UPDATE: Welcome Carolina Plott Hound readers.

Occupy Monday came back for its first rally. The ‘Forward Together’ movement that its leaders claim is so popular and is sweeping the South had a mere hundred or so people show up according to footage shot by WRAL’s Sky Five.

Not much of a turn out for their big movement… Sky 5: Protesters march in downtown Raleigh http://t.co/AGct3Q9LPt #MoneyMonday #Theatrics

— LL1885 – A.P. Dillon (@LadyLiberty1885) May 20, 2014

Much like their NCGA Welcoming committee, this turned out to be about the same size.  The official media of Occupy Monday was there in epic style — Mark Binker and Laura Leslie from WRAL, that is.  There’s video with their story. They spend a full seven minutes on what could be covered in one.  Binker notes the lack of attendance and thinks it will pick up after Memorial day. Yeah, whatever. The duo’s disappointment was all over their faces.

The WRAL story headline is fun, “Monday Wrap: Many came but all were quiet“. Why quiet? Because no Moral Monday would be complete without some kind of theatrics. They duct taped their mouths to protest new NC General Assembly building rules. No, I’m not kidding. Check out News and Record for a shot of one of them doing it.  All that pot and pan banging has to stay outside. This change of course prompts Moral Monday protesters to scream, ‘I’m being repressed!!! but the rules before were too vague…’ or something.  

Pete Kaliner explains:

The outrage over revised rules at the North Carolina General Assembly is pretty typical of the way the Moral Monday protesters have behaved for the past year. Namely, decry some issue only to complain further when the issue is addressed.

When the Moral Monday (or MoMo, for short) began getting arrested on purpose, they complained that the rules they sought to break in order to get arrested were too vague and so they should face no punishment.

The purpose of getting arrested was to make a political point and get media attention.

Think about this.

The MoMos researched how to get arrested and held instructional meetings to tell people how to get themselves arrested, if they so chose. Once arrested, the MoMos then argued that they should be acquitted because the rules they researched and broke were too vague.

Yesterday, the GOP clarified these rules… and the MoMos are mad.

But let’s take a look at what the Republicans did. Maybe the MoMos have a genuine beef with the new rules. Maybe the old rules crafted by Democrats were far superior, more fair, and more constitutional.

Maybe.

Indeed.  We hated the old vague rules which got us arrested  (just ignore we were arrested on purpose) but how dare you fix that to maintain working conditions inside the legislature. The stupid, it burns.

Back to that huge, sweeping movement’s crowd

Let’s look at some stills I captured from the Sky Five video, shall we?

Of interest are these folks in the yellow shirts. One or two in particular carrying bullhorns.

Are the yellow shirts Occupy Monday minders or their hired Summer protests organizers? Wait, that was redundant. Nevermind.

Also note the mall area is cordoned off with ropes to funnel the crowd. Makes it look fuller for the ground camera shots, but from the air you can see how sparse it was.

Reverend Barber and his “documentary” film crew entourage were half the crowd. I’ve said this before — this ‘movement’ is all about him. All about the fame.