Progressive Voices Archive

At the recent memorial for John Hope Franklin at Duke University, playwright Emily Mann — daughter of historian Arthur Mann, a close friend of Franklin’s — related one of many illuminating personal stories about the pioneering historian and scholar. In a conversation about the North Carolina political landscape, someone asked Franklin “Where did Jesse Helms come from?” Franklin quickly replied, “From hell” — “not missing a beat,” Mann said.

There’s been some good news on the campaign finance reform front of late. With a little luck and some hard work by people who care, it could provide momentum for proposed federal legislation that would take one of the most obvious and logical next steps: making public campaign financing an option for members of U.S. Congress.

There’s a Chinese proverb that says a “crisis is an opportunity riding the dangerous wind.” Former President John F. Kennedy used to remind people that the Chinese word for “crisis” was spelled by combining the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.” White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel quipped famously at the beginning of the year that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Recently, in case you missed it, the North Carolina House of Representatives began playing a game - a game in which you and every other North Carolinian is a player with an enormous stake.

Lately it seems no more than a couple of weeks go by without another story of the horrible consequences of school bullying hitting the news. The latest is the story of a 13 year-old boy in Tampa, Florida who was repeatedly bullied and sexually assaulted with a broom handle and a hockey stick. He finally found the courage to come forward after weeks of harassment and ask his teachers for protection.

North Carolina often acts like a fool in love with big business. State leaders continue to aggressively pursue an economic development strategy that relies on offering as much as possible by way of cash and tax incentives to a few large, typically well-known corporations. These corporations, which have included Dell Computers and Google, court officials at the state Department of Commerce, and the officials flirt right back by flaunting their ample packages of taxpayer-funded goodies.

No issue provides more striking evidence of the failure of North Carolina’s education system to serve our children than the “achievement gap.” By “achievement gap,” I refer, of course to that persistent gap in average scores on state and federal tests between students of color and white children and between children from low-income households and those from wealthier ones at every level of elementary, middle and high school.

The North Carolina General Assembly was on the cutting edge of education reform back in 2001 when it created the state’s Personal Education Plan statute, which requires schools to create individualized learning plans for every student at risk of failing. This means that schools must apply focused intervention and instruction that is specifically designed to help students improve, and they should work with parents so that complementary intervention is happening in the home.

If a thirteen year old enrolls in 8th grade Spanish, should her parents fear she’ll start packing her bags for Madrid as soon as the semester is over? Not likely. Yet opponents of comprehensive sex education often use similar reasoning in their opposition to allowing schools in North Carolina to offer it.

When politicians get nervous that they have done nothing to advance a cause dear to many of their constituents, the savvy politico will file a bill with a catchy name to misrepresent his or her voting record. That way, the politician can at least claim that he or she did something. The proposed alternative bill is always a dead letter - a political smokescreen with no co-sponsors, no support, and no hope of passing. Former Sen. Elizabeth Dole tried this technique after voting against the expansion of children’s health insurance. Senator Richard Burr tried it with universal health care.

As the relatively new director of a legal advocacy group for people with disabilities, I don’t pretend to be an expert in North Carolina politics. I’ve been told that could take years - especially when it comes to the development of the state budget. What I do understand is political process. And I understand the role of the organization I direct, Disability Rights North Carolina (DRNC), in that process.

There has been an attempt, especially in the South, to circumvent the racial integration of public schools ever since segregation was ruled illegal. Separate schools were not equal, and most of us now see that segregation simply was wrong.

Here in North Carolina, we are going to celebrate a dubious golden anniversary this summer. Fifty years ago this June, spurred by fears of union corruption, communism, and (gasp) black and white people organizing together for better jobs and higher wages, the North Carolina legislature imposed a prohibition on public workers collectively bargaining for a legal contract–General Statute (GS) 95-98.

Everyone knows that lawmaking in Congress can be a crazy and confusing process. That’s part of the genius of the American system: It takes a lot of hard work and compromise to get a majority of the 530-plus lawmakers to agree to just about anything.

Elected officials love to say they are “for the children.” Unfortunately, too often this supposed concern seems to be reserved mostly for happy, healthy, and well-adjusted kids.