COVER STORY
NORTH CAROLINA:
WE BUILT THIS STATE, WE WILL REBUILD IT AGAIN
By Randy Voller
Chair – North Carolina
Democratic Party
RALEIGH, NC - Years ago a wise
man once pulled me aside at work
and said “a hammer is a tool that
can be used for construction or
destruction. The choice is yours.”
For over a century, Democratic
leaders in North Carolina have
chosen to invest in our state and use
legislative policy to build a better
future. Their hammers were used
constructively.
These were deliberate policy choices
by leaders in North Carolina to invest
in creating infrastructure, building
roads, hospitals, schools, libraries,
parks, green spaces, technology
centers, and world class colleges
and universities. These decisions
by leaders of our state took daring,
imagination, vision and the faith that
the social contract would be honored
from one generation to the next.
When President Roosevelt (FDR)
had the audacity to pursue a “New
Deal” for America, he was building
on the notion that we can spread
prosperity out from the few to the
many and build a better America for
all citizens.
In addition, near the end of his life
during World War II, he used his
office to provide a clarion call to
future generations:
“It is our duty now to begin to lay the
plans and determine the strategy for
the winning of a lasting peace and
the establishment of an American
standard of living higher than ever
before known. We cannot be content,
no matter how high that general
standard of living may be, if some
fraction of our people—whether it be
one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—
is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and
insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and
grew to its present strength, under
the protection of certain inalienable
political rights—among them the
right of free speech, free press,
free worship, trial by jury, freedom
from unreasonable searches and
seizures. They were our rights to life
and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size
and stature, however—as our
industrial economy expanded—these
political rights proved inadequate to
assure us equality in the pursuit of
happiness.
We have come to a clear
realization of the fact that true
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individual freedom cannot exist
without economic security and
independence. “Necessitous men
are not free men.” People who are
hungry and out of a job are the stuff
of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths
have become accepted as selfevident. We have accepted, so to
speak, a second Bill of Rights under
which a new basis of security and
prosperity can be established for
all—regardless of station, race, or
creed.”
Among these are:
1. The right to a useful and
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