RALEIGH, N.C. — On Valentine's Day and Frederick Douglass's chosen birthday— thousands of moral, faith, and community leaders gathered for the "Love Forward Together" Mass People's Assembly & Moral March at the North Carolina State Capitol. The rally follows a historic 50-mile, three-day march from Wilson to Raleigh through the recently gerrymandered 1st Congressional district, drawing attention to attempts to diminish the political power of the community. Organizers of the march called for a moral and loving policy agenda that guarantees fair access to the ballot, living wages, affordable health care, and food assistance — especially after deep program cuts following the passage of the “big, deadly, ugly bill.”
Led by Bishop William J. Barber II, President & Sr. Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and Founding Director of the Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, and dozens of advocacy organizations, the mass mobilization marked 156 years since the ratification of the 15th Amendment, and offered seven moral calls to action to activate voter turnout in the state like never before.
Participants in the Mass People’s Assembly were invited to:
•Sign up to spend a weekend doing nonpartisan canvassing in District 1 or 3.
•Sign up to organize voter mobilization in a precinct in Eastern NC.
•Sign up for a phone bank or a text bank to reach infrequent voters in North Carolina.
•Sign up to do civic education about the power of infrequent low-income voters through social media.
•Sign up to host at least two local civic education meetings in your community ahead of November 3.
•Sign up to host a Souls to the Polls event during early voting and same-day registration.
•Sign up to make sure everyone in your family is registered to vote, receives voter education, and has a voting plan.
•Sign up to join online or in-person trainings in moral fusion organizing with Repairers of the Breach.
“We march because the moral arc does not bend by accident—hands bend it,” said Rev. Dr. Hanna R. Broome, Director of Religious Affairs for Repairers of the Breach. “And today, we are the arc benders—hands joined, hearts steady, love forward together, demanding a justice that reaches everybody.”
“We’ve come here today to say the love in our heart will not let us bow anymore. We cannot bow to their vision of power and we will not,” said Bishop William J. Barber II. “When we leave here, we are going back to our communities, and we are going to take love and organize everybody we know. We need love to be victorious.”
Steve Schmidt of the Save America Movement addressed the crowd, saying, “We do not come here today to negotiate or to plead for our rights because they do not come from Kristi Noem, President Trump and Pam Bondi, but from a higher power. We are not here to negotiate freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly or the freedom of religion. We are here to declare that we are not indifferent to the suffering of a child on a cold concrete floor in a jail cell, in what amounts to an American concentration camp, we say: No.”
Retired North Carolina Superior Court Judge Milton “Toby” Fitch told the crowd, “Love declares that no one is property, that every person belongs, and that every voice has the right to be heard at the ballot box. As early voting opens, we are called to turn out as never before, knowing that when we add our voices together, we exercise a power that no one has the right to take away.”
Brandon Ruffin, a member of the Union of Southern Service Workers, underscored the stakes for immigrant workers and families. “This fight is also about who belongs,” Ruffin said. “My immigrant brothers, sisters and family members are being targeted the most right now. Many of them are being detained. They are not convicted felons, and they are not criminals. They are workers, parents and neighbors.”
“When workers stand together across race, immigration status and job title, we shift power,” he added. “That’s real love in action—and we will win.”
Disability rights activist Sloan Meek delivered powerful remarks on the impact of current policies on disabled people and their families. “The cruel and deadly policies coming from our state and federal government are making us very tired,” Meek said. “We are tired of being scared for our lives, tired of being treated as disposable, tired of having our rights, our medical care, and our support taken away, and then being told that if we ask for help, we are abusing the system.”
“Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and Coretta Scott King are part of the freedom tradition of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and 161 years after Bishop James Walker Hood demanded voting rights in Raleigh, we refuse to go back,” said Bishop W. Darin Moore of the A.M.E. Zion Church. “When we show up—for justice in Minneapolis, for voting rights in Selma, for equality in Birmingham—ice melts, racism is confronted and segregation gives way, and we will keep showing up until every vote and every person is fully valued.”
“Nine years ago, when Donald Trump was first elected, many of us were so depressed, but we did what we had learned from Moral Mondays and Bishop Barber: we kept meeting, we kept studying, we kept organizing—and every time we came together, we felt better and we got stronger,” said Karen Ziegler, an Indivisible organizer “Today in North Carolina, Indivisible groups are organizing our neighbors, providing mutual aid, and working to stop detention centers, ICE abuses, and the voter suppression supported by the General Assembly and at the State Board of Elections. Join us.”
Speakers included Keith Ballard, the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, Suvya Carroll, the Rev. Frank Dew, Rabbi Lucy Diner, Judge Toby Fitch, Dennis Gaddy, Mary Hooks, Bishop George Jackson, Danyelle Holmes, Sloan Meek, Ashley Mitchell, David Neal, Alma Tinoco Ruiz, Ismael Ruiz Millan, Sangria Noble, the Rev. Della Owens-Barber, Nancy Petty, Kathleen Roblez, Brandon Ruffin, Steve Schmidt, Mona Singh, Greg Singleton, Wesley Stokes, Caitlin Swain, Imam Abdul Waheed, Wayne Wilhelmjo, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Bishop Sonya Williams, Clinton Wright, Bishop Darin Moore and Karen Ziegler.
The rally closed with Willie Nelson’s new song, “What Is America,” woven into a powerful video featuring imagery from the three-day march, for which Nelson granted special permission in support of the “Love Forward Together” movement.
The march and assembly brought together a multiracial, multifaith coalition of faith leaders, labor organizers, and impacted people, supported by the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign, Institute for Policy Studies, St. James Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), North Carolina Council of Churches, Union of Southern Service Workers, Indivisible, Second Chance Alliance, Human Rights Campaign, SEIU, Public Schools First NC, and the Save America Movement, which provided daily coverage along the route.
