The moral imperative to vote and organize
The Rev. William Barber identified four diseases that pose an evil threat to our democracy: systemic racism, systemic poverty, systemic ecological damage and the war economy.
Attending a recent Lannan Foundation lecture, I had the privilege of hearing the Rev. William Barber, known predominantly as the leader of the Moral Mondays Movement of weekly protests at the North Carolina State Capitol and co-chairman of the Poor People’s Campaign 2018. He is an imposing presence and bears witness to prophetic truths that bear repeating in these toxic times. His life’s work is engaged in nothing less than endeavoring to save the heart and soul of America.
Having become a clarion voice of conscience, he shed light on the importance of “reading the signs of the times.”
“Kavanaugh was unfit before Dr. Ford. Rape on top of rape in a kangaroo hearing. … Now the GOP is taking a page out of the segregationists’ handbook.” He spoke of there being a direct line from George Wallace, who called protesters “a mob,” to today’s rhetorical slur of “mob rule.” “This is the language of Putin, this is the language of China, this is the language of Netanyahu.”
What is past is never past. He alluded to the segregationists of another fractured time being moral extremists who gave equal moral standing to those things that are not equal noting that, “We must make a heresy of religious nationalism. So, too, he called out our Tweeter-in-Chief, who deals in distractions while the media follows the distractions without looking at the long game. He bids us to look at the truths underneath the tweets. “Trump is the symptom. We go forward and then face a violent pushback. No Obama, no Trump.”
He identified four diseases that pose an evil threat to our democracy: systemic racism, systemic poverty, systemic ecological damage and the war economy.
Look at the signs: “Six years before Trump we had voter suppression. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act so it was no longer necessary for any state to pre-clear voting changes,” sharing the statistic that the majority of 140 million poor people in this country live in states with votersuppression policies.
Misplaced priorities ensue: Across the country, there are 37 million people who remain without health care while every senator and congressman have free health care. Sixty percent of our discretionary spending goes to the war economy, while less than 15 percent is spent on health care and education. “People are making a killing on killing.”
“I think we need to look deeper at the spiritual sickness of this nation,” he said. This recurring disease is evidenced by the fact that during the 2016 presidential debates there was not one debate on poverty, not one debate on the war economy, not one debate on systemic racism.” Citing the fact that 4 trillion dollars have been spent on the War on Terror since 2001, he noted that “These interlocking factors have undermined our democracy now being of the few, by the few, and for the few.”
He sees a chain of events that ulti-
mately serve to increase, to embolden, to intensify our commitment to redress the systemic wrongs that afflict us. “We must vote and something else. Rage alone will not provide the sustenance. We need a larger struggle. We need moral leadership.”
He points to other signs rising up and made visible: the Poor People’s March, the Parkland students’ March for Our Lives campaign, Black Lives Matter, protests for a living wage, the women’s #MeToo movement. His voice building like rolling thunder, he declared, “This is about saving the soul of America. Silence is not an option. Love this nation enough to demand change,” and then concluded with an entreaty to action: “We must be the sign. Extremists must not have the last word. Don’t give up on this democracy; not now, not ever.”
At the end of the questionand-answer interview, in which he had reiterated that organized resistance needs to be reframed as a moral issue, not simply as a right/left, Democratic/Republican debate, he acknowledged that as a country we are in a dark place and asked us to consider, “Is it a grave or a womb?” He believes we are in the labor period that precedes the birth of new life. He doesn’t know if such resistance efforts represent “the seed or the plant,” but he bids us to be part of life rather than perpetuating the policies of death. He walked off the stage to a standing ovation. People are hungry for moral leadership, and on this night, that hunger was fed.