'Sin in the sight of God:' Crowds pack NC Capitol grounds to mobilize progressive vote

The "Mass Poor People’s and Low Wage Workers’ State House Assembly and Moral March on Raleigh and to the Polls" was one of dozens of voter mobilization events planned across the country.

"When politics have made it easier to get a gun than to get food and to get education, to get a living wage, to get a health care, something is wrong," Rev. William Barber III, co-chairman of the Poor People's Campaign, told those gathered.

Carrying signs in support of unions, universal health care, a $15 minimum wage, LGBTQ+ rights, gun control, education funding and an end to systemic poverty and racism, young and old and people of all races packed the grounds of the capitol.

Barber said that the United States "political system has a heart problem and a moral problem."

He said, "In our campaign across the country, poor and low-wage people, their allies, religious leaders, have decided we are not accepting silence anymore."

He called policies that he said punish the poor violence.

"Refusing to address what's causing so much death is not only bad public policy, it is sin in the sight of God."