Moral Monday returns to Raleigh with Rev. Barber in high spirits ahead of D.C. march
The Poor People’s Campaign’s first Moral Monday rally in Raleigh since before the pandemic was rung in late Monday afternoon with gospel music and hundreds gathered in Bicentennial Plaza on Jones Street.
“Somebody’s hurting my brother, and it’s gone on far too long and we won’t be silent anymore!” was sung by marchers, with Yara Allen’s soulful voice leading the Theomusicology and Cultural Arts group, the musical arm of the Rev. William J. Barber’s civil rights organization Repairers of the Breach.
The rally coincided with one in Madison, Wisconsin, as part of the “Mobilization Tour” consisting of 12 rallies to build momentum for a major march in the nation’s capital on June 18, the “Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and To the Polls.”
Speakers energizing the crowd included labor organizers, workers seeking to unionize and members of the clergy.
When Barber and activists held the first Moral Monday rally in April 2013, he said 50 people gathered outside the General Assembly and 17 were arrested for “holding up pictures of the Constitution and scriptures from the Bible.”
“Little did they know that that 17 would turn to 34 and 34 would turn to 68, and so forth and so on until a mighty movement began across this nation,” Barber said.
Through the summer of 2013 as the weekly Moral Mondays rallies swelled, more than 1,000 people were arrested for acts of civil disobedience, The News & Observer reported.
Barber and organizers of the Poor People’s Campaign faced the challenge of COVID-19 gathering restrictions over the past two years and Barber himself recovered from the virus this past January.
Among the speakers Monday was Alyssa White, a Starbucks worker in Raleigh’s midtown area on Wake Forest Road whose employees are the first in North Carolina to form a union at the coffee shop chain.
“A major motivator for me in organizing a union at my store is that it might inspire both Starbucks partners and other workers in this state once we win, and I look forward to carrying that momentum into our march on D.C.,” White said.
Other speakers included Shannon Wait, a temporary worker at Google from South Carolina of the Communication Workers of America Local 1400 and the Alphabet Workers Union who won an unfair labor practice settlement with the company last April.
Barber repeated one of his most common public messages: 140 million people in the U.S. — more than 43% of the country’s 2017 population — was living below 200 percent of the poverty level before the pandemic.
Some of those people were workers deemed “essential” but treated as expendable, he said, adding that large corporations’ profits have soared during the pandemic at the expense of workers.
“I said a few years ago when I was standing before some 60 million people that America needed a defibrillator and that we need to shock the heart of America, but after COVID ... we don’t need to shock the heart, we need a heart transplant,” Barber said.
Last summer, he was arrested in Washington, D.C. by police during protests calling for higher wages and voting rights, the same things being demanded at the comeback of Moral Mondays.
This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 8:29 AM.
