North Carolina’s Moral Monday Movement Kicks Off 2014 With Massive Rally in Raleigh

[deminks]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/178291/north-carolinas-moral-monday-movement-kicks-2014-massive-rally-raleigh#

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 (SNCC) 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 54 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).

(snip)

The Moral Monday protests transformed North Carolina politics in 2013, building a multiracial, multi-issue movement centered around social justice that 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 80-100,000 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.

(end snip)



Did you know there was a massive rally today?

The revolution will not be televised.

[dsc]

1. I did but I was in it

so that probably helped with my knowing about it.

[deminks]

2. Good on you! Thank you.

[TheMathieu]

6. Keep up the good work. nt

[DURHAM D]

9. Same here.

ETA: I was pleased to see such a large Planned Parenthood presence but I was disappointed that they were out of pink hats by time I went to their table. Did you get one?

[dsc]

10. yep got one

but my head was a bit big for the hat had to wear it pulled down to cover my ears. Got that and the equality sign at about 915 or so.

[marions ghost]

3. Good article in The Nation

excerpt:

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

MORE PIX:

http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/image_gallery/13371594/

[marions ghost]

4. WRAL coverage:

http://www.wral.com/news/local/video/13372497/

[marions ghost]

5. AP coverage:

http://www.heraldonline.com/2014/02/08/5657107/annual-march-rally-builds-upon.html

[WorseBeforeBetter]

7. Yes, I knew.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10694381

[bkanderson76]

8. I Did Not Know This and I Thank You deminks

[marions ghost]

11. K&R