Town hall by town hall, some stirrings of democracy in North Carolina | Opinion

In the late summer twilight, youth football players gathered outside the Gibsonville Community Center to be fitted for their helmets and uniforms, while inside the center local residents prepared for a more distant fall contest – the 2024 elections.

Tuesday’s meeting was the sixth in a series of 19 statewide town halls sponsored by the good-government advocacy group Common Cause North Carolina.

The meetings seek to encourage people to speak out, organize and vote in response to a Republican-controlled General Assembly that is making it harder to vote, restricting access to abortion and neglecting the state’s public schools.

Several years ago in Raleigh, Moral Mondays protesters descended on the Legislative Building to protest the legislature’s actions. That movement faded during the COVID pandemic. Now Common Cause is seeking to rally people where they live.

Gino Nuzzolillo, a 25-year-old staffer at Common Cause, conceived the town hall series and led the one at Gibsonville. “We can’t keep going to Raleigh,” he said. “We have to build a base in other places.” Across the state, Common Cause said more than 30 local advocacy groups have joined the effort.

A couple dozen people turned out for the Gibsonville stop on the Unite NC Town Hall Tour, including men and women, Black people and white people, local residents and a Guilford County commissioner.

Despite the summer heat, the metaphor that the meeting brought to mind was one of people frozen out of power blowing on sparks from a flint to ignite a fire for democracy.

The modest turnout suggests that these folks will be in the cold for a while. But there’s hope. A total of almost 400 people attended the first five town halls. A large group is expected in Wilmington on Aug. 14.

Faith Cook, of nearby Whitsett, said she came to the meeting “to be part of trying to make North Carolina what it should be.” She thinks a grassroots reaction to Republican legislation and policies will arise “if we continue to be a voice and each one teach one.”

Local state lawmakers are invited to each town hall. For this one, it was Senate leader Phil Berger and Rep. Jon Hardister, the House majority whip. Neither Republican attended, but a computer projected their official portraits on the front wall while people rose to speak about what they want to see in North Carolina.

No Republican lawmakers have attended the town halls, but a total of seven Democratic lawmakers have.

Republicans, entrenched in gerrymandered districts and confident after more than a decade of controlling the legislature, feel free to ignore such gatherings.

It’s the same attitude that has led to a closed legislative process in which the public is largely shut out and Democratic lawmakers are not a factor. Instead, the priorities and the future of the state are dictated by a handful of Republican leaders.

As the Gibsonville meeting ended, the Rev. C.J. Brinson of Greensboro told me that Democrats need more energy in opposition and must be more specific about what they want to do. Instead of broad protests about voting rights and health care, he said the focus should be on specifics, such as legalizing marijuana or restoring the voting rights of ex-offenders.

“You’ve got to really be for protecting women’s rights, you’ve got to really be for protecting the lives of trans folks, all of the stuff that gets characterized as ‘woke,’ ” he said. “Woke is good. Woke means that you give a damn.”

Republican lawmakers may feel confident they can ignore Democrats, but they should be wary of dismissing democracy.

As the Gibsonville group discussed how to respond to Republicans’ autocratic rule in North Carolina, polls closed in Ohio on a GOP-backed measure that would have made it harder to protect abortion rights. The results were an overwhelming rebuke of overreach by Ohio’s Republican-dominated legislature.

In this series of town halls, the people of North Carolina are stirring. First it may be a little, but by 2024 it could be a lot.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com