PoliticsSkepticism

Seriously, Don’t Donate Money to the NC GOP

In a detestable act of violence, a Republican County Office in North Carolina was firebombed over the weekend, which fortunately resulted in no casualties. Unsurprisingly, both presidential candidates took to Twitter when the news broke to express their dismay (although one was decidedly more, *ahem*, presidential than the other). In an less-expected turn of events, Democrats have now raised over $13,000 for the rebuilding of the office. While I appreciate the intentions behind this sentiment, I do not support it.  

First, it’s worth mentioning that there is currently no indication as to who the culprits of this crime are. The police have yet to release any suspects or motives, and no one appears to be taking credit for the deed. A nearby building was vandalized with the phrase, “Nazi Republicans get out of our town or else,” a sentiment that could just as easily be attributed to left-wingers as it could be to anti-establishment Trump supporters that are upset that the GOP is turning its back on their candidate. And no matter who is responsible, they deserve to be denounced.  

But the North Carolina GOP is responsible for some of the worst acts of prejudice in recent history: there’s HB2, their ridiculous (even by our country’s fucked up standards) anti-choice legislation, their highly-racialized mass incarceration… The list goes on. So while this act of violence against the NC GOP is despicable, it is not a reason to send money to arbiters of other, much larger, acts of violence. Instead, donate your money to… literally anyone else. If you’re coming up short on ideas, here are a few to get you started: 

  1. Trans Lifeline: Calls to the Trans Lifeline doubled in the wake of HB2. 
  2. Critical Resistance: Critical Resistance is one of the oldest organizations in the fight to end the prison industrial complex.
  3. Planned Parenthood: North Carolina is one of several states that have defunded Planned Parenthood, and they will make much better use of your money than the political party that is trying to elect an orange fascist. 

Featured Image by Pictures of Money

Courtney Caldwell

Courtney Caldwell is an intersectional feminist. Her talents include sweary rants, and clogging your social media with pictures of her dogs (and occasionally her begrudging cat). She's also a political nerd, whose far-left tendencies are a little out of place in the deep red Texas.

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11 Comments

  1. I think you’re wrong here. I’m a democrat before I’m a Democrat, and this was an assault on the process. There’s enough of that coming from the other side. Stepping up, regardless, was the right thing. Beat ’em with ballots.

    1. I mean sure, if you value the “process” over people’s well-being, then you’re totally right.

      1. Yeah, can’t say I much value the “process”, given that what it seems to consist of is – we, the parties, and corporations, will pick which candidates you are allowed to vote for, then, come election time, you can vote on either the people’s republic candidate, or the people’s democratic republic candidate. Should someone else try to shoe in on the process, we will make sure they know their place, and only our choices are available anyway.

        Local elections are an even bigger joke most places, imho. I have, where I am, several school board positions, several state supreme court judges (sort of nice that, in their cases, we, unlike SCOTUS, can kick them out with the ballot, but still…), and others for which there is no real local news to make any sort of determination of who they are, or what they stand for, their web presence, if they even have any, just babbles about where they went to law school, or other irrelevancies, and its damn near impossible, short of *being* a lawyer, or what ever category of person is required to have direct contact with them, to know/find out, a damn thing about their ideas, their policies, etc.

        Unless they manage to do something very publicly stupid, you might as well flip a bloody coin with most of them, for all anyone in the public has *any* information, beyond, maybe, in the case of those that bother, their “official” campaign propaganda.

        So much for “informed decisions”….

        But, yeah, as to the article, the fire bombing was just stupid. The scrawled comment on the other hand… Sadly, I can far more see someone on the left being dumb enough to do it, but only because I have no freaking clue if, or how many, of the right are paying anything near the level of attention to the ranting insanity Trump is putting out (without praising it), or which those on his side where already babbling before him, to correctly compare the contents to the sort of rhetoric and madness echoed by **more than one** historical “leader”, or regime from the past. They still shouldn’t have slandered their own neighbors with it.

  2. This was my hometown. The NC GOP has been an absolutely immoral organization for the last 6 years(at least). Especially to women and sexual minorities. But also to anyone who values the democratic process, with voter suppression and the worst gerrymandering the country has ever seen.

    But you know what? Our immoral citizens democratically elected those immoral assholes. And I can’t condone violence as a means of affecting political change. This bombing wasn’t justice. It was a poorly considered, petty act. There’s a zero percent chance of this bombing changing my vote from people who respect all our citizens, but fuck this tacit endorsement of political violence.

    1. Your username says “ikanreed” but you apparently didn’t read the part where I called the bombing “a detestable act of violence” and said the perpetrators “deserve to be denounced.”

      Saying “don’t give money to bigots” =/= tacit endorsement of political violence.

      1. I don’t know, to me, “Don’t materially help the victims of violence” is synonymous with tacit endorsement of that violence. I know, I know, I’m being the stupid-ass moderate white male who’s an impediment to social progress in the name of “order”. I don’t like seeing that in myself either, which is why I did some serious soul searching before replying.

        I’m probably not going to donate, for the same reasons you’re not, but those who do, I can’t condemn or even disagree with. Their motivations are sound and fit within a moral framework of wanting to do good in the world.

        There are so many better causes that money could go to. So many I couldn’t even begin to list them all, but I think using that to say “No you shouldn’t donate to help people rebuild their office” is a fallacy of relative privation.

        I think maybe my problem is I’ve fallen into an increasingly deontological view of morality lately, and utilitarian perspectives on “doing the right thing” by seeing all the far-reaching consequences of every act is just too hard for me. I don’t know. I’m gonna have to think about it more.

  3. Over on Daily Kos, they think it was Trump supporters trying to make it look like the Democrats did it. They also thought Pulse was someone trying to stir up trouble against Muslims, hence my “Are we still truthing about this?” comment.

    When did the “reality-based community” become so prone to conspiracy theories?

  4. Having rule of law around elections is important and donating to political opponents’ rebuilding efforts has a symbolic function to support that.
    More tactically, I think an unanswered act of terrorism does more for to help the NC GOP than 10 thousand bucks.
    It is unfortunate that those on the other side do not appear to have the empathy for people that some have for a building though.

  5. The same night that the RNC was fire bombed the DNC in Carrboro was vandalized as well (graffiti only, but still) and yet it not really being reported.

    I find that interesting, I just don’t know quite what to make of it.

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