Tennessee and National Faith Leaders to Unite for Moral Monday Rally
Repairers of the Breach
MEDIA ADVISORY FOR: April 17, 2023
Contact: Steph Derstine, steph.derstine@berlinrosen.com, 512-820-7903
Erica Noll, erica.noll@berlinrosen.com, 424-237-6790
*RALLY 2 PM CDT - MARCH 3PM CDT - ARRIVE AT CAPITOL 4PM CDT*
Bishop Barber, Rep. Justin Jones, Tennessee and National Faith Leaders to Unite for Moral Monday Rally, March to Demand Extremists Stop Using State Capitols to Trample On Democracy
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Clergy, Supporters to March to State Capitol with Caskets
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Comes One Week Before Ten-Year Anniversary and Recommitment of Moral Monday Movement
NASHVILLE - Bishop William J. Barber II, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones and Tennessee and national faith leaders will lead a Tennessee Moral Monday event in Nashville April 17, holding a rally at a local church before marching to the state capitol to deliver demands calling on state legislatures around the country to stop committing policy murder.
The Moral Monday rally will highlight the death from guns, death from denial of healthcare and death from poverty that results from extremists in legislatures across the country using state capitols to subvert our democracy. Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones may have been, rightfully, returned to their seats, but that does not remotely cover up the moral decay brought to the fore the last few weeks.
“All across the country, and especially in the South, we’re seeing attempted political coups d’etat,” Bishop Barber said. “This must be exposed. It must be challenged in a way that goes deeper than partisanism. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents must stand together to reclaim democracy. Legislators in these houses, when there’s an attempt to shut them down, must stand like the Tennessee Three and say, ‘We will not be silenced.’”
As part of Monday’s rally, faith leaders will lead a march to the Tennessee Capitol carrying child-size caskets and hand-deliver demands to lawmakers. Earlier this week, The Nashville Principles were released, a moral vision to carry our country forward and build a Third Reconstruction.
The Tennessee Moral Monday gathering comes just a week before the Moral Monday 10-Year Anniversary and Recommitment Rally at the State Capitol in Raleigh, North Carolina on April 24. Ten years ago, 17 North Carolinians walked into the North Carolina General Assembly to bear witness to the immoral attacks on the most vulnerable residents in the state. The movement went on to become one of the largest direct action campaigns at a state legislature in U.S. history.
RALLY DETAILS
WHAT: Tennessee Moral Monday Rally
WHO: Bishop William J. Barber II, President and Senior Lecturer, Repairers of the Breach
State Rep. Justin Jones
Tennessee and national faith leaders
WHEN: Monday, April 17, 2pm CDT
WHERE: Mckendree United Methodist Church
523 Church St, Nashville, TN 37219
MARCH DETAILS
WHAT: Tennessee Moral Monday March
WHO: Bishop William J. Barber II, President and Senior Lecturer, Repairers of the Breach
State Rep. Justin Jones
Tennessee and national faith leaders
WHEN: Monday, April 17, 3pm CDT
WHERE: Mckendree United Methodist Church to the State Capitol Building (600 Dr. M.L.K. Jr Blvd, Nashville, TN 37243)
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The Nashville Principles: A Moral Vision and Demands to Move Our Country Forward.
Representatives Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson may be, rightfully, returning to their seats in the Tennessee House, but that does mean the end of the moral decay in leadership that has been thrust into the limelight in recent weeks.
Jones, Pearson, and their colleague Rep. Gloria Johnson, who stood with them but wasn’t expelled, are showing us that this crisis of democracy is not about individuals. As they keep reminding us, it’s not about them alone. When Speaker of the Tennessee House Cameron Sexton sought to expel them, he was trying to expel any debate on gun control. He was trying to expel the voices of dead children speaking from the grave. He was trying to expel the voices of more than 200,000 Tennesseans, whose votes put Jones, Pearson and Johnson in the House.
Returning individuals to their duly elected seats does not solve the problem.
Extremists are using state capitols to end-run around the U.S. Constitution and the heart of our democracy. “Nashville” is happening all over the country: from Mississippi, where extremists in the state House of Representatives passed a bill creating a separate, unelected court in the majority-Black city of Jackson; to North Carolina, where a Democrat switched parties to hand Republicans a supermajority; to Florida, where voter suppression is top of the agenda in the state legislature; to Missouri, where Republicans defunded libraries. All across the country, and especially in the South, we’re seeing attempted political coups d’etat.
This must be exposed. It must be challenged in a way that goes deeper than partisanism. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents must stand together to reclaim democracy. Legislators in these houses, when there’s an attempt to shut them down, must stand like the Tennessee Three and say, “We will not be silenced.”
In Tennessee and in state legislatures across the country, we must challenge the politics of public policy murder. The failed attempt to silence three Tennessee lawmakers cannot hide the fact that extremists in state houses across the country are manufacturing death via public policy.
They won’t ban assault weapons even though they are used to create death.
They won’t pass Medicaid expansion even though the denial of healthcare results in death.
They won’t address living wages even though poverty causes death.
We must respond to this policy violence with a moral coalition that leads a movement against the policies of murder.
Ten years ago this month in North Carolina, we did just that, launching the Moral Monday movement. And it worked. To protest the extremism of a Tea Party take-over that aimed to dismantle our state government, we engaged with a diverse coalition that looked like our state for 14 weeks. We traveled across the state, right into the heart of so-called extremist politicians’ districts. We had a massive gathering of 100,000 people the following winter. And in the next election, extremists lost the governorship, the attorney general, the state supreme court and the supermajority in the legislature that they had built up as a result of racialized voter suppression.
We must not just commemorate that anniversary, but rededicate ourselves to the fight. When there’s debate on gun legislation, legislators should pack the galleries with parents and siblings of the dead holding photos of their loved ones. General assemblies should read the names of children killed needlessly by assault weapons. Just like Emmett Till’s mother did, at the beginning of the debate on gun legislation, elected officials should show the pictures of what happens to a child when their bodies are riddled with assault weapon bullets.
This is the debate we’re going to have to have. And we will not be silenced. We will wage nonviolent campaigns of civil disobedience in every state capitol where the leadership is trying to strangle democracy. In his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr wrote that the greatest enemy of the civil rights movement was moderates who loved order more than they did freedom. We will not let formality be the enemy of moving forward.
We demand that our representatives open debates with the truth, not partisan distortion: there is no corollary between more weapons and less violence.
And we pledge to show the country that this isn’t just about guns. The battle for gun laws is directly tied to the battle for the restoration of the Voting Rights Act. Anyone concerned about guns and violence must be concerned about racialized voter suppression, which allows people to get elected through trickery, not democracy, and then push policies that promote death.
If leaders of legislatures don’t want to hear the debate, they should step down.
Like Dr. King said when four little girls were blown up in an Alabama church, we must stand up to politicians who chose order over reordering. Why is it we can’t get gun laws passed? Every extremist politician who refuses to face the facts is the reason why. Every politician regardless of party who has not ensured the restoration of the Voting Rights Act is the reason why. And every preacher who has stood in the pulpit and gone along with extremism is the reason why.
We must refuse to accept the narrative that says our nation is divided between red country and blue country; there’s only one country and that’s the people’s country. There’s only states with lack of voter participation, waiting to be organized. In Tennessee in 2020, about 800,000 voters didn’t vote. Many of those who ran for office didn’t even have competition. If we didn’t have racialized voter suppression, they wouldn’t have these secure seats. If 25 to 30 percent of poor and low-wealth unregistered voters registered and voted, we could change outcomes.
Normal political logic gets upended when there’s a moral movement. And Nashville is showing again, such a movement is underway. It’s time for all of us to continue the moral fusion third reconstruction movement that has been rising up all over the country in various ways for the last 10 years. Forward Together, Not One Step Back.
*For questions or to coordinate interviews, please email steph.derstine@berlinrosen.com*
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