With an assist from Biden, Rev. Barber calls for rebuilding America to help the poor
The Rev. William J. Barber II took his national movement back to its Raleigh roots Monday evening with a rally at Halifax Mall kicking off a yearlong campaign meant to remake America so that it serves the poor and immigrants as well as the wealthy.
“We have work to do,” he reminded about 300 attending the rally in person, along with thousands watching online. “Especially when so many things are working to the contrary of what we know is right.”
As he has before, Barber cited a litany of injustices he said are caused by systemic racism and intractable poverty, starting with ongoing efforts by legislators in various states that would restrict voting.
“The same politicians who support voter suppression use their power once they get elected to deny health care and deny living wages and deny LGBTQ rights.,” Barber said.
“Yes, they mean to take us backwards, denying climate change, supporting unchecked military spending and defunding anti-poverty programs,” he said. They block efforts to require living wages, deny climate change and stymie action to transition to renewable energy, he said.
“It seems like they work overtime to build walls of injustice rather than pathways to equality,” Barber told the crowd.
“We know what they are doing. But the question is, what are we going to do? I declare with every breath in my body: We have work to do.”
The rally launched what the National Poor People’s Campaign said would be a year’s worth of events leading up to a mass march on Washington in June 2022.
Barber is a co-founder of the National Poor People’s Campaign along with the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who also spoke at the Raleigh event.
All kinds of people, Theoharis said — poor people, health care workers who can’t afford their own health care, family farmers, struggling veterans, teachers and others — are rising up to demonstrate their power over forces of regression “to reconstruct society from the bottom up.”
Barber, longtime pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, held the first Moral Monday event in Raleigh in April 2013, after Republicans took full control of state government and began shifting state policy to the right. He led a group of protesters into the state Legislative Building to decry the work of what Barber calls “extremist lawmakers.”
The Moral Monday movement gained traction, and within months, 1,000 people, including Barber, had been arrested during protests at the N.C. General Assembly.
Moral Monday became a model for nonviolent civil disobedience across the country.
More than a dozen speakers were on the slate for Monday’s rally, including President Joe Biden, who sent a recorded speech that was played at the gathering. Biden expressed his solidarity with the Poor People’s Campaign, saying, “We are all created in an image of God, and we all have the right to economic opportunity, to health care, to clean air, water, and the right to vote. With our advocacy, we’re translating our shared prayers into policy. and building our economy from the bottom up and the middle out.”
Biden said it won’t be enough to build back from the pandemic, which has been especially hard on the poor, analysts say. “We have to build back better than before, with millions of jobs that deliver dignity, a $15 minimum wage, affordable housing, universal pre-K, tuition-free community college. We need to build worker power through organization and collective bargaining, and heed the cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making.”
Temperatures were in the 90s during the three-hour event, though a breeze made it tolerable. Volunteers walked through the crowd offering water and chairs for those who tired of standing. Some opted for a seat in the grass, lush from recent rains and a lack of public gatherings because of COVID-19.
As Barber neared the closing of his remarks, his oratory reaching a fever pitch, the band on stage punctuated his points with drums and staccato organ chords.
“We got work to do,” he said. “And if — I said if — we do it together, if the rejected work together, generations yet unborn will rise up and remember us for the work we did, and together we will change the nation. “
It was a message Barber had preached before, but his enthusiasm had not waned.
“I’ve been working for justice a long time,” he said. “I ain’t tired yet. “
This story was originally published June 22, 2021 at 5:30 AM with the headline "With an assist from Biden, Rev. Barber calls for rebuilding America to help the poor."
