POTLUCK & POISON IVY: MONICA POTTS

THURSDAY 5/25. THE JOINT THEATER AND COFFEEHOUSE. 7 P.M. $35.

This month, Monica Potts will publish “The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America,” a book that was set into motion when Potts — who spent her workingclass adolescence in Clinton, but ultimately left town to pursue college and become a successful journalist — started comparing her path to the girls she grew up with who didn’t make it out, whose lives were stalled and blighted by poverty and substance abuse. Upon further investigation and a reexamination of her own memories and those of her childhood best friend, Potts discovered that so much of this bifurcation in fate could be attributed to small, seemingly insignificant choices they made while they were still children, particularly ones related to sex. In a culture of moral binaries — “Girls were either virgins or whores; students were either geniuses or failures; you could go to church or you could be a sinner” — one impulsive, puberty-fueled decision to prioritize the attention of boys over focusing on school could be a critical step on a trajectory toward early pregnancy, domestic violence and a stunted future, rather than just a weekend of harmless fun. “The rigid divide allowed no room for subtleties or missteps,” Potts says. The book, which has been getting praise from prestigious outlets, was described by The Guardian as “a lament for lost opportunities and wasted lives; a controlled expression of rage at a system that continues to fail so many even as it exploits their despair.” Potts will tell her story alongside music and dinner at May’s Potluck & Poison Ivy. DG

A PLIABLE LEGISLATURE STOMPED ON THE POOR, INDULGED THE RICH AND THREW TEACHERS, LIBRARIANS, CHILDREN AND TRANS PEOPLE UNDER THE BUS, ALL BECAUSE THE MAGA GOVERNOR TOLD THEM TO.

BY AUSTIN BAILEY AND LINDSEY MILLAR

With the 2023 legislative session blessedly at its end, Arkansas progressives (plus moderates and anyone to the left of the Proud Boys) know what complete and utter political defeat looks like. It’s this: tax cuts for the wealthy and out-of-state investors, even as children in the state go hungry; universal vouchers to subsidize wealthy families’ private school tuitions while denigrating and defunding the traditional public schools that educate the masses; no budging on a near-total abortion ban, not even for victims of incest or women carrying fetuses destined to die before birth or to suffer for only a few torturous hours beyond it; a barrage of new laws that do nothing but hammer home the message that transgender Arkansans are not welcome and will not be accommodated.

Supercharged by a mountain of MAGA money and an even bigger ego, Gov. Sarah Sanders called all the shots. The supermajority Republican legislature raced to do her bidding. Their rubber stamp on all of Sanders’ priorities (vouchers, prison expansion, tax cuts) marked a vast departure from the last administration, when Asa Hutchinson’s pro-gun, pro-life record failed to impress an increasingly insane right-wing extremist legislative branch. Where Hutchinson recoiled from drama, Sanders pursued it, eager to throw Trumpian blows of staggering cruelty if it landed her on Fox News. Her foot soldiers didn’t seem to mind Sanders’ obvious bid to get out of Arkansas and back on the national stage as soon as possible. It wouldn't have mattered if they did. Republican lawmakers knew to expect a primary challenger to knock them out of office if they dared veer out of lockstep.

Saying it’s the worst session ever feels trite, too flip to capture the brutality heaped on all but the wealthiest and most insulated. Not only did lawmakers do nothing to protect Arkansans from our charttopping gun death rates, they voted instead to protect the gun companies from us. A new law passed this session bars state entities from investing with firms that eschew the industry profiting off our homicide epidemic. Protecting children got lots of lip service, but no real action. Requiring proof of age and identity to get a social media account or view online porn, laws passed allegedly to protect kids, will be a boon for identity theft but won’t likely shield many innocent eyes. Threatening librarians with jail time if they allow young people to view or check out books about sex is not only a direct assault on free speech, but also a surefire way to maintain Arkansas’s spot as the state with the most teen pregnancies.

Protecting kids was not a priority when lawmakers opted to sacrifice children to quell the labor shortage. The 94th General Assembly did away with a work permit requirement for 14- and 15-year-olds, meaning children can now get a job without their parents having to sign off and without any government oversight to make sure working conditions and hours are safe and appropriate.

Arkansas’s wealthy and its businesses are safer than ever, having easily secured tax cuts by simply pointing fingers at transgender children and woke librarians, then grabbing the cash when no one was looking. Most of us didn’t get much of anything beyond the insult that the schools we send our children to — schools that anchor our communities — are hotbeds of inadequacy and indoctrination that anyone with the means should flee at their first opportunity. Is this really what Arkansas voted for?

Culture Wars

The Arkansas Capitol grounds will soon get a “monument to the unborn” thanks to a new law sponsored by Sen. Kim Hammer (R-Benton) and Rep. Mary Bentley (R-Perryville), which allows for private funds to pay for a monument dedicated to the embryos aborted when women still had bodily autonomy in Arkansas. Bentley promised the design would be “something beautifully done to honor precious children.” Several Republican opponents of abortion pushed back on the proposal, with one suggesting it had “the look and feel of spiking the football.” Rep. Cindy Crawford (R-Fort Smith), always ready with a comment so inane you wonder if you’re hearing things right, suggested we call on slaves for wisdom and guidance here. “You can ask slaves what happens when we forget. We have to remember slavery in America so it won’t come back. We have to remember abortion in Arkansas so it won’t come back. There’s no reason why we can’t have a monument. It’s not a poke in the eye; it’s a ‘God forgive us for what we have done.’ ”

In other culture war news, Arkansas will be the first state in the country to require users to show ID to create new social media accounts. Senate Bill 396, sponsored by Sen. Tyler Dees (R-Siloam Springs) and championed by the governor, will require social media companies to contract with third-party companies to perform age verification on new users. Those younger than 18 won’t be able to register for an account on the platforms without parents’ permission. How all that will work remains unclear. Dees repeatedly referenced Idemia, a third-party verifier based in France, as a good actor.

This legislature has done a lot of things that make little sense, but in the same breath that lawmakers talk about the national security concerns TikTok poses, they want Arkansans to give sensitive personal information to a foreign company?

Many legislators were told that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, believes that there’s no way to comply with the law. The way it’s written, a private citizen can bring a legal claim against a social media company if their child gets an account without parental permission, but the soon-to-be law also forces third-party verifiers to delete personal information. So how could the social media company defend itself?

Dees also sponsored another similar new law that will require Arkansas residents to show ID to visit pornography websites. Let’s hope no one tells these guys how easy it is to pay $5 a month for VPN access to mask your location, thereby bypassing all of this nonsense.

The economic cost of culture wars became briefly quantifiable during debate over a new law to require all state entities to divest from holdings with financial providers who consider ESG — environmental, social and governance — factors. It was sponsored by Rep. Jeff Wardlaw (R-Hermitage) and Sen. Ricky Hill (R-Cabot) and based on a model from the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Koch-funded right-wing bill factory. It’s also part of an increasingly activist turn for right-wing state treasurers, including Arkansas Treasurer Mark Lowery. Called the State Financial Officers Foundation, Lowery’s group aims to wield the power of the state to protect polluters from those forces attempting to save humanity by stopping climate change. Sure, the planet will die sooner if Lowery and his ilk succeed and states will sacrifice investment dollars for this newest version of corporate welfare, but the rich guys will go out on top. Similar laws have cost other states millions of dollars.

The same sponsors also pushed through related legislation that requires all state contractors to pledge that they won’t boycott energy, fossil fuel, firearms or ammunition industries. After the bill was introduced, Arkansas Times publisher Alan Leveritt wrote a slightly tongue-in-cheek op-ed pledging to continue the Times’ long-standing policy of boycotting gun and fossil fuel industries by keeping our money in the bank. The new act is based on an existing law that requires contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel. The Times has refused to sign that pledge and unsuccessfully challenged its constitutionality in the federal court system.

Voting

Republican lawmakers hate that the Arkansas Constitution gives citizens the ability to propose laws and constitutional amendments for consideration on the ballot. The legislature tried to curb that power by referring to voters a constitutional amendment in 2020 that would have raised the threshold required to make the ballot, and another one in 2022 that would have required 60% of voters to approve constitutional amendments for them to pass. Both proposals failed handily with voters, who recognized these amendments for what they were: a power grab by legislators to weaken the power of the people.

Unfettered, this session Republicans passed a clearly unconstitutional new law that increases the number of counties from which signatures for a ballot initiative or constitutional amendment must be submitted, upping that number from 15 to 50. The state Constitution specifically says “at least 15 counties,” which merely sets the floor required, sponsor Sen. Jim Dotson (R-Bentonville) said. Just like many other things that are silent in the constitution, here the legislature can step in and make laws, he argued.

But Sen. Clarke Tucker (D-Little Rock), who should have been paid by the hour for all the legal advice he was forced to dispense to his know-nothing colleagues, said he believed this was among the most blatantly unconstitutional bills he’d ever seen during his time in the ledge, including bills that were inviting constitutional challenges. The “at least 15 counties” language in the Constitution clearly means that “you don’t have to stop at 15” when gathering signatures. He also noted that while Dotson is correct that when the Constitution is silent, the legislature can make laws, in this case, Article 5, Section 1 of the Constitution explicitly says that unwarranted restrictions are prohibited.

Other anti-democracy bills aimed to make voting less convenient and less comfortable in hopes of convincing more people to give up on the American experiment entirely. “Election integrity” is code for “voter suppression,” and Arkansas Republicans touted election integrity all over the place as they carried on with their years-long campaign to make it harder to get your ballot counted.

Act 544 by Rep. Austin McCollum (R-Bentonville) and Sen. Jim Petty (R-Van Buren) creates a so-called election integrity unit within the attorney general’s office to further police the polls, adding new layers of red tape and intimidation. Because the AG is a partisan official, the measure further politicizes the management of our elections and delivers another unfair advantage to Republicans, who are quite skilled at using their power to keep challengers at bay.

Arkansas lawmakers also pushed some cookie-cutter legislation crafted by out-of-state groups as part of their ongoing “stop the steal” disinformation campaign. Sen. Tyler Dees (R-Siloam Springs) carried the water on a bill outlawing ballot collection boxes in Arkansas, just in case anybody ever thinks about putting one up. We don’t have them here, even though they’ve worked well in other states. National voter suppression groups shopped the same bill to outlaw ballot collection boxes in South Dakota, Virginia, Ohio, Kansas and Arizona. Absentee voters routinely send ballots through the mail, and Dees was unable to answer questions about how ballot drop boxes were more susceptible to fraud than the U.S. Postal Service. His bill passed into law anyway.

Mothers And Babies

With a near-total abortion ban in place after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, women in Arkansas find themselves in even worse shape than before. Arkansas had the highest maternal mortality rate of any state before the ban, and without access to abortion care, more women stand to suffer and die.

Amazingly, Arkansas lawmakers failed to come through on the paltry handful of smallpotatoes bills that aimed to help keep mothers and babies alive and healthy. Most of these measures are low-hanging fruit and already standard practice in other states. But the Republican supermajority at the Arkansas Capitol failed to make maternal health a priority, dedicating their time instead to heaping shame on public school teachers and transgender children.

A plan to add Arkansas to the list of states that provide Medicaid for new mothers for a full year after birth went nowhere. Thirty-two states plus Washington, D.C., already tap into federal dollars to help make sure new moms with scant financial resources are covered through that tumultuous year after pregnancy and birth. Ten more states have plans in the works to extend coverage beyond the minimum 60 days federal law requires. If any state needs to add this tool to its arsenal, it’s us. Arkansas is the most dangerous state in the country for expectant women, with high poverty rates and an undeniable need for more support for new moms. Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R-Knoxville) sponsored the bill to extend Medicaid coverage for new mothers, but the committee never even bothered to take it up. Aptly enough, this change that would cost less than $2 million and would definitely save lives got no attention from lawmakers and was left to die in committee. That $2 million savings the state will realize by letting new mothers’ health coverage lapse is enough to offset only a drop in the bucket of tax breaks legislators granted to the wealthy this session.

Women carrying fetuses cursed to suffer and die got a similar F.U. from Arkansas lawmakers this session. Rep. Nicole Clowney (D-Fayetteville) represented the will of the majority of Arkansans who, polls show, support exemptions to Arkansas’s near-total abortion ban. Her effort to change the law to reflect Arkansas’s wishes tanked in the face of bullying from the Christian soldiers who claim to know what is best for everyone. Women carrying a fetus that will die before birth or suffer for a few hours or days before dying after birth will still have no choice but to carry the baby to term.

Rep. Ashley Hudson (D-Little Rock) mounted a similar failing effort with a bill to let women who become pregnant through rape or incest access abortion. In this post-apocalyptic wasteland of reproductive rights, it’s unclear whether we should consider it a small victory or an utter defeat that Hudson did get one pregnancy-related bill passed. Her House Bill 1161 ensuring the school days teenagers miss to have babies count as excused absences is now signed into law.

Education

The Arkansas LEARNS universal voucher bill to sacrifice Arkansas students and communities at the altar of right-wing ideology might or might not be the biggest travesty of the session, but it’s likely the one whose harm will spread the farthest, the fastest. A Waltonite lobbyist’s dream of a law based on the demonstrably false premise that the school choice tide will raise all schools’ boats, Arkansas LEARNS will subsidize the private school tuition payments of wealthy families at the expense of traditional public schools that serve all students. By giving parents with the time, money and know-how enough public cash to get their children into private schools and away from us riffraff, the state’s new universal voucher program will send us back to Arkansas’s shameful days of segregated classrooms.

But it’s not all bad. Arkansas LEARNS’ high points include a minimum $50,000-a-year salary for every public school teacher in Arkansas, and $2,000 raises for educators already over $50K. That’s where they leave you, though. LEARNS repeals the state salary schedule which, to be fair, was almost wholly under the $50K mark,