About nine years ago I came to Washington thinking I was coming to the “New South” where one of the best higher education systems in America was building an advanced technology based economy in a progressively evolving environment. I saw North Carolina as a place with a bright future. It has pained me to witness the many setbacks economically, educationally and politically, which have occurred since.

We should be inheritors of the legacy of the Progressive Movement of Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, of the work of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton. North Carolina’s own Terry Sanford, Jim Hunt, William Schlesinger of Duke and so many other luminaries are no longer being heard. They brought us the civil rights movement, Social Security, unemployment compensation, Medicare, equal pay for women legislation, a commitment to good schools for children of all races, clean water and clean air. We have an obligation to push forward and carry on their legacy. Instead, we are now trying to impede the right to vote, reducing and in some cases eliminating unemployment compensation, blocking one and a half million North Carolinians from receiving medical care, denying women equal pay and everyone young and old a livable minimum wage.

We are undermining our educational system, including the once best in the nation higher education system, diverting money from public education to private schools which may re-segregate neighborhoods, reducing the authority of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and rolling back water and air pollution standards.

All this damage is in the name of phantom jobs and economic development, which will never emerge until we offer an identifiably superior education for our young people and provide them amenities required to keep creative people here. We surely have much to lose for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren. It is time we all take notice of what is happening and recommit to a Progressive Agenda. That is my goal in initiating this weekly Progressive Perspective.

Jim Smith is the first vice chair of the Beaufort County Democratic Party.