You are cordially invited to attend a reception featuring,
Rev.
William Barber, President of the North Carolina State NAACP and
leader of theÂ
Moral Mondays Movement. Â Join national
faith, labor and community leaders as we support the largest movement
in the South since Selma!
The weekly Moral Monday protests at the North Carolina
Statehouse transformed state politics in 2013, capturing the
hearts and minds of progressive activists across the
nation.
Since taking over the
Legislature in 2010 and the governor?s mansion in
2012?controlling state government for the first time since
1896?North Carolina Republicans have transformed a state long
regarded as one of the most progressive in the South into Alabama
virtually overnight. They eliminated the state earned-income tax
credit for 900,000 people; refused Medicaid coverage for 500,000;
ended federal unemployment benefits for 170,000; cut $200 million to
public education; slashed taxes for the top 5 percent while raising
taxes on the bottom 80 percent; passed one of the country?s most
draconian anti-choice laws; and enacted the country?s harshest
voting restrictions, which mandate strict voter ID, cut early
voting, eliminate same-day registration and ax public financing of
judicial races, among other things.Â
Last April 29, after the new voting restrictions
were introduced, Barber and sixteen other ministers and civil
rights veterans were arrested inside the State Legislature for
trespassing and failure to disperse. Barber called it a peaceful
?pray-in.? The next week, thirty more people were arrested. The
numbers grew quickly. By the end of July, when the Legislature
adjourned for the year, thirteen protests had been held at the
General Assembly and nearly 1,000 people had been arrested, most
for the first time in their lives.
Barber took the show
on the road when the Legislature left town, holding twenty-five
rallies across the state, in progressive strongholds like
Asheville and in heavily Republican mountain and river towns. It
was tough to find a week when there wasn?t a Moral Monday event
going on.
The movement?s most
important accomplishment has been to build a multi-issue,
multiracial, statewide progressive coalition, one that North
Carolina?or the South, for that matter?has never seen.
?In
a Southern state, an African-American is leading a multiracial
movement that I believe represents the majority of the people of
the state,? says Penda Hair, co-director of the
Advancement Project, a national civil rights
group that is advising the North Carolina NAACP.
?It?s a huge
breakthrough in terms of racial barriers in the South.?
In 2014, the Moral Monday movement will be active in the streets,
in the courtroom and at the ballot box. It will be focused not just on
changing minds, but on changing outcomes.
