The second Witness Wednesday, a spin-off recurring bit of activism from the Moral Mondays, was led by North Carolina's youth and students. It started with a press conference and was followed by a march to the Governor's office to deliver their demands relating to civil rights, voting rights, education, the racial justice act, and other important issues.

Where we've been is important in determining where we should go:

At the very time that school districts are cutting back on providing educational experiences that require travel to vital cultural and historic sites that are part of the state's (and indeed the nation's) history, we will bring 112,000 social studies students in grades 4, 5, 8, and 11 from across the state to explore ICRCM’s state of the art 16-gallery experience, The Battlegrounds. This 15,000 square feet exhibition—an engaging journey through American civil rights history—features audio/video narratives, photographs, artifacts, vintage newsreel footage, video reenactments, and interactive components that document, with sensitivity, efforts to dismantle racial segregation via non-violent struggles for social change.

This is important not just for African-American students, but for all of them. The sit-in sent a ripple throughout the entire nation, and there's simply no way to fathom how influential that ripple was in the evolution of civil rights in America.

Dear Friends,

The Republicans promised far-reaching tax reform, which all agree has been needed for years. Our tax code was created in the 1930's and has had no major overhaul since then. The tax code is a patchwork of exemptions and credits that give favorable preferences to everything from farm equipment, airplanes and boats, and incentives to large companies such as Met Life and Dell. (Of course, we all have our favorite tax credit, such as for solar.) Every economist and elected official knows that since we are no longer a manufacturing state, but rather service oriented, we need to broaden the base of the sales tax to hundreds of services while lowering the rate to make it tax neutral to consumers. This is the only way to achieve a stable revenue flow.

For all their claims of effectiveness and efficiency, the North Carolina Republican Party has completely failed to do the one big thing they established as their top legislative priority for 2013. Rob Christiansen's column today at the N&O offers an excellent analysis of the Great GOP Tax Reform Fail.