By Melissa Price Kromm, Tomas Lopez and Karen Anderson

Like so many people living in North Carolina, Tom Wood answered our nation’s call. At 20 he volunteered for the draft and shipped out as an Army medic in Vietnam.

Tom’s easy laugh masks the emotional pain he still feels 48 years later — and fails him entirely when he thinks about the proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot this November.

“We had incoming casualties every day, young men often with limbs blown off, blinded by shrapnel and burned beyond recognition all for with the hopes that democracy would prevail in their homeland, and I carry those emotional wounds today,” he says.

“The notion that legislators are playing fast and loose with our democracy, like it’s some toy to benefit a political agenda, enrages me. We were trying to bring democracy to Vietnam, and now I live in a state where legislators are trying to do everything to subvert our democracy.

“Good men and women fought and died for our rights as American citizens. These amendments make a mockery of their sacrifice.”

On Monday, we are launching the By the People Campaign, a coalition effort of nonprofits, grassroots groups, and community leaders, to educate voters about the harms of all six proposed constitutional amendments on the 2018 ballot and to help communities statewide fight back.

The campaign will commence with a coalition press conference at Bicentennial Plaza outside of the state legislative building in Raleigh. This 11 a.m. Raleigh kickoff will be accompanied by a statewide educational tour, launching Monday evening at 6:30 in Charlotte at Midwood Cultural Center.

The goals of this campaign are simple. We’ll do what politicians in Raleigh refused to: provide plain-language explanations of the intent and impact behind the dishonest “bad deal” amendments voters will see near the bottom of their ballots. And, we’ll encourage voters to vote against all six amendments, and help turn these bad deals into better outcomes for North Carolina.

After all, there are plenty of reasons to vote against the amendments.

We know that politicians have drafted these amendments in a misleading way — they say one thing, but are lacking so much detail that they’re basically a blank check to fill in those details later.

These amendments will attack checks and balances to allow lawmakers to appoint judges that will rule in favor of corporate polluters instead of protecting our air and water from chemicals like Gen X.

These amendments will create partisan gridlock in our state elections board and jeopardize popular early voting.

We know classrooms remain underfunded and natural disaster relief is often delayed and that these amendments will shift even more money from these public needs to permanent tax breaks for millionaires.

And, finally, we know that these amendments would revive discriminatory voting restrictions so extreme that they could exclude forms of identification used by active duty military and veterans like Tom Wood.

“Democracy isn’t complicated, it’s Americans being trusted to do their job as informed and engaged citizens,” Tom says. “What these politicians are doing with these amendments, it’s more than anti-democratic. It’s un-American.”

It’s time we all understand our reasons to vote against these amendments, and to be clear that everyone in our state deserves better — no matter what you look like, where you live, or what party you support.

We urge all North Carolinians to learn more about these “bad deal” amendments and find out what they can do to stop them at bythepeoplenc.com.

Melissa Price Kromm is the executive director of North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections. Tomas Lopez is executive director of Democracy North Carolina. Karen Anderson is executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina. They are part of the executive committee leading the By the People Campaign.