At least one bus full of Wilmington citizens will be heading to the capitol to join thousands standing in the NAACP's Moral March on Raleigh next weekend. Today, the Reverend Dr. William Barber, President of the North Carolina NAACP, addressed about 60 people at a local Baptist church. Barber came to mobilize citizens to stand up against the Voter ID Bill, and state cuts to education and Medicaid.
Citizens of 18 other states are also joining the upcoming march against what Barber describes as the moral and constitutional inadequacy of North Carolina's recent legislation. Barber likens Raleigh to a modern-day Selma--which is the Alabama city where Dr. Martin Luther King assembled thousands to launch a massive march for equal voting rights in 1965.
"Georgia saw what we're doing; now they're standing up against their legislating government, too. Alabama's coming on board. Florida, in March. Virginia has formed a People's Assembly. It's the spirit of it. It's almost, as Dr. King said, an idea of people whose time has come, people realizing that we don't have to be locked into the language of liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican. There is another language, a language about what's moral, what's constitutional, that gives people the space to be human."
Barber adds that Wilmingtonians in particular have a voice in this dialogue. He says that in 1868, blacks and whites came together here, and worked to amend the state constitution to incorporate principles of racial justice.
***For more information about the Forward Together movement, click here. On Saturday, February 8, several citizens are meeting at Wilmington Central Church of Christ, at 1134 N. Kerr, to bus to Raleigh at 6:30 a.m. Tickets are $20. Citizens are welcome to pay via credit card or PayPal at the New Hanover County NAACP website.