Injunction Ordered On Moral Monday Protest Rules in NC!

http://www.880therevolution.com/articles/local-news-122546/injunction-ordered-on-moral-monday-protest-12464149/

Posted Monday, June 16th 2014 @ 6am

Today's Moral Monday protest is expected to take place free of the rules that attempt to tell demonstrators how loud they can make their cause heard. Courts in the capital district have temporarily blocked rules aimed at the weekly demonstrations. The judge in the case even going so far to say that banning protesters from disrupting people talking in a normal tone of voice was "overboard." The temporary injunction will only be in effect for 2 weeks, with a full trial expected in the weeks ahead

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Moral Mondays’ Activists Slam North Carolina’s New Restrictions On Protests, Prepare To Defy Them
BY JACK JENKINS MAY 16, 2014

http://thinkprogress.org/home/2014/05/16/3438828/new-restrictions-on-moral-mondays-protestors/

North Carolina lawmakers announced strict new rules limiting where and how citizens can protest in the state Legislative Building on Thursday, a move many see as an attempt to stifle the progressive “Moral Monday” protests that continue to gain momentum in the Tar Heel state.

During the second day of the state’s 2014 legislative session, the North Carolina Legislative Services Commission, which has not met since 1999, announced a new set of regulations that overhaul building rules unchanged since 1987. Although state Republicans claim the new rules are only meant to lesson “disturbances” so lawmakers can conduct business, the regulations are sure to impact the ongoing Moral Mondays protests, a progressive grassroots movement in North Carolina that sprung up last year in opposition to a series of conservative laws passed by the North Carolina state legislature. Thousands of North Carolinians have expressed their fierce disapproval of the Republican-dominated General Assembly by protesting in and around the state Legislative Building over the past year, with more than 900 people reportedly arrested inside the building’s central rotunda for civil disobedience since April 2013.

But according to the new rules unveiled by the commission, groups are no longer allowed to “disturb, or create an imminent disturbance” at the Legislative Building, and visitors may be asked to leave if they are found to be disturbing “the General Assembly, one of its houses, or its committees, members, or staff in the performance of their duties.” Behaviors said to violate the rules include “singing, clapping, shouting, playing instruments or using sound amplification equipment,” or activities that defined many past Moral Mondays demostrations.

The rules—which were supported by a majority of Republicans but opposed by Democrats—also place limits on where protestors can gather at the General Assembly, especially on the main South entrance—the site of many previous Moral Monday protests. Groups that expect to involve between 25 and 200 people are allowed to reserve space at the South entrance, but the same location “may not be reserved for coordinated activities the person or group reasonably expects will involve 200 or more participants.” By contrast, last year’s Moral Mondays demonstrations drew crowds that numbered in the thousands.

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“These changes in the rules that defines acceptable speech as what they consider normal is, we believe, not only a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech, but is highly offensive and prejudicial to African Americans, minorities, women, the poor, LGBT people and faith communities who have been historically criticized for being abnormal to the so- called mainstream of our country whenever they have chosen to protest,” Rev. Barber said in a statement released by the NC NAACP. “This attempt to characterize certain speech as abnormal and contrary to civility is a trick as old as when opponents of civil rights, women’s rights, labor rights and LGBT rights accused their neighbors of being too loud or too uncivil when they challenged unjust and mean-spirited laws.”

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