Thousands of Moral Monday protestors line up to enter the N.C. General Assembly’s Legislative Building Monday. They walked through the building silently with tape over their mouths." />
Victoria Crocker
Thousands of Moral Monday protestors line up to enter the N.C. General Assembly’s Legislative Building Monday. They walked through the building silently with tape over their mouths.
Protesters gathered for the first Moral Monday of the 2014 Legislative session Monday evening in front of the N.C. General Assembly to continue to fight against many of the laws passed in last year’s session and to continue to show their support for many social and political causes.
Led by Rev. William Barber II, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP and leader of the Moral Monday movement, protestors taped their mouths shut to illustrate dissatisfaction with new rules passed by the Legislative Services Commission last week.
Although the old rules required visitors not to disturb the legislature, Barber and his supporters said the new rules remain vague and are intended to censor a citizen’s right to speak.
By the end of last summer’s demonstrations, 945 people were arrested for singing, chanting, holding placards and refusing to leave the premises of the State Legislature. However, no protestors were arrested Monday.
Before rallying in front of the State Legislature, Barber and his supporters gathered at the First Baptist Church on Wilmington Street where they met with supporters, many from the clergy, to set the tone for their plans for this and future Moral Mondays and to respond to the new rules.
“We know what Dr. King said in 1968,” Barber said. “Silence is betrayal. We will not betray the poor. We will not betray our children. We will not betray the sick. We will not betray labor rights. We will not betray the sick. We will not betray the LGBT community. We will not betray women. We will not betray the immigrant. We will not betray our forebears and foremothers and fathers. We will not betray our future. You get one time for us to show you how crazy that is, and after that, it’s over, baby!”
During Monday’s protest, demonstrators didn’t practice civil disobedience and instead walked in pairs through the rotunda. Most of them walked silently while holding their placards whichstated various messages regarding healthcare, teacher tenure and general dissatisfaction with current legislation, to show members of the General Assembly their voices would still be heard.
“This is the only time we’re going to do this,” Barber said. “We’re going to put a piece of paper over our mouths to show the nation what democracy would look like if Thom Tilllis was in charge.”
Like the previous Moral Monday movement and the HKonJ march in February, the spectrum of demonstrators represented people of different races, religions and socioeconomic statuses.
Capitol police estimated the crowd to include about 1,500 people. NAACP representatives put the crowd size closer to 5,000, the News & Observer reported.
Protesters also engaged in what they called a Love Feast, which involved breaking bread with the attendees to demonstrate all residents of North Carolina should share in “one loaf, and no one should try to take the whole piece and leave crumbs for everyone else.”
Barber also announced that he and his supporters would return Tuesday to attempt to meet with Republican legislators to repent for the harm their laws have caused North Carolinians, repeal the most extreme of those laws and restore North Carolina to its status of a moderate, bipartisan state. The “Three R’s” were a repeated theme throughout Monday’s event, cited by many speakers.
This act of civil disobedience, which Barber called the People’s Lobby, will be held at 9 a.m. on May 27.
Barber and other speakers repeatedly called the Republican legislators “extremist, not Republican” during their addresses to the audience, citing the progressive work of political figures such as Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower as real Republicans.