Moral Monday protest planned
By From staff reports
Published in News on January 13, 2014 1:46 PM
William Barber
Goldsboro will be the site of a protest by the North Carolina NAACP on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 20.
The weekly Moral Monday protests held this past year at the state Legislative Building in Raleigh drew intense media coverage over the course of the session and ended in the arrests of a number of protesters, including Dr. William Barber, president of the state chapter.
Since the end of the session, Barber has vowed to take the protests statewide and they have been held in a number of cities.
The Jan. 20 protest will involved both the Wayne County and Greene County chapters of the organization.
It will start at 4 p.m. on the steps of City Hall on Center Street. Marchers will then proceed to the Paramount Theater. Barber and other NAACP leaders, including Wayne branch President Sylvia Barnes and Greene branch President Benjamin H. Lanier, are expected to speak.
The protests are geared toward criticism of the Republican-led Legislature's inititiatves that NAACP leaders and others say are hurting the poor, reducing funding for education and attacking voting rights.
Barber drew much attention with the series of protests at the Legislature over the summer. At a press conference held this morning at Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, he cited the reasons for the protests and the need for the Legislature to reconsider the measures that he said are hurting minority voters, the needy and the state's educational system.
Among the initiatives that are being criticized are the Legislature's decision to require voter identification at the polls and the doing away of teacher tenure in the public schools.
"This event is a call to action for our communities, and a reminder to others that we are not happy or satisfied with the decisions made by the legislators," Ms. Barnes said.
"We will not let people that we voted into office and that we placed there, we will let them know that we will not stand for this."