While the Indiana General Assembly holds its annual Organization Day today n preparation for the 2015 legislative session, another organization, Indiana Moral Mondays, will be making its inaugural appearance to shape and affect laws in the Hoosier State.

A large group of citizen-lobbyists from around the state, organized in the last nine months under the Indiana Moral Mondays banner, will zero-in on the state capital Tuesday to begin to strategically move on legislative activity in the Statehouse, especially in those areas that affect labor, public education and the criminal justice system.

“People are suffering in Indiana and Moral Mondays intends to start holding our legislators accountable for the woeful state of affairs,” said Barbara Bolling-Williams, a member of the Indiana Moral Mondays Steering Committee and President of the Indiana State NAACP. Bolling-Williams cited Indiana’s poverty rate of 15.1 percent as evidence of the legislature’s record of poor policies.

“This number is one of the highest in the nation and is downright sinful,” she explained. “And poverty is almost double amongst people of color and those in urban parts of the state. It is totally unacceptable and we need to do everything we can to raise folks out of poverty.”

Indiana Moral Mondays also intends to pressure criminal legislation. “We have slowly built a school-to-prison pipeline in Indiana that is shuttling poor kids and kids of color from broken schools to dead-end prisons,” Bolling-Williams stated. She pointed out that the percentage of Hoosier African-Americans hovers around 10 percent, while the percentage of African-Americans in Indiana prisons is over 34 percent – a number, she says, underscores a statewide practice of unjust criminal laws.

“The recent abuse of police power in Hammond is not an outlier,” said Byron Ratcliffe, a Moral Mondays member and instructor at Crispus Attucks Medical Magnet High School in Indianapolis. “These kinds of injustices are occurring every day in cities across the state- Indianapolis, South Bend, Terre Haute, New Albany, Evansville, Fort Wayne and Gary. The numbers speak for themselves.”

First organized in February 2014, Indiana Moral Mondays is based on the civil rights movement that first started in North Carolina in 2013, and has taken hold in other states, including Georgia, Missouri and Wisconsin. The organization adheres to Five Demands that form the basis of its agenda:

• Secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that insure economic sustainability;
• Provide well-funded, quality public education for all;
• Stand up for the health of every Hoosier by promoting health care access and environmental justice across all the state’s communities;
• Address the continuing inequalities in the criminal justice system and ensure equality under the law for every person, regardless of race, class, creed, documentation or sexual preference;
• Protect and expand voting rights for people of color, women, immigrants, the elderly and students to safeguard fair democratic representation.

Indiana Moral Monday events begin with a prayer vigil at 10:30 a.m. when faith leaders from around the state will gather in the Statehouse rotunda to set the tone for a day of advocacy and outreach.

Dr. Rob Stone, a Bloomington physician and spokesperson for Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, is one of thousands of Hoosiers statewide who have joined forces with Indiana Moral Mondays. Stone wants legislators to know that Indiana Moral Mondays “will be paying close attention in the next session and our legislators should expect to see us at the statehouse often.”