North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory gives protesters cookies – seriously

North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory hand carried chocolate-chip cookies to abortion bill protesters outside the Raleigh governor’s mansion in a let’s-make-up gesture. The surprised recipient said he told her, “‘These are for you. God bless you, God bless you, God bless you.’”  The cookies were returned, and it wasn’t because he forgot the milk. The note on the untouched plate read: “We want women’s health care, not cookies.”

The Tuesday scene, described by The News & Observer, was fallout from McCrory’s Monday night signing of legislation that, among other provisions, will make clinics adopt some of the regulations that apply to ambulatory surgery centers, and allow health-care providers to opt out of performing abortions if they object. Opponents say the new law will limit access to abortion by forcing clinics to close, while McCrory and the bill’s supporters say the health and safety of the state’s citizens, not politics, are what’s at stake.

McCrory’s sincerity is not the issue. After state health officials sanctioned an Asheville, N.C., clinic on Wednesday for “egregious violations … that revealed an imminent threat to the health and safety of patients,” it was either evidence of the need for greater vigilance or proof that current laws are working, depending on which side you support. But it certainly means the subject of clinic safety will and should remain center stage.

However, McCrory’s name on the bill was a cue for endless televised replays of his 2012 pledge during a gubernatorial debate that, if elected, he would not sign any further abortion restrictions into law. In recent Public Policy Polling, the abortion bill was supported by only 34 percent of voters, with 47 percent opposing it. By a similar 48 to 33 margin, voters preferred that McCrory veto the bill (and that number included 25 percent of Republicans).

The cookies treat for angry dissenters was a clumsy move (they chanted:  ”Hey Pat, that was rude. You wouldn’t give cookies to a dude.”) and also in keeping with some of the troubles that have plagued McCrory since he made the leap from Charlotte mayor to the most prominent political job in the state. Engaging protesters about the issue of clinic safety would have been a better move.

Though presiding over Republican super-majorities in the state House and Senate, he has seemed more follower than leader, swept along by a conservative wave of proposals that has signaled North Carolina’s change in political direction, at a loss when talking with many who must have voted for him.

Franklin McCain, 53 years after Greensboro sit-ins, sees parallels in current North Carolina rights battles

t’s been more than 53 years since Feb. 1, 1960, the day when Franklin McCain, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil and Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan) bought a few things from the F.W. Woolworth in Greensboro, N.C., sat down at the lunch counter, asked to be served and were refused because of their race. The actions of the four North Carolina A&T State University served as an inspiration, part of the sit-ins and civil rights efforts that changed the country.

The significance of that day has been honored and celebrated — with the International Civil Rights Center & Museum opening in the shell of that long-closed Greensboro Woolworth exactly 50 years later and a small section of the lunch counter on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. But in 2013, are the results of that historic youth-led challenge being rolled back in North Carolina, the state where it began?

Franklin McCain said he believes they are.

“Unconscionable,” he called the wave of conservative legislation pushed through this year by Republican super-majorities in the state House and Senate, with mostly support from GOP Gov. Pat McCrory. “I would love to sit here and be telling you today that we’ve conquered a whole lot of things,” he said in a recent conversation with theGrio in his Charlotte home. “It irritates me that things that we thought we solved 40, 50 years ago have raised their ugly heads again.”