Leftist protesters trying to portray themselves as mainstream gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina yesterday to protest moves made by the Republican-dominated state government yesterday.
One of protesters' major objections is to a voter-identification law passed last year. That's more than a little ironic, because guess what organizers required march participants to have? That's right: photo identification. Though he waited 13 paragraphs to do so, Gary D. Robertson at the Associated Press, apparently aware that several prominent center-right Internet outlets had already noted the breathtaking hypocrisy (examples here, here, and here), actually told his readers about it; I could not find another establishment press outlet which did. However, Robertson, in classic AP style, cited a Republican critic instead of simply reporting the damning fact (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
Multitude at "Moral March" protest NC GOP policies
Following a year marked by hundreds of arrests and national publicity but few policy victories, leaders of the movement opposing the Republican agenda in North Carolina vowed Saturday to keep fighting and to speak clearly at the ballot box in 2014.
Thousands of people angry with GOP policies approved in 2013 were energized while attending the "Moral March on Raleigh," the largest gathering of its kind since weekly Monday protests began last spring at the Legislative Building.
"We return to Raleigh with a renewed strength and a renewed sense of urgency," the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP shouted to a packed crowd that extended at least three blocks along Fayetteville Street south from the old Capitol building. [1] "This Moral March inaugurates a fresh year of grassroots empowerment, voter education, litigation and nonviolent direct action."
Raleigh police didn't give an attendance estimate. Event organizers predicted between 20,000 and 30,000 people would attend when seeking a permit with the city to march from near Shaw University less than a mile. It took more than an hour for the last marchers to reach their destination.
There were no reported arrests or disturbances. More than 900 people were arrested during more than a dozen protests during the 2013 legislative session in nonviolent opposition to the GOP agenda. Saturday's event was not intended to include such civil disobedience.
Event organizers said people from more than 30 states planned to attend the rally, a reflection of the spread of the "Moral Monday" protests to nearby Southern states. ... [2]
... The NAACP and like-minded advocacy groups have held similar annual winter marches and rallies for the past seven years demanding changes in North Carolina government, but none received the kind of attention as Saturday's event. Everything changed when the Republican-led General Assembly and Gov. Pat McCrory passed laws last year opponents call extreme and backward.
Those laws include a refusal to expand Medicaid to more working people under the federal health care law, [3] a photo identification requirement to vote in person, additional abortion rules, taxpayer-funded grants for low-income children to attend public schools and tax changes critics say hurt the poor.
(Paragraph 13)
Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett, said Saturday the NAACP was being hypocritical for directing marchers on a document to bring photo identification when it opposes a photo ID requirement for voting. Lewis helped shepherd a voter ID law through the legislature. [4]
Notes:
[1] — Robertson and every in-state media story I read failed to note that Barber is the acid-tongued, hate-consumed demagague who in January denounced South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott as being a "ventriloquist's dummy." Scott is African-American.
[2] — Gosh, I didn't know the South had 30 states. It doesn't. A large number of the protesters came in from out of state, rendering the credibility of their claim to represent the Tar Heel State's "mainstream" highly suspect.
[3] — So any state which hasn't expanded Medicaid is "extreme." Horse manure. For the record, the list of 25 states which haven't includes Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Barack Obama carried a half-dozen of these states, but they're still "extreme." How's that for gratitude?
[4] — As usual with AP stories, the wire service refuses to note weaknesses and hypocrisy on the left until it can cite a critic on the right to make the whole thing a matter of partisanship instead of what it is — a matter of reality.
At least Robertson at the AP noted the marchers' identification requirement. He seems to have been unique. Stories at the Raleigh News & Observer by Thomasi McDonald (yes, that is this person's name), WRAL, and USA Today did not.
One possible upside to Robertson's reporting is that his story currently is not at the AP's national site. I suspect that's because the wire service's minders would prefer to try to minimize the exposure of the Moral March's drop-dead obvious hypocrisy.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
