Now What?
Photo Credit: Barbara Burgess-unsplash
A discussion on Citizen Engagement.
Citizen Engagement from Now What?
By Gene Nichol
This book concentrates on an ambitious suite of rights: rights to equal political participation; rights to equal human dignity; assurances of judicial independence and integrity; and rights to protect our children and our planet on this day and into the future. It also concentrates on ways to fix the ship that is North Carolina and to more confidently, more constructively, and more generously chart its course.
But none of these are possible in North Carolina without the expansion of an obligation – not a right, but an obligation. It is a duty, an undertaking, and a massive one; it is the heightened participation of engaged citizens. It is the marching feet, the joined hands, the met minds, and the beating hearts of the much-moved people of North Carolina. Political scientist Adam Bonica described the central, determinative faction in successfully opposing movements of authoritarianism as, unsurprisingly, “whether people successfully mobilized” to contest them. That’s not a great mystery, of course. I love the way Bruce Springsteen (one of my leading constitutional sources) phrased it in his public attacks on the Trump Administration in the early summer of 2025: “The last check on power after the checks and balances have failed is the people – you and me.” Thus it is. Thus, I’m guessing, it should be. And that’s true whether the checks and balances have merely failed or they’ve been purposefully broken down, decimated, as in North Carolina. Saving democracy is in our hands – joined ones.
And the Broad mission is, as ever, the most central one: the belief that everyone counts and that all of us are, first-class, fee simple members.
I heard Ken Burns, the great documentarian, put it another way once: You either believe all people are created equal or you don’t – and if you do, things follow from that.” And one of the things that follows is that you believe it without exception. There is not exclusion for “the unworthies.” The notion of equal justice applies across the board. All means all.
Faith in the People of North Carolina
By Karen McCall
I am writing this on the day that Alex Pretti was fatally shot by Border Patrol in Minneapolis (January 24, 2026). Renee Good had been shot and killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis just two and a half weeks earlier (January 7, 2026). When, like many Americans, I think about the meaning of these two tragedies, I can’t help but wonder whether our nation has now plummeted into authoritarianism. How else to explain how our President can command masked federal forces, with apparent immunity, to invade American cities and to violently attack protesters whose shouts, phones, songs, whistles, and even prayers annoy them? If such lethal aggression can be used against American citizens in Minneapolis, certainly it can be used against North Carolinians.
Gene Nichol’s recent, book Now What? traces North Carolina’s journey towards authoritarianism and counsels that just as the NC Republican Party pre-dated Trump in its anti-democratic behavior, it will remain in power after he has flamed out of the national scene. That is, unless we can take back control of our state General Assembly. Nichol argues that although “the democracy-ending work [in North Carolina] has been more covert, more civil, and less obviously wrapped in cruelty, violence, and criminality, the brutal door has been thrown undeniably and permanently open.”
NC Republicans opened the door to overt authoritarianism in 2024 when they contested the election of Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. First, the NC Supreme Court did not allow the State Board of Elections to certify Allison Rigg’s win after multiple recounts. Then, Judge Griffin, her Republican opponent, with the aid of the NC Supreme Court, tried to invalidate 60,000 votes which had been cast in November.
People across the state protested the behavior of the NC Supreme Court in its bid to steal the election. Independents, Republicans and Democrats took to the streets across the state in The People Vs. Griffin rallies. The NC Supreme Court was only stopped by a Trump-appointed federal judge, who ruled that it was unconstitutional to invalidate legally cast votes after the election. Allison Riggs took her seat on the NC Supreme Court in May, 2025.
It is Nichol’s theory that the NC Supreme Court took such extraordinary steps in denying the certification of Rigg’s win because Republican Supreme Court judges were so concerned about how voters would judge their tenure. Only if Allison Riggs were defeated in 2024, could these Republicans be certain that their party would retain a control of both houses in the General Assembly after the 2028 election.
Accepting the results of an election is the hallmark of a democracy, according to Stephen Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point. NC Republicans are clearly not willing to lose and are, instead, inclined to take anti-democratic steps to stave off a Democratic win.
Nichol reports that when Democrats in 2024 had a majority of voters and won the Governor’s Office, the NC Republican-controlled General Assembly stripped the Democratic Governor’s power to appoint the Board of Elections and gave that power to the Republican State Auditor. In no other state in the nation does the auditor oversee elections.
Since May, 2025, when the NC Supreme Court upheld the transfer of power to the State Auditor, the State Auditor has appointed two Republican board members, creating a Republican majority on the Board. All 100 counties of the state now have Republican majority Boards of Elections, Sunday voting has been curbed, and there are fewer early voting sites.
So, Now What? Gene Nichol has faith in the people of North Carolina. No one is going to come in and save our right to have our vote count. At this point, it is truly up to us. We have to use the ballot box, the courts, and citizen activity. Everyone has to be engaged.
Like Dr. King, Nichol believes that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice and that we have to live in hope. “We’ll discover that part of our charge, often the most essential part, is that we not lose heart. Getting up off the mat can be the engaged citizen’s greatest attribute.”
It is hard to be hopeful with the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good so fresh on our mind, but democracy was never saved by folks sitting on the sideline, despondent and passive.
