North Carolina’s Moral Freedom Summer

They’ve outed the extremist governor and legislators who have cut taxes for corporations and the rich, while raising taxes on low-income people. They’ve brought attention to how the state’s leaders are cutting funds for public education and jobless benefits while gutting environmental protections and women’s health funding.

Now, the coalition is going after political kleptocrats in their districts. The movement has recruited, trained, and sent forth 34 young community organizers across the state with the intention of registering 50,000 new voters this summer.

The central rallying cry for this mobilization is for the people to rise up against the atrocious voter-suppression legislation passed last year. That law is flagrantly anti-democratic, squeezing elderly people, minorities, students, low-wage workers, and other non-Republican voters out of their polling places.

The effort to restore ballot rights for all in North Carolina is called the Moral Freedom Summer, a clear nod to the historic Freedom Summer of 1964. In that heroic campaign, activists struggling to secure the vote for African Americans suffered horrific beatings, firebombings, and a shocking triple-murder.

Fifty years later, after the Tar Heel State’s top officials shamed themselves by eradicating fundamental rights gained by the blood of those activists, the people are on the move again. To keep up and offer help, visit the website at: http://moralfreedomsummer-naacpnc.nationbuilder.com/.

***

Originally posted at Other Words.