AFPNC State Director Dallas Woodhouse issued an open letter calling on the President of the NC NAACP, Rev. William Barber, to apologize for a statement released on Feb 16. You can read the Woodhouse letter here and the Barber statement here.
The crux of the matter is that the NCNAACP in its push to get card check legislation through congress attacked the members of AFPNC as a "phony group". Woodhouse as the organization's director in NC took offense and fired back.
All of this back and forth piqued my curiosity about the NC chapter of the NAACP and its very visible leader Reverend William Barber. Just a few days ago he headed up a march on the state legislature with the catchy title "Historic Thousands on Jones Street" it even has its own website http://www.hkonj.com/. At the site you can even buy a commemorative poster of the event for $10.
But back to my point, and there is one, about lobbying. Neither Rev. Barber nor the NAACP is registered as a lobbyist or lobbying principal in NC. I checked the NC Secretary of State Lobbyist website, nothing nada – zilch. I checked and all the groups on the left and right are registered but not Rev. Barber. Yet he is leading a march on the legislature, constantly holding press conferences in and at the legislature and putting legislative alerts on his website.
While I disagree with the need for most non-profits to register, we do it as a matter of protecting ourselves under the new lobbying laws. But now that I have looked at Rev Barber's non-registering, if he does not have to register, can anyone think of a reason Civitas or any of the other government watchdog groups out there should register?
For full disclosure, prior to joining Civitas, I was the State Director of AFPNC.
Francis, you raise an important question