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The Road to Raleigh
Last week, Pacifica Radio went to North Carolina to cover Bishop William Barber's march from Wilson to Raleigh, North Carolina's state capital. The 50 miles trek was to draw national attention to the Republican state legislature's push to gerrymander out of existence the 1st CD, an historically Black Congressional district where just 48 percent of the residents are white and a majority are Black or something else.
This is a state with one foot in the past as the nation's leading producer of tobacco and one in the future, ranking in the top tier of the nation for forward looking medical research. It's a state with fast growing wealthy residential gated enclaves and deep subsistence level poverty, prosperity and great deprivation side by side.
IT'S NORTH CAROLINA-IT IS AMERICA
While neighborhoods in and around North Carolina's internationally renowned medical research centers can enjoy access to 21st century care, mothers in its rural counties "are more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications" with "medical professionals...few and far between," reported the Carolina Public Press.
Not long ago, the state's Congressional districts had been evenly divided seven to seven, but thanks to GOP machinations it has swung 10 to four in the Republican direction. After generations of voting Democratic from after the Civil War, President Nixon's so-called 'southern strategy' of exploiting white anxiety over the civil rights movement shifted North Carolina into the reliable Republican column.
In 2008, the historic candidacy of Barack Obama flipped that for the Democrats by just 14,000 votes. It hasn't happened since.
This latest North Carolina GOP gerrymandering scheme was undertaken at the direct instruction of President Trump who said it was necessary to prevent Democrats from recapturing the House of Representatives which he predicted would vote to impeach him for a third time.
Similar GOP machinations in states like Texas, years before the actual U.S. Census should prompt such a reset, were being advanced as grassroots resistance to President Trump's mass deportation campaign was spreading quickly across the country even in the south.
On the morning of Feb. 11th, close to 300 members of the clergy and social justice activists from North Carolina and as far away as California gathered to form the line of march that stepped off from the parking lot of the Saint James Christian Church, in the 1st district's Wilson County.
"This is Our Selma Love Forward Together Mobilization Tour" was convened to support "unabridged voting rights; living wages and ending poverty; welcoming immigrants" as well as "guaranteeing healthcare for all; keeping peace, not ICE raids and unchecked militarism."
"We have gathered here today to start a three-day march to love forward together," said Bishop Barber's wife, the Rev. Della Owens-Barber, who is also the pastor at St. James. "If you love justice for all and equal protection under the law, then I call you now and urge you to respond to this call."
"We need to talk about more than Black and Selma. Remember the Bonus March when veterans came back. They weren't being paid properly in the 1920s. Remember the moral leaders who stood up to greed and graft in the early 1900s when they raised the question 'what would Jesus do?'," Bishop Barber told Pacifica as he took the first steps of the 50 miles march. "We are walking in a lot of footsteps, some of whom did not walk in the street but they walked in courtrooms. They walked in churches. Some of them walked into death. There is a whole crowd of people that were shot down and killed. They are walking with us this morning, ancestors."
Barber continued. "Oftentimes we forget that even in the Selma March it was Black, and it was white, it was Jewish, it was Christian, it was Muslim. It was diverse. We forget that when Dr. King got to Selma, he didn't talk about as much about voting rights as he said the greatest fear of the greedy oligarchy was for the masses of poor whites and the mass of Negroes to get together and form a voting block that could fundamentally shift the economic architecture of the nation. Even then he was talking about voting rights in terms of a reconstruction which we certainly need today. He was also dealing with authoritarianism."
WE ACTUALLY LOVE OUR NEIGHBOR
While there were dozens of signs printed by Repairers of the Breach, the national non-profit that supports Bishop Barber's work, there were also homemade signs calling for the abolition of ICE.
From the start of Trump 2.0, the administration targeted so-called sanctuary cities like Los Angeles. In Chicago in September, masked federal agents in a midnight raid landed a Blackhawk helicopter on a residential apartment building so they could repel down from the rooftop. Once inside, they forced entry into the apartments from which they seized all of the occupants, both citizens and immigrants that they zip tied including children.
The raid produced no arrests although the Trump administration had offered as pretext the presence of members of the violent street gang Tren de Aragua.
The violence used by masked ICE continued to escalate into the New Year when the Trump administration ordered 3,000 ICE and Customs and Border Patrol officers into Minneapolis/St. Paul where there were only 1,100 local police officers.
Last month, the efforts to seize people off of the streets, out of their cars and even out of their homes without warrants sparked widespread protests from local communities at the neighborhood level. Last month, federal agents in Minneapolis murdered Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, and Alex Pretti, a VA ICU nurse, and member of AFGE.
Both were 37 years-old and acting in support of local efforts to protect their immigrant neighbors who often are here in the United States legally.
Here in North Carolina, just as in the rest of the country, ICE's use of masked armed agents has sparked fierce but non-violent resistance as thousands have mobilized to protect their vulnerable neighbors. "ICE protesters turn their attention to a private prison company in North Carolina," reported the Charlotte Observer in an article which described local reaction to an attempt by the GEO company, a notorious private prison company to open back up the Rivers Correctional Institution, "which was shut down in 2021 when the Federal Bureau of Prisons let a contract expire."
SAVE AMERICA-THE ESSENTIAL CONVERGENCE
On the first day of the Love Forward Mobilization, Bishop Barber was joined by former Republican campaign strategist Stephen Schmidt, who was the co-founder in 2019 of the Lincoln Project, which has been fiercely critical of President Trump. In 2021 he helped create the Save America Movement, a political action committee to counter the MAGA movements stranglehold on the GOP.
In the fall of 2020, Schmidt accurately predicted that President Trump's unrelenting attack on the legitimacy of that November's election would foment violence. That prediction came to pass on Jan. 6th when Trump supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol which delayed for many hours the certification of President Biden's election.
Pacifica Radio asked Schmidt why he had joined Bishop Barber on the march.
"Well, I am out here representing the Save America Movement. Bishop Barber is a member of our steering committee and I am out here because Americans all over the country are coming together in opposition to the obscenity that is this administration, the worst in American history."
The 1st Congressional District has the highest percentage of food stamp reliant households out of the state's 14 districts. According to the United Way's ALICE survey (asset limited income constrained but employed) close to half of the district's households live below the poverty line or struggle month to month to get by.
As a so-called 'right to work' state, North Carolina has the lowest union density in the nation with just 2.4 percent of the workforce unionized as contrasted with Hawaii and New York where over 20 percent of workers are in a union. As a consequence, North Carolina minimum wage is still at the bottom at $7.25 an hour where it's been stuck for a generation.
In downtown Wilson, a massive eight story brick apartment building is boarded up. Vacant storefront after vacant storefront still have faded advertising for what they were. In a state where homelessness is spiking, Wilson has zombie homes where some love and attention would put them back into service for the living.
"Over the last 15 years, North Carolina has outstripped national trends in its increase of unsheltered people," reports the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency. "The total population that is homeless and without shelter in the state increased by 50 percent from 2010 to 2024, compared to 17 percent nationally."
Throughout the 2024 campaign cycle, Bishop Barber tried to raise the profile of the tens of millions of low wage and low wealth voters that were the real swing vote but only if they were engaged in a real conversation about their lives.
Bishop Barber told Pacficia that in North Carolina the Harris campaign failed to engage that population.
"You got to believe the new south is here but it just has not been organized. In the first CD Trump only won by 11,000 votes--185,000 people did not vote so these numbers are very narrow," Barber said. "There is not a state in this country where if you got ten percent of the poor and low wealth voters who did not vote, to vote that you couldn't shift an election cause now low wealth and poor voters make up between 36 to 42 percent of the vote."
THE WILLFUL RETRO
At the same time, while North Carolina had once led the south in support of education, it has dropped to the bottom nationally as state lawmakers "have enacted deeply unpopular tax cuts, including the scheduled elimination of the corporate income tax," according to the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, a non-profit think tank that tracks poverty.
On the road to Raleigh marchers stopped at a boarded up shopping mall surrounded by a chain link fence. JC Penny left only their logo behind.
Marcher Fran Cantrell is a retired school nurse from North Carolina's rural Wilkes County. Her husband was also a public school teacher.
"We have to stand up because things are just outrageous with what's happening and we have to stand up for the people who can't speak for themselves--for the poor and the people who need so much more than what they have and all of the things that are being taken away from them. We've got to help," Cantrell told Pacifica.
Cantrell said that as a school nurse she saw first hand how the increasingly MAGA dominated Republican legislature turned back the clock for public education for students and teachers.
"It's so sad--they have taken away so many of the incentives of people being able to work 30 years and retiring from public education," Cantrell said. "So, the great teachers obviously once they go through school and work in education for five or ten years they realize 'I can make more money and for my future I probably don't need to do this--even though they want to do it for the children."
Along the way, Rev. Barber and his wife Rev. Della Owens-Barber rode on an open air rack truck that could haul lumber that was equipped with a sound system. The couple improvised a call and response on their microphones.
"What do we want? Tell the truth" "When do we want it? Now!" "What do we want? Tell the truth" "When do we want it? Now!" echoed through the pine forests. In the road mix was Kirk Franklin's Nu Nation Project's Revolution that quotes bible scripture and then asks "Do you want a revolution?" and predicts "it is coming" and there "will be a brighter day."
At several points along the road to downtown Raleigh marchers would be applauded by locals. Outside the Appletree Child Development Center a crowd of high energy pre-schoolers and their teachers cheered the growing pedestrian parade led by a phalanx of rumbling police motorcycles.
Appletree staffer Cheryl Richardson told Pacifica her site was a Headstart location caring for children as young as six-weeks so parents could work. Richardson described how state and federal cuts to programs like hers were going to have serious generational consequences that should not be ignored.
"Because we can't function and then we have these children that will be behind-- and North Carolina is already at the bottom of the totem pole for education--come on now let us rise--let us rise," Richardon said.
DOOR TO DOOR MOBILIZATION
Across the highway on the front steps of their home sat Lawrence Leach and his two-year old granddaughter Elizabeth. They were holding up a "It's Time to Love Forward" placard in support of the "mass people's assembly and moral march and mobilization."
"We saw the commotion going on and looked out the door of what was going on and so we are joining in with you guys," Leach told Pacifica. "Here in North Carolina it's a real struggle for working people. All of my associates are having a hard time." The minimum wage is horrible. How can you live off of $7.25 an hour? You can not. Even with two jobs you still can not make it."
Leach, who is a disabled municipal worker, says low wages and the rising costs of living has him really worried for the next generation.
"The minimum wage is horrible. How can you live off of $7.25 an hour? You can not. Even with two jobs you still can not make it. I have grandkids coming up and I am wondering what their future is going to be at this point," Leach said. "You see the backward motion everyday. We've got to stand up and it starts with voting."
On the way into downtown Raleigh there was a pretty steep incline over about a mile long along which now hundreds were marching single file. Along the way the march had picked up several people like Annika Wilson, a speech pathologist, who spontaneously dropped whatever they were doing that day to join in the march.
For Wilson, whose sister lives in Minneapolis, it was the broad daylight murder by federal immigration agents of Renee Good and Alex Pretti that prompted her to join in on Friday.
"I hadn't had a chance to participate before but what's happening now is wrong," Wilson told Pacifica. "I am a person who has a pretty close relationship to fear because that's how I am wired. Yet, I see what some people are going through and I need to have my voice heard too."
By Saturday, Valentine's Day, there would be thousands from all over amassed in front of North Carolina's State Capitol Building who also wanted their voices heard.
UP NEXT: What are we for? Empowering the "prophetic imagination."
