It was a culmination of efforts. DocDawg who personally knows Rev. Barber's NC NAACP lawyer, Al McSurely, sent a lovely invitation to Rev. Barber through Al. Even though Barber's schedule was jam-packed, Al pushed him to accept. He did and Al threw the event into works by contacting his NC NAACP regional president in Asheville, Carmen Ramos-Kennedy, to find an African Methodist Episcopal church for an appropriate venue. St. James AME Church accepted and they opened their doors for us at noon. In addition, they organized a good old fish fry for our lunch before. The congregation of St. James warmly welcomed us and served their version of "two fishes and five loaves."
I had made arrangements weeks in advance for Rev. Barber to arrive at noon, but I was informed at noon that he would be delayed until until 1 p.m. Suddenly, I needed 45 minutes of content. I turned to the pastor of St. James, Reverend Brent La Prince Edwards, and asked if he had enough of his congregation there to form an impromptu choir, he said no and then he sheepishly said "I can sing a little." "Go for it," I quickly replied, and he threw it into works.
Rev. Edwards blew us away with his fantastic voice. Denise talked about the first time she heard Rev. Barber. And Al described some interesting history about Rev. Barber and his appearance at an NAACP convention where Mitt Romney spoke in 2012.
At the end of the video above, you can see me nervously tracking Rev. Barber's arrival by text and phone and the overwhelming relief I felt when I saw him actually walk in the church. It's pretty funny in hindsight. And another funny thing you'll see is Denise actually running out of words. This was a first for me.
Transcript of the Rev. Barber's speech:
Reverend William Barber II speaking to Daily Kos at St. James African Methodist Church in Asheville on September 25, 201
Forward Together! [Audience: Not one step back!] Forward together! [Audience: Not one step back!] It is good to be here today, through all of the ups and downs, the rain, the change in schedules, the airplane that when you get on they tell you the auxiliary power is gone. But through it all we thank God for His grace and God’s mercy to be here. Let me first of all start out by saying that everything that I say today you can blame Al McSurely and Bob Zellner if you want to fight somebody—they are the reason. Al said, you know, my scheduler said you can’t do this, then they said "you gotta go, you gotta go," so we’re here, we just left yesterday from the mall, speaking just before the Pope and talking about the need for moral action around climate change. [applause] I’ll talk some about that as well because I had to say to some folk, you know, I had to tell people I’m an evangelical. I want to say that right up front, because I’m sick and tired of people who call themselves evangelicals who don’t even preach what Jesus preached. [Amen] I said to them yesterday, if you can’t accept the Pope’s message on justice and climate and care for the poor, then you can’t accept Jesus either.
I’d like to thank Neeta, or I should say greet you, as someone who has, there is some of the blood of natives in my veins as well … I’m Tuscaroran, my great-great-grandmothers were, I tell people I’m pretty much at home anywhere, I have family members who have eyes that are as blue and skin as white as any European. I have Tuscaroran and African-American, so diversity works out pretty good. Look at me.
Let me thank Carmen, our new president, and Dr. Hayes, our former president, because we all know that history has continuums, and so I honor all the members who have been here throughout the years.. then certainly I’d like to thank Denise, thank you so much, ... you get me into a lot of trouble for some of the things you write, but you know, life just is not fun without being in trouble.
So, and a pastor who is a son of Emmanuel. I’m sitting here and imagining thinking about the history of this church. You know, Frederick Douglass coming along in 1865, after the Civil War, maybe coming here, to a group like this, and all these Abolitionists and other people and saying: what are you going to do? For a moment I’d love to talk about that almost classroom style in some way. I want to talk about building a movement to grab the heart of the moment. Building a movement to grab the heart of the moment. There is actually a book out I’ve been reading that talks about the heart of politics, The Heart of Democracy.
Now, because this is a Daily Kos gathering of bloggers—and how many bloggers are there here? A whole lot. You know, I want to tell you something. I want to tell you what your name really is. Your name is Baruch. That’s your name. Now, Baruch is the name that comes out of the Old Testament, and … it means the name that is blessed by God. Like Barack, but Baruch, means one who has been blessed by God. In fact, Barack also means one who bows, who pays homage to God, it’s a form of, an action of praise.
But Baruch in Jeremiah was Jeremiah’s scribe. In fact in the 36th chapter of Jeremiah, it says, "Perhaps the house of Judah will hear all the calamity which I plan to bring on them, in order that every man will turn from his evil way.” God was talking to Jeremiah and saying: maybe we can make them hear, hear what;’s being done, separate them from the propaganda of the false prophets, perhaps they could turn. And right after that, God called Daily Ko… I mean Baruch. He called Baruch. And Baruch was a son of Uriah, and Baruch wrote on a scroll, at the dictation of Jeremiah, all the words that the Lord spoke to Jeremiah, and so Baruch became the voice of the prophet. Baruch extended the moral voice of Jeremiah. If there was no Baruch, you wouldn’t really ... the message, the prophetic, transformative message that could save the nation from its peril would have not gotten out.
So every movement, ever moral movement of conscience needs a Baruch mechanism … Bloggers. It’s old. Jesus had disciples. Matthew. All the Gospels. John. Writers. They told the story in different ways, but they preserved it so it could reach a much broader audience. Because Jesus in his lifetime never went much farther than 30 miles from his home, but the message. Peter wasn’t a good writer, he was not a learned man. But John / Mark was his Baruch, his blogger. Acts, all the great works of the acts of the apostles would have been impossible without this guy named Luke ... who was a doctor and a correspondent. William Lloyd Garrison had the Liberator. Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony wrote The Revolution. Frederick Douglass had the North Star. NAACP had The Crisis. The grandson of William Lloyd Garrison wrote the call to the nation that produced the NAACP.
1898. The first place, the first thing that the persons who desired to destroy the Reconstruction politics of the South burned down was the Wilmington [Journal]. Before they had the Gatling gun to shoot and kill people, in 1989, the first thing they destroyed was the mechanism for getting the message out.
So, today, we still need Baruch. That is the role of groups and bodies like Daily Kos have to provide, we have more tools to use. That is the role groups need to have. Because if the moral message is isolated, then the propaganda of extremism wins. But if the moral message and the message of social conscience and social justice is amplified, then there is a proven record that it will touch the heart of the nation. It will touch the heart of the nation. That is why this country, this world, they always spend a lot of energy especially those who would be the oppressors they always spend so much money trying to silence the voice. That is why Dr. King, his sermon on Palm Sunday, before he was killed, exactly one year later to the day, preached a sermon, there comes a time when silence is betrayal.
Now, the first thing we got to get out, the message we have to get out clearly, to teach people, because we can’t assume people understand, is why the forces of extremism have captured a significant imagination of this country. Why is that? Why is the stuff that you and I look at and seems so crazy and so ridiculous encouraged? Why is it? Why is it that folk will pay money to advertise on Fox? [laughter] You can’t just say to people ...? Somebody, somewhere is doing something. They’re shrewd. They may not be nice, but let’s be truthful, but you have to give it to them, they are shrewd. You know, Jesse Helms was shrewd. And I learned something from Jesse Helms. I understand a broke clock is still right twice a day. And what Jesse Helms ... Jesse Helms said one day, I’m only serving for 51%, I’m not trying to save the whole world, he said give me 51% and I stay elected.
Why is that? I think it’s three or four things.
The key is helping people understand that in 1974, Charles Koch, the brother of David Koch, the sons of Freddie Koch, who called for the impeachment of Justice Warren and Eisenhower when Warren presided over the Brown decision and Eisenhower said that public education was a national security issue. You can’t miss this. What the lineage of extremism that they are connected to. But in 1974, not 11 years after the March on Washington, Charles Koch basically took the strategy of Dr. King from progressives because progressives gave it away.
You see, in 1963 Dr. King while he went to Washington but never told us to keep going back to DC. In fact he said, don’t go back to DC unless there are stakeholders from the bottom up. He never told us to have rallies in DC and celebrations and anniversaries in DC. The only time Dr. King talked about going back to DC was if you planned to stay, if you were going to engage in radical civil disobedience to change the structure and the conversation and the reality of this country. At the end of his speech, he gave us a plan:
He said: go back to Alabama, go back to Mississippi, go back ... build a state-based movement.
Charles Koch in 1974 said this in a speech: “The most effective response was not political action, but investment in pro-capitalist research and educational programs. In other words, institutions that can reach the public and tell them about libertarianism and anti-government philosophy. The Times quoted Koch to say, “The development of a well-financed cadre of sound proponents of the free enterprise philosophy is the most critical need facing us today” and so they and other billionaires put their money into think tanks, communication outlets, publishers, various medias, with a long term plan to build from the bottom up.
This apparatus has produced, pounded out corporate conservative propaganda 24/7 from the bottom up for decades ... who says and you have to understand what is happening. This is how they were able first to take over state legislatures and thereby take over the Congress, which then means they nullify the power of whoever the president. This is how they were able to get Congress and state legislatures to lower taxes on rich and corporations, break unions, defund schools and the rest of the things that have made them so much money and wreak havoc on the rest of us ... the money ... the money was not for politicians who would run for office, initially. It was to build their organization from the bottom up, to execute long-term strategies. to get what they want. Not today, not today, but tomorrow.
That was Dr. King’s strategy. And they took it. Then they financed it. The argument that was in The Times, the moral of the story, is that the right—I’m going to come back to that because I don’t like that word, but ... The right put its resources into long-term movement building.
You go back, ask Bob Zellner, you ask Bob Zellner, did they have rallies or did they have campaigns? He’d say, They had campaigns.
They didn’t have a rally, they had a campaign.
The right put its resources into long-term movement building. Setting up think tanks, radio shows. Blogs. Entire networks to reach the public to persuade them that conservative ideas would make their lives better.
They infiltrated and took over organizations like the National Rifle Association, and set up rapid-response organizations. They did it to pressure politicians.
Our side ... we took all of our money and resources and we put it into candidates, so many people looking for a messiah candidate who would lead them out of the wilderness and somehow convince the public of the rightness of our cause.
But then after the campaign was over, the infrastructure dissolves, the expertise disperses and it needs to be rebuilt every two or four years.
That is the first reason why this extremism that we’re seeing has such a hook in the American consciousness is because of the building [...] We gotta remember, that’s our I have to tell you, at some point we gotta get upset with folks taking our prophet’s dreams and using it to foster their nightmare.
The second thing we are facing is corporate … um, companies ... that how extremists use corporations to outsource their message by buying the message of a church. There is a new book called One Nation Under God, you all ought to read it, it outlines how when the New Deal was passed, a large number of measures, and now I’m going to read a bit from the book, were regulated business for the first time it empowered labor unions, it gave a voice to the people, and corporate leaders resented both of these moves.
The New Deal wasn’t perfect because of some of the racial things but because of this part, this part was very powerful, and it (the book) says the corporate leaders launched a massive campaign of public relations designed to sell the value of free enterprise. The problem was that their naked appeals to the merits of capitalism were largely dismissed by the public because nobody trusted them because of what had happened with the stock market crash. So, when they realized, the book talks about, that a direct case by them about free enterprise was ineffective, they decided to find another way to do it and they decided to outsource the job. So they polled and they checked and they found that the most trusted men in America at that time were ministers.
And so they outsourced their message to ministers, and they used ministers make the case that Christianity and unchecked capitalism were soulmates. This case had been made before but in the context of the New Deal, it takes on a sharp new political meaning, the author says. Essentially, they argue that Christianity and capitalism are both systems in which individuals rise and fall according to on their own merits. If you’re good you go to heaven, If you are bad you go to hell. In capitalism if you are good you make a profit and you succeed, but if you are bad or not living quite morally you fail.
They argued that the New Deal is not a manifestation of God’s will but rather an act of paganistic state-ism and inherently sinful. Then they used the messenger to develop other messages. One of the first was named James Fifield, he takes over the pastorate of First Congregational Church in Los Angeles and he tells the millionaires what they want to hear. He actually says reading the Bible should be like eating fish, we take out the bones to enjoy the meat. But the bones that he takes out, they are all of the texts that deal with Justice.
Accordingly, he disregards Christ’s many injunctions about the dangers of wealth and instead they preach the philosophy that weds extreme unchecked capitalism to Christianity. He becomes the frontman for a number of corporate leaders. Alfred Sloan of General Motors, the head of the US Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, they heavily fund his organization. Air time, radio time. Then Fifield sets out to recruit other ministers. In 10 years he has 17,000 so-called ministers representing this organization. And they actually had preaching contests to figure out which sermon could best teach this message, and they would sell them to each other, sell the message, and they would all preach the same sermon from pulpits all across the nation. They called it Americare.
See ... this is for so many who have thrown away Christianity ... you aren’t mad at Christianity, you’re mad about Americare, this corporate Christianity that was taken over by corporate elites in order to use clergy as frontmen for oppression. That is NOT Christianity. [applause]
This is false theology. You do good, you get wealthy. Therefore poverty is related to individual moral actions rather than systemic injustice and systemic sin.
And these preachers said, “This was the ‘American way of life’.”
So that’s the second reason why this extremism has such an effect…. And we must challenge that in our writing and our blogging.
Third, the Southern Strategy of 1968.
You can’t ever discount properly how powerful it still is. It’s a long term plan. Kevin Phillips told Nixon you can’t go on using the N word like that, you can’t do George Wallace, you gotta find a way to separate them. And you don’t have to win all the country, but you gotta to lock down the South. You have to lock up the South. Now, how do you do that? You can’t use race straight up. You gotta talk about taxes. Entitlements. Wealth redistribution. Forced busing. States Rights. Welfare queens. You suggest that the 1960s all failed in American all because of freedom.
It worked for Nixon. And Ronald Reagan used it to a T. Read his speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, when he was running for President, he used every word of the Southern Strategy…. He got white Southerners to vote against their own self interest. And he is still lifted up in this mythical fashion, because very few unpack this part of his campaign. And in some ways that’s what we see out front with Trumpism and why some of the other folks are so mad with Trump—because he’s only telling out front what they really say in the back. [applause]
This has been used again and again and it still has locked up the South.
Now, these are the three, this whole piece around this Charles Koch, and the hijacking the process of the building from the ground up, the corporate takeover of the Christian pulpit and using pastors as front men for what I call a heretical form of Christianity, which is really a kind of American…and then continuing hold of the southern strategy… not just on the south, but on many of the suburbs even of the north.
Now, that is how I believe we get to this place where you have the entitlements being bundled up with the racial narrative. That is how you get many many whites in the south voting against the very things that in the 40s actually helped them and their families get where they are, but after the ‘60s, entitlements were so racialized, America was so racialized, and then used to suggest to southerners at that time that “your problems are because these folks are now having access to what your people had access to in the 1940s and 1950s, and they don’t deserve it.” So then you end up voting against your own self-interest.
Let me show you how it works now. So you got people in our own state, in North Carolina, voting against Medicaid expansion because the way it’s been framed, it was framed by the extremists who try to say they are Republicans but they are really not, it’s been framed that it is “entitlements going to them,” when in fact, about 346,000 of the people being denied are white.
So now you get this narrative that the pathway to a great America, and here’s what they are selling and sometimes when I hear what they’re selling and just break it down into very very basic terms I think we can’t beat this argument. The question is not how strong they are, it’s how weak are we? [applause] Because their whole message is this: If you want a great America then deny public education and attack teachers, deny labor rights, deny living wages, deny immigration rights, deny women’s rights, deny LGBQ rights, deny and suppress voting rights. And if you really, really, really want a great America make sure people can get a gun quicker than they can vote. [applause] Oh, and if you want to really help the top of America, then use false notions about religion that turn people over again and let’s define.. let’s find a way to .. I’m not going to use the word, because somebody will take it out of context, but as Cornel West says, find a way to new “N” people. So you got to do the George Wallace dance but you gotta create new “N”s, so you use the Muslims and the LGBT community the new “N”s.
If I was in a revival, you mess around with the demon of racism that has never been totally exorcised from the existential reality of America. Then… you do all of this to cause fears.
These things have allowed a hostile takeover of state houses across the south. But, we in the moral movement don’t believe it has to be this way. First, we need to remember history. And that there are examples in history when we have overcome extremism worse than this. Don’t freak out!
The first, and I think this is important to educate people on the power of the First and Second Reconstruction. The First Reconstruction took place in the shadow of slavery and amid the wreckage of the civil war. African Americans joined hands with whites in North and South who were willing to see them as allies. They ended up controlling every state house in the south within the first 4 years after slavery. Together this fusion coalition elected new leaders, many of them African Americans, many of them former slaves, and the makers of this reconstruction hammered out from a deeply moral perspective new state and national constitutions that created national citizenship open to people of all races. In fact, this is the 150th anniversary of the 13th amendment, this year, the end of slavery. They built the first public schools, and in our constitution, they made public education a public right in the south, in 1868.
They extended the ballot to all men regardless of color and later would extend it to all women. In the preamble – have you ever read the preamble? The preamble of the North Carolina Constitution in 1868? You should read it, do some blogs on it. How did they get that progressive in 1868 to write this? “We hold that all persons are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruit of your own labor.” They were talking about labor rights in 1868! They were talking about labor rights in 1868. Long before the Knights of Labor came south. Long before the AFL-CIO. They knew, blacks and whites knew that labor without living wage, without enjoyment of the fruits of your labor is just a pseudo form of slavery. [applause]
They guaranteed public education. They guaranteed people protection under the law. 1868! They embraced new rules for the courts and criminal justice, and they expanded democracy. But remember, in 4 years the experiment of Reconstruction faced powerful opposition. Many former confederates saw black citizenship and black leadership as inherently illegitimate. They first attacked white people. The Klan was in some ways formed first to attack white people. And in North Carolina it wasn’t some backroom person with a straw in his mouth, it was the leaders at the University of North Carolina. Col Saunders, who has a building still named after him, led the formation of the Klan.
They attacked African American leaders. They began to wail against taxes, because if the Government had the right taxes they could fulfill the promises of a post-slavery economy and of lifting up the former slaves. They hated against public schools. They railed against taxes. Because they did not want white & black children to be educated at the same level. They took on the ballot box. They didn’t undo the 15th amendment, they just began to put up all kinds of impediments. They ABRIDGED the 15th amendments. Then they took over the courts.
That thing, they took over the courts. The tea pa… I mean.. they took over the courts. In 1875, we passed a law in this country, civil rights law, that made it a felony for a business not to serve an African American. But by 1883, by slowly building from the bottom up, they took over the courts and they nullified the civil rights laws of 1875. There was but one dissenter. Justice Harlan. What did they claim to do? What did this group claim to do? This was their marching order: “We have come to take back America!”
I’m JUST SAYING. [laughter]
“We have come to REDEEM America.” Look--redeem. They use moral messages for an IMMORAL activity. And by 1898 with the Wilmington riots and later the Springfield riots, all of the gains of the first reconstruction had basically been overturned.
Then you get a second reconstruction in 1954. Blacks, Whites, Latinos, Young People come together. I like to say it began with Brown, when you get 5, I mean 9 justices, one a former Klu Klux Klan member, to overturn separate but equal. It took 40 some years, 47, 46 years to do that, a constant movement, building off of the dissent of Justice Harlan….
Let me say this now: You MUST dissent NOW, even if Change doesn’t come now. Because you don’t know how your dissent NOW will help Change come Later!....[applause] Sometimes your role is simply to set up the foundation for change later. You might be DEAD and GONE…. But do NOT get discouraged. You don’t know who’s gonna read what you write ten years from now. [applause]
So think about what came with the Second Reconstruction? Integration, desegregation not integration of public schools, Medicaid, Medicare, expanded Social Security, economic opportunity, the civil rights act, the voting rights act, minimum wage, the war on poverty. Fusion happened. Fusion! Then, again, the Dixiecrats, the extremists, conservatives revolted. They couldn’t stand it. They turned to violence and terror. And then they decided to launch, what? The Southern Strategy. And guess what their mantra was? “We must redeem America! We must take the country back!”
But happily therein lies a roadmap for us today. We must begin to think in terms of building—how do I phrase this?—of birthing a Third Reconstruction. I believe that all of this movement, all of this struggle, is nothing but the birth pangs of a Third Reconstruction being born right in our midst.
I want to suggest 14 steps, 14 things that we believe are critical to the building of this third reconstruction. We’re testing them with the Moral Movement, learning as we go, but America’s Third Reconstruction depends on a moral movement. A map of the heart, not just politics. It is something I must give my life to. It is a struggle for which if I get up in the morning and I’m not engaged with it then I’m not even really living. Something to be called. I believe it has to be deeply rooted in the South, and it has to emerge state-by-state, and I believe no single leader or organization can orchestrate it. It never has.
Here are the 14 steps:
1. We must engage in indigenously-led grass roots organizing across states. There is no shortcut around this. We must build relationship at a state level. Helicopter leadership by so-called national leaders will not sustain a moral movement. [applause] What you need is to make local movements national! The nation didn’t change from DC down! It changed from Selma and Birmingham and Greensboro up! [applause] People say to me, Rev. Barber, we like the work you’re doing in North Carolina, but you need to go national, you’re not national. I say: by whose standard? You do not have an address in DC to be national, all you’ve got to do is have a movement that begins to touch the heart and the mind and the imagination of people across the nation. You don’t have try to be everywhere. They say, Rev. Barber: come here lead us. I say: nope. But I will slip in and teach you what we have learned so you can lead it yourself. What they need are indigenous…. Prophets, by the way, are indigenous, they were regional You had Amos and Michael and .. they were also governed by time. Amos, Michael, Jeremiah, Isaiah, they were governed by time…. The work they did in their area had impact. So what we need indigenously-led, state based, state government-focused, this is because the worst stuff that is happening to us is the place where we have the least amount of attention, and it’s in these state capitals! You need to have C-SPAN and blogs inside these state capitals, listening to these debates on the floor of the capital, so people can hear exactly what’s being said--and done! State-based, deeply moral, deeply constitutional, anti-racist, anti-poverty, pro-justice, pro-labor, transformative fusion movement.
2. We need to use moral language to frame and critique public policy regardless of who is in power. A moral movement claims higher ground than a mere partisan debate. By returning the public discourse to our deepest moral and constitutional values. In other words: someone must stand up and say, it doesn’t what party is in power, orwho has a super majority ... there are some things that transcend political majority, partisan politics. There are some things that are just right, some things that are just wrong. Some things that are just extreme and immoral.
Watch what I mean by this. For instance, when an extremist says “We want to read the Constitution” we should be the first one to say: Select me! Let me! That’s exactly what I want you to do, let’s read and let’s start with this: Freedom isn’t even the first consideration of our Constitution. That’s because there is no concept of a freedom in the American Constitution without first the establishment of justice, the providing for the common estate, promoting the general welfare and the insurance of domestic tranquility. You want to read the Constitution? OK, as long as you stop saying Welfare is a bad word because it is found in the Constitution. You want to talk about capitalism. But let’s talk about capitalism that must establish justice. Because that is the only capitalism that’s legal, that matters in this country and what you are talking about is constitutionally inconsistent. Also, a moral argument frees us to touch on this.
I’m going to recruit you all you slaves ... I’m going to make you all free today. You didn’t know this, but I’m gonna prove to you that you are all slaves and I’m going to free you today. How many of us when we talk, we still use that language: right and left? Why? Why? Why are we using language from the 1700s? That’s where it came from! In the French revolution, when the right wanted monarchy and the left didn’t. Why? Why do we put people in boxes like that? Why do we use the language conservative vs. liberal? I’m both. On ketchup I’m liberal. Hot sauce, I’m conservative.
How are you going to allow people to call themselves right when they are so wrong? Why do you put yourself in a linguistic box when you debate them? Why do you give away 50% of your argument? Why do you call somebody right but when you want to turn around and call them wrong? [laughter] I told you. Why do you say conservative when if justice and promoting the general welfare and common good is the essence of our Constitution, and conserve means to hold onto the essence of, and if everything they do undermines justice, then how do they get away calling themselves conservative? I know this is making your head hurt. But somebody, somebody has to begin to change the language because language is either a tool of liberation or it’s a tool of domination, and when you are fighting an adversary you don’t let him tell his story nor do you use their language.
That’s why I have people who tell me they are a Republican and I say how are you claim you are the party of Lincoln when you are fighting for voter suppression? So what do we call them? Extremists. Moral language gives you new metaphors, new abilities. And you can say, the reason I’m against this policy is not because it is left, or right or conservative. I’m guessing it is because constitutionally inconsistent, it’s morally indefensible, and it’s economically insane. [laughter] We certainly have to challenge the moral hypocrisy of the religious right, especially when they have been so wrong.
The fact of the matter is, I’m a theological Biblicist. Let me let you all know, we’re gonna spend some time on this, the greatest sin in the Bible is the sin of idolatry, the sin of self worth. The second greatest sin that has always existed whenever people worship themselves is injustice. There are more that 2,000 scriptures in the Bible that deal with the issue of injustice toward women, the stranger, the poor, the sick, the hurting, the unacceptable. If I had time I’d go through them. Not gonna go through them.
My point is, so how does someone get to call themselves a conservative when they liberally leave out so much of the Bible? How do you get to claim to be conservative when you talk more about what God talks about and the least about what God talks the most about? ... You’ve got 2,000 scriptures about justice and how to treat people and not one about prayer in school. You got 2,000 scriptures. You might have three about homosexuality, and not one of those trumps this scripture: you still must LOVE your neighbor as you LOVE yourself.
We can’t succumb to those who bought Christianity and the pulpit and turned it into something else…nor can we throw it away because we are angry with them. The deep religious and moral values that have been at the backbone of every progressive movement. There would have been no labor movement without the social gospel. I’m not talking the whole thing, but a part of it.
There would have been no Abolition movement without William Lloyd Garrison when he got arrested in Boston writing on his cell, “I, William Lloyd Garrison, was arrested this day for preaching the damnable gospel that all men are created equal.” There would have been no civil rights movement without the theological framework underneath the civil rights movement. So we have a serious moral crisis. Politicians have come to welcome clergy when they talk about abortion and prayer in school and homosexuality, but when they speak out about poverty, unchecked capitalism, labor rights, healthcare, criminal justice reform, climate change, raising the minimum wage, they say: you gotta be quiet now, because you’re talking politics. We are talking politics, but it’s the politics of Jesus, it’s the politics of Isaiah, of prophetic social conscience.
Moral framing allows us to change the language. We cannot allow conservatives who are really extremists to engage in moral theological hypocrisy and hijack the powerful language of faith. We have to do something. The Pope has done it. Moral Monday has done it. We have to get the language out of the containments of the sanctuary and into the streets. We have got to do this. [applause] Then if we do this moral framework we can unite around a moral agenda. I don’t do a lot of meetings where we sit down for three days to figure out an agenda. I believe a moral agenda should be well known beforehand. Let’s see if we agree. I believe a moral agenda should be number one that we want to secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies. That it should ensure economic sustainability by fighting for full employment, living wages, the alleviation of disparity in employment, a green economy, labor rights, affordable housing, targeted empowerment zones, strong safety net for the poor, fair policies for immigrants, infrastructure development, and ceasing war baiting and extreme militarism and a fair tax reform. I think we all agree. [applause]
[A moral framework can be a constitutional framework?]
And then, we should agree on educational equality. That every child should receive high quality, well funded, constitutionally diverse public education as well as access to community colleges and universities by securing equitable funding for minority colleges and universities. #2 We should at least agree on healthcare for all. We should at a least stand behind ACA. We are not going to stop there. We should be serious about defending Social Security, especially black folk, and women, since most of us didn’t get it 'til 1954. But that’s a sermon for another day.
We should be deeply committed to women’s health and environmental protection. We can agree that we want fairness in the criminal justice system by addressing the continuing inequalities in the system and providing for equal protection under the law for black, brown and poor white people. Morally, we are going to protect expand voting rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, and the fundamental principle of equal protection under the law. We understand that this is not a separate agenda but intersectional. There is a moral rubric that intersects on all of these. All of the people that are fighting each of these issues are fighting all these issues.
When you check their voting records, the same people who are fighting environmental justice are fighting public education. The same people who are fighting public education are fighting Medicaid expansion. The same people fighting Medicaid expansion are fighting women’s health. The people fighting the women’s health are fighting against the LGBT community. The same people fighting the LGBT community are fighting the labor rights community. So, if they are cynical enough to be together we ought to be courageous and smart enough to come together. [applause]…
Now, there’s another mechanism… Here we are fifty years after the Voting Rights Act today, and we have less voting rights than we had in 1965. That should not be just a concern of the NAACP. These are attacks on black and brown voting power. Thirty-two states still have 132 proposals still being pushed. We’ve had a two-year filibuster. Strom Thurmond only did it for 24 hours and 30 minutes. We’ve had a two-year filibuster since June 2013, on the Congress refusing to do what the 15th Amendment says it has to do, and that is, enforce voting rights. So for two years they have not fixed Section 4 as was dictated to them by the Supreme Court and thereby have allowed an open season on voting rights tat has allowed an open season on voting rights, and has unleashed voter suppression and apartheid redistricting all over the South and other parts of the country. Which has allowed for extremists to hold Congress and state houses hostages.
But here’s what we have to make sure people are clear on: the attack on voting rights is an attack on Labor. It is an attack on women. Attack on public education. Remember the model: if they lock up the south, then they lock up progressive politics. Which is why everybody—black, white, every organization who believes in progress—should be unified in demanding that the voting rights amendment act that restores section four should be passed this year. We must make sure that not one presidential debate is held without them having to answer the question: where are you on voting rights fifty years after Selma? And do not allow them to make it this just a black issue. It is about black and brown people, but it is also about this power of fusion politics. And hindering the ability of black and white and brown people and others to be a fusion politic and transform and fundamentally change this nation and birth this Third Reconstruction.
And North Carolina is today’s Selma.
But the case in North Carolina is the test case. Because if they were to get away with this case in North Carolina, and basically argue that a state can change its laws any way it desires, particularly when they don’t have section 5, but more importantly the argument they’re putting forth is, that as long as the state makes policy they can retrogress. When they see a policy that’s actually benefiting black and brown and white people coming together, they can use race as a pretext to retrogress and there’s nothing the court can say about it. And that becomes the standard. And if it would win, it would be unleashed all the time.
The second example of why we’ve got to understand intersectionality on these issues is what just happened in Charleston. When the governor stands up and says because 9 people died, they’re gonna have to bring that flag down. And some people had the nerve to applaud that. First of all, that flag should never have been up. It was taken down at the end of the Civil War. It should never have been up; it was a lost cause. But more importantly, this is in America. What she suggested was: Only black death matters. We got to challenge this. White and black, we have to challenge this. See, this has been an important ... for fifteen years. But 15 years of living people couldn’t get that flag down. Only when 9 people die, and it’s gonna mess up your summer economy….
They didn’t just die. They can’t just die. They have to die brutally. And then the people have to respond to that death right. You can’t be in the street, you can’t demand other things happen like Medicaid expansion, or living wages, you can only talk about that flag coming down, you have to be settled for that flag coming down ... and then you have to watch us do all of the formal pomp and circumstance when it comes down. Then, shhh, you have to be quiet. Even when you have a funeral, you can’t have a funeral like Dr. King had when those four girls were blown up in a Birmingham church when he stood up there and said, you know who really killed these girls? “Every politician that has fed their constituents the stale bread of hatred and spoiled meat of racism.” Every preacher that has stayed behind the stained-glass windows and not gotten the call of justice. They couldn’t say that from the pulpit. You basically have to act like Reverend Pinckney died naturally. You don’t want a lot of mourning.
But the mourning will cut through the distortions. … Really mourn. If somebody gets up and says, You know, that night, Reverend Pinckney he was late, because he was fighting for more money for the poor, for public education, He believed in Medicaid expansion. He believed in a living wage. So if you really want to follow Reverend Pinckney and you want to honor him, then let’s bring the flag down, but with that same pen let’s sign the Medicaid expansion into law….
A moral argument says: you gotta have that conversation, and anything less than that cheapens the lives. Anything less allows the narrative to say: Only black death matters. Anything less actually says I’m gonna misinterpret the forgiveness of the people. The people forgave Dylann Roof because they recognized that Dylann Roof was the symptom of a greater problem. It is called prophetic forgiveness. It’s the same forgiveness within the non-violent community where you forgive the individual while you still hold accountable the system. I was just there and the families on the day of grace … they are being misinterpreted. A moral critique, not a democrat or republican, can unpack this. So in reality what took place and the way the governor and others in South Carolina are attempting to use the flag coming down, a cover up of the injustices that are still there, they don’t want to do anything about. It’s not just a black issue, it’s intersectional. It’s connected to labor. To LGBT rights. To voting rights. To women’s rights. All of it is connected.
3. The other thing that must be said, I will go through these quickly, the first one is that we must demonstrate our commitment to civil disobedience. Smart civil disobedience must be a part of bringing this Third Reconstruction, and it needs to happen in the United States.
4. We must build a stage from which we lift the voices of everyday people impacted by the immoral policies. impacting the poor. A moral movement must put a face on these injustices. We must show the face of the people who have been denied Medicaid, so that the people that try to racialize entitlements can’t get away with that. The face of the people that are being denied living wages. In fact, we need some good investigative blogger of those people who have died because of these southern governors are allowing 8 million to go without Medicaid expansion. Then ask these families to allow you to do what Mamie Till did when her son was killed. She invited Ebony magazine in and kept that casket open. You need to help us find to find the preachers who who will say, or some imams or some rabbis, who will say if someone dies in your congregation and they could have lived, if only they had Medicaid expansion and then let’s have an open casket funeral. Let us invite the public in. And then we say: This is NOT God calling somebody home. [applause] We refuse any more … funerals. This is the fault of bad public policy by the legislature and the governor, and it does not have to be this way! We must put a face on death. We must put a faith on the 14 million poor children who exist in this richest nation in the world. We must put a face on our immigrant brothers and sisters. We must put a face on those that are hurt by environmental injustices. We gotta blog, we gotta write, we need you to find them. Those with health problems, with limbs that won’t work.
5. We’ve got to recognize the centrality of race. If somebody asks you today is it class or race we need some bloggers to say: It is. [applause and laughter] That’s what I need. Don’t waste our time trying to separate race and class. It is. It is. That racism, race-based slavery, white supremacy, is America’s original sin. And we need some folk that say it who don’t necessarily have ebony hue! … Someday, do you know Tonya Roth? Sometimes she’ll say, I’m an LGBT woman, but today I want to talk about racism. I say I’m a straight man and I want to talk about LGBT issues. They say, what? But that is the point. Sometimes I may get up to talk with women about Planned Parenthood. I’ll go on the radio show and they will say: why are you here today to talk about women’s issues. And I will say: no, I’m here to talk about what’s happening to black people. I’m a black man, I’m here to talk about what’s happening with women. In other words, we have to understand, and then I have to say know: this time you will never, ever separate us again. Because we understand what’s happening, and we can beat your hold, because we understand the game you are playing on the American psyche. [applause]
6. We must build a broad, moral coalition of religious leaders of all faiths. All faith traditions are not the same, but if you check them all, justice and love are at the center of them. We have to particularly hook them together, whether they are Christian or Muslim, Hindu or otherwise, it is possible, it is because we need them to help us lift our voices. The Pope is not the only one saying it. There are a lot of prophets who are not bowing to the forces of oppression. But they don’t have a space, don’t have a place. But I believe that this time we must amplify them, with many voices…. A whole lot of people. A whole lot of voices. Faith voices. If we amplify them, then they can grab at the heartstrings.
7. We must diversify our movement with the goal of winning unlikely allies. Fusion politics is about building a way to be in relationship with people that you wouldn’t normally expect.
8. We must build a transformative long term coalition that doesn’t just measure success by electoral outcomes. We have to understand our connectivity of issues. The greatest myth of our time is that extreme policies only hurt a small subset, like LGBT people, persons of color or the poor in fact these policies hurt us all. When you tell the story of Moral Monday--Maybe you are inspired by the NAACP, but … the reality is that in this movement we have learned that we are people who are black and white, we are Latino and Native American, we are Republican, we are Democrat, we are Independent, we’re people of faith, people not of faith but believe in a moral universe, we are native and immigrant, business leaders and workers, the unemployed, the uninsured, gay and straight, students, parents, and retirees. We are North Carolina, we are America, and we don’t intend to go anywhere. [applause]
9. We must make a serious commitment to academic and empirical analysis of policies. We gotta find a way to elevate academicians who understand the movement in the street and can give footnotes because the worst thing you can do is be loud and wrong…. We need almost a corps of scholars that work with Daily Kos that can give you the empirical stuff and then you figure out a way to break it down in a way that the people on the street can hear it. Because moral issues are not impractical. One of the textbooks of our movement is The Cost [Price] of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz. It is a powerful analysis because it actually shows that it is costing us more to keep people poor.
10. We’ve got to engage in voter registration and education. [applause] Now the power of the fusion coalition is based upon a diversified electorate. We’ve got to do it with hope. Did you know if you just registered 10% of the unregistered black people in North Carolina to vote you don’t even have to get 50% of the white vote, just a good strong core group of them, to vote their future and not their fears, it is over for the extremists? Do you know that if you register 30% of the unregistered black voters in the south, and connect them with progressive whites and Latinos, do you realize the solid south will come a-tumbling down?... [applause]
11. We must pursue a strong legal strategy. We gotta have some lawyers that see themselves once again as social engineers. That don’t say “Well, this has never been tried and I don’t know if I can win,” but they fight because they believe in the fundamental principles of our Constitution. The lawyers who take what we do in the street into the courthouse. When that happens, we will find ourselves winning in some different ways.
12. And then we gotta utilize social media, recordings on iphone, video, text, Twitter, Facebook. You know, Harriet Tubman didn’t have text, Twitter, or Facebook and she got 500 people out of slavery. I wonder what could we do? [laughter] All she had was moss on the north side of the tree, a North Star, and a .38 pistol in case you got scared and you didn’t want to go back and you didn’t want to go free, she made sure you were NOT going back to slavery.
But the mainstream media don’t often tell our story. We had 100,000 people in the street in North Carolina on a winter day, but the mainstream media didn’t even talk about it. But--you do. (whispers) You do.
And then, we gotta use the cultural arts, like Yara [Allen]. A movement is only as strong as the songs we sing together. If you study the history of the cultural arts, watch how she got up here, and in 30 seconds, two minutes, had us all as one family. But this time we gotta bring the music and the spoken word and the storytelling and the visual arts.
We’ve got to make sure that the images--I tell progressives sometimes: y’all don’t know how to rally. We had a rally and some prima donna who won’t even go to jail and she comes up and wants to sing.. no no no, Moral Monday? You can’t hit the mic unless you are willing to hit the jail. [laughter and applause] We need some help making sure that the music matches the message. Daily Kos, we need some help in elevating voices like Yara, not just the song, but the stories behind the song, and others, and begin to have a way that people can click something, I don’t know what that something is, and they can just all day long listen to the spoken word. They can just erase and exorcise all of that other propaganda out of their heads. They go somewhere thinking, (sings) “Hold On! Hold On! Keep your eyes (whispers) on the prize.
And then lastly, we must resist the one moment mentality, because we are building a movement. And o one victory will ever usher in the Beloved Community. Which means that no single set back can frustrate us. We are building up a new world and we have to have a movement. If we do, what can happen, Bob—I’ll tell you what. We can have a radical revolution tomorrow. We can lead to the Third Reconstruction.
We can change the consensus. We haven’t won all the elections yet in North Carolina, but when we started our governor was at 50% in the poll. Now he’s at 30 and falling. When we started, our legislature was at 30% now we’re at 19 and falling. When we started less than 50% of the people were for protecting voter rights, now over 50%, less than 50% were for Medicaid expansion. Now somewhere near 60% are for Medicaid expansion. Less than 50% of the people would accept the tax hike for education. But now it is more than 50% of the people will accept it. Because a moral movement changes the game.
We’ve been able to mobilize tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in the South. We’ve been able to mobilize in places unexpected. A thousand people have been arrested, more time than any time in history. We’ve been able to win in unexpected places, like Asheville, like Mitchell County that is 99% white and 89% Republican, one of our strongest branches now, one of the strongest parts of our movement is in Mitchell County. Mitchell County! [applause] You know what I’m saying? Up here in these mountains where folks learned how to get together around these moral issues and pull off blocking the water, this is the only place in this country I know where the incumbent tea party got sent home to drink tea! It was right here in the election. [applause] We are a moral movement. We can inspire young people. They’ll come in because young people are idealistic and they are looking for some way to be a part of transforming. When you give them space and they are not just a second thought, when you build a moral movement you can build long term where people do not feel depressed and anemic after an election, because they see victory differently.
Let me tell you how a moral movement sees victory, up close. Frederick Douglass in 1857 headed to a speech after the Dred Scott Decision, and all the abolitionists, certainly many of them there were suffering. They had suffered defeat after defeat. They were feeling bad, Denise. Someone told Frederick Douglass in that meeting, I don’t know if it was an AME Church or where it was, and Douglass said: “Well, that’s one view. But it is, I thank God, only one view; there is another view, there’s a brighter view. David, you know, looked small and insignificant when going to meet Goliath, but he looked larger when he had slain him and was standing over him. Thus has it ever been. Oppression, organized as ours is, will appear invincible up to the very hour of its fall. So sir, let us look at the other side, and see if there are not some things to cheer about even with this decision. Let’s see if there isn’t something that will nourish us at the root to keep working for emancipation.
“Take this fact — for it is a fact — the anti-slavery movement has, from first to last, suffered no abatement. No matter what they do, it keeps fighting. It has gone forth in all directions, and is now felt in the remotest extremities of the Republic. It started out small, and was without capital either in men or money (sounds like Moral Monday). The odds were all against it. It literally had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. There was ignorance to be enlightened, error to be combatted, consciousness to be awakened, prejudice to be overcome, apathy to be aroused, the right of speech to be secured, mob violence to be subdued, and a deep, radical change to be inwrought in the mind and heart of the whole nation. This great work, under God, has gone on, and gone on gloriously. Setbacks yes, but it keeps going. Amid all changes, fluctuations, assaults, and adversaries of every kind, it has remained firm in its purpose, steady in its aim, onward and upward, defying opposition, and never losing hope. Our strength is in the growth of the anti-slavery conviction, and it’s never halted. Though we have not seen ultimate victory yet.”
There is, said Frederick Douglass, a significant vitality about this abolition movement. It has taken a deeper, broader, and more lasting hold upon the national heart than ordinary reform movements.
And it is there that we have our answer. Those of you who still have hope in a progressive world for America: Let us now build a movement whose goal is to have a lasting hold on the heart of the south, and the heart of the nation. Let us build because our future depends on it. Let us, like Henry David Thoreau when asked, if we will repent for our activism, say, “No, the only thing we will repent for is asking what demon possessed us to be so quiet in the first place.” [applause]
Let us join with Mother Jones and remind every organization that your organization is not a praying institution, it’s a fighting institutions, it’s an educational institution. “Pray for the dead, but fight like hell for the living!” [applause]
Like Dr. King, at the end of the march from Selma to Montgomery, let our cry be: “Ain’t gon let nobody turn us around.” Like Nelson Mandela in the midst of apartheid, remind ourselves everyday: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” And so, Denise and Carmen and Neeta, if y’all want to do something, I can imagine it. What if we hooked up together and had a radical revolution of moral values tour and revival all over the South [applause] and a few other states in the middle? And what if Daily Kos helped us pull this off? And what if Daily Kos as a Moses and William Barber as a Joshua could get together with some other folks and pull this off? What if we find 10 states with the worst records on voting rights and labor and living wages and child poverty and health care, and criminal justice reform, and we get those 10 states to agree on a whole month of Moral Monday in March of 2016? Right in the middle of the election, and we changed the narrative of this country? And what if Daily Kos decided to become this generation’s Baruch?
I believe we can change the heart of this nation. And our movement will never lose, but grow, and grow, and grow, and GROW, and GROW!!! [standing ovation, shouts, cheers]
I am encouraging Markos to take on the "what if" challenge and let me work with Rev. Barber in delivering this message all over the South. It needs to go national. If you are moved by the effort St. James AME Church made on behalf of Rev. Barber please show them some love at their donation page. And the NC NAACP, where Rev. Barber is the president, could use some support, too. Let us know in the comments if you felt inspired to donate to these wonderful organizations. Video of Yara Allen leading the group in song:YouTube Video
