jewel of the east

You may remember reading about all the hard work the Democracy Summer internship teams did over the summer. In particular one project the Greenville team took on was to rally public support and meet with a majority of the City Council members to educate them about the anti-Citizens United resolution. Through their hard work over the summer, last night we won the milestone 10th city in North Carolina to pass this resolution, and the first east of 95!

I think that it is important to note that even though this amendment passed, those of us fighting for LGBT equality aren't going away. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I have 5000 words on the eastern North Carolina experience that you might want to see, if you'll kindly follow me below the fold.

As I mentioned in a recent blog entry, I was very excited to see the Greenville City Council come out against the discriminatory amendment one! But that doesn't mean a lot unless we turn it into votes against the amendment. So I wanted to give a warm invite to anyone who can help us out with this on campus anti-amendment event at ECU on Tuesday. They only have on campus voting for 1 week, so we have to make the most of it!

I'm just back from a Greenville City Council meeting where the council took up the issue of amendment one, and where many students, members of the general public, and myself spoke out against the amendment. The council voted by a strong majority to oppose the hateful, discriminatory, and overreaching amendment one.

Reasons varied from supporting equality, opposing discrimination, keeping government overreach out of our lives, and protecting domestic violence victims. During the budget discussion leading up to the amendment resolution vote, Greenville was referred to as North Carolina's jewel of the east. Tonight they lived up to that reputation.