Moral Monday returns home to NC with addition of Wisconsin
Contact: Martha Waggoner | mwaggoner@breachrepairers.org
Poor People’s Campaign to announce plans for joint Moral Monday with NC & Wisconsin
The two states are the childhood homes of the co-chairs, Bishop Barber & Rev. Theoharis
The North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign, along with Bishop William J. Barber II, will hold a news conference Monday, Feb. 28, to describe plans for a special Moral Monday in Raleigh, where the movement began almost eight years ago.
The Moral Monday will include over 35 organizations and faith centers in North Carolina, all committing to mobilize their base for the March 28th Moral Monday and the June 18th Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls.
Some partners will join the news conference, which will begin at 11 a.m. at Bicentennial Plaza in Raleigh, where the first Moral Monday was held in 2013. It will be live-streamed here.
Bishop Barber and Ana Blackburn, a tri-chair of the North Carolina PPC, will announce a joint rally that will include both North Carolina and the PPC in Wisconsin, the home state of Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. Bishop Barber and Rev. Theoharis are co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
Both of these states suffer from high poverty, voter suppression, denial of healthcare and the lack of living minimum wage:
But poor and low-wealth people are a powerful voice in both states. In the 2020 presidential election, 43% of eligible poor and low-income voters cast a ballot while in Wisconsin, the figure was 39%.
The first Moral Monday was held in April 2013 when Bishop Barber led a group into the North Carolina General Assembly to protest the regressive legislation being rammed through by extremist lawmakers. Seventeen people were arrested; almost 1,000 were arrested at the end of the 2013 protests in what historians have called the largest sustained civil disobedience campaign at a state legislature in U.S. history.
The Moral Mondays rallies and associated nonviolent acts of civil disobedience grew to involve tens of thousands of participants across North Carolina and spread to states across the South. The movement waged successful legal challenges to voter suppression and racial gerrymandering, winning twice at the Supreme Court.
In 2017, the US Supreme Court refused to revive what was described as a “monster voter suppression bill.” A federal appeals court had struck down the law as an attempt to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”
The joint Moral Monday is part of a Mobilization Tour that includes at least 10 states. The Mobilization Tour will Mobilize, Organize, Register and Educate people for a movement that votes.
Speakers will demand that this nation do MORE to live up to its possibilities:
MORE to fully address the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation and the denial of health care, militarism and the war economy and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.
MORE to change the narrative and build the power of those most impacted by these injustices.
MORE to realize a Third Reconstruction agenda that can build this country from the bottom up and realize the nation we have yet to be.
The reality of 140 million people who are poor or low-wealth and just one $400 emergency away from being poor – and who represent every race, color, creed, religion, sexual orientation, ability and political party and account for 43.5% of the people living in the richest nation in the world – is a moral crisis.
In-person stops begin March 14 in Cleveland, followed by Madison, Wisconsin, Raleigh, North Carolina, DC, New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Memphis and the Delta of Mississippi.