults and protect equal protection under the law for LGBTQ communities.
Protect immigrant communities and recognize our role in this society.
Reject any attempt to force local sheriffs to become extensions of ICE and further terrorize immigrant communities.
Immediately enact second-chance criminal justice reforms that end the policy of mass incarceration, the discriminatory criminalization of race and poverty, and illegal law enforcement abuses that disproportionately impact Black people.
Fully fund public education and protect the right to teach accurate history.
Prioritize environmental justice now over the policies of ecological devastation.
At a time when ending poverty is within our grasp, we cannot and will not continue to allow the elected leaders of this state to blatantly ignore the rights of the people who put them in office. We will not allow the clock to be turned back on our democracy, for our hard-fought gains to vanish, or for our children to have less democracy, less rights, less environmental justice than we do today.
The lack of willingness from state officials to create a democracy where its constituents have an equal and fair opportunity to vote, access to universal healthcare, educational opportunities, justice and public safety, is morally and constitutionally offensive and a sign of your fear of the people. Our call today will be a part of ushering in a new era in North Carolina of revived leadership and moral vision guided by our greatest ethical and constitutional teachings. We believe, together, that this generation can finally realize the promise of a Third Reconstruction and equal protection under the law for all North Carolinians.
Your actions make it our moral necessity to mobilize and challenge abuses of power with every nonviolent tool of truth, love, and justice. What we cannot and will not do is stay silent.
Forward Together, Not One Step Back!