Will more ‘Moral Monday’ protests affect the North Carolina Senate race?

an anything upset the script of the 2014 U.S. Senate election in North Carolina, as it’s now being written? It may depend on whether a 2014 renewal of the “Moral Monday” coalition and an accompanying voter registration effort will increase dissatisfaction with the state’s rightward legislative shift and motivate enthusiasm for the Democratic incumbent.

Because of diverse opposition to issues that range from a refusal of the Medicaid expansion to education cuts to limits on unemployment benefits to new voting rules now being fought in the courts, the nationalized partisan voting trends hardening in a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll may not be as firm in North Carolina.

Past is present as North Carolina honors 1963 march and battles voting laws

CHARLOTTE — In North Carolina, commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s dream credited past struggles while a current battle over voting laws took center stage.

In an uptown Charlotte park Wednesday, the crowd used the examples of civil rights pioneers in a continuation of the Moral Monday protests against conservative laws from the Republican-controlled state legislature. Similar gatherings were planned in each of the state’s 13 congressional districts. While many issues, including education and health care spending, were reflected in comments and emblazoned on signs, the new state voter-ID bill was a unifying cause.

Later Wednesday evening, several Democratic and Republican legislators took questions from their Mecklenburg County constituents in a raucous forum called, ironically as it turned out, “Solving It Together.” At the top of the list in hundreds of questions submitted beforehand – voter-ID laws.

North Carolina activists draw inspiration from 1963 March on Washington

CHARLOTTE – A Moral Monday gathering in Charlotte this week channeled sights and sounds of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 50 years ago.

As the sun broke through the clouds in the late afternoon, more than 2,000 stood and sat, sang and waved signs, listened to speakers, and wondered if some gains of the civil rights movement are slipping away in North Carolina.

It was a dress rehearsal for those planning to make the trip to Washington for Saturday’s commemoration of the historic march.

Linda Bain, listening on Monday, said she planned to travel from Charlotte to Washington by bus for Saturday’s events, meeting friends from New York City, where the retired educator lived before her move south this year. She missed the first march.

“I was a little too young,” she said. “I’m feeling more and more compelled to be there,” Bain said, “because of what’s going on here in North Carolina and around the country.”

Moral Monday’s Making its Mark in Charlotte


 

Charlotte, N.C.- Moral Monday’s have made their mark on Charlotte. Fair pay, voting and funding for education were just some of the topics demonstrators focused on. Mary Curtis was there and has an inside report.

Growing protest vs. conservative legislation: North Carolina in the national spotlight

CHARLOTTE – North Carolina’s Republican Gov. Pat McCrory was a rock star to the crowd gathered at the party’s 2013 state convention over the weekend at the Charlotte Convention Center. But as the conservative agenda led by GOP super-majorities in both the state House and Senate in Raleigh continues to advance, disapproval is mounting, with an increasing amount of national attention.

How did a Republican wave overtake a Southern state long thought of as moderate, even progressive, one that gave Barack Obama a narrow win in 2008 and where the vote was close as Mitt Romney took it in 2012?

And will a growing and diverse group of protesters gathering weekly at the state legislative building in Raleigh for what they call Moral Mondays, speaking up and being arrested, be able to turn back a tide of legislation North Carolina NAACP president Rev. Dr. William Barber calls “extreme and immoral”?