Dallas Woodhouse, State director of Americans for Prosperity-North Carolina, responds to busing zealots in Wake County.
The Rev. William Barber has once again spit in the face of Wake County voters. As the leader of the N.C. chapter of the NAACP he decided that if he does not like the actions of the elected school board he will interrupt and halt the meeting of our elected officials.
Barber has every right to advocate the positions of his organization. But he does not have a right to shut down a meeting of elected officials. This man who talks so much about people’s rights denied my right to be represented in the recent school board meeting.
It is insulting to elected officials and voters that he would occupy the seats of the officials and not let them tend to the people’s business. Should he want to occupy that seat, he should move to Wake County and run for office. Otherwise, he should refrain from hurting all children by interrupting a public meeting.
I wonder whether Barber is planning to halt the meetings of the more than 100 other N.C. school boards that also no longer bus children out of their neighborhoods because of the color of their skin or the income of their parents.
In a column published yesterday, John Hood made a similar point. He noted that members of the state NAACP are not protesting neighborhood-based assignment policies in other large, urban districts. For Barber and his colleagues, it is about politics, not education.
