Sign our petition to thank Governor Perdue for standing up to the far right in North Carolina. For the past year, North Carolinians have been under siege from an angry mob of bullies financed by powerful faraway sources. The only thing standing between us and them has been a 110-pound blonde gatekeeper who has held them off all by herself, not with a sword, but with a pen. Yesterday, that gatekeeper, Governor Bev Perdue, announced Read More
We here at Progress North Carolina were curious about this business of voting on an amendment to our state constitution. Has it been done before? How often? Do the voters tend to approve proposed amendments -- or do they reject them with the viciousness of a Tarheel center schooling a Duke point guard in the finer points of the pick and roll? The answers to these burning questions will follow in a future post Read More
Last week, through my sister, I learned that a friend of hers in Raleigh had lost his little shepherd mutt named Mocha. Rick and Mocha are inseparable and his friends knew he'd never be the same if they couldn't find her. As the days unfolded, person after person joined in the search to bring Mocha home. They gave up their evenings after work to search for her and they spread the word on social media Read More
What happened in Raleigh last night proves that the leadership of the NC House is unworthy of serving the people of North Carolina. January 5, 2012 will go down as a sad day for North Carolina. It will be remembered as the day that leaders of our state government met in the dark of the night to elude public scrutiny and then shut down debate by their opposition in an attempt to ram their extremist Read More
All this week, I have been following a remarkable series of reports from BBC reporter Martin Patience, who is holed up in an obscure fishing village called Wukan, located in southern China's Guangdong province. Apparently, the people of Wukan have taken up rakes, hoes and bamboo sticks to protest corrupt local officials who have seized their land without adequate compensation. The latest protest began when one of the villagers' representatives -- sent to negotiate Read More
Attending an NC House Speaker Tom Tillis Town Hall is a great way to get to know more about the hearts and minds of ordinary North Carolinians. In following Tillis around the state to educate people on the effects of budget cuts on our public school system, Progress NC has also been monitoring these town halls to see what the people of North Carolina care about. Here are a few things we have observed: Read More
Demonstrators took to the streets last Monday night in Alabama to protest a new highly punitive immigration law that is wreaking havoc with civil rights and local law enforcement budgets. Meanwhile, word comes from conservative lawmakers in Alabama that the bill causing so much trouble was introduced at the last minute after a 6-hour filibuster, with no time to review the bill, and presented in a way that would make it appear lawmakers were supporting Read More
In case you have not noticed, our country is in a mess. Gridlock in Washington has crippled our ability to address the monumental economic problems we're facing. How did this happen? It happened because more voters than ever are choosing candidates based on who they claim to be, rather than who they are. It happened because we, as voters, are accepting, without question, the claims of candidates, party spin doctors and elected officials Read More
These are exciting times for Progress NC -- we had our first far right undercover operative attempt to entrap us in a video sting last night. For an organization that has only been around for three months, it's rather flattering. I was standing outside the Morrisville Thom Tillis Town Hall meeting with our Pink Slip Truth Tour display, talking to people about the classroom job cuts made necessary by our state's latest budget, when Read More
Yesterday, I traveled to Forsyth County and attended my first Thom Tillis town hall meeting and let me tell you: it was more of an eye opener than a 16-ounce can of Red Bull. Not only were the Tillis true believers clearly of the belief that the rest of North Carolina was out to get them, 95% of them were old enough to have voted for Harry Truman and 99.9% were whiter than Pat Boone. Read More