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