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Dear Governor McCrory and NC Legislative Leadership,
We, the undersigned, urge you as esteemed leaders of the state of North Carolina to reject efforts by extremists on the far right to govern only for the good of a few and instead, that you remain moderate, do what the North Carolina Constitution requires, and govern for the good of the whole. The Republican Party now has a super majority in this state and as all of us believe, with great power and influence comes great responsibility. We are praying for your courage to act as leaders in this new year and always for the good of the whole.
The Civil Rights and Human Rights Communities are more than willing to work with you in ways that will advance justice and opportunity. No matter which party is in power we have always challenged our elected officials to lift our state from the bottom and govern as our state Constitution requires: for the good of the whole.
We believe in order to fulfill this Constitutional mandate, our leaders must commit themselves to the following nonpartisan values: 1) Economic sustainability, addressing poverty, full employment, living wages, disparate unemployment and labor rights, affordable housing, targeted empowerment zones and fair tax reform; 2) educational equality - every child deserves a high quality, well-funded, constitutional, diverse public education - and access to Community Colleges and Universities; 3) healthcare for all and ensuring access to Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security and providing environmental protection; 4) addressing the continuing inequalities in the criminal justice system for black, brown and poor white people; and 5) protecting, defending and expanding voting rights for all people.
Some of you have indicated that your first agenda priority will be a photo voter identification law for North Carolina. Regardless of what some public opinion polls may indicate, taking these actions would do irreparable damage to the fundamental civil and human rights of millions of North Carolinians.
Moreover, we urge you to resist calls from regressive ideology that would push you to engage in what we deem to be ill-advised policy making such as tax policies that favor the wealthy, draconian approaches to the budget that devalue educational equity and accessibility, economic policies that ignore livable wages and punish the unemployed, and social policies that diminish human dignity.
We will be at the General Assembly for a bipartisan presentation on January 15, 2013 to further convey this message. We will be back on February 9, 2013 for our 7th Annual Historic Thousands on Jones Street People's Assembly Coalition. We have great hope for our state and with that hope we know we have no permanent enemies, nor do we have permanent friends, but only permanent interests and issues.
Respectfully,
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II
President, North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP
