Commentary, What's Race Got To Do With It?

It’s Black Women’s Equal Pay Day: Here’s why that’s important

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10 days ago
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Image: www.womendadvancenc.org

By Antionette Kerr

Why are we still telling Black Women to work twice as hard?

It’s time for equal pay

The women in my family set high standards for what “hard work” felt and looked like. In many ways these lessons gave me strength and inspiration. I have a tremendous amount of respect for their wisdom and I credit them for my fierce work ethic. But lately, I’ve started to challenge the old adage that as a Black Woman I have to “work twice as hard” to be considered successful.

Demanding equal pay is especially important for communities of color who have been told that they had to work “twice as hard,” and be “twice as good” to be successful. This belief is so widely accepted that even former first Lady Michelle Obama advances it in speeches across America.

I echo the thoughtful sentiments of Guardian writer, Britni Danielle. “There’s one mantra many black parents drill into their children’s heads throughout their life: be twice as good. It goes that as black folks in America, we’ve got to work twice as hard to get half as far as our white counterparts,” she wrote. “Some semblance of this speech has been handed down for generations, and given our history in the US – forced into chattel slavery, oppressed under Jim Crow, and racially stigmatized to this day – it’s proven itself to be true.”

This is especially ringing true for women of color. According to equalpaytoday.org , “Each year, Equal Pay Day for All is held in April, but when we look at the wage gap for women of color, the gap is far greater. When compared to all men, women earn $.80 (cents) on the $1. When compared to White, non-Hispanic men, Black/African American women earn only $.63 (cents) on the $1. This means the typical Black woman must work until August 2018 to be paid what the typical White man was paid at the end of December 2017.”

The “work twice as hard” speech has become a rite of passage in many communities of color. Read more

Commentary, Education, News

Editorial: Bill Cobey stands up for state board and public schools

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10 days ago
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In Commentary, Education, News

State Board of Education Chair Bill Cobey

In case you missed it this this morning, Capitol Broadcasting Company published an editorial over at WRAL that takes aim at state legislative leaders following the news that State Board of Education Chairman Bill Cobey is stepping down from the board next month.

Cobey, a longtime North Carolina Republican who once chaired the statewide GOP and served in Congress, has often been at odds with the Republican-controlled legislature in recent years.

The editorial notes the reaction from Republican lawmakers, or rather lack of reaction, to Cobey’s departure is telling.

From the editorial:

Last week Chairman Bill Cobey, announced his resignation from the State Board of Education six months before the end of his term. “I want to move on so that others can lead,” he said.

We hope he’d serve his entire term, but we are not surprised that he is leaving.

Who could blame Cobey, at 79, for taking a break from the daily attacks on our public education system by Senate Leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore. They have been unrelenting in their efforts to dismantle the State Board of Education. Cobey fought the good fight on behalf of the board and is still fighting.

There are few North Carolinians who can claim Cobey’s conservative Republican pedigree. In 1982 (when Speaker Moore was 12 years old) he was Jesse Helms’ Congressional Club choice to unseat a four-term Democrat in the Fourth Congressional District. He fell short that year, but won the seat two years later.

Cobey was Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources under Gov. Jim Martin. He served as chairman of the state Republican Party. He was on the board of a private school and vice chairman of the Jesse Helms Center in 2013 when Gov. Pat McCrory named him to the State Board and he was elected its chairman.

It is certainly curious that, upon his resignation, Cobey received public words of appreciation for his service from Gov. Roy Cooper and former Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson while Republicans, including Berger, Moore and former Gov. McCrory who appointed him, were uncharacteristically muted.

It is the fact that Cobey isn’t a pushover; that he stands up for his principles and also works with Democrats to find common ground to strengthen public education; that he stands up for the constitutional role of the State Board of Education in the face of legislative efforts to weaken it. That infuriates Berger and Moore.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mark Johnson has been acquiescent to the legislative leadership and with newly-enacted powers from the legislature, worked to subvert the state board’s authority.

The current leaders of the General Assembly see every exchange as an opportunity for a confrontation, every issue is reason for ideological combat. Anyone who might have the moxie to suggest an alternative solution or competing idea is the enemy. Cobey has been under attack for several years. He fought hard.

Make no mistake about it, Bill Cobey believes in the strength of his ideas and positions. But he also has the confidence to let others challenge them and discuss them.

Most significantly, he has the patience to listen and work with those with different perspectives to seek common solutions. That’s not being a push over or liberal. That’s leadership.

It’s about putting the interests of the state, public schools and children first.

Cobey has the right priorities. They are sorely lacking among many members of the General Assembly.

We extend our admiration for, and thanks to, Bill Cobey and his service to North Carolina.

Commentary

Op-eds provide hope for renewable energy on another globally warm August morning

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11 days ago
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A news article in The Guardian puts it pretty bluntly in a Q&A article about the horrific wildfires plaguing California right now. After drawing direct connections between the heat and drought that have been battering the Golden State and the fires, the article puts it this way:

“What can be done?

Bluntly, stop using fossil fuels. ‘People are doing everything they can, but nature is very powerful and we’re not on the side of nature,’ California Governor Jerry Brown said last week. ‘We’re fighting nature with the amount of material we’re putting in the environment, and that material traps heat.’”

Which, thankfully, brings us to a couple of encouraging op-eds from North Carolina news outlets in recent days about the encouraging rise of sustainable energy and the can’t-happen-soon-enough demise of fossil fuels,

As Elizabeth Ouzts of Southeast Energy News explained in “Renewable energy losing its edge as a political wedge in N.C.” on WRAL.com, even many conservative Republicans are seeing the light:

“In this year’s Conservatives for Clean Energy survey, Republican voters said increasing competition in the energy marketplace and investing in clean energy should both be bigger policy priorities than supporting fossil fuels.

Asked how policy makers should solve the problem of toxic coal ash, a plurality of Republicans chose ‘investing state resources into solar, wind and other renewable energy sources’ over the options of doing nothing and paying utilities to clean up the waste.

A majority of voters – including a plurality of ‘very conservative’ ones – said they would be less likely to vote for a politician who supported the temporary ban on new wind projects.”

Some of the conclusions in Ouzts’ article are also reflected in another op-ed — this one by Jim Warren of NC WARN — in Raleigh’s News & Observer entitled “Why solar power is beating coal and natural gas.” Here’s Warren:

There’s good news — outside of North Carolina — in the increasingly desperate fight to slow the climate crisis before its own momentum makes acceleration unstoppable. Economical storage, the long-sought Holy Grail of renewable energy, is surging in the marketplace while climate-wrecking fracked “natural” gas has begun to decline.

“North Carolina is held back by Duke Energy executives’ obsession with gas and their obstructionist strategy toward solar and storage as they cling to the increasingly risky plan to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and some 20 gas-fired power plants.

The difference? Market competition versus monopoly capture of customers, public and civic leaders, and public debate.

Solar-with-storage projects are surging in many states by beating gas plants on economics and reliability. By 2026, the U.S. is expected to add storage capacity equal to 35 nuclear plants, generating $4 billion in annual savings.”

After detailing how Duke continues to stonewall efforts to expedite the conversion to renewables, Warren ends on this somewhat more encouraging note:

“Fortunately, utilities commissioner Dan Clodfelter, the Public Staff’s Chris Ayers and Attorney General Josh Stein are changing the long-standing rubber-stamp of Duke Energy’s ‘build plants, raise rates, control debate’ business model. Local leaders are emerging too. Working with Clean Path volunteers, Chatham County commissioners recently made a move toward solarizing county-owned facilities.

North Carolinians must insist that Duke Energy get on the right side of the accelerating climate crisis by belatedly joining the clean energy revolution.”

Amen.

Commentary, News

Chair of Governor’s Leandro commission decries education budget cuts

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14 days ago
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There were new and strong words yesterday from Brad Wilson, Chair of Gov. Cooper’s Commission on Access to Sound Basic Education. The Commission was created by Governor Cooper in July 2017 to take a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to how the state should meet its constitutional obligations under the Leandro rulings.

Wilson’s comments come in response to a General Assembly-mandated $5.1 million budget cut for the 2018-19 fiscal year, which led to the Department of Public Instruction’s recent announcement that it was eliminating 61 positions, including 29 positions focused on turning around our state’s lowest performing schools and districts. Here’s Wilson’s statement:

“The Commission on Access to Sound Basic Education is concerned that once again cuts to our state’s public education budget are disproportionately and negatively affecting the students, schools, and districts that are likely to suffer the most from the cuts. The most recent example, announced by the Department of Public Instruction, includes the layoffs of 29 staff from the Educator Support Services Division – staff whose primary focus was to support turnaround efforts in our state’s lowest performing schools and districts.

Experts from across the political spectrum have agreed for years—with the research to back it up—that the key tenets of North Carolina’s now 20-year-old Leandro case still hold true: quality teachers, quality school leaders, and adequate resources must be available to every student in every school across the state. The recent cuts stand in the way of all of these.

It is imperative that our state’s education leadership—starting with the General Assembly, which controls state funds for public education—does everything possible as soon as possible to ensure that a workable plan is in place to compensate for the cuts and that the negative impacts of the cuts are mitigated. The Department’s new regional support plan discussed at this week’s State Board of Education meeting is a start, but we need assurances that school districts will continue to receive adequate support to turnaround their low-performing schools. Governor Cooper appointed me to chair this Commission, and he remains steadfast in his commitment to ensuring that every student in our state receives the quality education he or she deserves and is constitutionally guaranteed. I, along with my fellow commissioners, will employ our collective expertise and experience to make the Governor’s commitment a reality.”

Commentary

Note to SBI: No need to spy on pipeline opponents — they’re hiding right here in plain sight

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15 days ago
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Map of proposed pipeline path — (Source: Atlantic Coast Pipeline)

As Policy Watch environmental reporter Lisa Sorg reported yesterday (“State Bureau of Investigation unit prepared “threat assessment” of Atlantic Coast Pipeline protestors”), state law enforcement officials have been spying on, or at least, monitoring, opponents of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline — the highly controversial energy project that threatens to bring significant environmental harm to eastern North Carolina in exchange for highly questionable benefits. This is from Sorg’s story:

“The state’s surveillance and counter-terrorism unit, the Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAAC), warned law enforcement officials that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline could attract “violent extremists” who are opposed to the natural gas project in North Carolina, a document obtained by Policy Watch shows.

According to a December 2017 unclassified “threat assessment” (see below), the ACP ‘has the potential to become a regional focal point for ideologically or politically motivated violent extremist actors inspired to commit acts intended to disrupt and halt ACP construction.’”

I suppose there could be something to this — there are always a few folks out there in just about every cause who are prepared to go too far — but it sure sounds extremely farfetched. North Carolina has been home to scores of environmental protest down through the years (invariably with good reason) and there is no record of surreptitious violent action. Indeed, in the overwhelming majority of cases — this one included — the protests are driven by activists committed to peaceful and very public action.

In other words, all one needs to do to monitor the anti-pipeline movement is to, well, read their press releases — like the one below that came out yesterday:

Clean Air and Water Advocates Launch Pipeline Monitoring Effort

RALEIGH, NC (August 1, 2018) – Today, a group of clean air and water advocates announced they would monitor construction of the fracked gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) for violations of commonsense environmental protections required by state and federal permits. Trained volunteers and staff with the Sierra Club, Sound Rivers, Winyah Rivers and Cape Fear River Watch will monitor ACP construction activities by water, land, and air to ensure potential violations are reported to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The initiative will be known as the North Carolina Pipeline Watch (NCPW).

“The fracked gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline is designed to maximize profits for polluting corporations, while our environmental safeguards are designed to protect our people and communities,” said Kelly Martin, Director of the Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign for the Sierra Club. “We helped launch the initiative to ensure the ACP doesn’t get away with violating the commonsense environmental protections that keep our air and water clean,” she added. Read more

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