Paying the Rent

“Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.” - Toni Morrison

At 1:15 in the early morning of Monday, June 2, 2025 about a dozen people from Moore County, NC gathered in a parking lot in Aberdeen to board a bus to Washington, DC for a Moral Monday with Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II and the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. This event marked the rebirth of the original Sandhills Circle of the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign, which didn’t manage to survive the pandemic in 2020.

Arthur Johnson from Wilson (front left), Al McSurely and O’Linda Watkins-McSurely seated directly behind Arthur Johnson.

We were lead by O’Linda Watkins-McSurely, one of the seventeen people arrested with Rev. Barber in the original Moral Monday on April 29, 2013, and we were joined by her husband, Atty. Alan McSurely, one of the architects of the Moral Monday Movement. The bus originated in Wilson, NC, stopped to pick us up in Aberdeen, stopped again in Sanford to pick up a few more people before heading up to Saint Marks’ Episcopal Church in Washington for fellowship, a briefing and training before we marched to the front steps of the Supreme Court.

After marching several blocks from St. Marks, the group assembled with a couple of hundreds other people to rally in front of the Supreme Court. We arrived just as Rev. Barber (a Cochair of the Poor People’s Campaign) arrived, and Al and Olinda were able to reconnect with the man who turned a stunningly successful statewide movement in North Carolina into a national moral movement.

In front of the Supreme Court, those assembled rallied for a moral budget, one that, in a country where money is speech, amplifies the voices of those who struggle to be heard.

After Bishop Barber (Rev. Barber), fellow clergy, and moral witnesses (people who would be irreparably harmed by “The Big Beautiful Bill”), shared their testimony with the crowd, most of us followed Bishop Barber to the Capitol grounds. Some people volunteered to go in and deliver petitions directly to congressmen and senators. Nine people were arrested for declining to stop praying and leave the premises when ordered to do so by the Capitol Police.

The bus riders, including volunteers for the Sandhills Circle of the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign, made their way back to St. Marks to board the bus for the long trip home.