NC: Time Magazine and NY Times Cover North Carolina Moral Mondays’ Protestors Voluntarily Arrested About State Budget Cuts to Unemployment, Healthcare Funding and Societal Benefits

“Moral Mondays” is a multi-racial North Carolina-based and organized civil protest meeting every Monday since April on the grounds of the North Carolina State Legislature.

It is led by Reverend Dr. William Barber II, the president of the State of North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The protestors hold speeches and then peacefully enter the legislative building until they are arrested for failing to leave. Protestors voluntarily are arrested to demonstrate their personal dissatisfaction about legislative budget cuts to unemployment benefits, education and healthcare. Some say that nearly 1,000 demonstrators have been arrested connected to “Moral Mondays”.

According to national coverage by Time magazine’s political journalist Elizabeth Dias:

Almost every Monday since late April, hundreds of protestors have gathered at the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh to oppose the state’s budget cuts to unemployment benefits, healthcare funding, education, and other social benefits.

Today, July 1, the “Moral Mondays” protest may break records: Thousands of people are expected, as it is the first Monday since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned parts of the Voting Rights Act and the day that some of the most severe state cuts go into effect.

Nearly 600 people have been arrested for civil disobedience in the Moral Mondays protests since they started on April 29. Last week’s protest alone drew 3,000 people, and 120 people were arrested. The protestors range from ministers to a 60-year-old seventh-grade teacher to college students to a Duke University historian. Baptist churches host worship and prayer services before the protests begin, and regional Christian radio stations are starting to cover the protests.