South Carolina’s quiet pond of Southern conservatism is being disturbed by an increasing amount of progressive agitation, which is in turn activating non ideological resistance to the tea party branded takeover by out of state money being attempted in the Palmetto State.
While over 100 thousand demonstrators are standing in the Streets of Madison Wisconsin, those of us holding up the resistance in deep red states like South Carolina feel like we’re missing the moment. However more people are demonstrating here than have in many years. It’s a huge strain on a progressive and Democratic political community used to brokered politics. Sidewalks politics with signs and bull horns horrifies the old guard here, who would prefer not to blog and avoids showing up.
When a quiet group of citizen lobbyists were ignored at the statehouse on March 14 and the experienced leaders were working on making sure someone from the legislature spoke to the people spending the day there, someone took too long to wind up the meeting and this broke out.
Nothing like this has happened in SC in at least a decade, probably much longer. It may be OK in Wisconsin, but you can go to prison for it in SC. There is a huge fine too.
What little is left of old guard assures us they’re working on the problem and if we politely wait, the pendulum will swing back. The young and the disgusted aren’t buying it and gradual progress is being made. We spend too much time watching Rachael Maddow and Ed on MSNBC. All that Youtube and Face book is complicating life for the old system here as well.
Read on to find out how even in the deep, red South, rising resistance is appearing. We have video. We've been watching you in Madison and Springfield. A lot of us have decided to try something different for the first time in a long time down here. We can't sip iced tea with people doing what the Republicans are choosing to do to our schools, disabled and sick. People needed that 400 million dollars Republicans threw away last week.
Over 2500 appeared at the Statehouse on March 12. The leadership provided by the seasoned people at the state’s SC Progressive Network paid off.
However what’s interesting is the rally in Columbia at the State Capital spawned a lot of offspring. There was a demonstration in the bible thumping backyard of Bob Jones University in the upstate three days later, in the cold rain.
A handfull of protesters greeted Nikki Haley outside at the College of Charleston on Wednesday evening. It was a cool room for the Governor. She was slick, but she didn't get the Tea Party Pep Rally she was hoping for. The walker jockey's in their snake flag T-shirts got there late and found over 100 chairs already filled with a polite, but expressive opposition. Haley's polished manipulations got her out looking good, but there was strain. Read about how she did it in this Post: Bamboozled with a Fire Hose Connected to a Think Tank. You can bet your own Koch funded right wing politician will be sounding like this soon. Scott Walker is last year's model. Haley is the Tea Party 2.0.
There was another rally in Charleston on Saturday. About two dozen attended Saturday, but some young faces with plans to do more soon. Here is what that was like.
Finally, there is a big Rally planned in Columbia on Wednesday to protest Governor Nikki Haley’s decision to remove progressive billionaire philanthropist and businesswoman Darla Moore from the Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina. Moore had given the state’s universities over 90 million dollars. The governor said she needed a pair of “fresh eyes” on the problem. Our new Governor considers state sponsored higher education a problem. Gov. Haley chose to retain someone who had been on the board several years longer and donated to her campaign and replaced Moore, the newer member, with another conservative donor to her campaign.
Moore’s no radical. She’s contributed to conservative campaigns as well. However ideological and political purity are highly valued by SC Republicans now and evidently the going rate is somewhere above 90 million dollars.
This Wednesday it’s the business school students, not the left wing hippies in the Poly Sci department, who are marching on the Capital. It must be complicated for all those Young Republicans, but it turns out that Republican field organization youth training is as perfectly adaptable to raising hell on a large scale as the best Wellstone or DFA seminar.
Here is the face book page for that Rally. 414 people have already committed to attend. http://www.facebook.com/...
The Reinstate Darla Moore effort is being run by some younger activists, but they've got training and support from Move On and other groups. They just put a new website online to support their effort. If you feel moved to indicate to Darla Moore's replacement that you would like him to resign, you'll find the phone number for his Lexington Law office online there. http://rallytoreinstatedarlamoore.com/ The old folks didn't do things like that here.
Is it making a difference? Two members of the SC legislature said so on Saturday at a Democratic Breakfast in Charleston, SC
It amounts to this. If people raise hell in large numbers and even in small numbers around the South Carolina, the system will respond, at least a little and that matters when a member of the legislature tells us so. The right wing power structure denies anything is happening, but something is, even here.
The Republicans remain in solid control here. They rammed a desperate budget through the state house of representatives in two days last week, after shifting the effort forward a day to beat a rising wave of opposition, much of it coming from outside the organized progressive community but appearing after progressives began holding public demonstrations. It’s easier to get intense with your Republican representative after you’ve seen two thousand people with signs in front of the state capital on Youtube. The state tea party can’t respond to all this activity.
All this means turning the State of South Carolina into a right wing economic and social experiment it going to cost the Club for Growth and all the new right wing groups more than they counted on. Progressives here are bidding up the cost of control in the Palmetto State, which means less problems for you elsewhere.
It is hard, but we are beginning to enjoy it.