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Thursday, May 16, 2013

News 'Moral Monday' protests at General Assembly to continue indefinitely

Posted By on Thu, May 16, 2013 at 11:31 AM

Fourty nine people were arrested in Raleigh on Monday for trespassing and failure to disperse at the General Assembly. They were protesting the destructive extreme right agenda currently moving through our state's legislature.

This was the third consecutive Monday of demonstrations. The NAACP, leaders of the weekly protests, dubbed them "Moral Mondays" in an effort to make Republican lawmakers consider the moral implications of their legislative war on North Carolina's poor and middle class.

  • "This political juggernaut runs totally contrary to what North Carolina has stood for during the last half century."

Though their party often professes a love of Christianity - and even sought to make it our official state religion earlier in the legislative session - these Republicans are not doing what Jesus would do. (Last I checked, Christ didn't go into villages and command the poor to go without all their resources so that King Herod could have a few extra bottles of wine with his dinner feast.)

For their part, state Republicans claim they are just enacting the "will of the people" and have dismissed the protests as angry Democrats, jealous they're not in control.

Privately though, they may be worried. Dallas Woodhouse, the state director of Americans for Prosperity, which backs many of the policies put forward by GOP leaders, sent an email to reporters asking them not to cover the protests.

Previous "Moral Mondays" saw 56 others arrested for trespassing and failure to disperse, including two prominent North Carolina historians: William Chafe, a Duke University history professor and the former dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, a UNC Chapel Hill history professor.

They penned a joint op-ed for Raleigh's News & Observer, stating they were compelled to participate in this act of civil disobedience to stand up to what they called a "headlong assault" on the legacy of our state by the governor and state legislature.

"This political juggernaut runs totally contrary to what North Carolina has stood for during the last half century," they wrote. "It represents class warfare against the middle class and the working-class residents of our state. Justice lies at the core of our civic life. And we are all responsible for sustaining that justice."

State NAACP President William Barber has said "Moral Mondays" will continue indefinitely.

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