Rev. William Barber Brings Mountain Moral Monday to Asheville

Dr. William Barber NAACP-NC president, shared statistics on  Medicaid, Education, and Voting Rights.  Photo: Urban News
Dr. William Barber NAACP-NC president, shared statistics on Medicaid, Education, and Voting Rights. Photo: Urban News

When the North Carolina NAACP’s Moral Monday demonstrations moved to Asheville August 5, the event broke records both locally and statewide.

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North Carolina’s Mountain Moral Monday demonstration August 5 brought 7,000 to 8,000 WNC residents to Asheville’s City-County Plaza; the audience stretched all the way to the Vance Monument.

The brainchild of the NAACP-NC and its state president, Dr. William Barber, Moral Mondays have brought together a broad coalition of North Carolinians who object to the policies and tactics of newly empowered majorities in the state House and Senate and new governor Pat McCrory.

Traditionalist African American churches have made common cause with women’s rights and gay rights organizations, environmentalists, healthcare advocates, and civil rights groups ardently opposed to voter-suppression legislation.

“They have sought to divide us,” said Barber. “But because they have attacked everybody, they have united us. They are bringing us together like never before.”

The demonstration brought 7,000 to 8,000 WNC residents to Asheville’s City-County Plaza.  Photo: Urban News
The demonstration brought 7,000 to 8,000 WNC residents to Asheville’s City-County Plaza. Photo: Urban News

Multiple Issues Generate Broad Coalition

Since the first Moral Monday at the state capitol in April, more than 900 NC citizens have been arrested, and as many as 20,000 have demonstrated against the legislature’s rejection of expanded Medicaid coverage, slashing unemployment benefits, enacting the strictest abortion restrictions in the nation, and, more than any other issue, restricting the ability of North Carolina’s elderly, poor, students, and African Americans to register to vote. [See Dr. William Barber on the New Voting Suppression Law]

The range of issues has helped cement the broad coalition while garnering wide geographic interest. Former state Representative and Buncombe County Commissioner Patsy Keever, one of the organizers of the event, said, “We have people coming from Yancey, Madison, Henderson, Mitchell … I think at least 11 counties. It’s really overwhelming.”

“It’s teachers, it’s everyone who’s invested in education, and in making good health care available, and in voting rights; to me those are the core issues, but people are hurting all over the state. I think what drives so many of us who are involved in this fight is the belief that everyone who has the right to vote should have the opportunity to vote.”

Strong Leadership to Challenge Bad Leaders

Keever praised Dr. Barber as “someone who can gather people in, like a shepherd, and that’s what we need. He gathers together people of all races and faiths, men and women, people with different issues and backgrounds … and when so many people from so many different backgrounds are all hurting together, well, it reaches a tipping point.”

Why Asheville? At a press conference before the demonstration, Dr. Barber explained, “We have been holding these rallies in Raleigh at the state legislature because that’s where the legislature and its leadership have been. We’ve been addressing our concerns to McCrory, [Senate President Phil] Berger, and [House Speaker Thom] Tillis. Now we’re going to address them to [state Senator Tom] Apodaca and [Buncombe County Representatives Nathan] Ramsey and [Tim] Moffitt… What they’ve voted for goes against our deepest constitutional values; what they’ve voted for is immoral when you set it against real biblical values: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’” (Matt. 25:40)

Economic Choices at Issue

Barber presented a report card on the 2013 legislative session: legislators, he said, kept 500,000 people from getting health care, 160,000 of them children; took 170,000 people off unemployment; ended tax credits for the working poor; raised taxes on 85% of the state’s citizens—but gave $10,000 tax cuts to millionaires.

“When people fall on hard times, government should step in to help, not step on them,” said Barber. “But on June 30 alone, 70,000 people lost their unemployment insurance compensation. That takes $20 million dollars a week out of our economy. That’s not just cruel, it’s not just bad policy, it’s insane economics.

“They’ve also ended the EITC in North Carolina,” said Dr. Barber, referring to the Earned Income Tax Credit. “The EITC has been helping 907,000 state residents—64,000 of them military families in North Carolina. That takes even more millions of dollars out of circulation.” Because it rewards work while discouraging reliance on public welfare support, Barber noted, “Even Ronald Reagan called EITC a great tool to help working people.”

Teachers Slashed, Teaching Trashed

He also pointed out that legislators claim to have increased the education budget, because there are more dollars, but when adjusted for inflation and growth in enrollment, per-student spending has fallen to historic lows. “Under this government 5,000 teachers will lose their jobs, and more than 5,000 teacher assistants will also be out of work. In the mountains here, and down on the east coast where I come from, in rural areas all over this state teachers are revered; education is seen as the way to better yourselves. But the legislature has decided to deconstruct and defund public education.”

The spending cuts, upper-income tax cuts, drastic cuts in benefits, and widespread increases in taxes on working people will combine to take more than $1.2 billion out of the state’s economy in the coming two years. Because working people spend most of their incomes on necessities, supporting stores, services, and other businesses, the austerity budget is a recipe for economic stagnation—as has been seen throughout Europe.

A Long List of Insults

Dr. Barber highlighted laws that will deny health care to half a million residents and deny raises and jobs to teachers, but he also pointed out numerous other areas of concern. New laws, he said, “will hurt the unemployed, take away Asheville’s right to its water system, harm the state’s environment through unregulated fracking, hurt women’s rights to healthcare, and, worst of all, attack the precious right to vote that so many of our grandparents died for, our parents fought for, that we have given of ourselves to achieve. It is now easier to register a gun in North Carolina than to register to vote.”

He pointed out that morality is at the core of democracy and our Constitution: the Founders believed that only a good and moral people can rule themselves. “This is not about liberal versus conservative; it is not about black versus white; it is not about left or right, but about right and wrong.”

Residents protest new laws that will harm our  environment and contaminate our water.
Residents protest new laws that will harm our
environment and contaminate our water.

Fusion Group Brought Many Speakers

Other speakers on Monday included NAACP Asheville Branch president John Hayes; former 1960s Civil Rights organizer Bob Zellner; healthcare advocates Leslie Boyd and Dr. Errington Thompson; educator Lindsay Furst; and representatives of the AFL-CIO, the Campaign for Southern Equality; the Mountain Voices Alliance, and the WNC Alliance.

Performers included Taylor Scott, a seventh-grader at Valley Springs Middle School; Rockell Scott, Minister of Music at Mt. Zion Church (and Taylor’s mother); David Lamotte; the Green Grannies, and Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell.