Tuesday Voice: A day after...

Moral Monday

By Jim Sadler

The editor asked me to write a reflection on Moral Mondays, presumably with some reference to a recent comment on Friday’s “Fish” column:

Since you mentioned Moral Mondays: How about asking someone from that group to write a Moristotle post article explaining what that was all about? While many of us applaud their willingness to carry “ridiculous signs,” as writer Allan Gurganus put it, we would like to know if there was ever a plan to actually accomplish something? Was this protest with a purpose, or just performance art?

If I understand the tenuous thread of logic from this commenter and the unnamed others he claims to represent, the humorist Allan Gurganus (never known for exaggeration, oh noooo...) apparently claimed that he saw some ridiculous signs at a Moral Monday protest, leading the commenter to wonder if the tens of thousands of people who attended Moral Monday protests at locations across the length of the state over a period of months were engaging in “just performance art.” He asks for someone from “that group” to explain “what that was all about.”
    It is an immense irony that this nation was observing the anniversary of the March on Washington the same week that this “just performance art” comment was made. Was there “ever a plan to actually accomplish something” with that March on Washington? “I have a dream” makes a great speech but isn’t much of a “plan.” “Just performance art?”—can’t get better performance art than Dylan and Baez, etc., singing those protest songs, dramatically staged on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And yet, although one could claim that the March on Washington was “just performance art,” here we are commemorating it half a century later.
    Because I attended a couple of Moral Monday events, the editor asked me as someone supposedly “from that group” (in the words of the commenter) to offer some thoughts “explaining what that was all about.” Let’s start with the comment about ridiculous signs. A very large number of signs at Moral Mondays were hand-made by concerned citizens who wanted to express their views. Out of thousands of such signs, maybe a few could be called ridiculous, and I’m glad that Rev. Barber told the few people with hateful signs to take them down because the protest was about love, not hate (something you’ll never hear at a Tea Party event). I made my own “Save Our Schools” sign with poster board and markers and marched around Raleigh with it. Maybe Gurganus thought that was ridiculous. I don’t give a damn that “many of us applaud their willingness to carry ‘ridiculous’ signs.” Ninety-nine percent of the signs weren’t ridiculous. Applaud that.

Moving to more serious matters, I’m afraid I can’t serve as someone from “that group” who can explain “what that was all about.” Of course, we all know that the North Carolina NAACP has been the leading organizing group for Moral Mondays in the state. “What do those people want?” “Are they outsiders?” “What is their ‘real’ agenda?” The NAACP has heard it all, and although I’m extremely grateful for their leadership in organizing the Moral Mondays, the NAACP is more than capable of speaking for itself.
    Perhaps, as someone from “that group,” I’m asked to speak for the tens of thousands of ordinary people who have come to Moral Monday protests, the most diverse crowds I have ever seen in any setting—very young to very old, all races, diverse religions/non-religions, etc. Again, I can’t presume to speak for “that group”; they were far too diverse; many are much more involved in issues than I am; and it would be presumptuous for me to present myself as their spokesperson. Unlike the non-specified “we” in the contributor’s comment, I speak only for myself.

Finally, and for me most importantly, I can’t represent “that group” because there is NO unitary single “that group”!! There were only thousands of concerned individuals such as myself. The Moral Monday protesters can’t be marginalized as “that group”—they are US. They are our friends and neighbors who are concerned about the resegregation of our schools through the “charter school” ruse, the denial of federally funded health insurance benefits to needy individuals, the pitiful pay for our teachers, the degradation of our natural resources, the attack on women’s reproductive rights through the scuzziest of legislative maneuvers, the stupid right-wing antics about Sharia law and big-gulp drinks, allowing someone with a loaded gun to sit in a restaurant next to my wife and me, and...
    the potential removal of 318,000 registered voters from the voting rolls because they don’t have a Division of Motor Vehicles ID. (About half of that 318,000 voted in the last election, but now they are not allowed to vote despite the fact that there has been no proven case of voter fraud in the last decade.)
    When it comes to the voting situation in North Carolina, you could do everyone a favor by recommending Ari Berman's July 30 article on Moyers & Company, “North Carolina Passes the Country’s Worst Voter Suppression Law.” It's concluding paragraph:

Move aside Florida, North Carolina is now the new poster child for voter suppression. The Moral Monday movement in the state is now more important than ever. Maybe someday we’ll look back at this period as the turning point when the nation realized just how important the Voting Rights Act was and is.

    To skeptics of Moral Monday, I can only offer conservative commentator David Brooks’s advice that “You don’t really want to be on the wrong side of history on this one.”
    Unlike the 1963 March on Washington, the Moral Monday events were very definite about the issues and the exact legislation that was threatened (and now enacted). Each Monday in Raleigh had a focus (health, education, voting rights, women’s rights, etc.) and addressed the specific legislation that threatened these rights.
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Copyright © 2013 by Jim Sadler

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