Moral Mondays, The Third Reconstruction & Act 192

North Carolina social activist Rev. Dr. William Barber

If politics is your thing, last night was your kind of night with big Tuesday primaries taking place in Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina; not so much for Marco Rubio.

A lot more than just delegates were at stake.

Are you the type who appreciates an excellent no-nonsense overview of the political landscape (and challenges) in both Missouri and North Carolina from a progressive point of view?

Then I'd highly recommend you take some time to listen to the two insightful interviews Brian Lehrer did back-to-back Tuesday morning with St. Louis Public Radio political reporter Jo Mannies and William Barber (pictured above), president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP.

In the interview on The Brian Lehrer Show, Barber offered insight into how the divisive rhetoric (which President Obama called "vulgar" earlier today) that has become the hallmark of Donald Trump's campaign rallies, are rooted in the same brand of racist populism trumpeted by George Wallace and other popular southern segregationists in the 20th century.

He argues that the toxic rhetoric which incites Trump supporters to physically assault protesters, is the same dangerous kind of inflammatory language that motivated four KKK terrorists to detonate 15 sticks of dynamite under the front steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama killing four little girls on Sunday September 15, 1963.

NC Republican Senator Thom Tillis

Since 2013, Barber has been at the heart of North Carolina's Moral Mondays protest movement opposing the unprecedented takeover of the state by right-wing Republican extremists led by Governor Pat McCrory and current NC Republican Senator Thom Tillis (pictured left).

Before narrowly defeating Democrat Kay Hagan to win a hotly-contested Senate seat, Tillis was a key ally of Governor McCrory while he served as the Speaker of North Carolina state legislature at a time when 54 of the 170 members were members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (including Tillis himself) at a time when Republican voter suppression in the Tar Heel state was making national headlines.

Tillis is a textbook Koch brothers flunky. With the help of his Koch-funded ALEC puppeteers in North Carolina, he led the state legislatures efforts to (among other things) roll back voting rights, attack unions, make access to abortion more difficult and eliminate unemployment benefits.

His former crony Governor McCrory is up for re-election this year and you can be sure he'll be facing organized protests from Moral Mondays members around the state.

It's the efforts of people like Tillis and McCrory who've (in part) inspired Rev. Barber to emerge as a powerful voice in the grassroots movement for social justice in North Carolina.

2014 Moral Mondays protest in Raleigh, NC

Which he chronicles in his recently-released book "The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics and the Rise of  New Justice Movement". 

In it, Barber argues that the wave of right-wing extremism typified by voter suppression and astonishing government power grabs through gerrymandering by conservative state legislators, has sparked a growing counter-wave of progressive social activism in America which he calls "The Third Reconstruction".

And his message, like the movement itself, is growing nationwide.

Since the Moral Mondays movement was launched in 2013, it has since spread to other states including New York, Georgia, Ohio, New Mexico, South Carolina and Illinois.

Donald Trump's victory in the North Carolina and Florida primaries last night is a sobering reminder of what's at stake in the 2016 presidential elections - and for our nation as a whole.

In the same way the election of Republican-majority legislatures in North Carolina and Kansas have proved disastrous to the social fabric of those states, an article posted on Trace.org yesterday by Olivia Li offers a disturbing snapshot of what's at stake for national and state elections with regards to issues like gun control.

Act 192 sponsor Republican Mark Keller

As she reported, the Pennsylvania state legislature passed Act 192 back in 2014 which allows individual gun owners and any large organization like the NRA that they belong to, to jointly sue any township or small municipality that tries to pass gun control legislation to control gun violence.

Not long after it was passed, the NRA sued Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and other municipalities in Pennsylvania over restrictions that kept people from carrying concealed weapons in cars or on their person without a license, requiring people to report stolen weapons or bans on sales of certain kinds of ammunition.

Doesn't matter that the NRA doesn't live in the town in question.

Act 192 allows them to tap into the NRA's massive war chest to actually prevent local elected leaders from passing gun control legislation to keep their local communities safe.

If small municipalities that challenge the NRA lose their court fight, a bizarre provision in the law requires them to cover massive attorney's fees, court costs and expert witness costs that the NRA incurs in it's effort to sue these towns and cities for writing their own gun safety laws.

Make sense? Of course it doesn't, not in a civilized society anyway.

Act 192 only makes sense in the ideological mindset.

As Trace.org reported, to avoid potentially-crippling costs of being sued by the NRA, more than 20 Pennsylvania towns and cities began repealing their own gun safety ordinances; including a small suburb outside Pittsburgh known as Wilikinsburg.

Four of the victims of the mass shooting in Wilkinsburg

Last Wednesday March 9th, just hours after the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court began to hear arguments on the merits of Act 192, two unknown gunmen wielding a .40 caliber handgun and an assault rifle, opened fire at a backyard family cookout at a home in Wilkinsburg, shooting and killing five people, including a pregnant woman, and wounding 3 more.

According to the New York Times, police say the shooting was planned; all of the victims were shot in the head; they were all related. The gunmen fled from the scene and escaped.

Only in the mindset of state Republican lawmakers beholden to an entity like the NRA does Act 192 make sense.


It's interesting, Republicans constantly gripe about the horrors of Democrats using 'Big Government' to intrude in the lives of individuals and interfere with people's right to govern themselves.

Yet Pennsylvania Republican legislators pass a law designed to block local elected leaders from making decisions about laws for firearms safety in their own communities?

Obviously Republicans are fine with 'Big Government' when it comes to guns, abortion and fracking.

"Situational Republican outrage?"

Just imagine the kinds of laws a Republican-controlled House and Senate would pass with the cooperation of a Republican president.

Act 192 is just one example of what was at stake in Tuesday's primaries; a law that may have contributed to five innocent people (six if you count the unborn child of the pregnant victim) being shot at a backyard cookout.

Is it a stretch to say that people's lives are at stake with the upcoming fall elections this year? I don't think it is.

Nor is it a stretch to say the time for a Third Reconstruction is now.

Anonymous Outs GOP Politicians as KKK Members

TX Sen John Cornyn - Majority Whip & KKK member? 

Now I'm not sure how many of you heard about the recent announcement by the global hactivst collective known as Anonymous of their intent to post the identities of thousands of members of the Ku Klux Klan online in a massive data dump intended to out racists - which went under the Twitter hashtags #OpKKK and #HoodsOff.

Well as this group of progressive political hactivists have proved before, they're highly proficient with computers and they don't make idle threats.

They released a portion of a list of what is said to be over 1,000 individuals - the full list will supposedly be released on Thursday.

The revelation that some of the people who were hiding their white supremacist beliefs under a hood are not only members of law enforcement and corrections officers, but mayors of major American cities and even four members of the United States Senate is sure to have political repercussions for the Republican Party.

The senior U.S. Senator from Texas, John Cornyn, III (pictured above) currently serves as the Majority Whip and is one of the highest-ranking Senators on Capitol Hill.

But according to a list posted on UsUncut.com of high-profile political figures outed as Klan members that was originally posted on the document-dumping site pastebin, Cornyn is listed as a member of the United White Knights of the KKK.

The implications of his being a member of the klan are pretty staggering, and not just because of the potential for his racist beliefs to affect the kinds of laws he supports or opposes in the Senate and the huge influence he wields over that process.

According to information on his Wikipedia page, Cornyn served as a district judge in San Antonio, Texas for six years before being elected to the Texas State Supreme Court where served for seven years; then he ran for Texas attorney general and won.

It's actually frightening to think of the impact his personal beliefs have had on the lives of hundreds of African-American and Latino suspects who saw the inside of his court room over the years.

Like the widespread criticism he received as Texas Attorney General for dragging his heels on investigating the convictions of 43 African-Americans from the town of Tulia, Texas on drug conspiracy charges based on the testimony of a single narcotics agent.

As the Austin Chronicle reported back in 2002, the 43 blacks arrested represented 16% of the town's African-American population.

Rep Joe Wilson of South Carolina

Remember South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson? (pictured left)

Same right-wing nutbag who rudely shouted out "You lie!" to President Obama in front of both houses of Congress, members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and invited guests during a nationally televised State of the Union address in 2009?

Yeah, that guy. He's listed as a member of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the KKK.

So was North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, the former Speaker of the NC legislature, an ally of current NC Governor Pat McCrory, and a major architect of the states draconian voter suppression laws.

As of right now when I'm writing this, the major news media outlets seem to be holding back on reporting the story until more information about the list itself can be verified.

But a number of the politicians outed on the list have released public denial statements already; including Jim Gray the Mayor of Lexington, Kentucky.

According to an article posted on Newsweek.com, Anonymous seems to be playing coy about the the information that appeared on pastebin, claiming that they will release the full list on November 5th when they will observe a global protest event against corporate and political corruption known as the Million Mask March.

English Catholic activist Guy Fawkes

November 5th is when people in England have traditionally observed Guy Fawkes Night which commemorates the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when a group of Catholic activists attempted to blow up the Palace of Westminster during the opening of Parliament in response to anger over oppression of Catholics by the Protestant King James I.

Guy Fawkes (pictured left), the English explosives expert who was preparing to set the fuse on 36 barrels of gunpowder in a cellar beneath the House of Lords, was discovered before the explosion took place and he was arrested and taken to the Tower of London where he was tortured until he gave up the names of the co-conspirators in the plot.

His exploits became familiar to many Americans after the 2006 film 'V for Vendetta' in which the title character, a charming but violent anti-hero terrorist named V attempts to repeat the attempt to blow up Parliament in a future dystopian England ruled by an oppressive conservative government.

Will the release of the list on Thursday be as explosive as the original plot?

There are a lot of people waiting to find out, in the meantime there are some sitting U.S Senators and mayors in America who are going to be sitting in the media hot seat tomorrow. 

And if it's true they are, or have been members of violent white supremacist organization the impact on their political careers, reputations, and the image Republican party, could be significant.