Clergy members rally outside Halifax Mall for “Moral Monday”

Press release from Advancement Project:

Clergy will lead the sixth wave of “Moral Monday” demonstrations during a rally outside the People’s House, the NC General Assembly, following a 26-stop Forward Together Movement Local Organizing Tour that touched communities in all corners of the state.

The rally will begin on Halifax Mall, located between the NC General Assembly (16. W. Jones Street) and the Legislative Office Building (330 N. Salisbury Street) at 5:00 pm, Monday, June 10, 2013. Some people will then peacefully move inside the NC General Assembly to give a personal moral witness and practice their constitutional right to petition their legislators for redress of grievances. There will be media availability at the beginning of the line before people enter the building.

“Over the past two weeks, we traveled the breadth of this state and one thing is certain: the people are overwhelmed by the extremism of the NC General Assembly and Governor,” said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President of the NC NAACP. “By the end, thousands of concerned North Carolinians, mothers, fathers, workers, grandparents, students, business people, educators and others came to the tour stops because the state they love is under attack by Tea Party-backed regressive forces who are committed to expanding the prosperity of the few at the expense of the many.”

“On Monday, June 10, an ecumenical group of faith leaders will encourage North Carolinians and congregants to join the growing North Carolina Forward Together Movement. These moral leaders will lend their prophetic voices and witnesses to this movement for a more democratic and just society.”

The new wave comes days after Bishops of five major denominations in North Carolina publicly endorsed Moral Mondays, including the Episcopalian, Catholic, Lutheran, United Methodist and Presbyterian churches.

“The ballot box is supposed to be the one place where every citizen – rich or poor, young or old, and of every race – has an equal voice,” said Penda Hair, Co-Director of Advancement Project. “But make no mistake about it. Everything from banning same-day registration and Sunday voting, which African-American voters are far more likely to use, to pushing for the most restrictive felony disenfranchisement law in the country, has been carefully crafted to restrict full participation in North Carolina. As a civil rights organization that has been working on the ground with the North Carolina NAACP for the past several months, are committed to using every tool at our disposal to support the work of the North Carolina NAACP.”