Mayoral candidate Martin Ramsey urges support for ‘Mountain Moral Monday’ rally

Here’s the press release from Asheville Mayoral candidate Martin Ramsey:

ASHEVILLE, NC, Aug. 5th, 2013 –

Throughout the past year the NAACP, civic, women’s rights, LGBT rights, labor groups and citizens from all walks of life have convened on the statehouse in Raleigh to express their discontent and anger with policies of the General Assembly they say are regressive.

Today, citizens across western North Carolina will rally in support of the “Moral Monday” movement for what Asheville mayoral candidate Martin Ramsey says is “an effort to build for a future that does not render the humanity of our most vulnerable citizens invisible.”

A local event scheduled today for 5pm at Pack Square has been gathering steam on Facebook with nearly 2,500 people pledging to attend, including state NAACP leader Dr. William Barber.

The Ramsey campaign staff and the candidate himself will be there in solidarity with those speaking out.

“It is imperative that we, North Carolinians, articulate our dissatisfaction publicly and begin to organize in our workplaces, communities, and in the political sphere to reject this vision of America and our state’s future,“ says Ramsey. “As a lifelong North Carolina resident, educated in our public schools and colleges, raised by a public teacher and in the rural northeast, I cannot stand quietly by and allow the attack on local sovereignty, women’s rights, the poor, and the marginalized to continue. We simply must do better. We must do more than bear witness to injustice. We must articulate an alternative.”

The Asheville mayoral hopeful has been using his campaign to encourage people to attend “Mountain Moral Monday” to “stand with our fellow citizens in order to make ourselves visible to those wrecking our state and future.”