Since Moral Monday demonstrations began this summer, more than 900 people have been arrested at the Raleigh protests — including some UNC professors.
Tonight students will have the opportunity to hear from UNC and Duke University professors about their experiences with the Moral Mondays protests against North Carolina’s Republican-controlled government this summer.
The event will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the FedEx Global Education Center.
“All these major national news outlets are talking about what our state legislatures are doing, so we thought we’d provide the first major scholarly interpretation of Moral Mondays,” said panelist Nancy MacLean, a history and public policy professor at Duke.
“Sometimes you can read about these things in the paper, but it’s hard to distinguish what’s really there,” she said.
More than half of the panelists are members of Scholars for North Carolina’s Future, an organization committed to fostering discussions about the state’s political climate. Other panelists were invited because of their active participation in the heated protests.
Dr. Charles van der Horst of the UNC School of Medicine said he was arrested at Moral Monday in May, charged with three misdemeanors: the illegal gathering of three or more people, the failure to leave the building and singing and waving placards.
He said he strongly opposed the government’s decision not to extend Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — a change he said cut funding for AIDS drug assistance programs.
“Many of the legislative changes will kill my patients,” van der Horst said. “That cuts off funding for 1,800 people.”
