Rally in Raleigh: Thousands of Moral Marchers Demand Justice and Equality

The ninth "Mass Moral March on Raleigh" was organized by the state NAACP and more than 100 other advocacy groups. Speakers included state NAACP head Rev. Dr. William Barber and leaders of national unions and abortion-rights groups.

"This is our Selma," Rev. Dr. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, told journalists in a press call earlier this month, invoking the 1965 civil rights marches in Alabama that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act and were recently represented on the big screen. "Selma can not merely be a movie, it must be a movement we engage in now. Everything they won in Selma is now being attacked and North Carolina is the clearest example of that."

Taking political control of North Carolina in 2013, Republicans have passed the toughest voting restrictions in the country, declined Medicaid expansion, ended unemployment benefits, rescinded the earned income tax credit, cut public education funding and slashed taxes on the wealthy. Barber has called their agenda 'regressivism on steroids. "

"If we continue steadfastly in a powerful moral movement to hold elected leaders accountable, we can restore the heart of politics and democracy in North Carolina," Barber wrote in an op-ed in the Raleigh News Observer. "The heart is where we integrate what we know in our minds with what we know in our bones-the place where our knowledge can become more fully human. We can never waver on these matters of moral principle, including economic justice through labor rights and fair living wages, equal education and funding for quality public schools, access to health care and the promise of a clean planet. "

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