 Dr. William Barber of North Carolina as you know, president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival. He's the author of three books, Revive Us Again, Vision and Action in Moral Organizing, The Third Reconstruction, Moral Mundies, Fusion Politics and the Rise of a New Justice Movement and Forward Together, a moral message for the nation. It's my pleasure to introduce one of the great people of our country as I said earlier this morning, a great force for pulling us together for good. Dr. William Barber. Thank you so much for allowing me to join you via this Skype. I've had a bacterial infection and my doctors took me off the road for a little bit. I'm doing well but I'm just trying to be mindful. I'm so honored and feel so humbled and graced by God to be able to join this historic release of this second kind of Kerner Commission. So thankful to the senator for his great work. So thankful to all of you at the Eisenhower Foundation for all that you have done for to give what I like to say footnotes for the foot soldiers because the worst thing you can do when you're organizing is be loud and wrong. And so, thank you. I really believe today is time to save our ship of state. We need to send out an SOS and if I could use that, I would say the only way we can save our ship of state is to see clearly, to organize intersectionally and to stand unwaveringly. After the civil rights movement, racist extremists who were without appearing to be racist, code words and dog whistles, the Southern strategy was a strategy deliberately designed to play the race card in a way to to reconstruction. Remember that Lee Atwater said something like if you say stuff like forced busing states rights and all that stuff. He said you get very abstract. And then you talk about cutting taxes. And he said all of these things you're talking about are totally economic. And the byproduct of them, though, this blacks get hurt worse than whites, but whites also get hurt very bad. But then they learn to plain black and brown people for their problem. The target of the Southern strategy that began in earnest right after the first kernel report was initially the states of the old Confederacy with the goal of developing a solid south to ensure that the majority of Southern whites would resist and repeal, repeal any fusion political alliances with African American. But it turned out that the race baiting worked in other parts of the country as well. This so called kinder gentler white supremacy that brought strong Thurman and the Dixie cracks into the Republican Party paid the way for the campaigns of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and the Bushes, all of whom employed the same political operatives and the same divide and conference tactics and the politics that undermined and deconstructed the many programs and policies that were working to address the issues of systemic racism and systemic power. Now Democrats are not without blame because the kind of neoliberalism took over that stopped even saying the word poor and only talked about the middle class. As Otto Swarma has said, the poor became what became the victims of attention violence. Racism became something you mainly talked about interpersonal terms, not policy and organizing became mainly an activity engaged in for elections to elect Messiah candidates and not organizing constantly for building up the public. And the south by many Democrats, progressives, neoliberals was written off for a strategy of winning so called blue states. So the first thing I want to say in terms of this SOS and seeing clearly, don't let anybody tell you that the problem is Donald Trump long before Trump mastered a modern day version of the con of the Southern strategy. He had an audience that had been cultivated for 50 years. In fact, even longer than that. This week, we remember Bloody Sunday and Dr King after Bloody Sunday and the Selma to Mount Gunnery March in a speech that is very often that is not very often quoted or remembered. Dr King said this when they got into Mount Gunnery. Toward the end of the reconstruction era, something happened very significant that it was what was known as the populist movement. The leaders of this movement began to awaken the poor white masses and former Negro slaves to the fact that they were both being fleeced by the emerging bourbon interest. Not only that, they began uniting Negro and white masses into a voting block that threatened to drive bourbon interest from the command post of political power in the South. They rewrote constitutions and changed laws and made voting open to all men, males, and they changed criminal justice laws. He went on to say to meet this threat, the Southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer the development of a segregated society. He said, I want you to follow me through here because it's very important to see the rape groups of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issues involved in the populist movement. It may be said of slavery area that the white man took the world and gave Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the reconstruction era that the Southern aristocracy, the redemption movement, took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow when his wrinkled stomach cried out for food that his empty pockets could not provide. He ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man better than a black man. He ate Jim Crow. His undernourished children cried out for necessities that his low wages could not provide. He showed them Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores and on the streets and in the buildings. This is what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society, a society of justice where none would prey upon the weakness of others. So what we're really seeing in this particular moment is what Neil Painter calls an iconography of an American calling response. We misunderstand the linkage between systemic racism and systemic poverty. If we think that systemic racism and systemic poverty is just about the dislike of black people. No systemic racism and systemic poverty flow from an ideology that has a deep dislike of democracy itself and a deep dislike of the establishment of justice and the promotion of the general welfare. To see this up close, my brothers and sisters, let's look at a particular instance of systemic racism right now and how it links to systemic poverty and that is voter suppression. Since the United States Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in the summer of 2013, there has been an assault on voting rights in this country like we haven't seen since Jim Crow and we can't get it twisted as we consider strategies for resistance and more importantly moving forward with the movement. Trump didn't win in November simply because he appealed to the white working class. I'm not saying the economic pain of white folks isn't real. I'm just saying they're not alone. Poor white people are hurting just like poor working black people and poor working brown people and that is not why he simply got elected. Trumpism got away with pitting poor white people against people of color but before 2016 to set the stage over 22 states since 2010 passed voter suppression laws and drew race driven unconstitutional apartheid like congressional and state legislative districts. These states represent the highest growth in black and brown voters. These states have 57% of black voters. These states represent 234 electoral votes. If you just do the 13 southern states of the former confederate that's 171, 180 electoral votes which means you can actually control almost you can control nearly 180 electoral votes by just controlling 13 southern states which means you only need 90 to 99 votes from the other 37 states to win the presidency. Think about that. The states that have engaged in voter suppression control 54 senators and over 50% of the United States House of Representatives. We have less voting rights today than we had August 6, 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was passed. That's not merely a class problem that's a race and a class problem. More than four years almost five that's how long it's been since the Supreme Court gutted section five of the Voting Rights Act. Now Strom Thurmond only filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 57 for 24 hours. This congress under First Elita Zippor-Bana and McConnell and Rinal Ryan has filibustered fixing the Voting Rights Act for over four years. We talk about Trump winning Wisconsin by 20,000 or 30,000 votes but there but but but our environment has showed us there were over 250,000 votes suppressed in Wisconsin. In North Carolina where we won after six years of fighting four years of moral movement 1200 arrests for moral civil disobedience we won and the Supreme Court called the monster voting laws and racist gerrymandering sociable racism and yet in 2016 we had 150 fewer voting sites early voting sites than we had in 2012 and across the country there were 868 fewer voting sites in the black brown and poor white community than there were in 2012. This my friends is the election hacking no one wants to talk about because it would force us to deal with systemic racism in America and study after study shows us that the political landscape would look very different without the systemic racism of voter suppression. Even in the South if you registered 30% of the unregistered black voters and they connected to progressive whites and brown people a number of southern states not just Alabama on a fluke but a number of southern states could turn from electing extremists that is why every effort of voter suppression is designed to try and prevent this because if you change the politics of the South you change the politics of the nation. Now here is the linkage to systemic poverty whether the tactics are partisan gerrymandering a discriminatory voter ID rolling back early voting same day registration not allowing automatic voter registration at 18 the places where we see the most the hardest racist attacks on voting rights in America are the same places and the same states where we see the highest levels of poverty even among white people the highest lack of living wages the greatest blockage of union rights the greatest denial of health care the greatest attacks on immigrants and the LGBT community the lowest the lowest lack of funding for public education in fact most of the poor as your report shows are white female children and disabled they are working people of all colors who work every day but live in poverty we have eight million more poor white people in America than black people yet many of them have been persuaded to elect candidates who promise to end health care defund public education and deny living wages despite the fact that 64 million families live on less than the living wage while 400 families make more than $97,000 an hour this is bigger than just a class problem it is about systemic poverty and racism think about it politicians who use surgical and targeted racist voter suppression then use that power to promote and codify policies that hurt all Americans especially the poor and the working class black brown and white and so we have to make the connection between these maladies that threaten the heart of our democracy just yesterday the heritage foundation used the tactics of the southern strategy to criticize your report they went straight to tactics that have been perfected for years they used code words to play the race card when they criticized this report just yesterday they blamed poverty on immigrants brown immigrants and government spending we must see this clearly if we're going to have a movement but we also must see clearly something else and that is what i call the heretical work of so-called white evangelicals and christian nationalism and the work to hijack moral consideration in the public square unfortunately what we are seeing now is a well-funded revival of a specific and subversive strand of christianity one with the historic legacy stretching all the way back to slavery Princeton historian Kevin Cruz has it right he has documented how public religiosity that wraps itself in the flag and will pray p r a y for a president while that president and his allies are praying p r e y i n g on the poor and are doing the business bidding a big business that that form that strange form of public religiosity was a is a purchased product in the american ethos the us chain of commerce sun oil and others beginning in the 1930s funded organizations like the spiritual mobilization and paid preachers to preach a twisted form of Calvinism to challenge the social gospel the social gospel had that had been so much a part of the new deal and the strange form of Calvinism says if you're good you go to heaven if you're bad you go to hell if you're good a good american you'll prosper if you're bad american you're poor so therefore poverty is the result of people not living by a certain prescribed life rather than the systems being broken and sinful now this as kevin cruz reminds us was a 21st century a 20th century version of slaveholder religion that plantation owners had paid preachers to defend in the 19th century it continues through the moral up to now and it is proving over and over again and it's those who pay allegiance to it that their god is cash that they have chosen to be chaplains for the greedy rather than prophets to the nation that's what you hear when you tell hear robert jeffreys tell president Trump god endorses building a wall that's what you hear when you hear franklin graham not the father who's being laid to rest but the son go around and get ten million dollars to go around the country doing the election and then to say that the election of trump was the will of god or jerry farwell talking about giving the president a mulligan on on on personal issues and saying that jesus never told seas are how to run wrong enthusiastically they celebrate they celebrate this kind of extremism as god's gift now the bible if i could be a preacher for a minute i am a trained theologian calls this whoring after of the gods that's what it's called in the scriptures whenever you a nation chooses to hurt the poor oppress the stranger mistreat the weak and corrupt the court systems the biblical prophets of ancient israel called it a whoring after of the gods they accuse the political leaders of public infidelity and unlike in marriage this adultery is not a private matter it must be challenged and it must be called out in the public square in fact ezekiel in ezekiel 22 talked about a time when he said the immigrants were being mistreated the the poor were being hurt he said the politicians in their policies were acting like raving wolves but something worse was happening and that was that the preachers and the moral leaders were covering up for the politicians that is not what is supposed to happen we are supposed to challenge public policy that runs counter to the call of love and justice what we're seeing is with so-called christian nationalist is a distinction that is not the distinction in the bible jesus made his first proclamation about the poor the protocols pthos those who have been made poor by economic exploitation his last sermon declared that every nation not individual not about individual charity but every nation would be judged by its policies toward the poor the prisoner and the sick this is why we must have a movement that challenges systemic racism poverty and the promotion of a heretical public morality because we can see clearly what is going on we have to get our language right because we have inherited a language that is too puny for the crisis we face somehow somewhere progressive and learn to think of ourselves as a part of the so-called left now i've had problems with that because i'm not left or right i fight more for the prophetic moral center you know left and right comes out of the french revolution those on the left didn't want the monarchy those on the right wanted the monarchy but these we're not in the french revolution i think left versus right liberal versus conservative is a trick language who who told us that the people who are so wrong on poverty programs are on the right who told us that when you undermine the poor that you are conservative to conserve means to hold on to the essence of and you hold on to the essence of something one of the key essences of our constitution is promoting the general welfare so if you're doing things to promote only certain people's welfare you're not being a conservative because you're not holding on to the essence of what our constitution calls us to do so we need a deeper moral language to name this crisis we've got to learn to speak in a way uh that has moral clarity we just need to say clearly it's wrong to take healthcare away for 20 million americans it's wrong to blame our economic challenges on poor people and immigrants and people of color while we give welfare to corporations in the form of dramatic tax cuts it's just wrong not left or right wrong it's wrong to scapegoat muslims and immigrants for violence perpetrated many times by our own foreign policy it's wrong it's wrong to have less voting rights today than we had 50 years ago it's wrong to protect the NRA but then not protect school funding it's wrong to protect the NRA but not get assault rifles out of our society it's wrong to cut healthcare and to ban docker students and to destroy the environment it's wrong that poor people can buy unleaded gas but can't buy unleaded water it's wrong to fund a war machine and to fund a racist border wall but then defund poverty programs and refuse to pay people a living wage and protect labor union rights it's wrong to pass a tax reform bill that is nothing but welfare to the greedy and the way it was done it represents more money being transferred from the poor and the working poor to the greedy than was transferred from the backs of slavery to the white slave masters and aristocracy that's what three trillion dollars represents it's wrong for preachers to claim to be representing god so long as they're standing against gay people standing against abortion standing for prayer in the school standing for tax reform uh standing for gun rights but then they say nothing about racism and poverty and stopping the sale of assault weapons and health care it's wrong and so there must be a movement that is rooted in love and truth because something is wrong in the hearts of people i'm telling you something is deeply wrong when they gain power and all they know to do with that power is to use that power to inflict pain or what Coretta Scott King called violence because she said robbing a child of public education is violent taking health care is violent not paying a living wage is violent she said and she said having an apathetic attitude to award these issues is also a form of violence something is wrong deep in the spirit when the only thing you can think of to do with power is to hurt other people we have to have a movement that doesn't just hate people shouldn't hate but almost pities them and that's why we work so hard to change it because how much do you have to dehumanize your own self in order to use power to dehumanize other people that is why we must have a movement that will organize intersection we got to see clearly but we've also got to organize intersectionally every movement to expand democracy and strive to water more perfect union in america's history has required a public moral witness that holds up the best of our religious and constitutional traditions when we have come together across divisions in the human family when for instance frederick douglas and the women's suffrage movement came together when white abolitionists and black freed people and runaway slaves came together when muslims and christians and and jews and others in the civil rights movement came together when the social gospels and people like terry roosevelt and franklin roosevelt and francis perkin came together to fight for justice we have always won that's how we ended slavery that's how we ended child labor it's how we won the right to vote for women if african-american and it is what this moment demands a moral movement to save the soul of this nation and revive the heart of the democracy long before a bullet took the life of dr king he and many others after seeing the first poor uh kernels kernels report after reading two americas they saw clearly the systemic violence that threatened the soul of this nation through interlocking injustices he said america had a spiritual sickness that was terminal and dr king insisted unless we experienced a radical revolution of values now he was murdered he was killed he did not get to see it in full but he knew that this revival could not simply be spoken into existence he knew that the poor who were often blamed and pitted against one another would have to unite in a national campaign of direct action to save the soul of america 50 years later we face a national crisis not unlike the storm that rocked america in 1968 many parallels and that is why my friends i believe that i've committed my life along with revan list dr listy or harris and many others to building now a poor people's campaign a national call for a moral vine there are five interlocking diseases injustices that threatened democracy in us today race systemic racism systemic poverty ecological devastation the war economy and militarism and the distorted morality of so-called christian nationalism and while a thorough analysis of america's morality may tempt us with despair it also brings us face to face with an intractable dilemma which first inspired the first poor people's campaign we have only one way out we must link up with others organize intersectionally but link up with those who are directly impacted by the interlocking injustices in a deeply moral way with a deeply moral and progressive agenda and refuse to be divided by the few who seem to benefit from a system that hurts us all the future not of the democratic party not of the republican party but of america depends on nothing less than a third reconstruction a deeply moral deeply constitutional deeply committed long-term not one rally one tweet one week or one day long-term anti-racist anti-poverty pro-justice transformative fusion movement a movement where we don't have black people working on racism white people working on poverty ecological people working on the environment but where we see how all of this is interrelated and interlocking it is not about saving a party but about saving the future of our democracy at a moment like this we must remind ourselves of a truth that is at the heart of the tradition of my Jewish brothers and sisters right in the middle of the book of psalms psalms 118 it says that the stones that the builders rejected have now become the chief common stone we now need the work of the rejected stones the rejected mothers the rejected poor people the rejected workers the rejected immigrants those who are rejected to come together with clergy with advocates and build a fusion coalition now with all of those affected and only by linking up and asserting our moral authority because budgets are moral documents healthcare policy is a moral document living wages is a moral doubt morality is not just feel good it is factual it is policy based and only by asserting our moral authority as children of the divine can we shift the moral narrative we first have to shift this narrative and change this attention value in this nation and then build a movement that will challenge whoever is empowered democratic republican or independent to become to be a part of making us truly a more perfect union and this must be a movement as i said rooted in love and truth and justice and non-valid we need and we are building the poor people's campaign a national call for a moral revival people are coming together jews christians and muslim young and old gay and straight red yellow black brown and others we're coming together some come because of the deep religious traditions that tell us how that our nations are judged by how we treat the least of these others are coming because the deep constitutional tradition the deep moral traditions that tell us that that that domestic tranquility is critical not domestic division and the general welfare and the common defense are all an establishing justice are critical to any kind of freedom that's worth having we're doing this not because it's the 50th year of the poor people's campaign we don't need another commemoration we're not even doing it because trump is president even if hillary was president we would still need to deal with these issues of poverty that have been so elaborated in this report you have done even if obama was president we'd have to deal with those and challenge policy even during that era that that that that should not should have been done or should not have been done we do not need another commemoration or another celebration the truth of the matter is you don't commemorate and celebrate an assassination of a prophetic movement know what you do is you reach down into the blood you pick up the baton and you carry it the next leg of the way so like you at the Eisenhower we've done a souls of poor folks audit we looked at us since the 50th year and we are declaring that this requires a moral revival and we must organize organize intersection and then finally this sos not only must we see clearly not only must we organize intersection we must stand unwaveringly that's why for the last two years i've been on a national tour training building from the bottom up because change doesn't come from dc down it comes from mount gunnery birmingham greensboro up that's why we've been all over the country organized with clergy and advocates and poor folks impacted people and now we are at the end of completing organizing a thousand people clergy impacting people a thousand people as a minimum in 32 states and 2,500 people in dc who are willing to engage in a launch of a poor people's campaign a national call for moral revival that we told the media about in december and they're ready to launch 40 days of moral nonviolent fusion direct action voter mobilization and power building from the bottom up and we're going to be launching on mother's day from mother's day all the way to june 21st the summer solstice and june 21st is also the anniversary of the death of swan chaining government we bought mother's day is when we launch june 21st is when the launch concludes the first part of it we're launching from birth to life and then on june 21st we're having a massive send-off rally in in dc and other places to send people off to go to work this is not launching a commemoration it's not just six weeks of doing something it is launching a movement we've even gotten calls from around the world of people who want to do other things in in in in coalition with us and it's with the poor not for the poor and clergy and moral leaders are joining conspicuously when we do direct action we're going to be in full ministerial regalia and clergy regalia we want the nation to see and advocates to see the first monday that we start it will be focused on child poverty and women in poverty and the disabled we're coming together of all different races and creeds and color let me tell you who's coming together as i conclude a white young lady out in seattle washington who lives in the zip code where you have the highest number of homeless white people seattle washington she came to one of our mass meetings and our mass meetings have never had under a thousand people in the audience and 30 to 40 thousand people online in fact in Alabama had over 150 000 people online but this young lady said i he said america i'm the white trash that you threw out but you forgot to burn and i'm connecting with the poor people's campaign a national call for a moral revival now who's hooking up with her where there's a black woman in alabama whose daughter died in her arms because they refused to expand medicare name was venus and she says with tears in her eyes her daughter's death will not be in vain and she's joining the poor people's campaign and planning to do a moral direct nonviolent a direct action and infusion movement and and voter mobilization i can also go to members of the Apache nation we've gone out there to arizona we've seen the pain that our native brothers and sisters are facing and they're calling all of the other nations to join in this season a moral nonviolent direct direct action fusion action and all over the country people are coming together and this movement not only will we have actions in dc but in the 32 state capitals because so much of what's happening and not happening is happening in the state capital and we will be acting simultaneously in a few weeks we're going to kentucky and west virginia up in appalachia and we're going there by invitation people who are tired of being fooled who are tired of being lied to who are tired of seeing people play the race card and then using that power that they receive to hurt the very people in these poor appalachian communities we've i've been with the pueblo people and black people and white people who are organizing in new mexico and i could tell you story after story had a video we can show you we can send to you of what's happening because it's time my brothers and sisters to say the ship of our nation together is what we must do we must build a movement and we must build it for a long term not for a sprint not for a tweet not for email and surely not for just one election in fact sometimes people ask as i conclude they say where did you get the idea did you get it from dr king we said surely some of it comes from dr king rabbi hasha surely rabbi hasha was involved surely the welfare right worker surely the first reconstruction surely a lot of movements but we also have a biblical text it's a text owned in love by muslims christians and jews it's from the book of aimers and it actually strangely it sounds eerily contemporary and it actually lays out what you have to have happen in a nation if you're going to deal with systemic racism and poverty if you're going to deal with lifting those who have been broken by the systems of that quality listen listen to what the text says aimers five verse 12 this is in the message bible and i conclude with this it says this people hate this kind of talk because raw truth like the kerning commission the second one uh healing our divided that's raw true is never popular but here it is bluntly spoken nation you have run rough shot over the poor you take bread right out of their mouths and because of that as a nation you're never going to move into your luxurious homes you have built you're never going to drink wine from the expensive vineyards of planet you will never have a stable nation until you deal with this issue of the poor then the prophet says i know exactly precisely the extent of your violation i know the enormity of your sins and it is appalling as a nation too often you bully right living people you take bribes right and left you kick the poor when they're down some people have come to the conclusion that justice is a lost cause evil is epidemic decent people are throwing up their hands they feel like protest and rebuke are useless and a waste of breath but i need some people says the prophet god says i need some people who will seek good and not evil and live i need you to say to the nation if you keep saying god bless this nation and god is your friend then live like it and maybe that will truly happen how do you live like it the prophet says hate evil love good work it out in the public square and then maybe god will notice the remnant and be gracious and then in verse 16 the prophet says god says listen listen god says i need a remnant of people who will go out into the streets and lament loudly feel the malls and the shops with the cries of doom weep and cry and say not me not us not on our watch that will enter the offices the stores the factories the workplace and enlist everybody in a general event god says i want to hear you challenge the nation and when you do i'll make my visit my friends it's time to go in the streets it's time to touch the heart of this nation it's time it's past time to no longer be silent it's time it's past time to be in the public square and in the halls of power it's time it's past time to take the research and raise our legitimate discontent it's time it's past time to save the soul of this democracy and the lives of her precious people it's time and it's past time to inspire movements for the poor around the world for all god's children it's time it's past time to save the soul of our ship of state god bless you love you let's get to work