RALEIGH – Thousands attending the largest annual gathering of left-leaning and civil rights groups in North Carolina on Saturday heard NAACP leaders urge unity ahead of big elections this year, citing the early American motto that out of many, the country became one.

Buoyed by the Occupy Wall Street zeitgeist that the interests of most Americans are not being served by the comfortable who control important institutions, National NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous and North Carolina’s NAACP leader, the Rev. William Barber, said division benefits the few at the expense of the majority.

“All of us in this one beautiful human rights movement in this country, we believe that you don’t breed hatred through division if you are an American. You spread love through multiplication,” Jealous said from a stage yards away from the doors of the state Legislative Building on downtown Raleigh’s Jones Street.

He said most North Carolinians didn’t want and didn’t support moves by the new, Republican-led General Assembly: cutting funding for education, ignoring jobs programs, limiting the voting power of youths and minorities by requiring photo IDs at the ballot box, and advancing a constitutional amendment for voters to ban gay marriage, Jealous said.

“Let us remind them that our nation already has a formula for success. It’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s justice. It’s one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all,” he said.

Rather than dividing the state, Republicans who took control of the General Assembly in 2011 for the first time in more than a century were voted into office because of the financial mess confronting the state when the recession hit, state GOP spokesman Robert Lockwood said.

“The Democrats’ failures put us in our current situation, and the Republican majority is putting us back on the path to fiscal sanity,” Lockwood said.

Republicans back a voter ID law to prevent fraud from tainting elections, he said.

“If you look at it rationally, why do you need a form of identification to get onto an airplane, into a movie theater, or into a bar — but not into a voting booth?” Lockwood said. “Anyone can vote in North Carolina because there is no voter-ID law.”

Diverse interests marked the crowd. Raleigh Police Capt. David Linthicum estimated to number around 3,000 to 5,000.

NAACP supporters from High Point to Halifax County made up the majority, with others carrying signs and wearing T-shirts supporting unions, farm workers, and increased education funding. Many carried tiny flags, either with the American stars and stripes or the rainbow banner supporting gay rights.

South Carolina NAACP President Lonnie Randolph said he hoped that pressure from North Carolina voters could stop Republican lawmakers from joining others who want to require drug tests from those who apply for unemployment benefits.

“I came here because I hope we can stop the contagion that’s in South Carolina from spreading to North Carolina,” Randolph said.

Jealous said in an interview he rarely attends state-level NAACP events, but makes a point of visiting the annual “Historic Thousands on Jones Street” rally because “this is the largest, most diverse, most optimistic crowd of activists in the South.

“People here believe in the idea of America itself. We’re a nation that was an ideal first. That ideal was that we expand access to education, expand access to opportunity, expand access to the ballot box,” Jealous said. “Right now, at the North Carolina state capitol, all of that is under attack.”