“This Is Our Selma”—and a debate challenge to Speaker Mike Johnson.
Turn out 1,500 more voters per county in North Carolina. That’s the threshold. The Reverend William Barber II has analyzed the numbers and believes that’s where districts flip. Gerrymandering typically assumes 45% turnout. At 50%, the map changes.
Barber’s ‘s launching “This Is Our Selma” February 11-14 in Raleigh—a mobilization focused on organizing around voting rights, healthcare, and wage policy rather than resistance messaging.
Barber, who led the 2013 Moral Monday protests, contends the strategy requires state-based county-level organizing rather than federal action alone. In every battleground state, voters earning low wages make up 36-42% of the electorate.
Last cycle saw a notable shift: for the first time, voters earning under $50,000 favored Trump over Democrats by roughly 1%. The campaigns took different approaches. Trump visited rural Eastern North Carolina counties. Democrats focused on Charlotte and Greensboro. Barber says former candidate Pete Buttigieg confirmed that consultants discourage using the word “poor,” preferring “affordability.” The poverty rate remains unchanged—Barber cites data showing 800 daily deaths connected to poverty.
The competing visions raise questions about campaign strategy, vocabulary, and which voters get visited.
Separately: Speaker Mike Johnson recently stated he’s “happy to have this lengthy debate” about whether biblical commands to welcome strangers apply to governments or indivi …