PPro and the tenth annual Historic Thousands on Jones Street Civil Rights Rally

On February 12, PPro Board member Sandy Harrison ’74 drove four student members of Princeton College Democrats from New Jersey to Raleigh, NC where they stayed overnight as guests of the Martin Street Baptist Church. The following morning, they joined in the tenth annual Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) civil rights rally in downtown Raleigh to protest the regressive and very harmful policies of the North Carolina legislature and Governor. The four students, as members of the Justice Squad, helped lead a march of thousands of political activists from all walks of life to the Capitol building where many speakers made inspired pleas to push for a 14-point agenda which addressed the rights of voters, the poor, women, veterans, LGBT persons, immigrants, and minorities, as well as environment protection, expansion of Medicaid, and more. Rev. William J. Barber II, founder and leader of HKonJ (which spawned the Moral Mondays Movement in 2013), capped off the event with an impassioned speech to, among other things, combat voter suppression, which is worse in NC than in any other state. This annual rally is the largest of its kind since the 1960s anywhere in the USA. The next day, on a national MSNBC broadcast with Rev. Barber as a guest commentator, one of the film clips from the rally showed one of the Princeton students front and center (with his arms raised in the air) at least five times throughout the program.