Harry Targ
America is facing an economic, political, moral, and
environmental crisis as deep as any since the Civil War. Extremists have
mobilized money and power to increase the concentration of wealth, decrease
economic justice, promote war abroad and police violence at home, expand
racism, sexism, and exploitation, and end all efforts to protect the fragile
environment.
Enormous amounts of money, largely provided by the
Koch Brothers but also coming from some of the largest corporations in the
country (insurance, energy, drugs, investment, water and on-line), created the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the 1970s. Billionaires David
and Charles Koch have used their money to transform American politics primarily at the level of state governments.
Their father, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the infamous John Birch Society of
the 1950s and 1960s that railed against alleged “communists” such as former
President Eisenhower and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.
ALEC has created think tanks, funded political
candidates who support their extremist agenda, prepared detailed legislative programs
on every public policy issue, and held conferences to recruit and curry the
favor of state legislators. This forty year semi-secret movement has led to the
capture of thirty state governments (governorships and state legislatures).
Since 2010 these state governments have launched an assault on workers, women,
people of color, and youth.
In Indiana, at least 16 state representatives and 9
state senators have had ties to ALEC. Former Governor Mitch Daniels and his
successor Mike Pence have attended and/or spoken at ALEC and other Koch
Brothers events.
As a result of ALEC, sustained assaults on the
well-being of Hoosiers since 2004 have included: the decertification of public
employee unions, the passage of right-to-work legislation, the creation of
charter schools, the shift of educational resources from public schools to
private ones through the establishment of vouchers. Also attempts were made to privatize
welfare services and some Indiana toll roads were leased to foreign
corporations. In addition Indiana politicians have promoted laws limiting the
ability of Planned Parenthood to provide health examinations to poor women and blocked
any regulations on coal power plants particularly adjacent to minority
communities. Indiana initiated some of the first voter ID laws in the country
making it more difficult for Hoosiers to vote and the current Governor decided
not to expand Medicaid. (see Bryan K Bullock, “the Ultra-Right-Wing State
Nobody Mentions,” Truthout, July 1,
2014).
These long-term trends in various states have
sparked the emergence of resistance. One
form of resistance is the Moral Mondays movement which began in North Carolina
and has spread all across the South and in parts of the Midwest. North
Carolina’s movement was convened by the NAACP in 2006 to start a conversation
about political and economic justice. By 2013, North Carolina’s movement grew
from 16 organizational partners to over 150. Activists began a weekly protest
against the North Carolina legislature’s extreme agenda and during the spring
legislative season over 1,000 workers, ministers, men, women, minorities,
educators, health care professionals, fast food workers, and others were
arrested for civil disobedience in the North Carolina State House. Most of the
arrests have just been declared unconstitutional.
Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina
NAACP, has emerged as a powerful spokesperson for the Moral Mondays movement.
He articulates the view that the country is in the midst of the third reconstruction.
The first, after the Civil War, brought former Black slaves and white workers
together to write democratic state constitutions. They practiced a “fusion” politics;”
that is working to unite people around shared issues and values and unity
around race, gender, faith traditions, and the common passion for building a
real democracy.
Barber reports that the fusion movement of the 1860s
and 1870s was destroyed by Klan extremism and rightwing plantation supporters
of the old slave system. The second reconstruction emerged in the 1950s after
Brown vs. Board of Education and succumbed to a new round of extremism resulting
from candidate Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” of the 1968 election season.
Now, Barber says we are in the midst of a third
reconstruction. Moral Mondays movements in North Carolina, and 13 other states
in the South and Midwest have begun to build a new fusion movement that draws
together workers, women, young and old, black, brown, and white people,
documented and undocumented, environmentalists, people of faith and atheists, and
the LBGT community based upon “moral” and “constitutional” agendas. He argues
that whatever an individual’s personal religious or political values, most
people hold to a moral core that addresses economic justice and freedom. And,
the federal and most state constitutions clearly state their commitment to
democracy and justice. The moral and constitutional dimensions are not, he
says, about political parties or ideologies but about these fundamental
traditions.
Rev. Barber spoke about his vision in Indianapolis at
a two-day mass meeting of the newly created Indiana Moral Mondays on September
19-20. On September 19, he briefed Hoosier activists who had been meeting for
months to plan for Rev. Barber’s visit as the “kick-off” to a new Indiana Moral
Mondays movement. On Saturday, workshops were held on the Moral Mondays issues
at Crispus Attucks High School. After the workshops hundreds marched from the
high school to the State House. There Rev. Barber spoke passionately about the
need for an Indiana Moral Mondays. The assembled supporters also heard
supportive words from National Organization for Women (NOW) president Terry
O’Neill and Indiana NAACP State President Barbara Bolling Williams. Hoosier activists
commented on the specific needs of fast food workers, African-American youth,
and health care workers. Indiana advocates for Medicaid expansion, labor
rights, and environmental justice also addressed the rally.
As the new Indiana Moral Mondays movement proceeds
in the months ahead it will be addressing a five-point core agenda similar to
that embraced by Moral Mondays movements in other states:
- Secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that insure economic sustainability;
- Provide well-funded, quality public education for all;
- Stand up for the health of every Hoosier by promoting health care access and environmental justice across all the state's communities;
- Address the continuing inequalities in the criminal justice system and ensure equality under the law for every person, regardless of race, class, creed, documentation or sexual preference;
- Protect and expand voting rights for people of color, women, immigrants, the elderly and students to safeguard fair democratic representation.
In his Saturday, September 20, afternoon speech to
the 400 people rallying at the Indiana State House, Rev. Barber said he was
told by his son, an environmental physicist, that if he ever got lost in
mountainous territory he should walk to higher ground. This is necessary,
Barber reported, because in the lowlands snakes congregate but if one climbs
above the “snake line” snakes, being cold-blooded creatures, cannot live.
Referring to the snake line metaphor in an earlier
speech Barber declared:
“There are some snakes out here. There are some
low-down policies out here. There’s some poison out here. Going backwards on
voting rights, that’s below the snake line. Going backwards on civil rights,
that’s below the snake line. Hurting people just because they have a different
sexuality, that’s below the snake line. Stomping on poor people just because
you’ve got power, that’s below the snake line. Denying health care to the sick
and keeping children from opportunity, that’s below the snake line” (Dave
Johnson, “Let’s Get Our Politics Above the Snake Line,” Campaign for America’s Future, July 22, 2014).
Rev. Barber urged the newly formed Indiana Moral
Mondays coalition to “go to higher ground,” where poverty is ended, everybody
can vote, children can be educated, the sick can be healed, and everyone is
respected.
People left the rally with a renewed passion to move above the snake
line to a higher ground. They vowed to
build a powerful new political voice in the state: Indiana Moral Mondays.
