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City mayor termed wrong in opposing toplessness
According to John Boyle’s May 18th column (in the Asheville Citizen-Times) about top-free women in public, Mayor (Terry) Bellamy was quoted as saying, “It’s an economic development issue and a tourism issue.”
Mayor Bellamy, is that what you are going to tell the Office of Civil Rights and or other federal judges?
Watch the IRS hearings and picture yourself being questioned about your pursuit of passing unconstitutional criminal ordinances that discriminate based on gender. They will not even let you discuss economic development and tourism.
Mayor Bellamy, it is amazing you can be so wrong for such a prolonged period of time. This issue is about equality. It is about the Constitution of The United States and the Constitution of North Carolina. It is about free speech and female autonomy.
Your willful ignorance will back-fire on you.
Jeff Johnson
Huntsville, Ala.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Johnson, who was the organizer of a topless rally in downtown Asheville last summer, listed himself as a “civil rights advocate” under his name on this letter to the editor.
Circumstances of arrest? Fighting for justice in N.C.
Last week (in mid-May), I drove to Raleigh for the express purpose of being arrested. You might call it premeditated civil disobedience.I had never been arrested before, but I was ready for it.
Five years ago, our broken health care system took my son’s life. We as a nation moved forward a bit with the passage of the Affordable Care Act in March of 2010, but my state is fighting the expansion of access to health care, leaving some 500,000 people at risk of the same horrible death my child suffered.
I can’t sit still for that.
Expanding access to health care is my mission in life since my son died, but other issues touch my heart as well.
I believe that anyone who works a full-time job should make enough to pay basic living expenses. If you work a 40-hour week, you shouldn’t need government assistance.
But this state’s General Assembly has done worse than not support a living wage; it has decimated the safety net that helps people who, through no fault of their own, need help.
I deal with people in poverty every day, people who can’t get the health care they need, who live in unsafe housing, if they have a home at all. I deal with people who work three part-time jobs because they can’t find full-time employment. These are not lazy people; they work hard and they deserve better.
I have tried to talk to legislators, but it’s like talking to a brick wall, although I get more of a sense of warmth from the brick wall.
Many of the legislators who are taking this state backward in time call themselves Christian, but I wonder what Christ would think of their actions.
My conscience and my faith have called me to action.
I went to Raleigh and I went into the Legislature Building – a place my taxes pay for and a place the State Constitution says I have a right to be – and I was arrested and charged with second-degree trespass and “chanting and loud singing.”
We did sing. We sang hymns of freedom, and we continued to sing them all the way to the jailhouse and as we were processed through.
We continue to sing. Every Monday, more of us will be arrested as we fight for justice for the least among us, just as we all are called to do.
Leslie Boyd
Candler
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