Rev. William Barber: A Moral Man In Immoral Times Fights For The Poor To Be Heard

Racist Gerrymandering Created A GOP Stronghold Across The Nation. We Must Fight Back

Democracy Now! (6/10/19)

Longtime civil rights leader Rev. Dr. William Barber joins us to respond to his conviction Thursday for trespassing during a 2017 protest against gerrymandering and attacks on healthcare at the North Carolina Legislature. Barber had refused to leave the General Assembly as ordered, after he organized a sit-in at the legislative building when Republican leaders refused to meet with him about concerns with voter ID requirements and redistricting plans that would weaken the power of the black vote.

“The GOP extremists are afraid. They know they cannot win if the people vote. They cannot win if we have fair districts. And so they are trying to do everything they can to cheat.”

“We must start connecting systemic racism, most seen through systemic voter suppression and gerrymandering, poverty, the lack of healthcare, environmental devastation and the war economy,” says Barber, the former president of the North Carolina NAACP and a leader of the national Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. This Wednesday he will join faith leaders and religious groups in Washington, D.C., for a march to the White House to protest the Trump administration’s attacks on the nation’s most vulnerable communities, and next week he hosts the three-day Poor People’s Campaign Moral Action Congress in Washington, D.C., that will draw hundreds of people from across the country for a presidential forum, where both Republican and Democratic candidates will speak.

Link to Story, Transcript and 20-Minute Video

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(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2019. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )