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Moral Monday in Raleigh, NC
May 20, 2013

Why did I stand with 56 others in the General Assembly Building on May 20th, the 4th wave of Moral Mondays, to offer myself for arrest?
As a representative of Veterans For Peace, I felt the need to protest the threats by the NC Legislature and Governor McCrory to deny veterans’ health care and unemployment insurance, and the government’s refusal to prosecute institutions which have illegally foreclosed on homes owned by active duty service members.
As a representative of NC Peace Action, I work to build a culture of peace, which requires that we honor the directions of our founding documents to establish justice and promote the general welfare.  The actions of this legislature and this governor are intended to reverse hard-won civil rights victories of previous generations.
What did I hope to accomplish by my participation in civil disobedience at the General Assembly?
As Frederick Douglass said in his speech to the Women’s Suffrage Association in 1888:  “All good causes are mutually helpful.  The benefits accruing to this movement are not confined or limited…They will be shared by every effort to promote the progress and welfare of mankind everywhere and in all ages.”
My participation in the Moral Monday movement is in solidarity with the people of North Carolina who stand for justice.  This is the great, as yet unfulfilled promise of America.  We occupy a hemisphere which has become home to descendants of epic migrations of human populations from every corner of the world.  It is here in the Americas, I believe, that we will come to know the truth that all humankind comprise a single human family, and that age-old institutions that oppress any group or individual based on age, race, class, ethnicity, gender, or gender orientation will fall when enough people act in solidarity with this truth.

John Heuer
NC Peace Action

Eisenhower Chapter 157, Veterans For Peace

 

 

John Heuer

John Heuer and Wally Myers, advanced guard of Moral Monday 12.

John Heuer