Can “ Moral Mondays” Save North Carolina from Immoral Governance?

by Tucker Jones

The North Carolina General Assembly has proposed some pretty outrageous legislation over the past year. At one point, it introduced legislation reaffirming the state’s right to declare a “state religion”—a right any high school student could tell you doesn’t exist. Some proposals, like this one, were quietly withdrawn after drawing laughter from the rest of the country, but far too many have either already passed or on their way to become law in the next few days. 

Just to list a few:

• Additional and unnecessary abortion restrictions, which will close all but one or two clinics across the state, were attached to a completely unrelated motorcycle safety bill. The wording of the restrictions and the arguments of the Republican legislators were nearly identical to what we heard in Texas last month. Republican Governor Pat McCrory promised during his campaign not to sign any new abortion restrictions into law, but he has already publicly stated that he will sign the bill. The only good news out of all of this is that pro-choice supporters got the phrase #MotorcycleVagina to trend on Twitter.

• “Tax Reform” has been passed, which has reduced the total amount of state revenue, shifted the tax burden away from wealthy individuals and corporations, and increased taxes on the poor and middle classes. Again, during his campaign, Governor McCrory said that any sort of “tax reform” would have to be revenue neutral, but he is either lying, has a different definition of neutral than the rest of us, or can’t do math. Which reminds me…

• This year the state budget will hit schools hard, ending funding for teacher assistants, eliminating higher pay for teachers with master’s degrees, gutting textbook and technology funds, and will in all likelihood lead to fewer teachers and even larger class sizes. In the meantime, legislators have designated part of the public education budget to cover vouchers for private schools, many of which are not properly accredited and many of which do not separate religion from education.

• Republican legislators rejected $780 million in federal funds to pay unemployment benefits for their constituents. North Carolina is the only state to have done this, evidently because no other state thought it wise to reject federal funding being distributed to every state in the nation. As a result, 70,000 unemployed North Carolinian workers have had their unemployment aid cut in half—or eliminated altogether.

• Republican legislators also turned down federal Medicaid funds, which would have insured over 500,000 North Carolinians and saved the state billions of dollars over the next decade. This seems to be an effort to spite President Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, at the cost of citizens’ health and taxpayer money.

• Republicans have repealed the Racial Justice Act, which previously allowed death sentences to be commuted to life without parole when there was evidence of racial bias in the court proceedings.

• Republican legislators have also been making an effort to punish Democratic strongholds by seizing property from cities. The General Assembly voted back in April to transfer ownership of the regional water and sewer system in Asheville away from the city and into the hands of the state government, over citizen protests. Now they’re doing the same with the Charlotte airport, the largest in the state and one of the busiest in the world. Though the City of Charlotte has run the airport successfully, safely, and profitably for 70 years, the General Assembly has passed a bill to seize it without compensating the city. In Durham, the Legislature is doing the opposite, forcing the city to annex a neighborhood that doesn’t want to be in town. The common thread here is that the Legislature is taking money away from cities, especially Democratic ones, and forcing new expenses upon them as punishment.

• Despite there being only two instances of in-person voter fraud in the past six elections, Republican legislators have passed new restrictions on voting, in the name of fraud prevention. Voters will now have to provide identification at the polls. This doesn’t sound like an egregious law at first, but over 300,000 North Carolinians currently lack valid ID. Oh yeah, and college IDs don’t count. The law also authorizes more election “observers” from each party at the polls; the same sort of these “observers” were caught lying to voters to turn them away in the 2012 election. Further, North Carolina’s Republicans have cut the early voting period, ended voter pre-registration in high schools, and have eliminated one-stop registration and voting.

• It might be harder to vote, but it’s now easier to carry a concealed firearm. Concealed weapons will now be allowed on campuses of public universities, and in restaurants and bars where alcohol is served.

It’s an extremely disheartening time to be a moderate in North Carolina, let alone a progressive. Fortunately, there’s one thing restoring my hope.

On Monday, July 22nd, I attended the 12th weekly “Moral Monday” protest, organized by the North Carolina NAACP and joined by various other groups such as NARAL, Planned Parenthood, unions, and environmental groups. This was my fifth Moral Monday attendance, and every week I went, I found more and more protesters standing with me on the Halifax Mall, in the center of the North Carolina Government building complex. Some estimates of crowd size reached 5,000 or more attendees.

I admit, I’m not a frequent protest attendee, but the coalition that North Carolina’s NAACP has brought together is the broadest I’ve ever seen. Further, each meeting is punctuated by invocations to God and calls to prayer. They’re not called “Moral” for nothing—protesters claim the moral high ground, with the facts on their side. While “What Would Jesus Do?” is an open question, I think most people would agree that He’d be for more people receiving health care, not fewer. After all, He gave away health care for free.

This is not to say that the protests are exclusively Christian. Leaders from local Jewish and Muslim communities have made their own prayers from the stage, atheists and agnostics are welcomed in the speeches, and one section of the field is designated to meditation.

Still, it’s clear that Rev. Dr. William Barber, President of the NAACP of North Carolina and de-facto leader of the protests, draws inspiration and tactics from the Civil Rights era, when Black religious communities across the South were the major organizers of acts of civil disobedience. Though a few of my non-religious friends were slightly uncomfortable with the amount of prayer during the protests, I reminded them that the tactics were hugely successful fifty years ago.

Aside from folks like me just showing up for the protests, over the past twelve weeks, over 900 people have been arrested in acts of civil disobedience. The volunteers, soon to be arrestees, first go through training at a local church, and then file into the North Carolina State Legislative Building around 6:30 every Monday, followed by a crowd of witnesses. Together they sing songs and chant until the Capitol Police warn them that they will be arrested should they continue. The witnesses remain in the building but stay silent as the volunteers disregard their orders; they then cooperate with the Capitol Police as the officers bind their hands in plastic zip-tie cuffs and march them out of the building into the prison busses waiting outside.

As the arrestees are loaded into the buses, a crowd cheers them on from across the street. They are then processed at a local detention center and released to friends and supporters, including Duke professor Tim Tyson, who welcomes them with lamb stew.

The sheer numbers of demonstrators and arrestees shows that there is a popular movement against the outrageous acts of legislative malpractice that the North Carolina Republican majority is forcing through. In fact, recent polls show that the Moral Monday protests have a higher approval rating than the General Assembly itself! But we’re more than a year away from the next elections.

The challenge for North Carolina progressives, moderates, and others who seek sane governance, will be to sustain this movement until November 2014. Between the gerrymandering and the new voter suppression efforts, get-out-the-vote campaigns will be more important than ever.

Until then, protests will continue at the Legislature every Moral Monday, and they’re spreading to cover more of the week as the session winds to a close.

With that, I’ll see you next Monday.