I spent most of Monday and Tuesday in Raleigh, N.C., watching the Moral Monday protest movement surge into a closed North Carolina Statehouse and watching 90 members get arrested and processed. The story is here, but here’s a second opinion. On the drive down, I talked to Republican strategist Marc Rotterman, who nicely channeled his party’s dismissiveness.
“It’s a fun time for a lot of people who want to relive the ‘60s,” he said, “but it’s not having any impact on the legislature.”
This was a diss that rang true. The protests haven’t actually gotten the legislature to back off on bills—I’ll have more today if, as expected, they push through voter ID. And a great number of the people watching and getting arrested are septuagenarians who remembered marching or spending the night in jail in the King years.
But that’s all in the piece, which covers enough ground to almost be a longread, I think.
