'Historic Thousands' march to legislature

Several thousand activists parade through downtown Raleigh to support a 14-point agenda of social reforms

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CORRECTION

A box in Saturday's City & State section that accompanied a story about the Historic Thousands on Jones Street march incorrectly stated one of the march's goals for government employees. Marchers sought collective bargaining power for public employees.

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RALEIGH -- The crowd flowed down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and parted like a river around the Capitol. Carrying signs proclaiming support for unionization, vegetarianism, abolishing the death penalty, ending the Iraq war and countless other causes, the marchers converged in front of the Legislative Building.

"The people united," they screamed, "will never be divided."

Saturday was the second time in two years that protesters from dozens of social reform groups took over the streets of downtown Raleigh to demand a laundry list of legislative changes.

Organizers say the marches mark the beginning of a new activism in North Carolina. They have hopes of coalescing into a movement as powerful as the civil rights struggle, forcing state legislators to adopt reforms that aid minorities and the poor.

"I think we all understand that we have incredible opportunity to effect real change in '08," said Paige Johnson of Orange County, a Planned Parenthood employee carrying a sign demanding sex education in public schools. "We're united in a way we've never been before."

Several thousand people gathered at Chavis Park and then marched a mile and a half to Jones Street. The march, dubbed Historic Thousands on Jones Street, is organized around an ambitious 14-point agenda with an undetermined price tag that would likely reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The constitution says it's our mandate to care for everybody," said Rev. William Barber, head of the state branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "We're calling on North Carolina to remember her soul."

Leadership and tactics

The marches are largely the work of Barber, who shortly after taking the reins of the NAACP in 2006 gathered the leaders of more than a dozen statewide organizations to hammer out a common agenda. He has since signed up more than 70 groups willing to rally with him.

Barber says that although blacks and whites are no longer separated by law, minorities still face huge disparities and are largely ignored by a state legislature influenced more by powerful lobbyists than the plight of the poor.

Minorities in North Carolina are far more likely than whites to drop out of school, to be imprisoned, to live in poverty, to be the victims of crime and to die young.

"We need a movement that will lift the hopes of every child," Barber screamed to the crowd Saturday. "We need a movement that will not leave the poor to fight by themselves."

Time well chosen

Some lawmakers say they are impressed with Barber's strategy. Rep. Paul Luebke, a Durham Democrat, said that he hears from Barber and other NAACP leaders regularly and that the annual Jones Street march sends a message that the group speaks for the masses.

"This agenda may take years to go forward, but if you do not have a large agenda, you will not get change," Luebke said. "Look at the civil rights movement. If you go back to the 1950s, most white people thought that black demands for equality in the South were a joke."

Rory McVeigh, a sociology professor in the University of Notre Dame's Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change, said Barber has chosen a time that is ripe for reform.

"When public opinion starts shifting, when people are dissatisfied, when 70 percent of the people don't approve of the president's job performance, that's an opportunity," McVeigh said.