BISHOP BARBER MEETS
WITH VP HARRIS, LEADS
GOTV RALLY IN N.C.
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Bishop William J. Barber remains focused not only on voting rights here in North Carolina and across the country, but also human rights around the world.
Last weekend, the first after the two-week Feb. 15th early voting period began for the March 5th primary, Barber, president of Repairers of the Breach and co-convener of the Poor People’s Campaign, led a coalition of faith leaders and activists in a four-city Moral March to the Polls Tour through North Carolina.
On Saturday and Sunday, Bishop Barber and various leaders in Charlotte, Hickory and Asheville, led GOTV (get out the vote ) rallies, pushing the need for poor and low-wage voters to realize “the policy violence that has been waged by the NC General Assembly” against them.
On Tuesday, Bishop Barber led various activists during a press conference in Raleigh in front of the NC General Assembly to announce details for a major 2024 voter mobilization campaign.
“After another year of devastating legislative attacks on poor people and low-wage workers by the NC General Assembly, it’s time for North Carolinians from across the state to take back the mic from the extremists and tell our elected leaders that we refuse to do anything but go Forward Together, Not One Step Back,” said Barber in a statement. “The extreme attacks coming out of the NC General Assembly make the need to revive and build upon a progressive vision and movement in North Carolina all the more urgent. We can build the North Carolina we believe in if we expand our democracy to all North Carolinians.”
The goal of the national Poor People’s Campaign effort is “…to mobilize 15 million poor and low-wage voters in more than 30 states ahead of the November 5th election this fall.”
According to the Campaign’s press release, “In North Carolina, there are 3,464,018 poor and low-wage eligible voters, including 2,326,099 White voters, 107,347 Latino voters, 26,403 Asian voters, 885,990 Black voters and 34,966 Indigenous voters. Together, they account for 41.45% of the electorate in North Carolina. If 19% of low-wage workers who haven’t voted before began to use their voice at the ballot box, they could shift the entire electorate in North Carolina.”
The Moral March to the Polls Tour then returns to Charlotte on Sunday, Feb. 25th for an evening service at Myers Park Baptist Church.
On Saturday, March 2nd in Raleigh, as well as in 30 other capitol cities in 30 states across the nation simultaneously, the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ State House Assembly & Moral March to the Polls" will take place, during which “…participants will come together to register their votes as demands to end poverty once and for all.”
If Bishop Barber’s plate wasn’t full enough, on Feb. 5th he sat down to a private meeting at the White House with Vice President Kamala Harris to “discuss issues impacting [America’s] poor, as well as Israel’s ongoing assault in the Gaza Strip,” according to a release from Barber’s Repairers of the Breach organization.
“The vice president is very clear, I believe, on these issues,” said Barber. “She resonated with the reality of looking at poverty through this lens of death.”
The release noted that Bishop Barber “…pressed Harris to take action to address the concerns of millions of Americans who are locked in poverty or have low-wage jobs. The vice president, he said, was amenable and appeared to be especially interested in a report from the Poor People’s Campaign that frames millions of poor and low-wage Americans as an “untapped power” at the ballot box as well as a 2023 study that argues long-term poverty can be linked to as many as 800 deaths a day.
“When she heard us put it that way, she clearly understood that it’s a different conversation,” he said, noting that Harris said she planned to deliver a speech this year focused on economics and wages. “It’s not about left versus right. Republican versus Democrat. This is about life and death.”
VP Harris acknowledged the meeting on X (formerly Twitter), “…thanking Barber for 'his years of work to raise wages and end poverty' before adding: “President Biden and I know we have a duty to ensure workers across our nation are treated with dignity and that all families have the opportunity to thrive.”
Bishop Barber, who is also a professor at Yale University, was then quoted as saying, “I really am not so interested in whether I get another meeting. I really want this to be poor and low-wage folk sitting in the Oval Office with (Harris) and the president.”
VP Harris also asked Bishop Barber his feelings on the conduct of the Israeli-Hamas conflict, which erupted last Oct. 7th when Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel, leaving 1,200 dead, and taking hundreds of hostages.
Barber noted a statement published in The NY Times last November where he and 900 Black Christian faith leaders criticized the Biden Administration for not calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. He also “voiced outrage to Harris over the indiscriminate violence…happening to women and children in Gaza.”
Earlier this week, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that over 29,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli- Hamas conflict.
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FEDERAL APPELLATE PANEL
SPLIT ON WHETHER TO
STOP GOP SENATE MAP
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Should the latest Senate redistricting map that opponents charge splits black voters in two Senate Districts be stopped, or allowed to stand for the 2024 election, and beyond?
That’s the question that was before a three-judge federal appellate panel of the Fourth District U.S. Court of Appeals last week. A U.S. District Court judge had already dismissed a lawsuit filed by two African-American plaintiffs against the NC State Board of Elections claiming that the Republican-led NC General Assembly deliberately redrew the state Senate voting map through the state’s Black Belt northeastern counties diluting black voters so they couldn’t elect their own state senators, and violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA).
The federal judge who dismissed the lawsuit Jan. 26th did so ruling there wasn’t enough time to stop the 2024 elections as petitioned. That judge also wrote in his 69-page order that plaintiffs failed to prove that NC Republican legislative leaders were even required to create a Northeastern Senate district that complied with the VRA.
The plaintiffs immediately appealed the decision, and on February 15th, the three-judge federal appellate court panel heard oral arguments in the case.
When the smoke cleared, at least two of the three federal judges seemed unimpressed with plaintiffs argument to stop the Senate redistricting map in order to redraw the two state Senate districts in question.
According to attorneys for the two black plaintiffs, evidence showed that per the two Senate districts in question, there were “extreme levels of racially polarize voting.”
But two of the federal appellate judges - Allison Rushing, who was nominated by Republican Pres. Donald Trump, and J. Harvie Wilkinson III, nominated by Pres. Ronald Ronald Reagan, seemed unconvinced, and unwilling to stop the Senate redistricting map before it could be used in the 2024 elections, which technically have already begun with early voting.
Only Judge Roger Gregory, who was a recess appointment by Democratic Pres. Bill Clinton and then nominated by Republican Pres. George W. Bush, indicated that as far as he was concerned, GOP legislative leaders knew exactly what they were doing when they redrew the Senate districts through Black Belt counties. He added that those Republicans also redrew those voting boundaries in late October of last year so that when challenged in court, it would be too late for anything to be changed.
Still, Judge Gregory seemed outnumbered in his viewpoint. Judges Rushing and Wilkinson were convinced that black voters in the area were no longer in need of VRA protection.
It is not known when a ruling from the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals is expected.
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ST. AUGUSTINE’S UNIVERSITY IN
“VERY DIRE” FINANCIAL SITUATION,
BUT REFUSES TO CLOSE
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
St. Augustine’s University (SAU) in Raleigh is in trouble.
It’s not the first time the Episcopalian historically black institution has run into difficulty managing its financial affairs, but this episode is seen as so critical, that there are serious questions about the school’s future.
After several weeks of negative reports, SAU Interim President Marcus Burgess held a press conference Feb. 19th to address concerns that the school had not paid many of its employees on time, in addition to being in critical debt to vendors, and the Internal Revenue Service, to the tune of millions of dollars.
Burgess called SAU’s situation “very dire.”
All of this in the aftermath of facing a loss of accreditation because of bad finances, and at least two lawsuits and a gender discrimination complaint from a former president, a former athletic director, and a former head football coach.
Prior to leaving on an emergency trip to Atlanta Monday to attend an appeals hearing on the school’s accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges, Burgess, who became interim president after the SAU Board of Trustees fired previous Pres. Dr. Christine Johnson-McPhail in December, told reporters that, in fact, SAU employees had been belatedly paid their salaries on Friday.
However, Burgess made clear that meeting paychecks will be a challenge in the near future. He assured that the school has hired a “financial consulting team” to help navigate SAU’s challenges.
He also maintained that the school was meeting with the IRS to help clear up a reported $7.9 million tax lien. SAU hasn’t paid federal taxes since 2020, records show.
And then there are vendors to whom SAU owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to that must be satisfied. One company is owed $598,000 for installing a new artificial turf on the practice field, and has filed a lien.
An insurance company claims SAU owes it $430,000 for deductibles on student health insurance plans.
And those are just two of the many on record.
“The issues we face did not begin yesterday, but I assure the community we are working feverishly to structure a cogent and viable plan to extricate this venerable institution," Burgess told reporters Monday.
Burgess has to win the confidence of his administrators, faculty, students and staff as well.
On Sunday, all filled the SAU chapel on campus to hold a prayer vigil for the school’s future amid its financial and leadership crisis. Students were upset because many had not received tuition refund checks from the school, which they say they badly need.
But finances aren’t the only challenges SAU faces.
Coach Howard Feggins, who was recently fired as SAU’s head football coach, alleged in a lawsuit that he was terminated for bringing up concerns about how the program was being run.
Former Pres. Johnson-McPhail has filed an EEOC gender discrimination complaint against the SAU board, alleging “a hostile workplace.”
And legendary SAU Track/Field Coach and Athletics Director George “Pup” Williams filed suit against the school in July 2020 after he was fired. Coach Williams claimed that he was “unlawfully terminated without cause.”
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