O'LINDA WATKINS
DURING MOORE COUNTY BLACKOUT,
BLACK CHURCHES MOBILIZE FOR POOR
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working in concert with Moore County authorities, are reportedly in the process of closing in on whoever was responsible for the December 3rd gunshot terrorism that disabled a Duke Energy substation, cutting power to tens of thousands of customers throughout the mostly rural county for several days, making national and international headlines.
As far as law enforcement is concerned, whoever caused the outage knew exactly what they were doing.
After several days in the dark, power was restored December 8th, but by the time it was, it was too late for many of the poor and Black families living there. Their refrigerated food had gone bad. They had no heat to ward off the cold temperatures. Young children, the elderly and afflicted suffered tremendously.
While many of the businesses in towns like Carthage and Southern Pines were able to pool their resources to help as many as they could, a group of community-based organizations that call themselves “the Moore County CRISIS Coalition,” have been working since the day after the blackout began to supply free food, diapers and generators to rural Black churches throughout Moore County.
Working with relief organizations from across the state including West Southern Pines Civic Organization, Moore County NAACP leaders, More for Moore, Helping Hands, Trinity AME Zion Church and many county churches, Moore County CRISIS Coalition collected and distributed food, batteries, blankets, generators, gas cards, diapers and other human necessities for poor families who were suddenly put in dire circumstances because of the unforeseen circumstances.
At least one Black church, Trinity AME Zion, pastored by Rev. Paul Murphy, set up a distribution center for the needy that plans to remain open through the holidays.
“Our response to this crisis ought to be governed by organizations familiar with and committed to the well-being of our Black and Brown sisters and brothers, and other poor people,” a CRISIS leader, O’Linda Watkins, the Moore County NAACP president for twenty-five years, said.
“While law enforcement does its duty, we will work on fulfilling the human needs revealed by the power outage emergency. Anyone wishing to support grassroots, community-led relief efforts can help us collect and distribute donations for those most impacted at the distribution center at Trinity AME Zion Church.”
“We know when the lights and refrigerators get power, tens of thousands of poor and working people will still be without food and other basic needs. Electricity is wonderful, but it doesn’t feed the babies. The attack hit the poor, disabled, elderly and sick in our communities the hardest, particularly our sisters and brothers in the small Black communities that are often centered around a Black church.”
Watkins continued, “We call on people of good will to support us by donating to: Moore County CRISIS Coalition. Checks can be sent to Moore County NAACP “Donation” website, Moore naacp.org. Please add “CRISIS” on the memo line of the check.
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Floyd McKissick, Jr.
MCKISSICK SAYS
MOORE v. HARPER
TOO IMPORTANT TO
IGNORE
BY Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The first vice chairman of the North Carolina Democrat Party, former
state Senator Floyd McKissick Jr., says Moore v. Harper, the pivotal North Carolina case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last week, “…poses an existential threat to our democracy.”
The question at hand - does the NC Supreme Court have the legal
authority to strike down the NC legislature’s “illegally gerrymandered congressional map for violating the North Carolina Constitution?”
North Carolina’s Republican legislative leadership says no, that when it comes to federal elections, neither the state constitution nor the state Supreme Court should have any power over the state legislature.
This is called the “independent state legislature theory” some Republicans and conservatives argue can be found in the U.S. Constitution. Many legal experts - both conservative and liberal - have called the “theory” a bad misinterpretation of a passage in the U.S. Constitution, that if allowed by the U.S. High Court, could empower state lawmakers across the nation to actually rig elections, illegally draw unconstitutional voting districts, and effectively stay in power without accountability.
And voters would have no legal recourse to stop them.
Republicans are the majority in over 54 percent of the nation’s state legislatures. Democrats in over 44%.
The NC case - in 2021, the GOP-led legislature passed an extremely partisan congressional voting map that gave the state ten Republican-leaning Congressional districts, and only four Democrat-leaning districts. Voters sued the NC legislature in state court, contending that its gerrymandered map violated North Carolina’s “free elections clause.”
Last February, the Democrat-led state Supreme Court agreed that the Republican-led legislature created an illegal extremely partisan congressional map, and struck it down.
Undeterred, Republican lawmakers drew up a second partisan congressional map, forcing the state High Court to order a special master to come in and draw a more constitutional map for the 2022 midterm elections.
That’s when Republican House Speaker Tim Moore petitioned the
conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court to step in and counter the state Supreme Court, reinstating their voting map. At first, the Moore petition was rejected, but four of the conservative justices urged Speaker Moore to petition again, and in June, the case was accepted.
And that’s how North Carolina’s “independent state legislature theory” came before the U.S. High Court last week.
In his op-ed to the News & Observer, former Sen. McKissick recalled his days in the legislature, sitting on the Redistricting Committee, where Republicans would draw partisan maps that “…split communities and neighborhoods down the middle to dilute the democratic process and disenfranchise voters — disproportionately impacting communities of color.”
“With Moore v. Harper, they are taking matters to the brink by appealing to a Republican-dominated Supreme Court in hopes it will put partisanship before people and support their fringe independent legislature doctrine,” McKissick opined.
“Republicans willingness to cast aside decades of precedent and our very Constitution for partisan gain is alarming and North Carolinians should pay attention. Our democracy is fragile. We must fight to protect it.”
McKissick added, “Republicans are merely interpreting the Constitution to fit their needs.”
For more than three hours Dec. 7th, the nine-member U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments from both sides of the issue. According to observers, even some of the High Court’s conservative justices - Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Comes Barrett - realized how extreme the independent state legislature theory was, and how it could negatively impact future federal elections, starting in 2024.
Arch-conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Neal Gorsuch and Samuel Alito had no problem with the “theory,” and seemed pre-disposed to rule for it.
The High Court’s newest associate justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, seemed to indicate that she will join her liberal colleagues Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in her line of questioning, noting that the nation’s founders “…sought to constrain the power of state legislatures.”
A decision is Moore v. Harper is expected in July 2023.
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