November 11, 2020 • 32 mins
In politics, there’s always a heavy focus on making the country work for the middle class. But the stark reality is there are 140 million poor and low-income people in this country. And if we don’t figure out how to mobilize around poverty -- to name it, expose the truth of it, and fix it -- we won’t be able break it. Reverend Dr. William Barber II has been working on this moral cause for years and joins Pete to discuss the truth about poverty and systemic racism in this nation, his movement of fusion politics, and his success with political organizing during the pandemic.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, I'm Pete Good, a judge, and this is the
deciding decade. Politically, people running for office are often advised
to speak only about the middle class, not to use
the words poor or poverty. There's always a heavy focus
on making the country work for the middle class, to
grow the middle class, which of course is important and true,
(00:26):
but the stark realities there are a hundred forty million
poor and low income people in this country, and if
we don't figure out how to mobilize around poverty, to
name it, expose the truth of it, and fix it,
we won't be able to break it. My guest today
is someone who has been working on this moral cause
for a long time and is truly one of the
most extraordinary servants of the people that I've ever met.
(00:49):
Reverend Dr William Barber the second has spearheaded some of
the most influential moral movements in our time. Since he
was young, he's held positions of community leadership. Was president
of Local and Double a CP Youth Council at age
fifteen and is now on their national Board of Directors.
He launched the political Fusion organization Repairers of the Breach,
created the Ascendant impactful movement called the Poor People's Campaign
(01:13):
in the tradition of Dr King, and he received the
MacArthur Foundation's Genius Granted for his work on furthering the
moral movement against inequality. I have personally found his words
and stands inspiring. His integrity and faith have moved him
to insist the political systems and political figures, including me,
actually listened to the voices of the core and the dispossessed.
(01:35):
He truly lives the call to stand for the least
among us. Reverend, thank you for taking time to be
with us. Thank you so much for Pete, and thank
you for your campaign, your tenacity. You were among the
first on the national debate platform of any party to
acknowledge the work of People's Campaign and to actually say
(01:56):
that if we were going to have debates in this
country by where we are, where we're going, we had
to put the issue of poverty up front and center. Well,
I think one of the most powerful things that you've
done is open America's eyes on just how many people
fall into that category of poverty or low wealth nearly
half of the country, and in politics are taught to
(02:19):
talk always about the middle class and never about the poor.
Although that line has become thinner and thinner over time,
and it's had me thinking of the fact that there's
no scripture that says, as you've done unto the middle class,
so you've done unto me. I wonder, in your experience
mobilizing and empowering people to tell their own stories, what
(02:40):
you think is giving this movement the ability to reach
more people than it has in the past. Why is
there more attention to poverty than there had been? And
uh and how much further do we have to go
before you would be able to say that the system
is really able to hear those who are crying out
in this way. My coach ship up in Roctor List still.
(03:01):
Harris and our team decided that first of all, you
have to believe in the agency of poor and low
wealth people number one. Number two, you have to do
your homework, to be quite honest. Maybe I didn't realize
it was as bad when we started, because I've always
heard thirty nine million, that's what you're here for, the million.
But what we found out is that people are using
(03:24):
a way of calculating that that's fifty five years old
and wasn't sufficient at the time. When we saw this
number a hundred forty men. We all fell back in
our seats and said, what in the world. And because
most of this is invisible, you know, people don't realize it.
Sixty one percent of African Americans are poor and low wealth.
(03:45):
That's twenty six million people. Thirty some percent of white
people are poor and low wealth, but that's sixty six
million people. Poverty has a forty one percent more of
an impact on Black people from a percentage perspective, but
from a actual raw numbers perspectives, there are forty million
more poor and lower white people than there are Black
(04:07):
And the line that has been used by those who
don't want us to deal with poverty has often been
that it was a marginal issue, that it did not
cut to the heart and soul and center of our democracy.
And then we had to say, there's an interlockingness between
systemic racism and bio systemic racism. I mean all forms
(04:29):
of racism, not just towards black people, but and not
just one form. P the suppression police violence and answering,
conser ration, resegregation of public schools, mistreatment of our Latino
brothers and sisters, emmigrants, continuing mistreatment of our indigenous community.
But you had to connect that the systemic power, and
then connect the system and powered into the nivel of
(04:49):
healthcare and ecological devastations. And then that has to be
connected to a serious analysis of the war economy what
Eisenhower called the military industrial complex. And then you had
to connect that to the theology, the false theology. And
so you asked me, what help does mobilize truth? And
then we went to them in We didn't start from
(05:09):
the top like a bunch of organizations saying we're gonna
speak on band for the Poor, bringing truth, bringing an analysis,
and showing people why they need to be connected. And
because of that Mayor, we've had tremendous mobilization. We had
the mass Poor People's Assemblar Mall march on Washington. We
(05:31):
were going to be on Pennsylvania Avenue June twenty, twenty twenty.
That didn't happen. We were gonna say, okay, we'll wait.
It was poor and lower people said no, you're not No,
you're not gonna wait. We're gonna go digital. Some of
them said we can't wait because we might die. Seven
hundred people are dying a day from poverty. Let me
ask you about that experience, because so much of the
(05:52):
tradition of these demonstrations is of course about gathering people
together physically. And I wonder, as a vetter of traditional
political organizing, or I should say, as a veteran of
traditional moral organizing, what lessons have you learned or what
conclusions have you drawn about what it will be like
in the future as we have both digital and physical gatherings,
(06:14):
continuing to do this kind of organizing and bear this
kind of witness. It's another two. It doesn't mean we
don't do the other. We're clear they're going to do
the physical. There's a place for it. But as they
at rust and told Dr King, sometimes in the movement,
you have to learn how to do jazz, and you
know what jazz is. You got to learn. They got improvised.
That's exactly right. And in the improvision you learned you
(06:37):
actually create something unique. And so we thought, if we
had a hundred fifty thousand people to tune in on
doing twenty if that would be great. We had two
point seven million people, we have four hundred thousand people
to take action that day and send the moral platform
for the healing of the nation. Jubilee Justice poverty platform,
four hundred thousand people sendate the governors and all of
(06:59):
them let slay this in We had fty tho people
just take the picture to say, look, we're here and
it's still growing. So one of the things we've done
we have something called in Polar's Moral Political Organizing Leadership
Institute and summit and all over the country we have
trained clergy advocates in POLO where people in the same
room we train them on history, we train them on economics.
(07:22):
But what we've learned is that we can now use
this too and powerful ways. And it actually worked better
for us because we wanted people to actually see and
hear the voices of poor and low impacted people. And
what was powerful is you to say, have a mayor peak,
come on, or Danny Glover, and the Danny Glover would
(07:43):
say did you know? And they would give the statistics
and then they say, but those are just numbers. Now
let's hear from the people who make up those numbers.
And people would come on and tell the story, and
then a person impact would say, this is why we
demand and would lay out the demands. And there's so
much power in that. I when I came to visit
in Goldsboro. One of the speakers at the event that
(08:05):
you gathered together had lost her son and was able
to show that her son would probably be alive today
if medicaid had been expanded in her community to serve
her community. And you know, I've been talking about medicaid
for years, and it was different to be in this
conversation with her bearing this kind of witness and this
(08:27):
pain that was caused by a policy that often gets
talked about in these dry terms or in terms of
these statistics. Well, you know, man, that's one of the
criticus I've had the political world. You know, you can
go back years. I mean, the way past Trump and
we had these debates, poverty was never at the center.
(08:47):
But one of the things I'm so I've pushed politicians
on it, we pushed them on, is why do you
talk about healthcare and not have people standing around you
who need it? You know, thank for instance, in the
soil all of these southern states denied the Affordable Care
at you know, the Obamacare, turned down Medica expansion. I've
(09:08):
asked myself time and time again, why is it that
Democrats in the South have not had press conferences with
the people that are effective by that. In my state,
five hundred thousand people, three hundred for six thousand white,
hundred and fifty some thousand black, thirty thousand people formally
connected to the military. Why not have press compers and
(09:29):
let them talk, you know, in the midst of COVID,
why not have virtual press conferences with impacted people who
are suffering, who are dying, who are scared to go
to the hospital because if they do, they might end
up with a bill for sevent or five thousand dollars
if they get treated for COVID and they can't, you know,
make these two things. I think we have to put
(09:49):
a face on it and we have to expose what
I call the death measurement. What moved us about George Floyd.
Everybody talked who did this and who's doing And let
me tell you, the hero of that was that little
girl that he held that camera the whole time, and
she put her face on it and a borce on it.
That's what moved people. And so what happened. People got
(10:11):
to hear him say I can't breathe, but then hit
the image of what was being done to him struck
a cord because so many people working in places without
the protective equipment feel like I can't breathe. His words
became shorten, and we have to take this away from
just being numbers to being about people. You also, you
(10:49):
came up as a leader in the n double a
CP speaking out for justice for Black Americans. Your movement
of fusion politics is multiracial, multidenomen national. But what is
the best way to think about this parallel set of facts?
And on one hand, poverty is something that unites so
many low income, low wealth white people, black people, and
(11:12):
people of other ethnicities and races. And on the other hand,
being poor and black is not the same thing as
being poor and white, and these racial experiences really are different.
How can you practice fusion on the one hand and
on the other not get caught up in the ideology
of color blindness, which I think we've learned is an
illusion that there's a mistake. No, you can't use that,
(11:32):
and that's why you have to put people in the
room where they're telling the same stories and the interaction
will come to intersection will come first of all. We've
always had to do that. It was the abolition movement
was diverse, and Frederick Douglas could talk about it from
the first spective of being a slave. In the civil
rights movement, you had the second reconstruction if we are
(11:54):
fusion black and white. So Rabbi Headshaw and Dr King
could come together, but even Dr King took the lead
as a black person talking about how what was happening
to black people was also hurting white people. Right, It's
kind of like the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, and you just don't leave it off
the table. Now, I'm gonna say something gonna be a
little controversial. In some ways, what he said in Montgomery
(12:19):
is more powerful than his closing at the Marching Washington.
I have a Dream was a close that he did
it in a a Rocket Mount Detroit Watchman in the Black
preaching it's like a closing, it's lifting people. I have
a Dream was him saying we don't have to stay
in this nightmare. There's a way out, and it's a
power for prophetic anthem of belief in the midst of
(12:42):
disbelief and despair. But at the end of the Semmer
to mountgom remark when he's pushing Johnson to do something
he doesn't want to do. Remember they did not want
to take up the voting rights at the people forced
to in a non election year. Most of the people
that have been elected had not gotten elected to pass
a voting rights act. But this moral fusion movement of
(13:05):
black and white, and brown and gay and straight, and
young and old and all came together. They made it
to mountin government. The King on those steps in his
speech starts talking about the first reconstruction. He starts talking
about what was happening when black and white people came
together in the South to build a new political base,
(13:26):
and how it was torn apart because the wealth, if
the aristocracy can cause them, saw the power of black
and white poor people coming together. And he says, when
poor whites can't eat the racists, give them the psychological
bird of racism. And he he lays out how every
(13:49):
time in history there is the possibility of poor blacks
and poor whites coming together to form a political base
that could change the country and change it for plytically,
the aristocracy soul's division. He says that division is not
just about just like on color, it's about power, and
it's about economics. All of this division we see and
(14:13):
all of this money being spent to divide is not
just the ignorance of one person. It is a strategy
called the Southern strategy that was implemented in the sixties
and when Kevin Phillips implemented it and gave it to
Richard Nixon and everybody following him. You know, Trump is
just the latest one to use it. He's not the
(14:34):
first one to use it. And he uses it in
such overt ways. You're not supposed to tell everybody what
you're doing. That's his food to The Southern strategy was
used by Regan, used by Nixon. Didn't somebody say that
Trump said the quiet part out exactly. See when Wallace
ran for the presidency, the people on that side of
the out saw his arguments were powerful, and his arguments
(14:57):
could guarantee the South, and that could anti you a
hundred and seventy electoral votes out of a race to
two seventies. But he was too loud to embrace it.
So Nixon said, we have to find a way to
do what while this is doing, but not sound like him.
And so le at Water said, the way you do
that is you talk about economics and school and busting
(15:18):
and but my pointy, not the king saw the other side,
Dr King said, if they're paying this much money and
fighting this hard, we need to look at the demographics.
And when Dr King looked at the demographic he saw
that there was this possibility for poor white people to
come together and dealing with race and poverty. Connected was
(15:40):
the Lincoln Now, another thing about Dr King is that
he was quite impatient with showing moderate liberals and progressives.
Letter from Birmingham Jail was largely about this in patience.
How's your patience right now? You see a political system
with Republicans Democrats, You've you've pressed on that them in
(16:00):
many ways. What what level of patients or in patience
do you think is called for in a moment like this, Well,
I think anybody the profits in the Bible were always impatient.
So there has to be a certain impatience in your
soul and in your mind and in your body when
it comes to how people are just disregarded. It's bactually
when you understand that it doesn't have to be that way.
(16:22):
To see how long are we going to be comfortable
with other people's death? You have never hesitated to speak
to the policy implications of the moral teachings of faith
as you understand it. And one of the things that
really surprised me in the course of campaigning for president
was how much appetite there was, certainly among progressives for
(16:44):
more of a conversation about faith. And I always tried
to be very careful to make clear that I believed,
as a as a political figure, that everything I didn't
said had to be for people of every religion and
of no religion, but that we also shouldn't be shy
to talk about the policy implications of our moral choices
and the moral implications of our policy emergencies. And yet
(17:07):
I think there was an assumption or an expectation among
a lot of the people that I talked to that
it was only in the political right that you would
see a lot of conversations about how faith and politics intersect.
I wonder if if you agree with that, first of all,
and if so, why would it be that maybe more
the left side of the aisle or the spectrum is
more reluctant or allergic to talk about the role and
(17:32):
interaction of faith and policy than than what we've seen,
especially on the cultural right, throughout my lifetime. Yeah. Well,
I I pushed back a little bit with you because
I don't use that language, and I think we have
to walk get away from it because it was language
that was deliberately put in our social fasorus to create
(17:53):
false interpretations that in language of left and right. And
to be quite honest, when you actually look at orthodox theology,
there is no language to better in any of our
holy books. My grandmother used to say about being a Christian,
it's like being pregnant. You are you are, and she said,
and you don't get to just choose. You have to
follow what Jesus said is the politics of God. So
(18:16):
you don't get to say you are somehow right Christian,
you know, a left Christian. Those terms are not really there.
And then secondly we have to know the history. I mean,
in order to commit genocide against the people who are
already here, the native people, somebody had come up with
the theology to concentrate that, in order to enslave people,
(18:38):
somebody had to come up with a theology that would
allow that to happen. Racistm and not just about name calling.
It is about power. Systemic racism is about power and policy.
It never is just about name called. The name calling
comes to cover up the policies. So what happens is
you have a group over here calling names and burning crosses,
but there's a group underneath that that's enforcing policy, changing policies, right,
(19:04):
and they can often say we're not with that group
right over that. So but but in order to do this,
in order to have this capitalism rooted on slavery, you
had to have these fourth and evil economics, and that
is when the end justifies the means. And so if
the end is prospered and wealth, it doesn't matter how
you get it. The second thing we had to have
(19:26):
was six sociology, and six sociologists says that something is
wrong with two people being in the same place as
equals simply based on color. And then you had to
have bad biology. And bad biology is what Cornell West
talks about in one of his early book, Propery Delivering,
where a French scientist actually came up with this notion
(19:49):
that you could determine brain size by skin color. M
And then the last thing you have to have is
heretical ontology, and a radical ontology is that God meant
it to be this place. And so we have to
remember that the church split in America before there was
a Civil war in the church before there was a
(20:11):
civil war in the nation. Almost every major denomination had
split in America by eighteen for the over the issue
of slavery. And there was an argument one time, do
you baptize the slave? Yes, you're baptized because it makes
some better slave. Then there was an argument, no, you
can't baptize them, because that's honoring their humanity. I mean,
And you can find this stuff not in some backwoods
(20:33):
build it, but in the stacks of the Lafe, Breads
of Horror and Yale. And do I mean people really
spent time, may have Pete messing us up. There was
a whole system behind it. And there's something parallel about
this junk science and about the theology, right, and that
both taken and orderd by human beings that create the
(20:56):
social and political where they look at this political order
and then they create this immutable excuse for it. And
whether it's the will of God or the laws of science,
or both of them taken together, is a way to
make it sound like these things that were created by people,
and that means surely could be torn down by people, right,
but makes it look as though they were just part
of the order of the universe exactly. And one of
(21:18):
the things that happened to meet in seminary that has
made me so passionate around this issue. I'm so intense
about being against any form of codified racism or codified
sexism or codified homophob Because one of our fathers in
the ministry got the Bill Turner. He assigned us to
(21:39):
preach pro and anti slavery sermons, to go into snacks
that doke and find it. But the black folks had
to preach the pro slate, and we almost had a
mutiny until he explained. He said, I want you to
understand how intentional this was. I want you to understand
(22:05):
the argument so you can unpack the argument that the
foundations of slavery and the rationales still exist in our
political and you need to be able to hear it
when you don't hear it. In other ways, you need
to be able to hear it when it's not said
as overtly and as outright as it was said other
years ago. But you need to know it because it
(22:27):
has not gone away. So after we got over our
initial you know, resistance, we put ourselves in the idea
I have a sermon and I put myself into it.
And when I was preaching that sermon, you know, I said,
my God, if I didn't know better, I'd be convinced.
So this was really sophisticated work, yes, sir. And then
the other thing that happened is the white kids in
(22:49):
the room were all crying. But they told me afterwards
was we could imagine people that look like us preaching this.
And then they said, but I've heard that, so they
recognize in it the n a of things that are
with us right now, right exactly. They recognized it in
conversations that they heard. But also many black folks said,
that's why some of our people got convinced. You know,
(23:11):
everybody didn't like Dr King was put out of his
own denomination. People get back, yeah, for being They told
him to wait, why is it? Because they too had
been affected by this systematic and intentional and sophisticated form
of presenting racism as the way of God. You know,
(23:31):
but also we need to look that same kind of
thinking not to the same effect was done to poor
white men who didn't have land because they were left out.
There was theological thinking around keeping women and saying they
weren't you shouldn't be voting, the dismissing of Native people.
And see, one thing we got to understand is when
you see someone like Trump, Trump, it's just an iconography
(23:54):
of the too often repeated American reality, as Neil Painting
likes to say from Princeton. But the world is changing,
the demographics are changing, and a lot of people are
going through this traumatic experience is that they're having come
to terms with having been lied to all of their life.
(24:26):
So let's let's fast forward a little bit. Let's imagine
there's people in in office, in legislature, in the Congress,
in the White House who are more friendly to policies
that tackle systemic racism, to dismantle some of these patterns
of generational poverty. But we know it's not just going
to be as simple as electing the right people and
(24:47):
everything gets better. Right, Where where does the movement and
where does the energy have to go? If Trump is
part of the history books now, but we still have
this glaring need right in front of us that obviously
built up over the years, no matter who was in
power and has gone through these these reversals, these fits
and starts, these improvements and setbacks. What what will it
(25:10):
take for a third reconstruction to happen where it would
actually be different. This time, we need to tell the truth.
We need to have a major, I believe presentation to
really lay out the state of America and why we
can't continue to like this give America is going to be.
And it doesn't need to be about democratic or republican
or left of it right. It needs to be about
(25:32):
how can we say we are a nation that we
establishes justice, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare,
and shoots domestic tranquility and believes in equal protection under
the law with probably what will be fifty percent of
our people in poverty because of COVID, So I think
we don't need republican life. This is an FDR moment.
This is an Abraham Lincoln moment. This is our Edmonds
(25:56):
Pettis Bridge moment. This is our nineteen twenty women stuff
Rich moment, and whoever is leaving the country needs to
see it at that and help the country understand that
because we only go forward together and we have to
refuse to take one step back. And lastly, we have
to lift up the American people. This is a moment
(26:17):
that I think American President and senators need to do
what Dr King did at the March and Washington. I'm
not talking about this speech. I'm talking about the picture.
Go look at that picture at the March and Washington,
and those are all the people standing around at the kame.
It's white people up there, black people, even as an
officer of the law up there. And it sends this
(26:39):
picture that this is about all of us, that racism
is not just against black people, it's against democracy. Poverty
hits all of us and destroys the answers of who
we are called to be as a democracy. And I
think the President would do well of and put people
around and have a big thing with people who are
impacted and let them say we are America and we're
(27:00):
going to accept this in the more. And so if
you fight me over healthcare, you fight this is who
you're fighting. You know. The thing I find so beautiful
in that image is that it takes very seriously the
idea of the president's relationship to the country. We pack
so much into that word of president of the United States,
but to really be of I mean, what's in that
preposition that does so much work? And if it means
(27:21):
that the president is somebody who calls forth the entire
country or elevates the voices from within the country. It
could be it could be the most powerful thing. We
do it in war. If we do it the kill,
why don't we do it to live? We need to
take seriously this most powerful word. We we the people,
and we need to send a warning to the nation
(27:43):
of what happens if we don't fix these things. But
then offer the hope and not notice. I didn't say
optimism because the optimism I don't have a lot of that.
But hope, theologically, hope goes through this spair, not around it,
nor does it not. You have to hew out of
the mountain of despay a stone of hope. It does
not dismiss the despair. It actually puts it all out there.
(28:05):
You have to be honest about the problem. It helps
us uncook our self from the sense of apathy and
what cannot be in and what's not possible. We keep
talking about compromises, but what about courage. There has to
be something that you don't compromise on. And I look
at the fact that everything we hold dear today. If
(28:27):
you use the line of progressive a hundred years ago,
somebody said it was impossible, but they're always had to
be a remnant that wouldn't accept that. They're one of
the things I read it every week. I mean my Bible,
you know. I listened to jazz music. I listened to
some hip hop sometimes because sometimes the brothers in the
street are more prophetic than sin some other folks. But
(28:50):
I also every week read that part of the Declaration
of Independence where it says, after a long train of abuse,
the people have the right to alter the government. In fact,
the Declaration of Independence almost suggest that is unpatriotic to
(29:12):
have a long train of abuses. Racism qualifies as a
long systemic policy drive racist as a long train abuse.
I think poverty has a long train of abuses. I
think not paying people are living ways. And it took
black for four hundred years to get to seven dollar.
We can't wait another for hun to get fifteen because
we started out of zero. So it's been a long
(29:34):
train of abuses. Yeah, some things we have one chance
to shift now, and people are gonna be so looking
for the shift, they're not gonna accept not addressing them.
And if we don't address it, we might lose this country.
And what I mean by that is when people protest
in a country, that means they still love it enough
(29:55):
because they still believe change is possible. What you don't
want people to do instant of up on protests and
just not care, because, as my grandmother used to say,
an idle man is the devil's workshop. Instrikes me that
there's an act of trust that's embedded in the act
of protests, not necessarily a trust that an institution will
do the right thing on its own, but a trust
(30:16):
that it's somehow possible to make it change. Yeah, And
the first part of protests is for your own sanity.
It's because if somebody steps on your toe and you
lose the ability to say oh, or if you if
you put your hand on the hot stin you don't
move it and you go to the doctor, they will
check your whole nervous system because they say something wrong
(30:38):
with you. And so my hope is in the midst
of all of this pain, it will produce that power
that sometimes comes into mr pain, and that is the
power of a remnant coming together to say, not on
our watch, it doesn't have to be like this, and
we are not going to die needlessly. Maybe the time
(31:00):
has come for us to take seriously every breath we
have and decide that we no longer have any breath
to waste on foolishness, that every breath we have needs
to be used for the furtherance of love and truth
and justice and humanity. There was so much in that
(31:25):
conversation that I know I'll be reflecting on. He spoke
frequently about the importance of speaking truth to power, about
telling and hearing the truth. Reverend Barbara lays out the
truth about poverty in this nation, about systemic racism, about
religious and political activism, and politics generally. This kind of
moral call is something that I believe will resonate more
(31:45):
and more in the decade ahead. And if we can
collectively say not on our watch to those who won't
speak the truth, those who are content with morally shocking
realities in our country, and if we can say that
to ourselves when we're getting too comfortable, then we might
live to see this country become a much better place
for all. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
(32:13):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, I'm Pete Good, a judge, and this is the
deciding decade. Politically, people running for office are often advised
to speak only about the middle class, not to use
the words poor or poverty. There's always a heavy focus
on making the country work for the middle class, to
grow the middle class, which of course is important and true,
(00:26):
but the stark realities there are a hundred forty million
poor and low income people in this country, and if
we don't figure out how to mobilize around poverty, to
name it, expose the truth of it, and fix it,
we won't be able to break it. My guest today
is someone who has been working on this moral cause
for a long time and is truly one of the
most extraordinary servants of the people that I've ever met.
(00:49):
Reverend Dr William Barber the second has spearheaded some of
the most influential moral movements in our time. Since he
was young, he's held positions of community leadership. Was president
of Local and Double a CP Youth Council at age
fifteen and is now on their national Board of Directors.
He launched the political Fusion organization Repairers of the Breach,
created the Ascendant impactful movement called the Poor People's Campaign
(01:13):
in the tradition of Dr King, and he received the
MacArthur Foundation's Genius Granted for his work on furthering the
moral movement against inequality. I have personally found his words
and stands inspiring. His integrity and faith have moved him
to insist the political systems and political figures, including me,
actually listened to the voices of the core and the dispossessed.
(01:35):
He truly lives the call to stand for the least
among us. Reverend, thank you for taking time to be
with us. Thank you so much for Pete, and thank
you for your campaign, your tenacity. You were among the
first on the national debate platform of any party to
acknowledge the work of People's Campaign and to actually say
(01:56):
that if we were going to have debates in this
country by where we are, where we're going, we had
to put the issue of poverty up front and center. Well,
I think one of the most powerful things that you've
done is open America's eyes on just how many people
fall into that category of poverty or low wealth nearly
half of the country, and in politics are taught to
(02:19):
talk always about the middle class and never about the poor.
Although that line has become thinner and thinner over time,
and it's had me thinking of the fact that there's
no scripture that says, as you've done unto the middle class,
so you've done unto me. I wonder, in your experience
mobilizing and empowering people to tell their own stories, what
(02:40):
you think is giving this movement the ability to reach
more people than it has in the past. Why is
there more attention to poverty than there had been? And
uh and how much further do we have to go
before you would be able to say that the system
is really able to hear those who are crying out
in this way. My coach ship up in Roctor List still.
(03:01):
Harris and our team decided that first of all, you
have to believe in the agency of poor and low
wealth people number one. Number two, you have to do
your homework, to be quite honest. Maybe I didn't realize
it was as bad when we started, because I've always
heard thirty nine million, that's what you're here for, the million.
But what we found out is that people are using
(03:24):
a way of calculating that that's fifty five years old
and wasn't sufficient at the time. When we saw this
number a hundred forty men. We all fell back in
our seats and said, what in the world. And because
most of this is invisible, you know, people don't realize it.
Sixty one percent of African Americans are poor and low wealth.
(03:45):
That's twenty six million people. Thirty some percent of white
people are poor and low wealth, but that's sixty six
million people. Poverty has a forty one percent more of
an impact on Black people from a percentage perspective, but
from a actual raw numbers perspectives, there are forty million
more poor and lower white people than there are Black
(04:07):
And the line that has been used by those who
don't want us to deal with poverty has often been
that it was a marginal issue, that it did not
cut to the heart and soul and center of our democracy.
And then we had to say, there's an interlockingness between
systemic racism and bio systemic racism. I mean all forms
(04:29):
of racism, not just towards black people, but and not
just one form. P the suppression police violence and answering,
conser ration, resegregation of public schools, mistreatment of our Latino
brothers and sisters, emmigrants, continuing mistreatment of our indigenous community.
But you had to connect that the systemic power, and
then connect the system and powered into the nivel of
(04:49):
healthcare and ecological devastations. And then that has to be
connected to a serious analysis of the war economy what
Eisenhower called the military industrial complex. And then you had
to connect that to the theology, the false theology. And
so you asked me, what help does mobilize truth? And
then we went to them in We didn't start from
(05:09):
the top like a bunch of organizations saying we're gonna
speak on band for the Poor, bringing truth, bringing an analysis,
and showing people why they need to be connected. And
because of that Mayor, we've had tremendous mobilization. We had
the mass Poor People's Assemblar Mall march on Washington. We
(05:31):
were going to be on Pennsylvania Avenue June twenty, twenty twenty.
That didn't happen. We were gonna say, okay, we'll wait.
It was poor and lower people said no, you're not No,
you're not gonna wait. We're gonna go digital. Some of
them said we can't wait because we might die. Seven
hundred people are dying a day from poverty. Let me
ask you about that experience, because so much of the
(05:52):
tradition of these demonstrations is of course about gathering people
together physically. And I wonder, as a vetter of traditional
political organizing, or I should say, as a veteran of
traditional moral organizing, what lessons have you learned or what
conclusions have you drawn about what it will be like
in the future as we have both digital and physical gatherings,
(06:14):
continuing to do this kind of organizing and bear this
kind of witness. It's another two. It doesn't mean we
don't do the other. We're clear they're going to do
the physical. There's a place for it. But as they
at rust and told Dr King, sometimes in the movement,
you have to learn how to do jazz, and you
know what jazz is. You got to learn. They got improvised.
That's exactly right. And in the improvision you learned you
(06:37):
actually create something unique. And so we thought, if we
had a hundred fifty thousand people to tune in on
doing twenty if that would be great. We had two
point seven million people, we have four hundred thousand people
to take action that day and send the moral platform
for the healing of the nation. Jubilee Justice poverty platform,
four hundred thousand people sendate the governors and all of
(06:59):
them let slay this in We had fty tho people
just take the picture to say, look, we're here and
it's still growing. So one of the things we've done
we have something called in Polar's Moral Political Organizing Leadership
Institute and summit and all over the country we have
trained clergy advocates in POLO where people in the same
room we train them on history, we train them on economics.
(07:22):
But what we've learned is that we can now use
this too and powerful ways. And it actually worked better
for us because we wanted people to actually see and
hear the voices of poor and low impacted people. And
what was powerful is you to say, have a mayor peak,
come on, or Danny Glover, and the Danny Glover would
(07:43):
say did you know? And they would give the statistics
and then they say, but those are just numbers. Now
let's hear from the people who make up those numbers.
And people would come on and tell the story, and
then a person impact would say, this is why we
demand and would lay out the demands. And there's so
much power in that. I when I came to visit
in Goldsboro. One of the speakers at the event that
(08:05):
you gathered together had lost her son and was able
to show that her son would probably be alive today
if medicaid had been expanded in her community to serve
her community. And you know, I've been talking about medicaid
for years, and it was different to be in this
conversation with her bearing this kind of witness and this
(08:27):
pain that was caused by a policy that often gets
talked about in these dry terms or in terms of
these statistics. Well, you know, man, that's one of the
criticus I've had the political world. You know, you can
go back years. I mean, the way past Trump and
we had these debates, poverty was never at the center.
(08:47):
But one of the things I'm so I've pushed politicians
on it, we pushed them on, is why do you
talk about healthcare and not have people standing around you
who need it? You know, thank for instance, in the
soil all of these southern states denied the Affordable Care
at you know, the Obamacare, turned down Medica expansion. I've
(09:08):
asked myself time and time again, why is it that
Democrats in the South have not had press conferences with
the people that are effective by that. In my state,
five hundred thousand people, three hundred for six thousand white,
hundred and fifty some thousand black, thirty thousand people formally
connected to the military. Why not have press compers and
(09:29):
let them talk, you know, in the midst of COVID,
why not have virtual press conferences with impacted people who
are suffering, who are dying, who are scared to go
to the hospital because if they do, they might end
up with a bill for sevent or five thousand dollars
if they get treated for COVID and they can't, you know,
make these two things. I think we have to put
(09:49):
a face on it and we have to expose what
I call the death measurement. What moved us about George Floyd.
Everybody talked who did this and who's doing And let
me tell you, the hero of that was that little
girl that he held that camera the whole time, and
she put her face on it and a borce on it.
That's what moved people. And so what happened. People got
(10:11):
to hear him say I can't breathe, but then hit
the image of what was being done to him struck
a cord because so many people working in places without
the protective equipment feel like I can't breathe. His words
became shorten, and we have to take this away from
just being numbers to being about people. You also, you
(10:49):
came up as a leader in the n double a
CP speaking out for justice for Black Americans. Your movement
of fusion politics is multiracial, multidenomen national. But what is
the best way to think about this parallel set of facts?
And on one hand, poverty is something that unites so
many low income, low wealth white people, black people, and
(11:12):
people of other ethnicities and races. And on the other hand,
being poor and black is not the same thing as
being poor and white, and these racial experiences really are different.
How can you practice fusion on the one hand and
on the other not get caught up in the ideology
of color blindness, which I think we've learned is an
illusion that there's a mistake. No, you can't use that,
(11:32):
and that's why you have to put people in the
room where they're telling the same stories and the interaction
will come to intersection will come first of all. We've
always had to do that. It was the abolition movement
was diverse, and Frederick Douglas could talk about it from
the first spective of being a slave. In the civil
rights movement, you had the second reconstruction if we are
(11:54):
fusion black and white. So Rabbi Headshaw and Dr King
could come together, but even Dr King took the lead
as a black person talking about how what was happening
to black people was also hurting white people. Right, It's
kind of like the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, and you just don't leave it off
the table. Now, I'm gonna say something gonna be a
little controversial. In some ways, what he said in Montgomery
(12:19):
is more powerful than his closing at the Marching Washington.
I have a Dream was a close that he did
it in a a Rocket Mount Detroit Watchman in the Black
preaching it's like a closing, it's lifting people. I have
a Dream was him saying we don't have to stay
in this nightmare. There's a way out, and it's a
power for prophetic anthem of belief in the midst of
(12:42):
disbelief and despair. But at the end of the Semmer
to mountgom remark when he's pushing Johnson to do something
he doesn't want to do. Remember they did not want
to take up the voting rights at the people forced
to in a non election year. Most of the people
that have been elected had not gotten elected to pass
a voting rights act. But this moral fusion movement of
(13:05):
black and white, and brown and gay and straight, and
young and old and all came together. They made it
to mountin government. The King on those steps in his
speech starts talking about the first reconstruction. He starts talking
about what was happening when black and white people came
together in the South to build a new political base,
(13:26):
and how it was torn apart because the wealth, if
the aristocracy can cause them, saw the power of black
and white poor people coming together. And he says, when
poor whites can't eat the racists, give them the psychological
bird of racism. And he he lays out how every
(13:49):
time in history there is the possibility of poor blacks
and poor whites coming together to form a political base
that could change the country and change it for plytically,
the aristocracy soul's division. He says that division is not
just about just like on color, it's about power, and
it's about economics. All of this division we see and
(14:13):
all of this money being spent to divide is not
just the ignorance of one person. It is a strategy
called the Southern strategy that was implemented in the sixties
and when Kevin Phillips implemented it and gave it to
Richard Nixon and everybody following him. You know, Trump is
just the latest one to use it. He's not the
(14:34):
first one to use it. And he uses it in
such overt ways. You're not supposed to tell everybody what
you're doing. That's his food to The Southern strategy was
used by Regan, used by Nixon. Didn't somebody say that
Trump said the quiet part out exactly. See when Wallace
ran for the presidency, the people on that side of
the out saw his arguments were powerful, and his arguments
(14:57):
could guarantee the South, and that could anti you a
hundred and seventy electoral votes out of a race to
two seventies. But he was too loud to embrace it.
So Nixon said, we have to find a way to
do what while this is doing, but not sound like him.
And so le at Water said, the way you do
that is you talk about economics and school and busting
(15:18):
and but my pointy, not the king saw the other side,
Dr King said, if they're paying this much money and
fighting this hard, we need to look at the demographics.
And when Dr King looked at the demographic he saw
that there was this possibility for poor white people to
come together and dealing with race and poverty. Connected was
(15:40):
the Lincoln Now, another thing about Dr King is that
he was quite impatient with showing moderate liberals and progressives.
Letter from Birmingham Jail was largely about this in patience.
How's your patience right now? You see a political system
with Republicans Democrats, You've you've pressed on that them in
(16:00):
many ways. What what level of patients or in patience
do you think is called for in a moment like this, Well,
I think anybody the profits in the Bible were always impatient.
So there has to be a certain impatience in your
soul and in your mind and in your body when
it comes to how people are just disregarded. It's bactually
when you understand that it doesn't have to be that way.
(16:22):
To see how long are we going to be comfortable
with other people's death? You have never hesitated to speak
to the policy implications of the moral teachings of faith
as you understand it. And one of the things that
really surprised me in the course of campaigning for president
was how much appetite there was, certainly among progressives for
(16:44):
more of a conversation about faith. And I always tried
to be very careful to make clear that I believed,
as a as a political figure, that everything I didn't
said had to be for people of every religion and
of no religion, but that we also shouldn't be shy
to talk about the policy implications of our moral choices
and the moral implications of our policy emergencies. And yet
(17:07):
I think there was an assumption or an expectation among
a lot of the people that I talked to that
it was only in the political right that you would
see a lot of conversations about how faith and politics intersect.
I wonder if if you agree with that, first of all,
and if so, why would it be that maybe more
the left side of the aisle or the spectrum is
more reluctant or allergic to talk about the role and
(17:32):
interaction of faith and policy than than what we've seen,
especially on the cultural right, throughout my lifetime. Yeah. Well,
I I pushed back a little bit with you because
I don't use that language, and I think we have
to walk get away from it because it was language
that was deliberately put in our social fasorus to create
(17:53):
false interpretations that in language of left and right. And
to be quite honest, when you actually look at orthodox theology,
there is no language to better in any of our
holy books. My grandmother used to say about being a Christian,
it's like being pregnant. You are you are, and she said,
and you don't get to just choose. You have to
follow what Jesus said is the politics of God. So
(18:16):
you don't get to say you are somehow right Christian,
you know, a left Christian. Those terms are not really there.
And then secondly we have to know the history. I mean,
in order to commit genocide against the people who are
already here, the native people, somebody had come up with
the theology to concentrate that, in order to enslave people,
(18:38):
somebody had to come up with a theology that would
allow that to happen. Racistm and not just about name calling.
It is about power. Systemic racism is about power and policy.
It never is just about name called. The name calling
comes to cover up the policies. So what happens is
you have a group over here calling names and burning crosses,
but there's a group underneath that that's enforcing policy, changing policies, right,
(19:04):
and they can often say we're not with that group
right over that. So but but in order to do this,
in order to have this capitalism rooted on slavery, you
had to have these fourth and evil economics, and that
is when the end justifies the means. And so if
the end is prospered and wealth, it doesn't matter how
you get it. The second thing we had to have
(19:26):
was six sociology, and six sociologists says that something is
wrong with two people being in the same place as
equals simply based on color. And then you had to
have bad biology. And bad biology is what Cornell West
talks about in one of his early book, Propery Delivering,
where a French scientist actually came up with this notion
(19:49):
that you could determine brain size by skin color. M
And then the last thing you have to have is
heretical ontology, and a radical ontology is that God meant
it to be this place. And so we have to
remember that the church split in America before there was
a Civil war in the church before there was a
(20:11):
civil war in the nation. Almost every major denomination had
split in America by eighteen for the over the issue
of slavery. And there was an argument one time, do
you baptize the slave? Yes, you're baptized because it makes
some better slave. Then there was an argument, no, you
can't baptize them, because that's honoring their humanity. I mean,
And you can find this stuff not in some backwoods
(20:33):
build it, but in the stacks of the Lafe, Breads
of Horror and Yale. And do I mean people really
spent time, may have Pete messing us up. There was
a whole system behind it. And there's something parallel about
this junk science and about the theology, right, and that
both taken and orderd by human beings that create the
(20:56):
social and political where they look at this political order
and then they create this immutable excuse for it. And
whether it's the will of God or the laws of science,
or both of them taken together, is a way to
make it sound like these things that were created by people,
and that means surely could be torn down by people, right,
but makes it look as though they were just part
of the order of the universe exactly. And one of
(21:18):
the things that happened to meet in seminary that has
made me so passionate around this issue. I'm so intense
about being against any form of codified racism or codified
sexism or codified homophob Because one of our fathers in
the ministry got the Bill Turner. He assigned us to
(21:39):
preach pro and anti slavery sermons, to go into snacks
that doke and find it. But the black folks had
to preach the pro slate, and we almost had a
mutiny until he explained. He said, I want you to
understand how intentional this was. I want you to understand
(22:05):
the argument so you can unpack the argument that the
foundations of slavery and the rationales still exist in our
political and you need to be able to hear it
when you don't hear it. In other ways, you need
to be able to hear it when it's not said
as overtly and as outright as it was said other
years ago. But you need to know it because it
(22:27):
has not gone away. So after we got over our
initial you know, resistance, we put ourselves in the idea
I have a sermon and I put myself into it.
And when I was preaching that sermon, you know, I said,
my God, if I didn't know better, I'd be convinced.
So this was really sophisticated work, yes, sir. And then
the other thing that happened is the white kids in
(22:49):
the room were all crying. But they told me afterwards
was we could imagine people that look like us preaching this.
And then they said, but I've heard that, so they
recognize in it the n a of things that are
with us right now, right exactly. They recognized it in
conversations that they heard. But also many black folks said,
that's why some of our people got convinced. You know,
(23:11):
everybody didn't like Dr King was put out of his
own denomination. People get back, yeah, for being They told
him to wait, why is it? Because they too had
been affected by this systematic and intentional and sophisticated form
of presenting racism as the way of God. You know,
(23:31):
but also we need to look that same kind of
thinking not to the same effect was done to poor
white men who didn't have land because they were left out.
There was theological thinking around keeping women and saying they
weren't you shouldn't be voting, the dismissing of Native people.
And see, one thing we got to understand is when
you see someone like Trump, Trump, it's just an iconography
(23:54):
of the too often repeated American reality, as Neil Painting
likes to say from Princeton. But the world is changing,
the demographics are changing, and a lot of people are
going through this traumatic experience is that they're having come
to terms with having been lied to all of their life.
(24:26):
So let's let's fast forward a little bit. Let's imagine
there's people in in office, in legislature, in the Congress,
in the White House who are more friendly to policies
that tackle systemic racism, to dismantle some of these patterns
of generational poverty. But we know it's not just going
to be as simple as electing the right people and
(24:47):
everything gets better. Right, Where where does the movement and
where does the energy have to go? If Trump is
part of the history books now, but we still have
this glaring need right in front of us that obviously
built up over the years, no matter who was in
power and has gone through these these reversals, these fits
and starts, these improvements and setbacks. What what will it
(25:10):
take for a third reconstruction to happen where it would
actually be different. This time, we need to tell the truth.
We need to have a major, I believe presentation to
really lay out the state of America and why we
can't continue to like this give America is going to be.
And it doesn't need to be about democratic or republican
or left of it right. It needs to be about
(25:32):
how can we say we are a nation that we
establishes justice, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare,
and shoots domestic tranquility and believes in equal protection under
the law with probably what will be fifty percent of
our people in poverty because of COVID, So I think
we don't need republican life. This is an FDR moment.
This is an Abraham Lincoln moment. This is our Edmonds
(25:56):
Pettis Bridge moment. This is our nineteen twenty women stuff
Rich moment, and whoever is leaving the country needs to
see it at that and help the country understand that
because we only go forward together and we have to
refuse to take one step back. And lastly, we have
to lift up the American people. This is a moment
(26:17):
that I think American President and senators need to do
what Dr King did at the March and Washington. I'm
not talking about this speech. I'm talking about the picture.
Go look at that picture at the March and Washington,
and those are all the people standing around at the kame.
It's white people up there, black people, even as an
officer of the law up there. And it sends this
(26:39):
picture that this is about all of us, that racism
is not just against black people, it's against democracy. Poverty
hits all of us and destroys the answers of who
we are called to be as a democracy. And I
think the President would do well of and put people
around and have a big thing with people who are
impacted and let them say we are America and we're
(27:00):
going to accept this in the more. And so if
you fight me over healthcare, you fight this is who
you're fighting. You know. The thing I find so beautiful
in that image is that it takes very seriously the
idea of the president's relationship to the country. We pack
so much into that word of president of the United States,
but to really be of I mean, what's in that
preposition that does so much work? And if it means
(27:21):
that the president is somebody who calls forth the entire
country or elevates the voices from within the country. It
could be it could be the most powerful thing. We
do it in war. If we do it the kill,
why don't we do it to live? We need to
take seriously this most powerful word. We we the people,
and we need to send a warning to the nation
(27:43):
of what happens if we don't fix these things. But
then offer the hope and not notice. I didn't say
optimism because the optimism I don't have a lot of that.
But hope, theologically, hope goes through this spair, not around it,
nor does it not. You have to hew out of
the mountain of despay a stone of hope. It does
not dismiss the despair. It actually puts it all out there.
(28:05):
You have to be honest about the problem. It helps
us uncook our self from the sense of apathy and
what cannot be in and what's not possible. We keep
talking about compromises, but what about courage. There has to
be something that you don't compromise on. And I look
at the fact that everything we hold dear today. If
(28:27):
you use the line of progressive a hundred years ago,
somebody said it was impossible, but they're always had to
be a remnant that wouldn't accept that. They're one of
the things I read it every week. I mean my Bible,
you know. I listened to jazz music. I listened to
some hip hop sometimes because sometimes the brothers in the
street are more prophetic than sin some other folks. But
(28:50):
I also every week read that part of the Declaration
of Independence where it says, after a long train of abuse,
the people have the right to alter the government. In fact,
the Declaration of Independence almost suggest that is unpatriotic to
(29:12):
have a long train of abuses. Racism qualifies as a
long systemic policy drive racist as a long train abuse.
I think poverty has a long train of abuses. I
think not paying people are living ways. And it took
black for four hundred years to get to seven dollar.
We can't wait another for hun to get fifteen because
we started out of zero. So it's been a long
(29:34):
train of abuses. Yeah, some things we have one chance
to shift now, and people are gonna be so looking
for the shift, they're not gonna accept not addressing them.
And if we don't address it, we might lose this country.
And what I mean by that is when people protest
in a country, that means they still love it enough
(29:55):
because they still believe change is possible. What you don't
want people to do instant of up on protests and
just not care, because, as my grandmother used to say,
an idle man is the devil's workshop. Instrikes me that
there's an act of trust that's embedded in the act
of protests, not necessarily a trust that an institution will
do the right thing on its own, but a trust
(30:16):
that it's somehow possible to make it change. Yeah, And
the first part of protests is for your own sanity.
It's because if somebody steps on your toe and you
lose the ability to say oh, or if you if
you put your hand on the hot stin you don't
move it and you go to the doctor, they will
check your whole nervous system because they say something wrong
(30:38):
with you. And so my hope is in the midst
of all of this pain, it will produce that power
that sometimes comes into mr pain, and that is the
power of a remnant coming together to say, not on
our watch, it doesn't have to be like this, and
we are not going to die needlessly. Maybe the time
(31:00):
has come for us to take seriously every breath we
have and decide that we no longer have any breath
to waste on foolishness, that every breath we have needs
to be used for the furtherance of love and truth
and justice and humanity. There was so much in that
(31:25):
conversation that I know I'll be reflecting on. He spoke
frequently about the importance of speaking truth to power, about
telling and hearing the truth. Reverend Barbara lays out the
truth about poverty in this nation, about systemic racism, about
religious and political activism, and politics generally. This kind of
moral call is something that I believe will resonate more
(31:45):
and more in the decade ahead. And if we can
collectively say not on our watch to those who won't
speak the truth, those who are content with morally shocking
realities in our country, and if we can say that
to ourselves when we're getting too comfortable, then we might
live to see this country become a much better place
for all. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
(32:13):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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