While thousands of students ran through the streets of Raleigh in an attempt to see how quickly they could run five miles and stuff 12 doughnuts into their mouths, several other students took to the streets for a different cause Saturday morning.
Students from various campus organizations, including the N.C. Student Power Union and the N.C. State chapter of NARAL Pro-Choice, marched in the seventh annual Historic Thousands on Jones Street rally.
The North Carolina NAACP led the rally, which featured more than 140 coalition groups and stretched from one end of downtown Fayetteville Street to the other, according to The News and Observer.
The crowd, which The News and Observer estimated to be about 10,000 people, marched in protest of a broad range of issues ranging from poverty and abortion to a proposed voter ID law and Medicaid. However, one common sentiment united the groups — discontent with the currently Republican-controlled government of North Carolina.
“They suggest this is how you fix America, this is how you fix North Carolina, this is how you fix poverty. Three things: Give more tax cuts to the wealthy, tell the poor people they need to be more responsible, and get more guns,” Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, said to The News & Observer. “That’s a ridiculous kind of rhetoric.”
Bryan Perlmutter, a senior in business administration and member of the N.C. Student Power Union, marched in Saturday’s rally along with more than 100 other members of the student group.
“It is important that students get out in the streets to make their voices heard,” Perlmutter said.
Perlmutter has organized other events for Student Power and recognized the importance of participating in the annual rally.
“This was really our chance to show the legislators that we will continue mobilizing,” Perlmutter said.
Dara Russ, a senior in sociology and president of the University’s chapter of NARAL Pro-Choice, attended the march to advocate for women who she said are currently being denied access to health care.
Though Saturday was Russ and her organizations’ first time participating in the rally, 15 people from the pro-choice group showed up to march.
“A lot of people weren’t there for our organization, but they supported our cause, so they took some of the extra signs we made to help us,” Russ said.
Russ said she thought the rally was inspiring, but she also appreciated it as an educational venture.
“Going to things like this makes the problems we face more real,” Russ said. “You see the people effected, and it makes you want to be more politically involved.”
Though Russ is a vegan and did not plan to participate in the Krispy Kreme Challenge, she said she was glad she had the opportunity to be a part of the rally.
“We went out to lunch after the rally and our waitress asked us if we had just run the Krispy Kreme Challenge,” Russ said. “It was funny because most of us were oblivious about the run, and when we told our waitress that we had come from the HKonJ she was oblivious about that.”
