Newspapers / Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / March 3, 2016, edition 1 / Page 7
Part of Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
FORUM , MMaaam??MM^^MMHMBBWH^MmmmbmimhwhmMMMHBHMH??????????M?MaaaM^HWHBI^B Remaking history for North Carolina's women of color Gladys Robinson Guest Columnist [Editor's note: March is National Women's History Month.] Black History Month is a time to recall the struggles of people of color in our country and to cele brate accomplishments in racial, economic and social justice that bring us all closer to the vision of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness promoted by our founders. We are reminded today, as we daily witness economic hardship, the aftermath of gun violence, mass incarceration, and rising inequality that enriches the one per cent at the expense of our middle class, that these struggles are not just part of the past, but also shape the future. No one is more impacted by the histor ical legacies of racism, sexism, classism and oppression than women of color, who continue to face persistent barriers and obstacles on every issue from fair pay and affordable health care to quality education and the wealth gap that we've seen histor ically. To make the kind of real progress that changes our history moving forward, we need a deliberate effort to address these issues and our approach must lead with race, class and gender. In 2016, we need more than resolutions and political rhetoric to fix the economy and address inequality in our state; we need a plan. Now is the time for our elect ed leaders to make sure that they under stand and are working for the people they represent. They need to be working with colleagues and advocates to take meaning ful action on the policy priorities that will help make the lives better for those who are most struggling in our current econo my: women, particularly women of color, and their families. For too long, women have been left behind in economic and workplace poli cies, even as they become more prominent in the economy, the workplace and in pub lic life. Women today are half of all others, half of the workforce and increasingly leading households as sole breadwinners for their families. But although the econo my has changed tremendously because of increased participation from women, our workplace policies and legislative priori ties have not kept up. Women remain unequal to men when it comes to every economic indicator. Not only have women not reached parity at work in terms of pay, leadership positions, or promotions, but women face constant attacks on their reproductive options, with little acknowledgement that if, when and how many children a woman has is a pri mary indicator of her economic status. In North Carolina, on average, a woman who holds a full-time job is paid $33,459 per year while a man who holds a full-time job is paid $41,950 per year. This means that women in North Carolina are paid 80 cents for every dollar paid to men, arqounting to a yearly gap of $8,491 between men and women who work full time in the state. That gap is even wider for black women and Latina women. Because of North Carolina politicians refusal to fully imple ment the Affordable Care Act and provide women preventive health care including birth control, women are less able to con trol their economic fates or to make basic decisions about their families. Public policy can have a real impact on people's lives. We expect our elected lead ers to reisolve to tackle issues that matter to families, like access to affordable chQdcare and paid family leave. Parents, particularly single working mothers, have few affordable child-care options. Over 65 percent of all children have both parents in the workforce, yet the cost of child-care for families is increas ing. The cost of childcare is more than rent in many places and a four-year education at a public university. Since women more often have to take time off from work to care for children and for, aging relatives, they face additional discrimination and lower earnings as a result of lost wages. About 20 percent of all women in the United States have or will provide at least part-time care to an elderly or disabled relative, family member or friend, and many will do so by sacrificing their own earning potential or retiring early. In fact, the average female caregiver loses $40,000 more in lost wages and Social Security benefits than the average male caregiver. Although having children clearly car ries real economic consequences for women and their families, attacks on women's reproductive health care access to decide when, how and if to have chil dren is at an all time high. More anti woman state laws were passed last year than in the previous three years, with even more proposed for this year. Politically motivated attacks on Planned Parenthood, the leading provider of family planning services in the country, erodes access to reproductive health care and endangers women's ability to determine the size of their families as well as their economic security. These attacks do the greatest damage to poor women and women of color who often face the greatest economic barriers to getting birth control and abor tion and depend most on providers like Planned Parenthood for everything from contraception to preventative health care. This year, our state legislature must move forward on the priorities of women and families rather than spending the ses sion turning back the clock on reproduc tive health care, starting with the most impacted women: low-income women of color. We must insist in 2016 that every lawmaker stand with women and families by protecting reproductive health care, advancing equal pay for equal work, and passing paid leave arid childcare policies that enable women to take care of their families. And, we must be clear that any politician who wants to focus on a narrow, partisan agenda to distract us from this plan is standing in the way of progress not just for women, but for the whole state. By working together to stand with women and families in the legislative ses sion, we can be on the right side of history by increasing equity for all women, partic ularly women of color. Together, we can build a North Carolina legacy worthy of celebration. Gladys Ashe Robinson is a health serv ices executive and a Democratic State Senator for the 28th district (Guilford County). She serves as the Deputy Minority Leader in the North Carolina General Assembly. Clinton or Sanders: What Would Dr. King Say? B01 Turner Guest Columnist i i i :ii iviosi oiacus wno win vote in the Democrat pri maries for the 2016 presi dential campaign would vote for Bernie Sanders if they followed the logic of a speech Dr. Martin Luther King gave in NYC's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. In candid and unpretentious language in a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," Dr. King spoke about the straight correla tion between income inequality at home and the inclination toward war abroad. His words were quite revolutionary and condemned widely. The policies proposed by Democrat presidential can didate Senator Bernie Sanders, especially his res olute focus on "a political revolution," rebounds from the echo chamber of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In a little-known speech delivered a year before he was killed, Dr. King made clear that he was much more than a mesmerizing dreamer, a pragmatist, a run-of-the-mill centrist or a simple reformer, labels Sanders puts on his rival, Hillary Clinton. Although then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had already labeled him "the most dangerous man in. America," Dr. King, speaking before a group called Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, revealed himself as a revo lutionary. "We are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. I call for radical departures." Of the Vietnam War, King said - as Sanders is heard to say about the pres ent-day tendency America has to be the world's police - "We are a society gone mad on war, and America will never invest the neces sary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continue to draw men ana skiiis ana money like some demonic destruc tive suction tube. So, I am increasingly compelled to see this war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such." King wondered aloud about young black men who "were sent eight thou sand miles away to guaran tee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not . found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem." Such a remark was revolutionary, especially to black minis ters who thought the civil rights movement was a separate issue from the anti-war movement. Dr. King doubled down, call ing the Vietnam War "a cruel manipulation of the poor." Line ut. rang s reier ence to "Americans as strange liberators," candi date Sanders says "The test of a great and powerful nation is not how many wars it can engage in, but how it can resolve interna tional conflicts in a peace ful manner. I will move away from a policy of uni lateral military action and regime change, and toward a policy of emphasizing diplomacy, and ensuring the decision to go to war is a last resort." When Sanders calls for a $15-an-hour minimum wage, he is pointing to our fellow Americans whom Dr. King called "God's desperate, rejected, suffer ing, helpless and outcast children, the. weak, the voiceless, the victims of our nation." Sanders takes his call for revolution from the words of the late John F. Kennedy who in 1962 said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." King repeated those words five years later, going on to challenge "those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of over seas investments. I am con vinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a rad ical revolution of values." Dr. King headed toward his planned "Poor Peoples Campaign" in 1968, a year after this speech focused then on conquering what he called "the giant triplets of racism, extreme material ism, and militarism." It's easy to celebrate Dr. King's preaching every January; it's another to sup port a politician like Sanders, who dreams as he did. That requires revolu tionary resolve. Bemie Sanders promotes policies that are logical extensions of where Dr. King was headed before he was silenced in Memphis: the gap between the very rich and everyone else, a livable minimum wage, universal health insurance, protec tion of the environment, and reins on corporate greed. Sanders seeks to lead a peaceful political revolution of the magni tude of Dr. King's Dream, at the end point of which "justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." Somebody needs to tell Democrat voters, especial ly blacks, who see Secretary Clinton, not Senator Sanders, as the practical way to realize The Dream. Apparently Dr. King - in the form of Bernie Sanders - is still way ahead of his time. Dr. Bill Turner is a noted educator, writer and thinker who called Winston-Salem home for many years. Reach him at bill-turner@ comcast Jiet. . _ ? J _1_!11 _ J T Tl__ n_ W! f Carl Wesley Matthews: A remembrance and appreciation JohnT. Liewelyn Guest Columnist carl Wesley Mattnews died Friday at the age of 84. With his passing, Winston-Salem has lost a giant of moral courage. It was Carl who sat in alone on Feb. 8,1960 at the Kress lunch counter at Fourth and Liberty, awaiting service. His courage was a beacon: 11 students from then Winston Salem Teachers College joined him. The beacon shone even brighter: 10 students from then-Wake Forest College joined in. The demonstra tion continued; the group, now numbering more than 20, was arrested on Feb. 23 and taken to jail. The act of liberating the community's conscience was undertaken by Carl Matthews, and his example drew students promoting change and demonstrating goodwill - Blacks and Whites together. It is easy to forget the real danger and the palpable hatred that could be unleashed by this simple act of conscience. One week before Carl acted, the now world famous Greensboro sit-in had begun with four North Carolina A&T college stu dents. That watershed moment is rightly memori alized with a downtown museum. For some, Winston-Salem's con frontation on the same issue may seem to be a footnote. Two points con tradict that view: Segregation was a battle to be fought town-to-town. A change in Greensboro's lunch counters would mean f nothing for Winston-Salem unless people in Winston Salem insisted on a similar change here. The second point is. this: it was Winston-Salem, not Greensboro, where lunch counters were first desegre gated. The Winston-Salem change came on May 25, 1960; Carl returned to the lunch counter and was served, 107 days after he first sat down. This obser vation takes nothing away from Greensboro; it is sim ply to say that Winston Salem did the right thing first - even if City fathers were reluctant. Carl Matthews and his student followers brought our city to its senses with a simple but very dangerous demon stration of moral courage It is this man who embod ied the best in the pursuit of social justice who we lost last week. I met Carl nearly 20 5 told the story of the stu dents and the sit-in. It was broadcast on public televi sion and is available in public libraries. This loss is also person al as my family values its long-standing friendship with Carl Matthews and Sharon Rucker. . Occasional dinners, and holiday and graduation cards were reminders of how our lives entwined. My children got to know first-hand a man who was the embodiment of morali ty and dignity and an exemplar of living his faith, even in the face of public resistance. What a gift for them and their generation. The current presidential campaign and a front-run ner who will not reject sup port from the Ku Klux Klan suggests that we are going to need another gen eration inspired by Carl's courage. years ago when my wife helped to oiganize a city wide event recognizing the veterans of the 1960 sit-in. In all the years from 1960 through 2000, no onein the community had formally recognized Carl Matthews or the students of Winston Salem State University and Wake Forest University. Four decades without com ment sends its own mes sage. The two-day sympo sium, exactly 40 years after the arrests, involved city government and both uni versities. It woke the city up to its own history. Carl and the students were hon ored; a historical marker recounting their story was unveiled and stands today on Fourth Street, opposite the old county office build ing. A documentary film, "I'm Not my Brother's Keeper: Leadership and Civil Rights in Winston Salem, North Carolina," When Carl stood to leave the Kress store on the first day of the sit-in he qui etly recited the 23rd Psalm. From the Blacks and Whites assembled came other voices, joining in. It concluded with a loud and multi-voiced "Amen." Carl's story confirms that even in times of tension? then and now?people of faith and goodwill can build a path to brotherhood. Dr. King observed, "The arc of the moral uni verse is long, but it bends towards justice." In our community, Carl Wesley Matthews should always be honored and remembered as the man who reached up and pulled that arc toward the city of Winston-Salem and social justice. Rest in Peace, my friend. John T. Llewellyn is associate professor of com munication at Wake Forest University. S
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
March 3, 2016, edition 1
7
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75