[Update, Thursday, 2:30 p.m. Running around today, I missed the march but caught some of the preparations at the Bell Tower and the end of the rally at Halifax Mall. Not thousands, but several hundred marched and/or came to the Mall for the speeches. “We cheered extra loud as we went by the Civitas building,” Lee Sartain told me. Sartain is running in the Democratic primary for a newly created seat — District 38, there’s no incumbent — in the N.C. House of Representatives.
[I’ve posted some pictures:
What follows is the original post from Tuesday, 3/13:
The ides of Love march organizers predict that thousands will gather in Raleigh on the Ides of March to take a stand against the proposed anti-gay Amendment One. The ides, as we know from our Julius Caesar, fall on March 15. Start point for the march is the Bell Tower at NC State, at 11 a.m. The route is down Hillsborough Street to the Capitol, then over to Halifax Mall, behind the General Assembly building on West Jones Street, where a rally is planned starting at 12 noon.
HonestNC is the event’s home office. “Thirty other states have added discrimination to their constitutions,” says HonestNC’s David Hook. “Show the world that it stops here.”
Below, I’ve posted a short video starring Hook. The image above is taken from the video, fyi.
You can check out HonestNC on their homepage or via the Ides of Love page on Facebook.
Here’s the latest from the organizers about the march:
HonestNC, a group of community organizers from N.C. State, will march from the Bell Tower to the State Legislature on Thursday, March 15th at 11 AM to protest the proposed amendment to limit marriage in North Carolina. With expected attendance of several thousand, the city of Raleigh will close down Hillsborough and Morgan Streets to allow the group safe passage to express their view that adding discrimination to the state’s founding documents hits right at the heart of our idea of civil unity, and threatens the core legitimacy of our social mores.
The group will gather for a rally at Halifax Mall to show our representatives in the state legislature that citizens of the populace will not stand idly by while civil rights are cut off from a portion of our group. The Grains of Time, an a cappella ensemble from N.C. State will be performing the national anthem and several speakers will take the podium to speak against exclusion and discrimination. As younger members of the community, HonestNC strive to show state voters that we will not engage in generational withholding of civil rights, and that the legislature should provide better leadership in public policy. As citizens, this amendment will not pass.
And the video: