Moral Monday Movement Launches #TalkUnion Tour
September 2, 2014
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| Thousands of demonstrators rallied outside the North Carolina Statehouse in Raleigh during a Moral Monday protest in June 2014. |
The Moral Monday Movement has concluded another series of protests to expose and challenge destructive laws in North Carolina.
The #TalkUnion tour kicked off on Labor Day in downtown Raleigh where union and civil rights leaders rallied in support of a minimum wage increase and workers’ rights.
“CEOs are making 300 times the average worker,” said MaryBe McMillan, Secretary-Treasurer of the North Carolina AFL-CIO. “Corporate profits are the highest they have been in 85 years. We can afford to pay workers a living wage.”
The tour made stops in Greensboro and Charlotte.
#TalkUnion came just days after seven consecutive days of action across the country – the first multi-state Moral Monday movement to date. Organizers from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin gathered each day around common themes – labor rights, education, equality, women’s rights and health care. The week ended with a mass rally for voting rights on August 28, the 51st anniversary of the historic March on Washington.
Moral Mondays began in 2013 as a grassroots response by the North Carolina NAACP to a sharp conservative turn in North Carolina’s political leadership.
“Today, statehouses like ours in North Carolina are engaging in a modern form of nullification and interposition, so we are mobilizing to critique these regressive policies,” said Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP. “The attacks are the same. They’re all coming from these Tea Party extremists. Each state has to deal with its own internal issues. But we are united with our vision and what must happen.”
