The Fire This Time

Bring on the Good Trouble

Back when I was a young guy, living in a second floor apartment with my cat and a closet full of empty beer cans, I had occasion to lock myself out. My keys were inside the apartment, on a bookcase just inside the open window that looked out over the porch roof. I figured if I could find a way up to the porch roof, it would be a simple matter to retrieve the keys. But where to find a ladder, at eight o’clock at night?

I hit upon what I thought was a relatively clever solution. I went down to the corner phone (no, Virginia, no one had ever heard the term “cell phone,” except maybe as a perk for convicts) and called the local fire department. I explained my situation, and asked if they could just please possibly send out a pickup truck with a ladder, for which I’d be forever grateful. “Sure,” the dispatcher said. “No problem.” He took my address and ended the call. I turned around to walk back home.

I started to hear the sirens as I approached the house. First they came from the far end of the street, and then from around the corner on the near side. About the time I got to my front yard, a turntable ladder truck arrived, blaring loudly, followed shortly from the opposite direction by a pumper, a rescue truck, and a supervisor. As I watched, one of the guys from the ladder truck took down a short ladder and climbed up onto my porch roof. While this was happening, a neighbor I didn’t recognize wandered up and asked what was going on. “Oh,” I waved, pretending to be amused. “Some moron locked himself out.”

It's a funny story to tell at parties, but at the time I was mortified. And I’m telling it to you now, because while this was no doubt all good fun for the firefighters, and fairly harmless as pranks go, it is exactly a page from the Alt-Right playbook. Overestimate and overstate the importance of the problem, over-react, create a lot of noise and confusion, and when the opposition complains, brag about how you owned them. Welcome to the world of North Carolina politics.

A fine example of this kind of behavior is being exhibited in the State Assembly right now. They are desperately trying to pass a dozen or so totally unnecessary reconfigurations to various departments with the aim of further weakening the authority of an already weak Governor’s Office. The legislators have jammed all this junk into a drawer marked “Hurricane Helene Relief,” and the proposed relief doesn’t actually amount to much. I won’t bother to describe further what they’re up to here, if you missed it, it’s all laid out in a recent post, at this link: A Fascist Wish List . . . .

Their desperation stems from the fact that try as they might, they’re losing ground. They can’t get a party member into the Governor’s manse, and they’re about to lose their supermajority in the House. That means our incoming Democratic Governor might be able to make some of his vetoes stick.

Ironically (for me) this conniving has not gone ignored, and our famous Reverand Barber has decided to try and reinvigorate the Moral Monday protests. These began several years ago, and became my first opportunity to defend people doing “good trouble.” The protesters were being arrested for “resist, delay, or obstruct” (RDO) a law enforcement officer, for refusing to leave the Assembly building when told to do so. In the end, and with the able assistance of a whole shitload of local lawyers acting Pro Bono, all of the charges were dismissed. I’m polishing my shoes and dusting off my briefs.

In the meantime, the long saga of Allison Riggs’ effort to remain seated as one of two Democrats on the State Supreme Court continues. There was a vote, and then a recount, and then a recount of the recount, and now the recounting is over and Riggs won, by 700+ votes (out of 5.5 million cast). Not to let losing stand in his way, her opponent wants to relitigate the vote. To do so, he has challenged the legitimacy of voter registrations for 60,000 North Carolina voters, to include – of all people – Riggs’ own parents.

Her opponent is an NC Judge named Jefferson Griffin. He’s throwing a whole battalion of firefighters at the problem, including some Post Hoc arguments about who should be allowed to vote, because that’s what you do when you lose a game, right – demand to change the rules? Being a good party member, it’s probably never occurred to His Honor that one duty of a Supreme Court Justice is to protect people from government over-reach. The Board of Elections is meeting today to consider this lawsuit. They will probably reject Griffin’s demands, which (I presume) he will continue to advance in court. Another day in paradise: damp, cold, unrelenting.