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Thom Tillis Stars at First Ever "Tilly Awards"

Jeremy Sprinkle
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Awarding Speaker Tillis for all he has done to North Carolina

Progress that took North Carolina decades to make has begun to unravel in the almost eight months since Republicans took full control of our state legislature and Thom Tillis won election as House Speaker.

The NC State AFL-CIO, along with allied groups, hosted a tongue-in-cheek awards ceremony today that showed North Carolinians are taking notice. The 1st Annual Tilly Awards gave Speaker Tillis a special type of recognition for his work.

Click here to see photos from the 1st Annual Tilly Awards.

“North Carolina has been the best place in the South to live, work, and do business,” said MaryBe McMillan of the NC State AFL-CIO. “Speaker Tillis has worked hard to undermine that, and his hard work to take North Carolina backward deserves acknowledgment.”

McMillan presented Tillis with a chess set for the “Stop Treating Workers as Pawns in a Game” award. Speaker Tillis and his caucus held unemployment benefits for 37,000 workers hostage during the course of budget negotiations.

Click here to watch MaryBe McMillan's presentation at the Tilly Awards.

Other speakers also focused on those budget negotiations. Jeff Shaw of the progressive budget coalition Together NC presented Tillis with the “Broken Gavel Award for Divisive Leadership.”

“It takes unique leadership to prefer division over unity,” said Shaw.  “And it takes a gutsy leader to ignore what thousands of North Carolinians believe, what economists say will promote recovery, and what is the most obvious answer to our fiscal woes: revenue.”

Click here to watch Jeff Shaw's presentation at the Tilly Awards.

Other speakers included Alison Kiser of Planned Parenthood of NC, Bob Hall of Democracy NC, Adam Searing of the NC Health Access Coalition and Doug Jackson of TellTillis.com. All presented the speaker with unique awards.

Thanks to John P. Comer for being our Master of Ceremonies!

Click here to watch Alison Kiser's presentation of the "Best Impersonation of a Doctor by a Politician Award" at the Tilly Awards.

Click here to watch Irene Godinez presentation of the "Dream Crusher Award" at the Tilly Awards.

Click here to watch Bob Hall's presentation of the "Twisted Choices Award" at the Tilly Awards.

Click here to watch Adam Searing's presentation of the "Short-sightedness Award" at the Tilly Awards.

Click here to watch Doug Jackson's presentation of the "Most Generous Boss Award" at the Tilly Awards.