(My apologies for not writing about Moral Monday #8; I made it back home to Raleigh after NN13 and caught a bus from the airport directly to the N.C. General Assembly just in time for the Moral Monday protest, but I was already fighting a virus and ended up in the hospital with pneumonia within a day. I wasn't able to attend the July 1 Moral Monday protest but write from the experiences of friends who attended, as well as media coverage. I'll be back soon, though!)
Yesterday's Moral Monday, the ninth wave of the protests against the Tea Party/Republican supermajority's efforts to ramrod 2,000 pieces of ALEC legislation through the General Assembly, focused on the war against North Carolina's unemployed.
Seventy-two people chose to take songs and prayer into the General Assembly building and refuse to disperse when asked to do so by the police; they were arrested for failure to disperse, criminal trespass, and violating rules of the GA building. Handcuffed and taken through pre-processing in the General Assembly's basement cafeteria, they were then taken to the Wake County Detention Center, where they were processed and taken before a county magistrate.
The total number arrested in the nine waves of civil disobedience is at 682, including a small number who've been arrested in Witness Wednesday protests at the General Assembly and the N.C. State Capitol down the block, where Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and his state budget director Art Pope maintain their offices.