This past weekend, the national Moral Mondays movement officially kicked off here in Indiana. The two-day event included an interfaith service with a keynote speech from Moral Mondays leader Rev. Dr. William Barber II as well as a teach-in, march, and rally at the Indiana Statehouse.
Barbara Bolling Williams, president of the Indiana chapter of the NAACP (a coalition partner with the Moral Mondays movement) said the focus of the Indiana Moral Mondays movement closely mirrors that of the original movement started in North Carolina.
“The primary focus of the Indiana Moral Mondays movement is to address the extremist and immoral laws that are coming out of our state legislature,” said Bolling Williams. She listed the expansion of Medicare, voter identification legislation, the local criminal justice system, and economic sustainability among other things the group plans to actively seek to improve.
“We believe people who work should have an opportunity to adequately support themselves and their families – it is unconscionable and immoral for unemployment benefits and a living wage to be denied to local citizens,” she said.
Destiny Martin, an 18-year- old single mother who worked in fast-food for two years, attended this past weekend’s events and spoke about her experiences to hundreds of attendees. Martin, who has been involved in protests both locally as well as in Chicago, with the Fight for 15 movement to rally for higher fast-food wages, said she was initially reluctant to participate in fear of losing her job. During a worker’s strike Sept. 4, Martin was threatened with arrest and told that if she was taken into custody, her young daughter would be taken by child protective services. She said nevertheless, her goal is to continue speaking out in hopes that more people will get involved.
“There are a lot of people afraid of getting fired so they’re scared to participate, but it really helps,” she said. “These corporations and CEOs of these restaurants are really paying attention now.”
