The NC Council of Churches is proud to publish a brand new e-book collection of testimonies from Moral Mondays. With 32 short vignettes from North Carolinians across the state, Voices of Moral Mondays tells the story of everyday folks being motivated to speak out on account of their faith. Many, though not all, of the accounts describe what it was like to engage in civil disobedience and be arrested by the authorities. Click here to download the free e-book.
By Laurel Green, Charlotte
There is a bond between people who are arrested together performing civil disobedience. It grows from a soil of shared experience and blossoms into a garden of interwoven visions.
There are way too many reasons I felt compelled to take a stand as a part of Moral Mondays. From the privatization trend in our state to the outrageous intrusions on women’s choices, from the dismantling of safety nets to the destruction of our environment, to the attempts at ripping away progress in civil rights, to the shredding of our public education system, the list is long and horrifying. North Carolina is being used as a petri dish right now by groups like ALEC; if we cannot stop them, surely other states will follow.
But I suspect that most of you who’ve found your way to these words already know these things. So instead I will share what it was like for me to participate in civil disobedience with 150 of my new dearest friends.
Those of us who had decided to risk arrest met ahead of time in a church where general info was given and questions were answered. Together we sang, prayed, laughed and prepared. This was one of the most inspiring uplifting parts of the experience, the energy when we left was of hope and commitment.
Almost 2,000 people gathering on the lawn, the heartfelt opening words during the rally, slowly marching by twos together into the NC General Assembly, all these things helped to replace moments of nervousness with pride and resolve.
Time began to alternate between stretching and contracting. Climbing the flight of stairs took a microsecond, but the final steps into a bowl of gold doors, fountains, cameras, and uniformed officers took much, much longer.
The sense of community and shared purpose was so strong as we listened to impromptu speeches and powerful prayers that it was easy to forget what was about to happen. But voices on megaphones and men in tall hats brought the present back into slow-motion focus.
I looked up to find a friend, a trusted ally standing in the galley above. In that moment of solidarity, eyes offering and receiving strength, I felt the support and joy of ancestors who cleared these paths so that we might walk them.
Being arrested is hard. Swallowing anger at injustice, even when you prepare in advance, takes deep breathing. It is also sad. I could feel a deep sorrow behind my eyes that things had come to this.
Being arrested is hard. Swallowing anger at injustice, even when you prepare in advance, takes deep breathing. It is also sad. I could feel a deep sorrow behind my eyes that things had come to this.
Being arrested is also incredibly empowering. The despair I sometimes feel fell away as I put one foot in front of another, taking my place in a line of people with hands bound, boarding a bus singing, heads held high.
As the stress, tension and fear fell away, the giddy humor took over. We did it. We were on a bus that reminded us all of childhood, singing hilarious variations of what were somber songs a few hours earlier. We made jokes that with hindsight were probably unwise under the circumstances, but nothing interfered with our sense of victory in that moment. We decided the beauty of the sunset was in celebration of freedom. We giggled like children as we combined our efforts and opened all the windows.
Being transferred from one grey bench to another, in and out of a dozen different cinder block rooms all painted white provides lots of time for storytelling. Conversations with strangers-that-are-now-your-family range from sharing deeply held beliefs and formative experiences to moments of improv theater that are hilarious and priceless. The uniformed men and women who were our companions in the multi-roomed ballet of grey benches eventually gave up trying to contain their own laughter. Our struggle was not with them; everyone present realized it.
We were tired, hungry, uncomfortable and did I mention tired? We laughed, a lot, but we were also deeply aware of the somber reasons that brought us all together sharing that experience. I know I was not alone in awareness of the privilege that allowed us to have made the choice we did or of the many people we were representing. We worked to keep our spirits high, floating on winds of change, but no one took the day’s events lightly, I suspect we will all carry the experience within for many years.
The final thing I must share is how important it was to feel, viscerally feel, the support and love from those people who surrounded us at every step with their own strength. We knew we were not alone, not for a single moment.
We may come together “in spite of” our differences, but we leave honoring and understanding them as a part of our strength. Forward. Together.