Rally for Palestine in Raleigh. The North Carolina Green Party is marching in solidarity for the people of Palestine. One of the Issues Wayne's Platform addresses is No to War!

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a plan for all north carolinians

Economy – What will Greens do to provide jobs with adequate pay and benefits?

I will work to attract to our state companies that offer good wages and benefits, and have a track record or clear intent to treat their employees fairly.

Greens want to provide people with jobs that pay a living wage and have health insurance, retirement and other benefits.
To that end, we approve of attracting companies to the state that treat employees with respect and fairness. A Green government would not court companies that have a history of poor employee treatment, including union-busting, wage theft, and a track record of high employee turnover.
The state must keep an eye on the future as well. No matter the quality of jobs offered, a business which threatens to leave behind costly pollution for future generations to cope with is not one which should be seen as attractive.

I will promote worker cooperatives, which have the potential to make our economy more resilient to downturns and will keep money within local communities and the state.

Greens support the introduction of businesses run as worker cooperatives.
Worker cooperatives will reduce wealth inequality, since they are not required to produce dividends for shareholders or support extravagant salaries in executive management.
Worker cooperatives are more likely to implement humanitarian solutions to economic downturns. For example, rather than using layoffs to reduce costs, they can use reduced hours to keep people employed.
Worker cooperatives make strong communities. The cooperative is invested in more than its profits since its employees and mangers are also members of the local community. The cooperative is invested in good schools, local medical care, and a clean and healthy environment.

I will promote the creation of a state-owned public bank. We can build an economically stronger state through public banking.

Private banks do not have a good history of building communities. They earned the nickname “tapeworm” banks many years ago because money deposited in them is removed from the economy and placed into the hands of their corporate officers and investors.
Private banks have no incentive to lend at reasonable rates, pay reasonable returns on deposits, or view the community they serve as more than a source of profit. The public relations campaigns private banks engage in are an investment in burnishing their image, not in their real commitment to serving the community.
A public bank would serve all areas of the state, regardless of the stage of economic development.
Public bank “profits ” would accrue to the state, allowing for an offset to regressive sales and property taxes.

I would encourage North Carolina to implement the ESG standards European companies look for when deciding to open new facilities in the US.

North Carolina should not resist implementing environmental, social and governance standards (ESGs) that are important to attract companies based in Europe. Resistance to these standards is an automatic disqualifying factor for companies that are required by law to report their progress in these areas when based in the European Union.

Education– what will a Green Governor do to improve education in North Carolina?

Greens support an end to state use of taxpayer dollars to fund private and for-profit schools. I will hold the charter school system up to the light to see if it can withstand expert scrutiny and open discussion of educational outcomes.

The intent of charter school advocates and the legislature is plain, which is to end the public school system by engineering its failure. That this is happening over a period of time instead of overnight is because the legislature has to allot time for banks and investors to develop the private school system to the point where it will be socially acceptable to stop funding public schools. In at least one state, Florida, a conservative school superintendent is recorded as stating that this is the intent of the charter school movement, and that the intent in public education is not to educate for employment or enrichment of life, but to instill morality. By this what he really means is obedience to Christian teaching and rejection of any thought that might be critical of conservative ideology. This is similar to ideas espoused by Betsy DeVos, who oversaw the beginnings of the end of public education, and reinforced by the likes of Mark Robinson.

Republicans Don’t Want to Reform Public Education. They Want to End It.

By the legislature’s own standards, the charter schools and private schools receiving taxpayer dollars cannot meet the standards of the public schools they compete with. Despite vows of determining funding on “evidence based” outcomes, when presented with challenges from the state education department to achieve better outcomes for students, the legislature responded by removing from the education department the ability to enforce standards without consulting a review board stacked with charter school proponents appointed by the legislature.

NC Board eases up on stricter charter school renewal rules. See what’s on the table.

I will campaign for an end to the legislature’s stranglehold on appointive power on the various boards and institutions that govern our education system.

Stacked with ideologues and demagogues who see education in a narrow economic and religious framework, these boards and commissions, especially the UNC Board of Governors and the UNC-CH Board of Trustees, are turning what was once an enviable system of universities and public schools into institutions of conformity to conservative ideology and obedience to authority. The legislature does this because it cannot compete in the arena of debate and ideas and disdains intellectual discourse. It must legally mandate that its ideas are spread under the weight of law and the threat of defunding.

I will campaign for an end to spending millions of dollars on school “resource” officers, in favor of spending millions of dollars on actual resources such as school nurses and counselors, art and music instruction, and teacher aides.

ACLU of NC on Cops and Schools

This will do far more to create a safer environment in schools than any police presence. Police are not trained to handle students with emotional problems, or to handle special needs students. They are trained to respond to threats with violence, and are less likely to seek nonviolent solutions.

I will campaign for an end to the further attacks on tenure in the UNC system, which are intended to open the faculty to political interference by the Board of Governors. I will oppose the passage of HB715, which proposes to end tenure in the UNC system.

Tenure at universities has long been a target of conservatives. Tenure was meant specifically to diminish political interference in the affairs of the academy, and it has worked so well that abolishing it to allow full political control of teaching and research is seen as necessary by the general assembly.

I will oppose the passage of HB 96, also called the NC REACH Act.

The act is aptly named, as it is clearly a political reach into post-secondary education. Its intent is to create a perception of the American form of government as the sole repository of lofty ideals. To this end, it ignores the real history of the United States by limiting criticism to carefully chosen works incapable of examining the real social and political organization of the US, which is determined almost entirely by class and wealth. Even as an academic exercise, it would only be of value when compared with other forms of government, both historical and present.

HB 96 – NC Reach Act

I will support the complete funding of public schools in accord with the original intent of court rulings in Leandro v. North Carolina Public Schools (sometimes referred to as Hoke County v North Carolina Public Schools)

This case is being taken up by a partisan NC Supreme Court with the intent of ruling in favor of the GOP majority in the general assembly. Using a convenient separation of powers argument, it will leave the general assembly free to underfund public schools as it pursues the end of the public school system.

I will oppose the new School of Civic Life and Leadership at UNC, and will work to defund and abolish it.

Made up out of the desires of the general assembly for a state-funded conservative think-tank (because “We have no shortage of faculty with progressive, left-wing views,” Boliek said on Fox News. “The same really can’t be said of right-of-center views.” see Daily Tar Heel, Feb 27, 2024), its accelerated time schedule was first announced in the Wall Street Journal before even the broader UNC system was informed of its schedule. It is designed to be an anti-democratic, Euro-centric center for the promotion of conservative thought, and will act as another facade putting a patina of academic credibility on the fascism which capitalism seeks to impose on the working class and the poor. This institution should invoke disgust in anyone that actually understands freedom, liberty and equality.

environment– what will a Green Governor do to address environmental issues in North Carolina?

I will ask the legislature to fully fund the NC Department of Environmental Quality, and return to its jurisdiction environmental enforcement that has been split among different departments.

Along with many other departments, the legislature underfunds and understaffs the Department of Environmental Quality responsible for permitting, while requiring that it meet deadlines that grant automatic permits to applicants if not met. This is sold as improvements in government efficiency. In fact, it is a method that will allow developers and landowners with complicated permit applications to avoid compliance with environmental regulations.

I will support a return to tighter development restrictions on silt runoff, wetland destruction and permitting standards.

The recent Supreme Court decision in Sackett v EPA removed protection of over 50% of what had been protected wetlands in some watersheds in the US. This triggered a 2011 North Carolina law which prohibited the state from protecting wetlands using a standard higher than those used by the federal government. In the 2023 Farm Act, these protections were removed explicitly.
An Environmental Defense Fund study cited in the News and Observer says that “…anywhere between 14% and 100% of the state’s non-coastal wetlands could be open to development. Those wetlands cover 490,000 to 3.6 million acres, many of them in the low-lying coastal plain.”
North Carolina has in recent years rolled back protections for wetlands and loosened restrictions on developers with regard to riparian buffers and other environmental standards.

I will work to reduce agricultural runoff and continued chemical spills into streams and rivers. This includes runoff from concentrated feedlot operations, hog waste, and intensive poultry farming.

In the western US, with a long history of supporting CAFOs and chemical intensive farming, water tables are dropping rapidly, and potable water wells are being contaminated by nitrates. In recent decades, agriculture in North Carolina has followed suit in development of CAFOs, and allowed agricultural and chemical spills to contaminate drinking water, downplaying the consequences and putting profit over environmental standards. This is inexcusable in light of the challenges to ecosystem services faced today.
The NCDA is allowed to provide permits to agricultural operations independently of the DEQ. NCDA is also allowed to keep secret the numbers and locations of animal breeding operations, such as poultry and hog farms. This conceals the quantity and location of water pollution point sources.

I will push for more federal help and state investment to clean up North Carolina’s 38 Superfund sites.

The cost of “progress” in the US, and in North Carolina, has usually been accompanied by environmental degradation. Pursuit of profit cannot continue to take a back seat to a clean environment.

Health CAre– As Governor, what will you do to address the rising cost of healthcare in our state?

I will advocate for our state’s representatives in Congress to support the Medicare for All Act in the U.S. House (H.R. 3421) and U.S. Senate (S. 1655).

Private health insurance works for a privileged part of the population, and for those who face no barriers to employment and are fortunate enough to obtain health insurance through work.
While the ACA expanded coverage to many millions of people, not all states would allow expansion on ideological grounds. That number has dwindled to nine states, but there are still millions uninsured in the US.
Medicare and Medicaid face serious threats of becoming privatized, as capital pushes for more access to government dollars while at the same time being able to control access to health care. Medicare Advantage and Medigap plans, but especially Medicare Advantage, show that subsidizing private health insurance companies to deliver health care can have very bad results. Medicare Advantage insurers are incentivized to delay and deny health care in pursuit of profits.
The US is the only developed country that does not provide some form of national health care.

In the absence of universal healthcare, I will work for North Carolina to implement a state universal health care program.

Some states have made efforts to reduce the health care costs of their peoples through state supported health care programs and subsidies.
In 2023, H.R.6270, the State-Based Universal Health Care Act of 2023 was introduced into the federal House. A partial summary of the bill notes “This bill establishes the option for states, or groups of states, to apply to waive certain federal health insurance requirements and provide residents with health insurance benefits plans through a state-administered program. Such programs must cover 95% of the residents in the state within five years and plan benefits must be at least as comprehensive and affordable as the coverage under the equivalent federal program.”

Even though the state has accepted the expansion of Medicaid coverage under the ACA, there are still over 10,000 uninsured people in North Carolina. Most of these could be covered under Medicaid expansion, and I will work to direct the state to reach out to this population to obtain the widest possible health insurance coverage.

After the extension of Medicaid coverage to insure people during the heights of the Covid pandemic expired, many states purged people from the Medicaid rolls in the name of saving money. After North Carolina Medicaid expansion took effect in December 2023, many people who lost coverage were able to reapply, but there is a small population who are uncovered as of February 2024. This population may include people that are difficult for public notices to reach for one reason or another.

I will work to limit private equity investment in the health services field in North Carolina.

Over the last several years private equity investment firms have begun to purchase hospitals, private practices, and medical device and supply providers. The practice of private equity firms is to buy an asset, manipulate the asset’s finances to produce profit, then sell the company or asset when it appears to produce declining profit. Private equity firms only hold companies for three to seven years, then sell and move on. In the wake of acquisition by equity investors, hospitals have been forced to close, quality of care has declined, and medical companies have gone bankrupt. This problem is so pervasive that some states are now seeking to limit or outright refuse the sale of hospitals, nursing homes, and practices to private equity investors.

Criminal Justice– What will you do to resolve inequities in prisons, jails and policing in North Carolina?

In accordance with socialist principles, I will work to abolish prisons in North Carolina.

In 1917, Emma Goldman wrote of prisons in the US that “… when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist.” Goldman wrote this at a time when US prisons, following their historical predecessors and contemporaries in other countries, were institutions of horror, abuse, and oppression consistent with the past US treatment of underclasses, including indigenous peoples and the victims of slavery.
Despite decades of “prison reform”, we are now seeing an ideologically driven return to those times across the states in the US. A single example, the Angola state prison in Louisiana, is representative of far too many prisons across the US.
Since the founding of the country, prisons have been used as instruments of revenge on the poor, the working class, and the politically inconvenient.
This does not mean that there are no people in the world that should be segregated from society for the safety of society. But there is no moral principle that demands that they be kept under inhumane conditions, in solitary confinement, and without decent nutrition, access to family, or decent medical care.
The people that commit the greatest crimes, on scales that far dwarf bank robberies or even mass murders, are protected by law. They sit in the corner offices of executive suites and in the boardrooms of companies and banks across the US, and are showered with money, honors, and the gift of political influence. We arrest people who shoplift a loaf of bread, but let people who perpetrate immense financial crimes impoverishing millions walk free.
Prisons do not reduce recidivism or act as deterrents. They primarily exist as a means of exacting revenge on behalf of a society that creates the conditions for the crime in the first place.

In accordance with Green principles , and within the framework of the state and federal legal system, I will push for reformation of the criminal justice system in the US.

immigration– What policies will you pursue with respect to immigrants to the US residing in North Carolina, and the state’s response to immigration in general?

I will campaign against state and local law enforcement cooperation with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of Homeland Security.

ICE sows fear in immigrant communities, even among people who have documentation and are in the country under work visas. This fear is used by unscrupulous employers to suppress wages and obtain unpaid labor from workers under threat of deportation. Thus ICE contributes to a system of exploitation and oppression consistent with US treatment of immigrants throughout history.
Local law enforcement agencies, left to their own devices, develop relationships with immigrant communities in the course of their work. If immigrants view local law enforcement as an extension of ICE, those relationships are damaged.

I will campaign for state-issued identification and/or driver’s licenses to be issued to all working immigrants.

Immigrants working in North Carolina are going to drive, either to get to work or in the course of their jobs. Whether they have a driver’s license or not will be immaterial to the need to work. If the state offers driver’s licenses to immigrant workers, upon demonstration of necessary driving skills, at least people won’t be on the roads while unaware of traffic regulations. People can then obtain tax identification and contribute to the state and federal tax base.

I will highlight the economic contribution of immigrants to our economy. In fact, immigrants are necessary to the economy of the state, and by so contributing are entitled to state services, including education and health care.

Too many people in the US see immigrants either indifferently or as dangerous burdens. Neither group recognizes the economic value of immigrant contributions. They see only immigrant costs.
Employers, and financial reporters, do not make this mistake. The figures show that without immigrants, who made up over 18% of the workforce in 2023, that businesses from agriculture to the trades, and services such as dining, hospitality, and nursing home care would be unable to fill jobs.
Immigrants are hostage to ideological myths about their impact on the US and its economy. The net impact is positive, and US workers are not competing with immigrant workers for jobs. It is employers who suppress wages and violate labor standards.
Regarding the supposed financial burden imposed by immigrants, a 2022 article in the Network Open Journal of the American Medical Association found that in 2017 “ … immigrants contributed $58.3 billion more in premiums and taxes in 2017 than insurers and government paid for their health care, and US-born citizens incurred a net deficit of $67.2 billion. Undocumented immigrants accounted for most (89.0%) of the surplus.” (emphasis added)

labor– What changes do you see as necessary to protect the rights of labor in North Carolina?

I will work to repeal right-to-work law in North Carolina

Right-to-work laws were made to undermine unions. Sold as the ‘right-to-work’ and allowed under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which amended the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the former codified into law that states could pass laws which allowed an employee to take advantage of union-negotiated contracts and union activity favorable to the employee, but without having to join a union or pay union dues. Subsequently union activity and wages in states that had passed ‘right-to-work’ laws declined. In North Carolina, this law is GS 95-78; Declaration of Public Policy.

I will champion the repeal of the general statute in North Carolina that prevents public sector workers from bargaining with their employer.

Since 1959, it has been illegal in North Carolina for any city, town, county, or state agency or department to engage in bargaining with a labor union representing public employees. The specific law is GS 95-98.

paid for by A Green For Governor – Turner 2024