By Melvin Harris Jr.
(For the Charlotte Post)
Bishop William Barber II, a Goldsboro, North Carolina minister and founder of Repairers of the Breach, led a rally Monday at the Government Center to urge North Carolinians to challenge the extremist agenda of state lawmakers at the ballot box. Barber maintains that the General Assembly’s Republican supermajority hasn’t addressed the effects of poverty, where there are 4.2 million poor and low-income people who account for 40.2% of the state’s population.
Thirty-seven percent of the state’s workforce, or 1.8 million people, earn less than $15 an hour.
“There’s not a state in this country where the poor and low wealth voters who have not voted, if you could mobilize those that are already registered, they could determine who sits in the legislature, who sits in the Senate, who sits in the Congress, who sits in the presidency,” he said.
Before Barber took the microphone, Madeline took to the microphone to discuss her experiences as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community and low-wage worker.
Madeline, who declined to reveal her last name, believed it was important to attend the rally despite not being a big public speaker because telling her story felt “necessary.”
“It felt like it needed to be said,” she said. “Everyone has their own problems; some might be bigger than others, but everyone needs to be heard.”
Barber started Moral Mondays in 2013 to focus on how General Assembly policies impact vulnerable communities in five areas:
- Systemic racism and poverty
- Ecological devastation
- Lack of access to healthcare
- Economy
- Religious nationalism
The percentages of low-wealth voters vary by state. For example, they make up 7% of Georgia’s electorate. In Florida, the percentage is 3% and Michigan it’s 1%.
In North Carolina, the percentage is 19%.
“That’s what I hope that most of the people here walk away from and this 19 to 20% can change the trajectory of the state,” said the Rev. Glencie Rhedrick, associate minister at First Baptist Church-West and co-chair of the Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice.
She hopes North Carolina’s religious leaders and people negatively impacted by legislative policy spread the word to advocate for change starting with election outcomes.
“That’s the hope, that those who were here take the message back,” she said. “Those who were able to see it virtually will embrace the message and spread the word so that we can really do the organization that we need to do to shift the negative dynamics that our city and state face.” Moral Mondays have always been strategic in organization and that’s the way Barber likes it.
“The worst thing you can do is be loud and wrong,” he said. “And the worst thing you can do is want to change with no strategy. It ain’t enough to cuss the darkness, you got to have a way to get to the light.” Part of the Moral Monday’s strategy is messaging what’s “right versus wrong” rather than comparing political parties.
“We don’t have to endorse candidates,” Barber said. We can endorse principles. We can endorse consciousness because if you tell people where people stand on the issue, they know who to vote for and you won’t even tell them who to vote for, you just have to tell them ‘He voted against your living wages.’”
Nevertheless, Barber left rally-goers with a simple message.
“We will organize, we will build, we will bring a better reconstruction into existence,” he said. “And we will be known as the generation that rose and put those extremists in their place. It’s possible we do it right, some of them will come on over here and join us in the fight for love and the fight for justice.”
