Around 80,000 to 100,000 people from 32 states marched in Raleigh, North Carolina on Saturday to protest the state’s GOP-led legislature’s extremist attacks on human and voting rights and vital public assistance programs.
The “Moral March on Raleigh,” organized by Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) People’s Assembly Coalition, was the “largest civil rights rally in the South since tens of thousands of voting rights activists marched from Selma to Montgomery in support of the Voting Rights Act,” said Ari Berman, a writer for The Nation who attended the march. Moral Mondays, smaller weekly protest gatherings of activists against the measures, have been ongoing since last year.
Protesters marched from Shaw University to the state Capitol holding signs that called out state lawmakers for enacting restrictive policies regarding abortion, voting rights, labor, and education, among others. In particular, since taking over the state government for the first time in a century, North Carolina Republicans passed extreme anti-choice and voter suppression laws, diverted millions from public education to voucher schools, and cut taxes for the top 5 percent while raising taxes on the bottom 95 percent, among other changes.
Media Resources: ThinkProgress 2/9/14; Salon 2/9/14; The Nation 2/8/14; Feminist Newswire 10/1/13, 1/21/14
