INDIANA MORAL MONDAYS’ WORKING GROUP
PLANS SEPTEMBER STATEWIDE MOBILIZATION
Harry Targ
The new Indiana Moral Mondays’
Working Group will kick off the formation of a statewide grassroots activist
organization on September 19-20, 2014 in Indianapolis, hosting faith community
meetings with Reverend William Barber from North Carolina; workshops on
organizing, and a major mobilization featuring speeches by Barber and leaders
from around the state. Organizers are inviting activists from around the state who
are committed to building a new moral movement to improve the lives of workers,
women, people of color, the young and old, gays and straights, and immigrants.
Civil rights, labor, environmental,
religious, women and other activists have been meeting since March in
Indianapolis to develop this Indiana statewide network inspired by the North
Carolina “Moral Mondays” movement.
The Hoosier network will challenge
reactionary policies adopted by the Indiana legislature and supported by
Governor Mike Pence. Activists want to reverse efforts at voter suppression and
the weakening of worker rights. They demand Medicaid expansion, legislation raising
the minimum wage, the closing of coal powered plants that pollute communities,
and increased support for public education.
At its June 14 meeting attendees
representing the NAACP, labor unions, and environmental and women’s groups
approved a Mission Statement that will guide the work of the new network. It
includes calls for equal justice, an end to disproportionate incarceration of
minorities, the right of workers to organize, well-funded public education,
environmental justice, full voting rights, and immigrant rights. Of particular
relevance to Indiana history the Mission Statement calls for the transformation
of the “history of racial bigotry in Indiana to one of racial and ethnic
equality and unity.”
The
Emergence of Moral Mondays in the South
Moral Mondays refers to a burgeoning
mass movement that had its roots in efforts to defend voter rights in North
Carolina. Thousands of activists have been mobilizing across the South over the
last year inspired by Moral Mondays. They are fighting back against draconian
efforts to destroy the right of people to vote, workers’ and women’s rights,
and for progressive policies in general.
Moral Mondays began as the annual
Historic Thousands on Jones Street People's Assembly (HKonJ) in 2006 to promote
progressive politics in North Carolina. Originally a coalition of 16
organizations, initiated by the state’s NAACP, it has grown to include 150
organizations today promoting a multi-issue agenda. In 2006, its task was to
pressure the state’s Democratic politicians to expand voting rights and support
progressive legislation on a variety of fronts.
With the election of a tea-party
government in that state in 2012, the thrust of Moral Mondays shifted to
challenging the reactionary policies threatening to turn back gains made by
people of color, workers, women, environmentalists and others. Public protests
at the State House weekly in the spring of 2013 during the state legislative
session led to over 1,000 arrests for civil disobedience and hundreds of
thousands of hits on MM websites. Similar movements have spread throughout the
South (Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida) and in some states in the Midwest
and Southwest (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Missouri). Moral Mondays in
North Carolina resumed in February with 80,000 activists in attendance.
Rev. William Barber, a key organizer
of the movement, has grounded this new movement in history, suggesting that the
South is in the midst of the “third reconstruction.” The first reconstruction,
after the Civil War, consisted of Black and white workers struggling to create
a democratic South (which would have impacted on the North as well). They
elected legislators who wrote new state constitutions to create democratic
institutions in that region for the first time. This first reconstruction was
destroyed by white racism and the establishment of Jim Crow segregation.
The second reconstruction occurred
between Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 and President Nixon’s 1968
“Southern Strategy.” During this period formal segregation was overturned,
Medicare and Medicaid were established, and Social Security was expanded.
Blacks and whites benefited. Dr. King’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign envisioned
a defense and expansion of the second reconstruction. However, the Nixon presidential
campaign encouraged appeals to racism and began the process of reversing reforms
in the region and the nation at large.
Now we are in the midst of a third
reconstruction, according to Barber. Political mobilizations today, like those
of the first reconstruction, are based on what was called in the 1860s “fusion”
politics; that is bringing all activists—Black, Brown, white, gay/straight,
workers, environmentalists, immigrants—together. Fusion politics assumes that
only a mass movement built on everyone’s issues can challenge the billionaire
economic elites such as the Koch brothers and their Wall Street collaborators
with masses of people (the 99 percent). Fusion politics, he says, requires an
understanding of the fact that every issue is interconnected causally with
every other issue. Therefore, democracy, civil rights, labor, women’s,
gay/lesbian, immigrant, and environmental movements must act together.
The Indiana Moral Mondays Working
Group has created committees to organize the September events and to build the
organization. In addition Indiana Moral Mondays Working Groups are being
constructed in cities around the state.
