The Moral Mondays movement fills the rotunda at the North Carolina state capitol in June 2014.
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.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. —The Rev. William Barber, North Carolina NAACP
Deirdre Fulton writes 'Not One Step Back': Moral Marchers Converge in North Carolina:
Rallying around a 14-point "People's Agenda," thousands gathered in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina on Saturday for the annual Moral March calling for livable wages, environmental justice, healthcare for all, an end to racism and inequality, and more.
The movement stands in opposition to "the extreme and regressive agenda being pushed in North Carolina"—an agenda it says is "a reflection of what is happening across the United States."
Organized by the state NAACP and more than 100 advocacy groups, the march is an extension of the Moral Monday actions that have been taking place in North Carolina since 2013. Participants will challenge recent attacks on voting and reproductive rights, economic justice, public education, equal protection under the law, and more, under the banner "Forward Together, Not One Step Back!"
"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’t 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."
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—It Don't Mean a Thing If You Ain't Got That Theme:
It's been an unusally good couple of weeks for relations between the Democratic Party and the press. Kerry has seen his profile dramatically heightened, and during that time has received very little in the way of cheapshot Gore-ing. In fact, his record of military heroism has constantly been both implicitly and explicitly contrasted with Bush's ne'er-do-well, half-assed stint in TANG. As a result, the first bid media wave to introduce Kerry to the majority of Americans has portrayed him as the model citizen-soldier, one who fought honorably in a war that he never supported, but returned to fight just as hard to end the war. Not a bad first impression.
Meanwhile, the Bush campaign has been overtaken by malaise. The "Mars Attacks" strategy went nowhere. The SotU was a bust that left even Noonan wondering what went wrong. Bush turned in a diffident performance on MTP, was forced to play defense, and failed to resolve any of the difficult questions imperiling his image as a bold, trustworhy leader. Indeed, the major news story of February has been whether or not Bush was AWOL, a story that most Dems had resigned themselve to seeing ignored.
The results of the focus on AWOL are clear. Kerry is cleaning up in the Dem primaries and is building a lead over Bush in national polling. But I worry that the Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party are not taking full advantage of the situation. Today on MTP, Charlie Rangel turned in a pretty damn good performance. He promoted Kerry's record and vision, and made Bush look fairly awful. But when the subject turned to AWOL, Rangel got caught up in the partywde habit of focusing on the legalities of AWOL, and the question of "was he or wasn't he there."
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