WEBVTT - Rev. Dr. William Barber II on tackling systematic racism and combating poverty 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:08.039 Hi, I'm Pete Good, a judge, and this is the 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:15.200 deciding decade. Politically, people running for office are often advised 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:17.760 to speak only about the middle class, not to use 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:21.279 the words poor or poverty. There's always a heavy focus 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:23.400 on making the country work for the middle class, to 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.040 grow the middle class, which of course is important and true, 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.280 but the stark realities there are a hundred forty million 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:31.880 poor and low income people in this country, and if 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:34.519 we don't figure out how to mobilize around poverty, to 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:36.680 name it, expose the truth of it, and fix it, 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:39.440 we won't be able to break it. My guest today 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:42.280 is someone who has been working on this moral cause 0:00:42.320 --> 0:00:44.680 for a long time and is truly one of the 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:47.640 most extraordinary servants of the people that I've ever met. 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.839 Reverend Dr William Barber the second has spearheaded some of 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:56.160 the most influential moral movements in our time. Since he 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:59.680 was young, he's held positions of community leadership. Was president 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:02.200 of Local and Double a CP Youth Council at age 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:04.959 fifteen and is now on their national Board of Directors. 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:08.680 He launched the political Fusion organization Repairers of the Breach, 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:13.200 created the Ascendant impactful movement called the Poor People's Campaign 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:16.000 in the tradition of Dr King, and he received the 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:19.360 MacArthur Foundation's Genius Granted for his work on furthering the 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:23.279 moral movement against inequality. I have personally found his words 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:27.480 and stands inspiring. His integrity and faith have moved him 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.880 to insist the political systems and political figures, including me, 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.920 actually listened to the voices of the core and the dispossessed. 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:38.399 He truly lives the call to stand for the least 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.480 among us. Reverend, thank you for taking time to be 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:44.160 with us. Thank you so much for Pete, and thank 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:47.840 you for your campaign, your tenacity. You were among the 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:52.640 first on the national debate platform of any party to 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:56.640 acknowledge the work of People's Campaign and to actually say 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.360 that if we were going to have debates in this 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:02.360 country by where we are, where we're going, we had 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:06.360 to put the issue of poverty up front and center. Well, 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:08.240 I think one of the most powerful things that you've 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.160 done is open America's eyes on just how many people 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:15.280 fall into that category of poverty or low wealth nearly 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:19.200 half of the country, and in politics are taught to 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:22.040 talk always about the middle class and never about the poor. 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:25.639 Although that line has become thinner and thinner over time, 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.359 and it's had me thinking of the fact that there's 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:31.000 no scripture that says, as you've done unto the middle class, 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:35.320 so you've done unto me. I wonder, in your experience 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:39.919 mobilizing and empowering people to tell their own stories, what 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:43.760 you think is giving this movement the ability to reach 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:45.919 more people than it has in the past. Why is 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:49.079 there more attention to poverty than there had been? And 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:51.760 uh and how much further do we have to go 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:54.920 before you would be able to say that the system 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:57.560 is really able to hear those who are crying out 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:01.240 in this way. My coach ship up in Roctor List still. 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:04.720 Harris and our team decided that first of all, you 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:08.639 have to believe in the agency of poor and low 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:12.240 wealth people number one. Number two, you have to do 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.120 your homework, to be quite honest. Maybe I didn't realize 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.280 it was as bad when we started, because I've always 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:20.800 heard thirty nine million, that's what you're here for, the million. 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:24.040 But what we found out is that people are using 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:27.200 a way of calculating that that's fifty five years old 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:30.400 and wasn't sufficient at the time. When we saw this 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:32.760 number a hundred forty men. We all fell back in 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.160 our seats and said, what in the world. And because 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:39.480 most of this is invisible, you know, people don't realize it. 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:44.880 Sixty one percent of African Americans are poor and low wealth. 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:49.240 That's twenty six million people. Thirty some percent of white 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:51.440 people are poor and low wealth, but that's sixty six 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:55.280 million people. Poverty has a forty one percent more of 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:59.600 an impact on Black people from a percentage perspective, but 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:05.040 from a actual raw numbers perspectives, there are forty million 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:07.640 more poor and lower white people than there are Black 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.480 And the line that has been used by those who 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:13.760 don't want us to deal with poverty has often been 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:17.240 that it was a marginal issue, that it did not 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:21.200 cut to the heart and soul and center of our democracy. 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:25.120 And then we had to say, there's an interlockingness between 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:29.120 systemic racism and bio systemic racism. I mean all forms 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:31.800 of racism, not just towards black people, but and not 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:34.960 just one form. P the suppression police violence and answering, 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:39.279 conser ration, resegregation of public schools, mistreatment of our Latino 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:43.760 brothers and sisters, emmigrants, continuing mistreatment of our indigenous community. 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:46.719 But you had to connect that the systemic power, and 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:49.200 then connect the system and powered into the nivel of 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.880 healthcare and ecological devastations. And then that has to be 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:56.320 connected to a serious analysis of the war economy what 0:04:56.520 --> 0:05:00.440 Eisenhower called the military industrial complex. And then you had 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.719 to connect that to the theology, the false theology. And 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:07.240 so you asked me, what help does mobilize truth? And 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:09.720 then we went to them in We didn't start from 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:12.400 the top like a bunch of organizations saying we're gonna 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:16.680 speak on band for the Poor, bringing truth, bringing an analysis, 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:22.520 and showing people why they need to be connected. And 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:27.360 because of that Mayor, we've had tremendous mobilization. We had 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:31.040 the mass Poor People's Assemblar Mall march on Washington. We 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:34.440 were going to be on Pennsylvania Avenue June twenty, twenty twenty. 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:37.320 That didn't happen. We were gonna say, okay, we'll wait. 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.080 It was poor and lower people said no, you're not No, 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:43.840 you're not gonna wait. We're gonna go digital. Some of 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:46.960 them said we can't wait because we might die. Seven 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:49.599 hundred people are dying a day from poverty. Let me 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.359 ask you about that experience, because so much of the 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:56.880 tradition of these demonstrations is of course about gathering people 0:05:56.920 --> 0:06:01.080 together physically. And I wonder, as a vetter of traditional 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:03.960 political organizing, or I should say, as a veteran of 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:07.400 traditional moral organizing, what lessons have you learned or what 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:10.800 conclusions have you drawn about what it will be like 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:14.800 in the future as we have both digital and physical gatherings, 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:17.479 continuing to do this kind of organizing and bear this 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:21.000 kind of witness. It's another two. It doesn't mean we 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:22.760 don't do the other. We're clear they're going to do 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.120 the physical. There's a place for it. But as they 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:28.000 at rust and told Dr King, sometimes in the movement, 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:30.800 you have to learn how to do jazz, and you 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:34.159 know what jazz is. You got to learn. They got improvised. 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:37.520 That's exactly right. And in the improvision you learned you 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:41.919 actually create something unique. And so we thought, if we 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.479 had a hundred fifty thousand people to tune in on 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:46.360 doing twenty if that would be great. We had two 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:49.679 point seven million people, we have four hundred thousand people 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.960 to take action that day and send the moral platform 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:56.560 for the healing of the nation. Jubilee Justice poverty platform, 0:06:57.040 --> 0:06:59.640 four hundred thousand people sendate the governors and all of 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:02.560 them let slay this in We had fty tho people 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:05.080 just take the picture to say, look, we're here and 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:08.400 it's still growing. So one of the things we've done 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.680 we have something called in Polar's Moral Political Organizing Leadership 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:14.880 Institute and summit and all over the country we have 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:18.880 trained clergy advocates in POLO where people in the same 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:22.040 room we train them on history, we train them on economics. 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:24.840 But what we've learned is that we can now use 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:28.920 this too and powerful ways. And it actually worked better 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:33.520 for us because we wanted people to actually see and 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:38.560 hear the voices of poor and low impacted people. And 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:41.120 what was powerful is you to say, have a mayor peak, 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:43.960 come on, or Danny Glover, and the Danny Glover would 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.800 say did you know? And they would give the statistics 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:48.680 and then they say, but those are just numbers. Now 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:51.280 let's hear from the people who make up those numbers. 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:53.360 And people would come on and tell the story, and 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:56.280 then a person impact would say, this is why we 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:58.840 demand and would lay out the demands. And there's so 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:01.280 much power in that. I when I came to visit 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:05.840 in Goldsboro. One of the speakers at the event that 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:09.400 you gathered together had lost her son and was able 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:12.880 to show that her son would probably be alive today 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:17.320 if medicaid had been expanded in her community to serve 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:19.840 her community. And you know, I've been talking about medicaid 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:23.600 for years, and it was different to be in this 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:26.880 conversation with her bearing this kind of witness and this 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:31.040 pain that was caused by a policy that often gets 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:33.760 talked about in these dry terms or in terms of 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:36.240 these statistics. Well, you know, man, that's one of the 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:39.840 criticus I've had the political world. You know, you can 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:43.320 go back years. I mean, the way past Trump and 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:46.640 we had these debates, poverty was never at the center. 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:50.480 But one of the things I'm so I've pushed politicians 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:53.320 on it, we pushed them on, is why do you 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:57.080 talk about healthcare and not have people standing around you 0:08:57.080 --> 0:08:59.640 who need it? You know, thank for instance, in the 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.720 soil all of these southern states denied the Affordable Care 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.960 at you know, the Obamacare, turned down Medica expansion. I've 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:10.480 asked myself time and time again, why is it that 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:15.800 Democrats in the South have not had press conferences with 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:19.079 the people that are effective by that. In my state, 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.760 five hundred thousand people, three hundred for six thousand white, 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:26.360 hundred and fifty some thousand black, thirty thousand people formally 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:29.240 connected to the military. Why not have press compers and 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:32.480 let them talk, you know, in the midst of COVID, 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:37.120 why not have virtual press conferences with impacted people who 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:39.400 are suffering, who are dying, who are scared to go 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:41.800 to the hospital because if they do, they might end 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:43.880 up with a bill for sevent or five thousand dollars 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:46.880 if they get treated for COVID and they can't, you know, 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:49.440 make these two things. I think we have to put 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.560 a face on it and we have to expose what 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:57.400 I call the death measurement. What moved us about George Floyd. 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:00.920 Everybody talked who did this and who's doing And let 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:02.720 me tell you, the hero of that was that little 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:05.920 girl that he held that camera the whole time, and 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.160 she put her face on it and a borce on it. 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:11.600 That's what moved people. And so what happened. People got 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:13.880 to hear him say I can't breathe, but then hit 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:16.840 the image of what was being done to him struck 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:20.840 a cord because so many people working in places without 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:24.400 the protective equipment feel like I can't breathe. His words 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:28.760 became shorten, and we have to take this away from 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:49.240 just being numbers to being about people. You also, you 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:51.200 came up as a leader in the n double a 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:56.000 CP speaking out for justice for Black Americans. Your movement 0:10:56.040 --> 0:11:01.680 of fusion politics is multiracial, multidenomen national. But what is 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:05.440 the best way to think about this parallel set of facts? 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:08.839 And on one hand, poverty is something that unites so 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:12.280 many low income, low wealth white people, black people, and 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:15.280 people of other ethnicities and races. And on the other hand, 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:17.400 being poor and black is not the same thing as 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:21.160 being poor and white, and these racial experiences really are different. 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:24.240 How can you practice fusion on the one hand and 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.599 on the other not get caught up in the ideology 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:29.960 of color blindness, which I think we've learned is an 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:32.520 illusion that there's a mistake. No, you can't use that, 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:34.160 and that's why you have to put people in the 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.480 room where they're telling the same stories and the interaction 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:41.240 will come to intersection will come first of all. We've 0:11:41.280 --> 0:11:44.000 always had to do that. It was the abolition movement 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:48.240 was diverse, and Frederick Douglas could talk about it from 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.360 the first spective of being a slave. In the civil 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:54.520 rights movement, you had the second reconstruction if we are 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.040 fusion black and white. So Rabbi Headshaw and Dr King 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:01.440 could come together, but even Dr King took the lead 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.000 as a black person talking about how what was happening 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:07.000 to black people was also hurting white people. Right, It's 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:10.000 kind of like the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:11.880 but the truth, and you just don't leave it off 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:14.559 the table. Now, I'm gonna say something gonna be a 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:19.400 little controversial. In some ways, what he said in Montgomery 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:23.679 is more powerful than his closing at the Marching Washington. 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:25.960 I have a Dream was a close that he did 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.079 it in a a Rocket Mount Detroit Watchman in the Black 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:32.440 preaching it's like a closing, it's lifting people. I have 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.240 a Dream was him saying we don't have to stay 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:37.720 in this nightmare. There's a way out, and it's a 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:42.120 power for prophetic anthem of belief in the midst of 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:46.400 disbelief and despair. But at the end of the Semmer 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:50.600 to mountgom remark when he's pushing Johnson to do something 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:53.280 he doesn't want to do. Remember they did not want 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:56.040 to take up the voting rights at the people forced 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.360 to in a non election year. Most of the people 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:01.480 that have been elected had not gotten elected to pass 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:05.320 a voting rights act. But this moral fusion movement of 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.120 black and white, and brown and gay and straight, and 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:10.480 young and old and all came together. They made it 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:15.120 to mountin government. The King on those steps in his 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:20.720 speech starts talking about the first reconstruction. He starts talking 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:23.320 about what was happening when black and white people came 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.199 together in the South to build a new political base, 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:30.920 and how it was torn apart because the wealth, if 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:35.400 the aristocracy can cause them, saw the power of black 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:39.520 and white poor people coming together. And he says, when 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:43.880 poor whites can't eat the racists, give them the psychological 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:49.800 bird of racism. And he he lays out how every 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:54.160 time in history there is the possibility of poor blacks 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:57.400 and poor whites coming together to form a political base 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:00.400 that could change the country and change it for plytically, 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:05.280 the aristocracy soul's division. He says that division is not 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:09.200 just about just like on color, it's about power, and 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:13.440 it's about economics. All of this division we see and 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:17.080 all of this money being spent to divide is not 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:21.000 just the ignorance of one person. It is a strategy 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.960 called the Southern strategy that was implemented in the sixties 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:28.480 and when Kevin Phillips implemented it and gave it to 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:32.200 Richard Nixon and everybody following him. You know, Trump is 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:34.040 just the latest one to use it. He's not the 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:36.200 first one to use it. And he uses it in 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.760 such overt ways. You're not supposed to tell everybody what 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:42.880 you're doing. That's his food to The Southern strategy was 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:45.880 used by Regan, used by Nixon. Didn't somebody say that 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:49.680 Trump said the quiet part out exactly. See when Wallace 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:53.800 ran for the presidency, the people on that side of 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:57.520 the out saw his arguments were powerful, and his arguments 0:14:57.560 --> 0:15:00.600 could guarantee the South, and that could anti you a 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:03.320 hundred and seventy electoral votes out of a race to 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:06.400 two seventies. But he was too loud to embrace it. 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.000 So Nixon said, we have to find a way to 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.600 do what while this is doing, but not sound like him. 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:15.040 And so le at Water said, the way you do 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:18.520 that is you talk about economics and school and busting 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:23.080 and but my pointy, not the king saw the other side, 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.720 Dr King said, if they're paying this much money and 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:29.960 fighting this hard, we need to look at the demographics. 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:32.440 And when Dr King looked at the demographic he saw 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:36.040 that there was this possibility for poor white people to 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:40.120 come together and dealing with race and poverty. Connected was 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:43.560 the Lincoln Now, another thing about Dr King is that 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:48.280 he was quite impatient with showing moderate liberals and progressives. 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:52.840 Letter from Birmingham Jail was largely about this in patience. 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:56.560 How's your patience right now? You see a political system 0:15:56.600 --> 0:16:00.360 with Republicans Democrats, You've you've pressed on that them in 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:03.720 many ways. What what level of patients or in patience 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:05.800 do you think is called for in a moment like this, Well, 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:09.360 I think anybody the profits in the Bible were always impatient. 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:12.040 So there has to be a certain impatience in your 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:14.800 soul and in your mind and in your body when 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:19.200 it comes to how people are just disregarded. It's bactually 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.320 when you understand that it doesn't have to be that way. 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:25.440 To see how long are we going to be comfortable 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:30.800 with other people's death? You have never hesitated to speak 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.480 to the policy implications of the moral teachings of faith 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:37.960 as you understand it. And one of the things that 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:40.440 really surprised me in the course of campaigning for president 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:44.560 was how much appetite there was, certainly among progressives for 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:46.920 more of a conversation about faith. And I always tried 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:50.000 to be very careful to make clear that I believed, 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:52.560 as a as a political figure, that everything I didn't 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:55.840 said had to be for people of every religion and 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:58.680 of no religion, but that we also shouldn't be shy 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:02.760 to talk about the policy implications of our moral choices 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:07.680 and the moral implications of our policy emergencies. And yet 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:11.359 I think there was an assumption or an expectation among 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:12.720 a lot of the people that I talked to that 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:16.040 it was only in the political right that you would 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:19.480 see a lot of conversations about how faith and politics intersect. 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:22.320 I wonder if if you agree with that, first of all, 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:25.480 and if so, why would it be that maybe more 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:27.600 the left side of the aisle or the spectrum is 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:32.000 more reluctant or allergic to talk about the role and 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:34.960 interaction of faith and policy than than what we've seen, 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:39.160 especially on the cultural right, throughout my lifetime. Yeah. Well, 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.679 I I pushed back a little bit with you because 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:43.960 I don't use that language, and I think we have 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:46.880 to walk get away from it because it was language 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:53.440 that was deliberately put in our social fasorus to create 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:57.520 false interpretations that in language of left and right. And 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:00.960 to be quite honest, when you actually look at orthodox theology, 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:02.960 there is no language to better in any of our 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:06.679 holy books. My grandmother used to say about being a Christian, 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:10.399 it's like being pregnant. You are you are, and she said, 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:12.640 and you don't get to just choose. You have to 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:15.880 follow what Jesus said is the politics of God. So 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:18.560 you don't get to say you are somehow right Christian, 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:22.359 you know, a left Christian. Those terms are not really there. 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:26.520 And then secondly we have to know the history. I mean, 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:30.199 in order to commit genocide against the people who are 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:34.600 already here, the native people, somebody had come up with 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.240 the theology to concentrate that, in order to enslave people, 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:41.120 somebody had to come up with a theology that would 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:44.439 allow that to happen. Racistm and not just about name calling. 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:48.320 It is about power. Systemic racism is about power and policy. 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:51.959 It never is just about name called. The name calling 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.199 comes to cover up the policies. So what happens is 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:58.560 you have a group over here calling names and burning crosses, 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:04.600 but there's a group underneath that that's enforcing policy, changing policies, right, 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:06.879 and they can often say we're not with that group 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:10.560 right over that. So but but in order to do this, 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:14.040 in order to have this capitalism rooted on slavery, you 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:17.600 had to have these fourth and evil economics, and that 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:20.760 is when the end justifies the means. And so if 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:24.040 the end is prospered and wealth, it doesn't matter how 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:26.760 you get it. The second thing we had to have 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:32.439 was six sociology, and six sociologists says that something is 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:35.360 wrong with two people being in the same place as 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:38.919 equals simply based on color. And then you had to 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:43.600 have bad biology. And bad biology is what Cornell West 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.160 talks about in one of his early book, Propery Delivering, 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:49.439 where a French scientist actually came up with this notion 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:54.119 that you could determine brain size by skin color. M 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:57.600 And then the last thing you have to have is 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:02.640 heretical ontology, and a radical ontology is that God meant 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:05.199 it to be this place. And so we have to 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:08.800 remember that the church split in America before there was 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:11.119 a Civil war in the church before there was a 0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:14.320 civil war in the nation. Almost every major denomination had 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:17.360 split in America by eighteen for the over the issue 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:20.520 of slavery. And there was an argument one time, do 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:23.640 you baptize the slave? Yes, you're baptized because it makes 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:25.919 some better slave. Then there was an argument, no, you 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:28.960 can't baptize them, because that's honoring their humanity. I mean, 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:33.280 And you can find this stuff not in some backwoods 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:36.600 build it, but in the stacks of the Lafe, Breads 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:40.320 of Horror and Yale. And do I mean people really 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:44.000 spent time, may have Pete messing us up. There was 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:48.760 a whole system behind it. And there's something parallel about 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:51.680 this junk science and about the theology, right, and that 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:56.200 both taken and orderd by human beings that create the 0:20:56.320 --> 0:20:59.520 social and political where they look at this political order 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:03.159 and then they create this immutable excuse for it. And 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:05.520 whether it's the will of God or the laws of science, 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:07.560 or both of them taken together, is a way to 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:10.680 make it sound like these things that were created by people, 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:13.720 and that means surely could be torn down by people, right, 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:15.560 but makes it look as though they were just part 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:18.119 of the order of the universe exactly. And one of 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:21.240 the things that happened to meet in seminary that has 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:24.560 made me so passionate around this issue. I'm so intense 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:30.800 about being against any form of codified racism or codified 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:35.439 sexism or codified homophob Because one of our fathers in 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:39.680 the ministry got the Bill Turner. He assigned us to 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:45.720 preach pro and anti slavery sermons, to go into snacks 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.480 that doke and find it. But the black folks had 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:53.920 to preach the pro slate, and we almost had a 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:57.919 mutiny until he explained. He said, I want you to 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:04.760 understand how intentional this was. I want you to understand 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:08.639 the argument so you can unpack the argument that the 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:13.120 foundations of slavery and the rationales still exist in our 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:16.040 political and you need to be able to hear it 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:18.280 when you don't hear it. In other ways, you need 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:20.560 to be able to hear it when it's not said 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:24.560 as overtly and as outright as it was said other 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.639 years ago. But you need to know it because it 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:30.440 has not gone away. So after we got over our 0:22:30.520 --> 0:22:34.159 initial you know, resistance, we put ourselves in the idea 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:36.320 I have a sermon and I put myself into it. 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:40.200 And when I was preaching that sermon, you know, I said, 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:42.919 my God, if I didn't know better, I'd be convinced. 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:47.360 So this was really sophisticated work, yes, sir. And then 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:49.560 the other thing that happened is the white kids in 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:52.400 the room were all crying. But they told me afterwards 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:55.720 was we could imagine people that look like us preaching this. 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:58.720 And then they said, but I've heard that, so they 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:01.360 recognize in it the n a of things that are 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:04.600