North Carolina Open Thread: "Love It or Leave it"

NORTH CAROLINA OPEN THREAD for Sunday, July 21, 2019

218th Weekly Edition

This is a weekly feature of North Carolina Blue. We hope this regular platform gives readers interested in North Carolina politics a place to share their knowledge, insight and inspiration as we work on taking back our state from some of the most extreme Republicans in the nation. Please join us every week as we try to Connect, Unite, Act with our North Carolina Daily Kos community. You can also join the discussion in four other weekly State Open Threads.

Colorado: Mondays, 7:00 PM Mountain Michigan: Wednesdays, 6:00 PM Eastern North Carolina: Sundays, 1:00 PM Eastern Missouri: Wednesday Evenings Kansas: Monday Evenings

You can help by adding anything from North Carolina that you would like to highlight. just kosmail me or email at randalltdkos at gmail. Twitter: @randallt

Thanks for reading and contributing, the floor is yours.

Rev. Barber x

We have to produce truth & we have to produce love & not just say we're against a racist, but beat the policy. There are 4.3 million poor people in North Carolina. Speak to them. The majority of them are white. Speak to them. Show them how they’re being conned. pic.twitter.com/DYqboAhxc8

— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) July 20, 2019

To Council Members Who Voted For RNC: Any Regrets?

‘Yes’ vote takes on new meaning after ‘Send her back!’

The Charlotte City Council’s 6-5 vote to accept the bid for the 2020 Republican National Convention happened July 16, 2018, a year ago this week. One year and one day later, at a rally on the East Carolina University campus in Greenville, North Carolina: “Send her back!”

I thought it might be instructive to ask City Council members who voted “yes” if they had second thoughts.

“No, I don’t have any second thoughts,” said Greg Phipps, one of four council Democrats who joined the two Republicans, Ed Driggs and Tariq Bokhari, in the majority vote. Phipps is not running for re-election in November. “I stated that night when I voted—and I still feel the same way—that democracy is something that's bigger than Donald Trump or the Republican Party.”

The chant in Greenville, he said, is “part of democracy. They can say things. Their speech is protected … I think you have to resolve that at the ballot box. It’s offensive and racist, but it would have been offensive and racist wherever it was.”

Tillis & Walker: Two sides of the same coin

Sen. Thom Tillis and Rep. Mark Walker were in attendance Wednesday night at President Trump’s rally in North Carolina, where the crowd’s chant of “send her back!” targeting Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) rang in the air unchallenged.

On Thursday, Tillis defended the president, saying he had no control over the crowd and equating the event to a rock concert. Walker, a former pastor who has worked in refugee camps, called the chants offensive and said such rhetoric needs to stop before it defines the Republican Party.

Setting aside Two-Faced Tillis for the moment: Walker, who is supposed to be a religious man, is more concerned about the political consequences to his party than he is the safety and prosperity of the ethnic minorities being targeted in chants like this. Just do a mental exercise for me, and finish this sentence: "Such rhetoric needs to stop before it----" If you came up with "leads to violence" or some variation of that, you are a normal human being with an innate concern for the welfare of others. Now back to Tillis, who has latched onto Trump like a Lone Star tick:

Tillis — who broke with Trump over his declaration of a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border to build the wall, then made an abrupt turnaround and was endorsed by the president last month — told reporters at the Capitol that people were “reading too much into” the episode.

“Any one of y’all that have been to a rock concert or other venues, somebody starts up, somebody else thinks . . . I mean, to be fair to the audience, they’re in a mode where they’re energized,” said Tillis, who rode with Trump on Air Force One to the rally and arrived in the president’s motorcade.

Thanks again, have a good week!

BONUS STORY

Right-wing bigots target North Carolina concert by African band that stood up to Islamists

July 21, 2019 Jordan Green, Triad City Beat

Responding to hate, a Winston-Salem music venue rallies the community behind what just might be the greatest band in the world.

The comments in response to two sponsored posts on Facebook promoting an upcoming Winston-Salem concert by the Grammy-winning and internationally-acclaimed group Tinariwen came in a steady drip of loathing, vitriol and menace.

One commenter from Smithfield wrote on July 13: “Gotta bring my AR, too….”Another commenter chimed in: “So ISIS is playing the Ramcat? LOL.” And another: “Take the fucking towels off your god damn heads.”

Responding to the Ramkat’s invitation to “join us for Tinariwen, with special guest Lonnie Holley,” one commenter wrote, “Or bomb us, your choice.” A commenter from Randolph County wrote, “Any true American will not support this bunch of trash. Let them perform in their own country. They need to get out of the USA.” Reacting to a photo of the band wearing traditional north African robes and turbans, a commenter from Archdale, wrote, “Ain’t looking at nothing Muslim. The wanna-be religion that’s the plague of the world.” Another wrote, “Look like terrorists to me. Um no way.”

Read the rest. The owners of the establishment have been bringing in African acts for a long time. They have never seen anything like this. They said “It was surprising, threatening and downright sad.” Many of the hateful statements reflect Trump’s new “Send Them Back” label.