 You don't have to pay for it. I don't want to get a sicker. It's a real human being, a mother of two children, whose denial of tax is the money cost to the taxpayers in North Carolina. There's not a penny in this legislature. Access to health care, access to life, that's not right. It's not right. Today, and only today, we will put that tape on their mouth, not because we are complicit with their rules, but because we are defying their rules and we want to show the whole world how crazy it is to try to shut down democracy and shut down the voice of the people. I'm 78 years old. I've been a revolutionary most of my life. Fire up! There you go! This is the seventh day of the Jericho March. No way! That's correct. And so it's important for us to do all that we can to get as many people out to vote as we possibly can. Good morning. Would you all say with me forward together? Forward together. Not one step back. I've been to North Carolina and then gone to jail down in North Carolina. Where the folk that went to jail in Marl Monday? Where's Jay Leach? Is Jay here? Yeah. Alright, anybody else? Alright, come on up here because y'all know that in Marl Monday we never speak from a stage alone. So I need two or three of y'all. It's time. So y'all sit, grab a chair and sit right behind me because we need a new ethic. It's not never was. Have you ever watched that when Dr. King was at March on Washington all the people that were around him? There was never this one person on the stage kind of thing because it's not about one person. It's about we. What we can do. And so you just saw tidbits. Now I want to first lay out 12 steps that we've been working with for the last seven years. It takes time. Just grab a chair. One of those chairs. Yeah. Just grab a chair. They look like those cops standing behind and getting ready to rest. God, we praised this morning. And we thank you for your power and strength. We've been working on this fusion movements take time, but it's critical because I believe that we're in the embryonic stages of a third reconstruction. The first reconstruction, the 1800s reconstruction, the 1960s, both of them happened because of fusion politics. We don't have time to work through all of the components, but you should know that the very attacks that are going on today to the social justice movement is the sign not that we're losing, but we're winning. You see, sometimes your enemy is your best predictor of your power because we know from the first reconstruction and the second reconstruction what they used to stop both of those reconstructions, the tools of deconstruction always included taking over the courts, attacking voting rights, attacking fair tax policies, attacking public education, attacking labor rights, and attacking those who were believing in a progressive way. The only difference is in the first reconstruction it took them about 30 years to undo. And the second reconstruction from 54 to 68, it took 14 years, but when President Obama was elected, not him as president because we don't agree with everything, but the electorate that elected him that shifted the south, that changed the south and caused states like North Carolina, Florida, and South Carolina to vote for an African American, the former slave states. And when you saw all these people come together, black, white, different parties, different races, different creeds, different sexuality, it pointed to the possibility of breaking the southern strategy, which is the last stronghold in the American democracy. And when that happened, the people who saw it happen realized we were in the embryonic stage of a reconstruction. So they did what they claimed they don't like to do. They're trying to abort it. You see what I'm saying? So they didn't wait 30 years like it did in the 1800s or 14 years in the 1960s immediately. And what did they attack immediately? The courts, voting, tax policy, labor. Now, we've been working at this for about seven years because we believe from 2007 and 2008 is actually when we began to see this embryonic stage. And we believe in North Carolina, the Forward Together Marble Movement, there are 12 components of the movement. And I want to encourage each of you to go back home, your states, and work with Bill Lee's movements. I'm going to tell you why. And here they are. Number one, we have to engage indigenously led grassroots organizing at the state level because change does not happen from DC down. It happens from Selma up. It happens from Birmingham and Montgomery up. So what we need are indigenously led, say that with me, indigenously led, state government, state-based, deeply moral, deeply constitutional, anti-racist, anti-poverty, pro-justice, pro-labor, transformative fusion movements. Because most of the things that are happening to hold this country back now are happening in state governments. Each one of our reconstruction, the first reconstruction, the second reconstruction, happened when we changed what was going on in state legislatures because in state legislatures and with governors, remember Dr. King, governors whose lips are dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, is state governments and legislatures as where interposition happens to undermine federal protection. You see? So we have to have a free focus. Dr. King actually never told us to go back to DC. He said go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to North Carolina, go back and be a state-based movement. So if you come to DC, you come with a movement not just with a march. All right. Number two, we must use moral language to frame and critique public policy, not just this left-right Democrat. It's too small. We need moral language. Number three, we must demonstrate a commitment to civil disobedience. Nobody is going to be bothered if you just go have a march. They'll sit up there, have a picnic and watch you. But we had 1,006 people arrested over two years. And we have seen the governor's number go from 50% to 35% to legislature from 40% to 19%. And we've seen in North Carolina when we started, only 40% of the people were for Medicaid expansion, but now 58% are for it because through civil disobedience and moral framing, we were able to shift the consciousness of the state. We must be at number four, build a stage to lift the voices of everyday people, not politicians. Did you see? Those were everyday people. We must put a face on the pan and force America to see the pain that it's causing. Number, the next one, build a coalition of moral and religious leaders of all faith. We learned that from Unitarian. So we have 1,000 Imams and Rabbi. Really, our movement is quite Unitarian. Next one, we must intentionally diversify the movement with the goal of winning uniclimate allies. 11% of the folk that went to jail and marched with us are Republicans because we don't even talk about Republican and Democrats. We talk about extremists versus those who believe, because there are some people that are not Tea Party intoxicated and they're not high on Coke, K-O-C-H. And you have to give them room. You have to give them some room. You have to believe in a movement and the possibility of redeeming your enemy. Anytime you get in a movement and you do not believe in the possibility of your enemy redeeming, you need to check yourself because if you stay at that too long, you will become what you hate. Next, we must build transformative long-term coalition, rooted not in an individual, but in an agenda. So you can't just curse the darkness. Our agenda is economic sustainability, addressing poverty and labor rights. Number two, educational quality for all children. Number three, healthcare for all. Number four, criminal justice reform because of the disparate impacts on black, brown and disenfranchised poor whites. And then the last one is protecting and expanding voting rights, women's rights, LGBT rights and labor rights and upholding the fundamental principle of equal protection under the law. You cannot just have a negative what you are against. Prophetic, moral, crawling demand that you have hope. A hope that touches the pain but then builds hope up out of the pain. Next, you have to make a serious commitment to academic and empirical analysis of policies. In other words, the worst thing you can do is to be loud and wrong. Next, you have to utilize social media and the cultural arts. What Sayuda did, did you feel the room shift? Nevada just can't, if I had come in here and just started talking, it'd be a very different place. But she used the cultural arts to do two things. She used music to connect you to the past, inspire you in the present and create an atmosphere for prophetic, moral teaching. Because the Bible says in the Book of Kings and before the prophet or before prophetic teaching can come forth you must call for the minstrel. It says that when the minstrel sings then the hand of the Lord comes upon those who are engaged in prophetic, moral work. Next, you must engage in voter registration and education. Next, you must pursue a strong legal strategy. A lot of these issues we also have to take in the courts. Whatever you stir up in the streets you have to litigate in the courts. And then lastly you must resist the one-moment mentality and build a movement. Now those are the 12 steps. I don't hawk a book, but I have a book entitled Forward Together, a Message for the Moral Mission and in it it lays out all of these things on Amazon. I'd like to ask you to get that. And Beacon is helping us write a piece that's coming out soon on the third reconstruction. Where are my friends from Beacon? They're here. And these are movement books. They're a movement to talk because I really believe that we are in a battle for the soul in the heart of our democracy. And we need a moral campaign going forward. Now the Bible says in Psalm 94 God put an end to evil. Judge the earth. God the wicked get away with murder. How long will you let this go on? And then it says who will stand up for me against the wicked and who took my side against the evil workers. Psalm 94 suggests that in every age you must have moral dissenters. People who will not go along just to get along. People who will challenge injustice non-violently but aggressively and who will not back up. Moral dissent is a necessity for our democracy. You remember Henry David the Roe when he wrote this little piece on civil disobedience? He was in jail one day and his friend Waldo Emerson came by to visit him and basically said Henry a man of your upstanding character and place in the world why are you in jail and to which Henry the Roe looked at Emerson and said with all this slavery and injustice why are you not in jail? That's really the issue. Moral dissent. The reality is we are in a time I believe when we need moral dissent like never before. Let me share with you why. First of all, right now as we sit here we are in the nation's poorest region, the south. The highest percentage of citizens living in poverty as high as it was in 1968 when Dr. King was shot. Our country's 12 poorest states are southern states. Though 15% of Americans live in poverty, the numbers in the south Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas are upwards of 20% and in some states in the south upwards of 40% of our children our children not black children, our children well 40% of black children but 20% 25% of children in general. There are we are at this time we're the wealthiest nation and the poorest nation in terms of the gaps at any time in our history. That's serious. We need a moral movement. At the same time we're in the south and in this country right now we've had 24 states refuse to expand Medicaid. 24 states, think about that now that's a new civil war and most of the reason to expand Medicaid is because they don't like a black man in the White House let's just be real about that because it can't be because it's anti-Republican because the idea came from a Republican named Teddy Roosevelt 100 years ago 8 million people are right now without health insurance according to the New York Times simply because governors and legislatures are once again engaging in the interposition and nullification just like Wallace and others stood in the doorways to block people from going to colleges now we have governors and legislatures in the south blocking people from going to hospitals. Think about it. That's right Florida I can name them all if I named all 24 I'd get mad so that's why I say 24. We are and what's sad about it is that it's actually hurting more whites than blacks but as Tim Wise said these arguments about poverty and social programs are racialized that started in 1968 with the White Southern strategy of Kevin Phillips to racialize these issues. Now in the states that are being denied Medicaid 6 out of 10 black people live in those states but in my state for instance there are 344,000 of people being denied a white only 142,000 of black and yet there are people thinking that if they expand Medicaid they're going to primarily help black because the White Southern strategy is a mythology that has power it's the only way we've been able to hold back the South and that is to cause poor whites to vote against their own self-interest and you can't break through that a white black I mean a democrat versus republican argument you have to have a moral argument for instance I was in a little town where they fly three confederate flags I had lost a little weight and there's a guy by the name of Sugar, Joe Sugar has a good clothing place so I wanted me some clothes I said I'm going despite the confederate flag he's a good friend of mine when I got out of the car there were three white guys in this particular place St. Paul they were standing on the corner I got out they pointed at me that's him oh my goodness but I wanted those pants so it was on because every now and then I get vain and think I look good at least my wife tells me that and so they started walking in the fact they said are you that NAACP guy I said yes I am they said we heard you having a march I said yes I am they said well now we don't know about this NAACP but we heard that you were fighting for Medicaid expansion and unemployment because our governor I said yes they said well can we come I said they said well we heard that you were talking we heard you on TV talking about right and wrong you weren't talking about Republican because we're Republican but we didn't vote for this mess I got a cousin that needs Medicaid expansion and I got a brother that keep borrowing money from me because he lost his unemployment can we come up I said come right on come right on because there is we have to begin to get people to see the myth of extremism and when we deny Medicaid expansion we're talking about cash years and cooks and nurses aids and waiters and veterans and construction workers and people who actually clean our back sides but then can't afford health care and the sad thing about that the poorest states with the highest level of poverty and the highest denial of health care are red states that have the most politicians that are against the very policies that would help the people who elected them and how immoral is it to get elected to Congress and simply because you were voted in you get free health care but then you don't want the people that elected you to have the same thing I'm telling you we need a moral movement Otto Swarma at MIT sounded like a prophet I didn't even know people at MIT believed in God I was up there I was studying and I met Otto Swarma and he was talking one day and he says he was in the class he said Reverend Barbara he was stuck in the class and he said we need to imagine again a different future I said that sound like Isaiah 58 where it says cry loud and spare not show Israel my sin is this the fast that I require no the fast that I require is that you care for the poor that you lose the man and then he said because you know when we do not care for the poor and the hurting it's a form of attention violence I said that sound like Ezekiel when Ezekiel said your leaders are like rabies infected wolves who eat the flesh of the poor and the hurting I said so we so he calls it attention violence he said it's and what we got going on in America is almost a willingness to disregard the poor and the hurting and it affects the best of us I mean even sometimes as much as I love president Obama you know sometimes he'll say what we're working for is a society where those people aspiring to be in the middle class can come up some people are not aspiring to be in the middle class I want to say which I was his name was with his you know counselor sometimes you got to say the word pope some folk are not aspiring to get in the middle class some people are trying to simply protect what Jesus wrote into Jerusalem on those y'all don't read your Bible you'll get that it's three letters when we see that in education resegregation is happening now faster than it was in the 1970s and when we see that the one institute say that high poverty resegregated schools 61 years after brown is still the major problem with education in America now remember Dr. King 20 days before he was killed March 14th, 2006 1968 talked about the other America and he said one America is beautiful but there's another America that has a deadly ugliness about it thousands of people can't work thousands don't have healthcare thousands live in vermin infested homes and thousands and thousands of young people are deprived the opportunity of education they are not dumb they are not without because they don't have native intelligence but because the schools are so inadequate and so overcrowded and so segregated that they are devoid of quality and in 2015 we can still talk about the two Americas and then on top of all of this we need a moral movement because now we're almost having to rename America we almost need to stop saying democracy and call it what John Nichols calls it dollarocracy $10 billion spending in the last election the Koch brothers talking about spending a billion dollars of their own money because of the way the supreme court you know and I tell folks we need to talk about sex but not the private stuff personal sexuality abortion what we need to talk about is the relationship in the back seat of our democracy between big business and politicians that keeps having this sex and producing the malformed children of injustice that's the sex we need to talk about we need to talk about we need to talk about the sex the sex that Hosea talked about you know it's some good stuff in the Bible but she's not going to read it Hosea said that the leaders have gone ahorring after other gods and when Hosea said that he was talking about when the leaders used their power to get in bed with the power for rather than to do what is right for the people now we got the VIA the Supreme Court gutted it Justice Roberts said the nation is no longer divided and then the Holy Ghost got a hold of Justice Ruth Ginsburg She forgot that she was a justice and became a preacher. And in her dissent, she called what they were doing hubris, pride. You know, pride is the first sin. Pride comes before the fall. And then she said, throwing out pre-clearance when it has worked is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you're not getting wet. And then she looked up from her paper and said to the court, no matter what you have done here today, you remember Bloody Sunday. And then she quoted a Unitarian. She said, and this court needs to remember that the moral art of the university is long. But it will then toward justice. But Justice Ginsburg was right because two hours after the ruling, Texas announced that they would be enforcing a strict photo identification. And 45 days afterwards, North Carolina passed the worst voter suppression law since 1965 that would not have met the test of pre-clearance. One of our senators said, the day that Shelby came down, June 25th, a day that will live in infamy, he said, now that the headache has been removed. He described the Voting Rights Act that cost the lives of four girls in a church here in Birmingham, the lives of James Reeve and Viola Woosa and Jimmy Lee Jackson and Martin King and Mega. He described what their blood purchased as a headache. Another official up in the mountains said on camera, if what we are doing will hurt students that are lazy, so be it if it will hurt Democrats, so be it. And if it hurts a bunch of blacks that just want free stuff from the government, so be it. And when people are that sick, you cannot cut through that with the simple conservative versus liberal. You need a moral, a powerful deep penetrating moral argument. And now some people are getting weary, even our friends. The Tea Party has said, the best we're gonna give you, if we fix the Voting Rights Act, this is what they're saying, and the bill has been filed, the best we're gonna give you is a fix to what the Supreme Court did that leaves Alabama, where you are today, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Tennessee uncovered. Oh yeah, that's being proposed in Congress right now. And voter ID would not be covered under pre-clearance. Now, and some of our friends are saying, you know, we're tired, it's the best we can do. You never negotiate till you fight. In a moral movement, you always change the atmosphere before you change the attitude. I said, how can you accept that we haven't sat in the Capitol yet? We haven't had civil disobedience yet. We haven't marched yet. You know, if the people, it has no way in the world, we can accept a Voting Rights Act fix that gives us less protection than what they want marching across the Edmunds Pettus Bridge. And we have to say to some people, if we are more scared of people drunk on tea and people that are intoxicated with this coke mentality, if we are more afraid of them than our foremothers were of billet clubs and guns and death, then shame on us. Shame on us. Where is Mr. President at? Where's Mr. President? Mr. President, we need the Unitarian Church to stand up in this moment. We need white people to talk about racism. Yeah, and we need, if the NAACP, and my president is talking about a journey for Americans, a journey for justice in America and possibly marching, not from Selma to Montgomery, but from Selma to Washington, D.C. We need the Unitarian to be a part of that. We need, we need a moment. I'm willing to help you, Mr. President, but aside from all the civil rights organizations, we need a group of clergy to put on our stoves and our robes and go sit down in Boehner's office and refuse to move until we are not, we are not going to change what's going on with just texts and tweets and emails. We must put our bodies on the line in this moment. If we have politicians that have decided to crucify voting rights and crucify the poor and crucify the sick, my Bible teaches me that every crucifixion needs a witness, needs a witness. Think about what they're trying to sell us and you'll understand why we must have a moral movement. This crowd is saying to us that the way to a better America is these are the things you must do. You want a better America? Cut money to public education and hurt teacher. This is what they say. This is their whole agenda. Let me break it down on the street level. If you want a better America, take healthcare and let people die and be sick. If you want a better America, cut people's unemployment. Take away their earned income tax credit. If you want a better America, then give more tax breaks to the wealthy and raise taxes on the working poor and the poor. If you want a better America, take women's rights. If you want a better America, then take away the rights of the LGBT community. If you want a better America, then push aside the push aside voting rights. If you want a better America, criticize the president on everything, even when he's right. Talk about his wife's arms. Talk about when she wants to give people the children their vegetables. Even talk about his daughters. Rather than that crazy festival of pardon in a turkey anyway. You remember when they talked about his daughter? What, the dress she wore at the pardoning of the turkey? This is what they're saying. If you want a better America, divide people and split them up. And then if you really want a better America, after you've done all of this division, make sure people can get a gun quicker than they can raise to the vote. That's their whole agenda. And we must stand up to that agenda because if we can't make a moral claim and a moral case against that kind of agenda, then what kind of faith do we have? Isaiah, are the people of faith now? The Bible is asking, who will stand up for me now? That's what God wants to know. Let me close here. Isaiah 10 says, war unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights. Matthew 25 says, when I was hungry, and that's not a question about personal charity, that's a question about systemic justice and how we use government. When I was, he said, the Bible says, he will say to the nations, not to the individuals, but to the nations, to the government. When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was in prison, did you visit me? When I was sick, did you care about me? James Reeve, I read about him so much and I'm glad to be here among his friends, his legacy. All souls church, July 1964, a year before he was killed, almost. He says, look, if we're gonna be able to meet their need, we're gonna really have to take upon ourselves a continued and this disciplined effort with no real hope that in our lifetime, we're gonna be able to take a vacation from the struggle for justice. Let all who live in freedom, won by the sacrifice of others, be uniting and the task begun. Till every man on earth or every person on earth is free. And I'm here to tell you, that time is now. We need a moral movement, a moral dissent. Somebody must stand and say, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who's in power, Republican or Democrat. There's some things greater than Republican Democrat. And left versus right, I don't even like that language. There's some things greater than the narrow categories of liberal versus conservative. There's some things that are just wrong, extreme and immoral. It's constitutionally inconsistent, morally indefensible and economically insane. We need a movement that destroys the myth of extremism. We need a movement that says it's extreme and it's immoral to hurt millions of people, just because you can. It's extreme and immoral to sing America, America God shared his grace on thee. But then you refuse and deny grace to women and grace to the immigrant community and grace to the LGBT community and grace to those who are poor and grace to those who are sick. Something wrong with that. And so I'm glad today, that I'm a part of you and a part of this generation of moral dissenters. I'm glad to be among those. We couldn't have done moral movement in North Carolina and in 12 other states without the Unitarian Church. I'm glad because it's our turn now. Martin ain't coming back, y'all. James Reed cannot come back. Mega can't come back. Elizabeth Canton's state can come back. Harriet Tubman can't come back. But we are their children. And it's our time to focus on the weightier matters of justice and compassion and faith. It's our time to take on the regressive public policies and the nightmares of extremism. And I often say if Harriet Tubman could get 500 people out of slavery, she didn't have tech, she didn't have email, she didn't have a car, she didn't have a plane, she didn't have a train. All she had was moss on the north side of the tree, a north star in the heavens, a made-up mind, and every now and then a 38 in her pocket full. I'm not suggesting that part, but I am suggesting. It's time for us to restore hope of a better way. Walter Bruegelman says prophetic movements do not start with implementation. Don't ask how we're gonna fix it all. The first role of a moral movement is to restore imagination. It's to conjure up a new hope. It's to help people be released from all of the things we have given our allegiance to that has caused us to be cynical and despairing. And the prophet comes to say, but wait a minute, justice can still roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. The prophet comes along and says, wait a minute, there is still higher ground. There's still hope. There can still be community. The prophet comes along and the prophetic movement comes along and says, no, if we do these things, we can be repairers of the breach. And so is our time to speak truth to power, to protest, to go to court, to stand up, to vote like never before, to march for justice, to do the work of God. Doesn't matter who's in the governor's office, doesn't matter what the Congress does, doesn't matter what the Tea Party says we can't be, who somebody needs to stand up in this moment and say you don't have enough political power to vote us away. You don't have enough insults to talk us away and you don't have enough money to buy us away. We need the heart. I'm on my way back to Montgomery, but the heart of our nation needs reviving. The heart is in trouble. Not just the politics, but the heart of our nation, our democracy is in trouble. And they tell me that whenever you have heart trouble, whenever there's an heart attack, somebody has to call code blue. And when code blue is called, everybody comes. Everybody drops what they do. And they tell me that when the heart has stopped or is having problems and having a rhythm, you don't give up on it. You go get something called a defibrillator. And that defibrillator has electric shock. And you don't just shock the person one time. It's been said that you might work on a heart 30 minutes or 45 minutes and people have come back because it is always possible to shock the heart. Well, I want you to know that the word heart comes from the Latin word core. It means the core, the center place where you are. But the word heart also comes from the word or the same Latin word core is the key to the word courage. And so to have heart is to have courage. And somebody's got to have the heart to start, to revive the heart. What you talking about? My wife is a nurse. And she told me that she's seen people go into cardiac arrest. And she says if you don't have courage, it'll unnerve you. If you don't have courage, it'll freak you out. And you won't be able to help the person whose heart is dying on them. But if you have courage and if you have something inside of you, you can run over there and get the defibrillator. And while they're jumping and while they seem like they're dying, you can help them and you can put what's necessary on the defibrillator and you can stick it on their chest. And over and over again, you can shock them. And she's been there where she has shocked people and they have come back to life. I'm wondering in America. I'm wondering in the Unitarian Church. Are there any people who have some heart? Is there a heart in this nation today? Are there some people that have some courage and you don't mind shocking this nation? You don't mind shocking it with some love and shocking it with some justice and shocking it with some mercy and shocking it with some truth and shocking it with some compassion. I want you to know that you are here for such a time as this because God needs you to be America's defibrillators. Today is time to shock this nation and revive our heart again. If I was in church, I would sing revive us again. Fill each heart with thy love. Let each soul be rekindled with fire from above. Hallelujah. Find the glory. Hallelujah. Find the glory. Hallelujah. Find the glory. Revive us.