'Moral Monday' protest movement returns to Raleigh
Eight years after Rev. William Barber launched the "Moral Monday" movement to protest actions taken by the North Carolina General Assembly, the protests returned to Raleigh on Monday.
Barber, former state NAACP president, now heads the national Poor People's Campaign, and Monday's rally in downtown Raleigh – along with rallies held across the U.S. – were the starting point for a year of activism expected to culminate next June with a march on Washington, D.C.
Demonstrators at the rally on Halifax Mall called for a "Third Reconstruction," saying Congress needs to address poverty and low wages from the bottom up.
President Joe Biden backed that call, saying in a recorded message played at the rally that the U.S. needs a $15-an-hour minimum wage, more affordable housing, universal pre-kindergarten and free community college.
"We all have the right to economic opportunity and health care, clean air [and] water and the right to vote," Biden said in the 90-second message. "We know it's not enough just to build back from this pandemic and the devastation it's caused for the most vulnerable among us. We have to build back better than before."
The president said his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan package of pandemic relief has already reduced hunger nationwide by 25 percent and will eventually cut child poverty rates in half.
"No matter what ethnic state you are in, it is your right to have the same equal rights as everyone else out here," said Bishop Trey Foster, of Disciples of Yahawashai’s Love & Yah’s Love Community Outreach in Raleigh. "It is your right to be able to have the opportunity and not be judged because of your social status."
Moral Monday protests were, as the name suggests, a weekly occurrence for much of 2013 and 2014, ending in hundreds of arrests at the Legislative Building. B
ut the demonstrations became infrequent after that, with the most recent one held three years ago.
