Original Commentary

As we all confront the ripple effects of the an unprecedented pandemic throughout North Carolina, we should pause to acknowledge the fundamental lesson that our fates are intertwined. And we should not let this moment pass by without demanding that public leaders put people and communities first as they craft solutions to our public health and economic realities.

Now is no time for North Carolina to double town on "fiscal restraint" As the health pandemic caused by the new coronavirus continues to take its dreadful toll on human life and wellbeing, the denizens of Right-Wing Avenue in North Carolina have begun to promote an inaccurate and downright dangerous talking point. According to politicians and their apologists in conservative advocacy groups and think tanks, the policy agenda pursued by the Republican-led General Assembly over the past decade has left our state extremely well-positioned to respond to the crisis.

Experts say it is a certainty that there will be an economic slowdown as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Businesses will see demand for their goods and services decline as a result of people isolating or quarantining themselves or having to stay home with schoolchildren and infected or otherwise vulnerable family members. Businesses will experience disruptions to their supply chains of goods and products as a result of challenges with interstate and global trade. Workers will be laid off or not be able to come to work. Income losses could be catastrophic for families and communities and only serve to deepen the economic harm.

The COVID-19 outbreak demands immediate and aggressive action – for now and the future As miserable, frightening and unprecedented as it is, the current global pandemic with which we are currently attempting to cope ought not to have caught us by such great surprise. Public health officials have been warning about the growing likelihood of such events for decades and, in many instances, dealing with less widespread versions.

You’d think the emergence of the coronavirus would, at long last, have shamed North Carolina’s political right into an embarrassed silence on the topic of Medicaid expansion. After all, it’s one thing to blithely claim that hundreds of thousands of hard-working people would be better off without health insurance coverage when the nation isn’t in the middle of a dangerous health epidemic. To do so at a moment like the present, however, is enough to raise serious concerns about the mental wellbeing of those issuing such utterances.

When I was a newly ordained, still naive and idealistic, young pastor from South Carolina, I attended a meeting of Clergy for Choice. This was 1989, 16 years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion. We had gathered as faith leaders because state legislation was in the offing that would curtail that federal right.

As the coronavirus continues its slow and stress-inducing march across the globe there are several things – both from a practical, public health standpoint and from a public policy perspective – that all of us would do well to keep in mind. Here are five: #1 – This is a deadly serious matter that we all need to treat as such.Yesterday, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Elizabeth Cuervo Tilson, North Carolina’s State Health Director and Chief Medical Officer for the state Department of Health and Human Services on the Policy Watch radio show News and Views and she offered several important reminders about where things stand and what we all should do to minimize the risk.

We all know there’s a lot at stake in this crucial political year, including a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. All politics may be local, but the impact is global. The Trump administration, from Day One, has been systematically dismantling human rights and cultivating a culture of discrimination that doesn’t stop at our borders. One of President Trump’s first acts was to impose the Global Gag Rule, which bans non-governmental organizations that receive U.S. funding from using their own funds to advocate for, share information on, or offer abortion services.

For many caring and thinking people who pine for the honesty, integrity, intelligence, energy and hopeful change that Barack Obama brought to the presidency, the 2020 primary season has been a sobering and, at times, dispiriting one. Here, however, are five things to keep in mind that might just bring some perspective to the next few months and help you not to lose sight of the forest for the trees:

On Wednesday of this week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear its first abortion rights case since the Trump administration and a sharply divided U.S. Senate combined to empanel the high court's first solid anti-abortion majority in the modern era. The confirmation of the hyper-partisan and ultraconservative Brett Kavanaugh to the Court in October 2018 appears to have provided the fifth vote anti-abortion interests have been looking for – one that could potentially overturn 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision and roll back the reproductive freedom that has been guaranteed to at least two generations of Americans.