This will be a quick diary as I have to get ready to head out to a rally today. Anyone who has been paying attention to North Carolina politics knows that we have been inundated from all sides with extreme legislation in the past few years. From refusing to expand medicaid, to trying to legislate women's vaginas, to demolishing voting rights, to attacks on counties that try to protect LGBTQ folks and everything in-between.
Early this morning was the end of the NC General Assembly session. For anyone who is curious, this session seems to be the longest in a very, very long time. Apparently having a super majority has made the extremists even less efficient and wasteful, costing the NC tax payers a cool $2 million extra this year.
Things ended very early this morning after a marathon day where a number of bills were voted on, one after another. There was a bit of good news (look for future diaries about the good news Belhaven residents got yesterday about their rural hospital), but there was also some awful news. One of the worst bills passed early this morning was HB 318.
As always, the extremists labeled a malicious bill targeting immigrants and other working poor North Carolinians with a seemingly wonderful title, calling HB 318 the Protect North Carolina Workers Act. As you likely already know, it does quite the opposite. windsong01 wrote a diary detailing some of it, which I urge you to read.
The NC AFL-CIO released a statement yesterday calling on Governor McCrory to veto this bill. As they wrote:
H.B. 318 will force more residents struggling to find and keep a job into deeper hunger and poverty by denying access for tens of thousands of childless adults to the federally-funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. H.B. 318 will prohibit the state from getting waivers to federal time limits on such benefits despite the fact that unemployment remains high enough in 77 of North Carolina’s 100 counties to qualify and no state money would be affected by the change.The NC NAACP along with several other organizations including Southeast Immigrant Rights Network and the American Friends Service Committee will be holding a rally today at 4PM EST, the Rally to Support of NC's Latino Community, to bear witness at how immoral this bill is, and to urge the governor to veto it.H.B. 318 will make the already difficult job of local police to protect the public even harder by forcing them to prioritize the enforcement of federal immigration law over common-sense policing and by discouraging crime victims and witnesses from interacting with police to help solve and prevent crimes. H.B. 318 will make the simple act of establishing the identity of North Carolina residents with whom they interact on a daily basis more difficult not only for law enforcement but for courts, clerks, or other government officials.
Meanwhile, H.B. 318 will make it easier for abusive employers to use the threat of deportation to keep workers from speaking up about unsafe working conditions or unpaid wages, thereby undermining the wage standards and working conditions of all working people in North Carolina.
Anyone who cares about this but lives too far away to attend or is unable to attend as this is last minute notice can watch the livestream right here. If you have the time, I urge you to do so. We must all bear witness to how immoral this is.
