Two weeks ago it seemed that North Carolina might be able to play a pivotal role in preventing the dismantling of public education. Senators Thom Tillis and Richard Burr were both considered possible swing votes in the confirmation of Betsy DeVos, and people in the state mobilized to show their displeasure with an underqualified Secretary of Education.
Unfortunately, both Tillis and Burr voted with the money they received from the DeVos family, and Betsy DeVos seems to have spent the last week trying to quickly validate the fears of those who opposed her. It has been exactly one month since Donald Trump became President of the United States. He will hold that office for at least 47 more months. President Donald Trump is a global threat, and his incoherent ideology of force and white nationalism taps into the worst parts of American identity.
As a progressive coalition, we lost the battle against DeVos’ nomination. Not only did North Carolina fail to provide a rebuke against the destruction of public schools in the Senate, but the leader of our public university system publicly supported DeVos as only another terrible Secretary of Education can. Even worse, the front-runner for the 2020 North Carolina GOP gubernatorial nomination, Lt. Governor Dan Forest, has been at the forefront of DeVos-style education privatization.
North Carolina will continue to be a battleground for national fights on issues ranging from LGBTQ rights to environmental protections, and progressives will probably lose most of those. The 2016 elections weren’t hypothetical, and national bodies like the EPA or Department of Justice that might have mediated North Carolina’s issues in a favorable way under President Obama are going to be under severe attack during the Trump administration. Within North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper notwithstanding, Republicans continue to have supermajorities in both houses of the General Assembly and have demonstrated their willingness to use this power to undermine democratic norms.
It will be important that, despite future setbacks, a progressive coalition continues to fight for a more just vision of the U.S. and N.C. This does not mean we cannot be disappointed, or that we refuse to think about the damage that policies we fail to stop will cause. Rather it means that we feel that pain, we acknowledge it and we continue on anyways. Obviously, losing the will to fight only further emboldens regressive movements. Our impact matters more than our intentions. That said, the moral imperative to not give up should not be underestimated. Fighting against racial injustice, gendered discrimination or economic disenfranchisement isn’t solely predicated on feasibility. We have to fight for justice, because the consequences are too dire if we don’t, and because doing anything else would be a dereliction of our moral duty.
The next four years will offer plenty of new opportunities for resistance. Those who want to stop right-wing extremism must embrace as many as possible. We have to demand that N.C. and the U.S. protect transgender rights. We must vote in the 2018 elections even if possible 2017 N.C. General Assembly elections don’t go well. We have to show up to HKonJ even if Republicans refused to listen to our Fusion movement the previous year. We have to remember that failure is not an excuse for inaction.
