Esse Quam Videri: To Be Rather Than To Seem
The first (and, until yesterday, last) protest I ever attended was in Southern California in 1971, part of the Moratorium movement to end the war in Vietnam. We scrofulous hippies and yippies were met by the then-novel sight of row upon row of black-suited, body-armored SWAT teams swinging truncheons and spraying mace. We marched. We shouted out. We cried. We bled. And, finally, we won.
Fast-forward to 2014, and my second-ever political protest (OK, so I've been kind-of busy for the past 43 years, alright?), in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. This is another Moral Monday, an ongoing effort organized by the state NAACP chapter, many churches, and a variety of liberal groups to protest the (temporarily) Republican-controlled legislature's Koch- and ALEC-inspired efforts to deconstruct North Carolina before this now-purple Southern state becomes too blue for their tastes. Gerrymandering. Fracking. Voter suppression. Medicaid denial. Sharp cuts to public education. Coal ash spills. Banning marriage equality. Hobbling environmental protection. Raising taxes on the working poor while giving the rich yet more tax breaks. Republican Governor Pat McCrory, House Speaker Thom Tillis (the 2014 Republican nominee to run against incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan for the U.S. Senate) and their minions have been busier than a one-armed paper hanger for the past two years overturning much of the body of established law that once made North Carolina the most progressive (and successful) state in all of Dixie.
Moral Monday protests happen every week that the legislature is in session here in NC, inside the state legislature building. Last year, over 900 folks were arrested for peaceably airing their grievances. But yesterday, to kick off the new year's efforts, arrests weren't on the program. Instead, about 2,000 of us sealed our mouths with duct tape and marched in eerie silence, two by two, through the legislature building while the Senate sat in session, in symbolic protest of a new rule, passed in the middle of the night, empowering state police to arrest anyone in the building who appears to be an "imminent threat" of creating a disturbance -- even if no crime is committed. We were black, white, brown, gay, straight, young, old, permanently disabled, temporarily enabled, unions, churches, musicians, laborers, professors, mothers with babes in arms, veterans, physicians, and so many more. This is indeed the Democratic Big Tent. We looked like America. It reminded me more of a church supper than a political action. Security for the march was provided by stooped grey-haired retirees. We marched to the tune of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" from loudspeakers across the street.
The Moral Monday movement is beginning to spread to other Southern states, like Georgia. So, what are the rest of y'all in the other 48 states doing next Monday?