North Carolina NAACP
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 1, 2016
CONTACT: Attorney Alice Bennett, Legal Redress and Public Policy Coordinator, at 919-682-4700
Moral and Civil Rights Leaders Need to Consider Mass Nonviolent Sit-In
If HB 2 Not Repealed Before Upcoming Legislative Session
The extremist faction in the North Carolina General Assembly rammed through House Bill 2, which attacks the rights of every North Carolinian who works for a living. Gov. McCrory immediately signed it, betting on fear and prejudice against gay and transgender people as a smokescreen. As citizens began to understand its radical purposes, however, HB 2 pulled together an unlikely array of constituents who oppose this bill; organizations and businesses as diverse as the NAACP, The Freedom Center for Social Justice, the NCAA, Bank of America, the High Point Furniture Market Authority, Equality North Carolina, Lowes Home Centers, the NBA, Google, the AFL-CIO, IBM, Apple, Southerners on New Ground and the Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice have denounced HB 2. The Attorney General has announced that he will not defend HB 2 in court. And the fight to roll back this radical law is bringing together LGBTQ organizations and the civil rights community as never before.
Rev. Dr. William Barber II, President of the NC NAACP and architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement stated that, “We cannot be silent in the face of this race-based, class-based, homophobic and transphobic attack on wage earners, civil rights, and the LGBTQ community.” Unless Gov. McCrory and the legislature repeal HB 2 before April 21, the Forward Together Moral Movement, better known as ‘Moral Monday,’ will consider launching a massive campaign of sit-ins at the General Assembly to make a moral witness against this immoral and unconstitutional legislation. “Together with our many allies, we would coordinate this campaign of nonviolent direct action along with other forms of nonviolent protest that will instruct our legislators with respect to the rights of all citizens.”
HB 2 bars communities from passing any ordinance that affects wages, working hours, benefits, payment of earned wages, leave policies or minority set-asides. Claiming to protect children, HB 2 actually prohibits municipalities from protecting minors in the workplace. It eliminates the rights of illegally fired workers to sue in state courts. It bans local governments from requiring their contractors to grant sick leave or pay a living wage. HB 2 is an attack on all working people of North Carolina. HB 2 violates the rights of all citizens by barring them from using state courts to sue in any discrimination case. Women, men, veterans, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, LGBTQ people, Baptists, Buddhists, and others who wish to challenge discrimination, can no longer use our North Carolina courts to do so. Obviously, this imposes special burdens on those who frequently endure discrimination, but under HB 2 no one is permitted to use the state courts to sue over any kind of discrimination.
The bill uses fear and hate to cover its dirty tracks. Ostensibly a law to revoke Charlotte’s nondiscrimination law and thereby decide which restrooms transgender persons are allowed to use, HB 2 also leaves it legal for businesses to fire people, refuse to hire people, or refuse to serve people simply because of their sexual identity or gender expression. Focusing their attacks on the LGBTQ community, proponents of HB 2 hope to divide North Carolinians and permit themselves to strip rights from working families with impunity. Bishop Tonyia Rawls, Executive Director of The Freedom Center for Social Justice stated, “They wrongly believe that citizens and the media will not read the law and see its explicit, far-reaching and radical impact on our civic and economic life. HB 2 injures our democracy, impairs local government, and undermines the rights of most citizens, in addition to hampering transgender persons who wish to use public restrooms in a safe, dignified manner.”
Rabbi Fred Guttman, rabbi of Temple Emanuel of Greensboro, NC and board member of the National Conference for Community and Justice also stands in opposition: “Our faith and moral traditions demand that we love our neighbors as we do ourselves. That is reason enough for every citizen to raise a moral dissent against North Carolina’s extremist House Bill 2, which is not merely about which bathrooms transgender persons may use but undoes constitutional protections for all citizens.” Democracy demands that we respect the rights of all citizens, and it becomes the duty of every member of a civilized democracy to raise a moral dissent when citizens’ rights are under attack by the government that is sworn to uphold them.
North Carolina NAACP · PO Box 335, Durham, NC 27702