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North Carolina's Moral Monday Movement Kicks Off 2014 With a Massive Rally in Raleigh
HKonJ: Thousands March in Downtown Raleigh

North Carolina's Moral Monday Movement Kicks Off 2014 With a Massive Rally in Raleigh
Ari Berman
The Nation
February 8, 2014

On February 1, 1960, four black students at North Carolina A&T kicked off the 1960s civil rights movement by trying to eat at a segregated lunch counter at Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro. Two months leader, young activists founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee  at Shaw University in Raleigh, which would transform the South through sit-ins, Freedom Rides and voter registration drives.

So it was fitting that North Carolina’s Moral Monday movement held a massive “Moral March” in Raleigh today which began at Shaw University, exactly fifty-four years after North Carolina’s trailblazing role in the civil rights movement. Tens of thousands of activists—from all backgrounds, races and causes—marched from Shaw to the North Carolina State Capitol, where they held an exuberant rally protesting the right-wing policies of the North Carolina government and commemorating the eight anniversary of the HKonJ coalition (the acronym stands for Historic Thousands on Jones Street, where the NC legislature sits).

The day began cold and cloudy, a fitting metaphor for politics in North Carolina last year. Since taking over the legislature in 2010 and the governor’s mansion in 2012, controlling state government for the first time in over a century, North Carolina Republicans eliminated the earned-income tax credit for 900,000 North Carolinians; refused Medicaid coverage for 500,000; ended federal unemployment benefits for 170,000; cut pre-K for 30,000 kids while shifting $90 million from public education to voucher schools; slashed taxes for the top 5 percent while raising taxes on the bottom 95 percent; axed public financing of judicial races; prohibited death row inmates from challenging racially discriminatory verdicts; passed one of the country’s most draconian anti-choice laws; and enacted the country’s worst voter suppression law, which mandates strict voter ID, cuts early voting and eliminates same-day registration, among other things.

The fierce reaction against these policies led to the Moral Monday movement, when nearly 1,000 activists were arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience inside the North Carolina General Assembly, rallies were held in more than thirty cities across the state and the approval ratings of North Carolina Republicans fell into the toilet. Sample signs at today’s rally: “OMG, GOP, WTF. It’s 2014, not 1954!!!” “Welcome to North Carolina. Turn Your Watch Back 50 Years!” (See my Twitter feed for photos of the rally.)

The Moral Monday protests transformed North Carolina politics in 2013, building a multiracial, multi-issue movement centered around social justice such as the South hadn’t seen since the 1960s. “We have come to say to the extremists, who ignore the common good and have chosen the low road, your actions have worked in reverse,” said Reverend William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP and the leader of the Moral Monday movement, in his boisterous keynote speech. “You may have thought you were going to discourage us, but instead you have encouraged us. The more you push us back, the more we will fight to go forward. The more you try to oppress us, the more you will inspire us.”

If today’s rally was any indication, the Moral Monday movement will be bigger and broader in 2014. An estimated 15,000 activists attended the HKonJ rally last year, bringing thirty buses; this year, the NC NAACP estimated that 80,000–100,000 people rallied in Raleigh, with 100 buses converging from all over the state and country. It was the largest civil rights rally in the South since tens of thousands of voting rights activists marched from Selma to Montgomery in support of the Voting Rights Act.

“This Moral March inaugurates a fresh year of grassroots empowerment, voter education, litigation and non-violent direct action,” Barber said. There will be a new wave of direct action protests when the North Carolina legislature returns in the spring, a new wave of activists doing voter mobilization and registration during the “Freedom Summer 2014,” and litigation challenging North Carolina’s voter suppression bill. The movement will be active in the streets, in the courtroom and at the ballot box. They will be focused not just on changing minds, but on changing outcomes.

To that end, the HKonJ coalition called for five demands:

• Secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that insure economic sustainability;

• Provide well-funded, quality public education for all;

• Stand up for the health of every North Carolinian by promoting health care access and environmental justice across all the state's communities;

• Address the continuing inequalities in the criminal justice system and ensure equality under the law for every person, regardless of race, class, creed, documentation or sexual preference;

• Protect and expand voting rights for people of color, women, immigrants, the elderly and students to safeguard fair democratic representation.

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Barber has frequently called North Carolina “a state fight with national implications,” and that message has started to break through nationally. Moral Monday spinoffs have begun in Georgia and South Carolina, and national progressive leaders like Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers traveled to Raleigh to lend their support today. “This is a movement, not a moment” is a frequent refrain among Moral Monday activists. “This was just the beginning,” Barber said after the rally. “We did not come all this way just to go home.” Barber just wrapped up a sixteen-city tour of the state last week. He’ll hit the road again next week.

By the end of the rally, the sun had finally come out. “Even the universe is blessing us,” Barber said.

Copyright © 2014 The Nation -- distributed by Agence Global

HKonJ: Thousands March in Downtown Raleigh
Thomasi McDonald
News Observer
February 8, 2014

RALEIGH — State NAACP President William J. Barber II laid out goals for a diverse coalition of groups Saturday afternoon at a rally attended by thousands of people from all over the state and the nation who marched, sang, chanted, cheered and even danced through downtown Raleigh.

Organizers said the “Mass Moral March” was intended to push back against last year’s Republican-led legislation in North Carolina.

Barber called for well-funded public education, anti-poverty policies, affordable health care for all that includes the expansion of Medicaid, an end to disparities in the criminal justice system on the basis of class and race, the expansion of voting rights and “the fundamental principle of equality under the law for all people.”

“We will become the ‘trumpet of conscience’ that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called upon us to be, echoing the God of our mothers and fathers in the faith,” he said. “Now is the time. Here is the place. We are the people. And we will be heard.”

The mammoth crowd that gathered in downtown Raleigh represented a variety of causes that joined last year’s Moral Monday protests, but the event also brought in groups and individuals usually on the fringes of state politics.

Susan Fariss of Mocksville drove three and a half hours to hold up a sign supporting the legalization of medical marijuana.

“I have several health problems that cause me pain,” Fariss said. “I have tried Vicodin and different muscle relaxers, but no matter what I’ve tried, I’m in pain. My doctor told me he could not prescribe it, but he recommended medical marijuana.”

Holiday Clinkscale, 60, of Raleigh climbed atop a big potted plant on Fayetteville Street and twirled an American flag above his head. He wore a leather jacket decorated with red, white and blue stars and stripes. Clinkscale wore the regalia on behalf of “depressed” African-American men.

“Black men in Raleigh couldn’t wear red, white and blue after the Civil War when we were freed, or they would have been executed,” he said. “You see a lot of black men here today looking depressed.”

In solidarity on issues

Wake County attorney Daryl Atkinson was at the march, but the look on his face was one of purpose.

Atkinson, who volunteered to represent some of the people arrested at last year’s Moral Monday protests, said he had a long list of reasons for attending the rally.

“Everything from trampling on our voting rights, to the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, not extending unemployment benefits and not expanding Medicaid. The list goes on,” he said.

Hannah Osborne, a student at N.C. State University, said she came to the rally Saturday morning to “promote women’s rights and a woman’s right to choose.” She and her father, Dale Osborne, a pastor at Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, held purple signs that read “Stop the war on women.”

The march, known as the Historic Thousands on Jones Street, or HKonJ, was organized by the state NAACP and Barber. He and his group drew national attention last year for organizing the Moral Monday demonstrations to protest what they called “immoral” legislation enacted by Republican leaders including Gov. Pat McCrory and House Speaker Thom Tillis. Those policies included new abortion restrictions, an election-law overhaul that will require voter ID and cuts to unemployment benefits.

The McCrory administration tried to block previous Moral Monday events. In late December, a Wake County District Court judge overturned a decision by the administration to keep demonstrators off state Capitol grounds and confine the events to Halifax Mall, a big grassy area enclosed by the state office and legislative buildings.

The procession of marchers Saturday stretched across six blocks for well over an hour, from its starting point at South Wilmington and South streets, turning onto Davie Street and turning again on Fayetteville Street. Raleigh police didn't release a crowd estimate, but police spokesman Jim Sughrue on Saturday said the march organizers submitted a permit application that planned for 20,000 to 30,000 people. Organizers say last year’s event drew 10,000 people.

Conservatives stand firm

The organizers called the event a “Moral March on Raleigh,” but for those on the other side of the political aisle, it is the organizers of Saturday’s march who are unethical.

“The so-called Moral March on Raleigh is anything but moral,” Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the NC Values Coalition, said in a news release. “It is spearheaded by groups that support abortion and homosexual marriage.”

Dissenters were notably few, but marchers at the beginning of the route were sternly warned by Alan Hoyle of Lincolnton. He was outfitted in a rough burlap garment that covered his red sweatshirt and blue jeans, and he held a sign that read, “Abortion, Adultery, Homosexuality, Sin. Christians Repent. America’s Judgment is Here.”

“God says, you’re already defeated!” Hoyle thundered in response to passing marchers who chanted, “The people united, can never be defeated!”

On the eve of Saturday’s march, N.C. Republican Party Chairman Claude Pope called for a more civil discourse in light of his party’s “overwhelming victory” that put a GOP governor in office and gave the party control of the General Assembly for the first time in 140 years. Pope said that Barber has a right to protest but that he’s protesting on the wrong side. Pope characterized previous Democratic administrations under former Govs. Mike Easley and Bev Perdue as corrupt and inept but said the Republican majority still “welcomes ideas from the other side.”

“What we are saying today is that civil discourse needs to return,” Pope said.

‘Not a small minority’

Leading state Republicans say that they are offended by Barber’s “divisive rhetoric” and that the state NAACP leader has been anointed the de facto head of North Carolina’s Democratic Party.

Pope called on state Attorney General Roy Cooper and U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, both Democrats, to clarify whether they endorse Barber’s “far-left agenda.” Cooper is expected to run for governor against McCrory in 2016, and Hagan is up for re-election this year.

“Barber’s ‘moral march’ is nothing more than a partisan political rally endorsed by the Democratic Party and fringe far-left groups like MoveOn.org and Planned Parenthood, which have recruited liberal activists from other states to attend (Saturday’s march),” Pope said.

But Mark Peterman, a state employee who lives in Raleigh, said state leaders should realize that the demonstrators do not represent a small minority.

“We want to show the governor and the legislature that we are here to stay,” he said. “As time goes on we need the governor and the legislature to do what is right for all people, not just a small minority of business interests.”

The annual march takes place the second Saturday of February and has grown over the years since it started in 2007. Organizers claim partnerships with 150 groups representing teachers, working families, religious leaders and civil rights advocates.