Rev. William Barber’s Moral Monday movement is one of the factors attributed to removing Pat McCrory from the governorship of North Carolina. He tells how resistance works.
Rev. William Barber, The Nation: North Carolina: A Case Study for Resistance in the Trump Era
North Carolina’s economy working again. Celebrated as a moderate mayor in Charlotte, our state’s largest city, McCrory was glad to sit and listen to our concerns. “I’ll meet with you once a month if you will promise not to criticize this administration in public,” McCrory told me. Politics, he believed, was the art of negotiating deals in private. But we had already learned what every American must understand in the coming Trump years: Democracy depends on everyday people standing together in public, refusing to be divided by those who refuse to serve the common good.
McCrory came into office in 2012 through a backroom deal designed to fracture our moral coalition. Confident that black religious voters could be split off from marriage-equality advocates, Republicans put Amendment One on the 2012 primary ballot to define marriage in the state constitution as a union between one man and one woman. McCrory’s coalition of voters was baited by fear of gay marriage, much as Trump held out fear of immigrants, Muslims, and protesters in this year’s campaign.
Defining the moral position is part of the struggle.
Along with much of the rest of the country, North Carolina fell victim this year to the extremism we’ve not yet experienced in Donald Trump. But we could not be deceived by the extremism we have endured under Pat McCrory. Though we know too well that America faces some tough days ahead, this moral victory should give all Americans reason to hope that we can revive the heart of our democracy and move forward together to a more perfect union.
In February 2014, 80,000 North Carolinians rallied in support of Rev. Barber’s positions in Raleigh. Subsequent rallies in cities throughout the state occurred before the 2014 election; it was not enough in part because the Democratic candidates stood apart from the movement.
Roy Cooper refused to defend HB-2 (Hate Bill 2) in court; in that decision, he implicitly adopted Rev. Barber’s position. He won election by 10,000 votes in a narrowly-decided election.