Moral Monday charges dropped

Eight months later, the 57 Moral Monday protesters who were arrested on May 20 had their charges dropped.

The Moral Monday movement spanned last year’s legislative session, with crowds gathering almost every week to protest against policies passed by the Republican-led N.C. General Assembly.

Nearly 1,000 people were arrested and charged this summer at Moral Monday protests.

Wake County has been handling all the charges, and the May 20 charges were dropped last week.

Some UNC faculty members and students were among those arrested.

Patrick Conway, chairman of UNC’s economics department, was arrested May 20.

Conway said he never intended to get arrested.

“My protest was a passionate response to a wrong-headed policy,” he said.

Jennifer Ho, a UNC English associate professor, also participated in Moral Monday protests on a different date, though she was not arrested.

“As someone who believes in issues of social justice, I felt it was incumbent on me to be present and register my constitutional right of protesting,” she said in an email.

“I fear that under the current administration, many who have been historically disenfranchised in the past will see themselves disenfranchised anew with policies that don’t allow women access to safe and affordable abortions, that don’t allow all North Carolina educators a fair and equitable wage that is commensurate with the kind of job that they are doing — educating the citizens of North Carolina — and that the gains made in the contemporary civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in terms of voting rights access are being undermined by the policies of the current North Carolina administration.”

Conway said he believes those on both sides of the state’s political debate can still reconcile their differences.

“We are never past a point of negotiation,” he said. “I expect them to eventually get to that point.”

Conway also emphasized that his decision to protest was entirely a personal one.

“The protests are an individual choice, not an academic decision,” Conway said. “My decision to protest was driven by the government’s decisions and the seeming inability of outsiders to speak and reason with them. I’ve been able to voice disagreement in the past, but not now.”

The N.C. chapter of the NAACP, one of the lead organizers of the protests, expressed enthusiasm about the dropped charges in a press release issued last week .

“Since the District Attorney has begun trying the Moral Monday cases, the record of conviction has cast doubt on whether any of these cases should have been tried in the first place,” the release states.

The release noted that none of the May 20 arrestees who have faced trial so far have been convicted. Overall, 31 people have been acquitted and 13 have been convicted.

The group also indicated in the release that the Moral Monday movement will continue to challenge the General Assembly’s policies, with a protest called Historic Thousands on Jones Street, planned for Feb. 8.

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