Interchange – Indiana Moral Mondays

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Host Doug Storm is joined by William Morris and Joe Varga to discuss the genesis of the Moral Mondays Movement in North Carolina and how it has begun to form a broad coalition here in Indiana.

A Mother Jones article from April, 2014 describes the impetus for Moral Mondays as being political action against a Republican agenda in North Carolina. The Republicans “who in November 2012 took control of the state Legislature and the governor’s mansion for the first time in more than a century. Among their top priorities—along with blocking Medicaid expansion and cutting unemployment benefits and higher-education spending—was pushing through a raft of changes to election laws, including reducing the number of early voting days, ending same-day voter registration, and requiring ID at the polls.”

But perhaps deeper than this “fusion politics” is an engagement with an ethics of care.

The Indiana Moral Mondays Mission Statement:

We, the people, coalitions and faith communities of Indiana hereby form Indiana Moral Mondays Movement in order to promote a just society in which every person is valued, and resources are used for the common good.

In doing so, we seek to embrace the moral values and the enduring qualities of love found in the secular and spiritual communities from which we come.

Find out about this weekend’s event in Indianapolis, “Forward Together with Reverend Dr. William Barber II”  at the group’s website, Indiana Moral Mondays.

Guests:
William Morris is an attorney with Indiana Legal Services where he works on low-income housing and homelessness prevention. Prior to that he was a civil rights lawyer for a dozen years in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Morris is a member of the Indiana Moral Mondays Steering Committee.

Joe Varga is an Assistant Professor of Labor Studies at Indiana University. He is a former Teamster shop steward and long time labor activist, having worked for the IBEW and the New York State Working Families Party. He is currently working on a project detailing the spatial history of de-industrialization in Southern Indiana. Joe is also active in Jobs with Justice, and numerous other activist causes.

Credits:

Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Board Engineer: Jonathan Richardson
Executive Producer: Alycin Bektesh