By Lee Eric Smith
My first encounter with the Rev. Dr. William Barber was via a Youtube link my friend Troy Mathis sent me.
I clicked the link on my phone. I winced when I saw that Dr. Barber’s speech was 40 minutes long. Like many of us, the idea of watching any video for 40 minutes on Youtube seemed daunting. But I know Troy; he wouldn’t send me this if it wasn’t good. I clicked play and for the next 40 minutes I was locked in on a fiery Dr. Barber preaching neither a conservative nor a liberal agenda, but instead calling for a MORAL agenda.
What does that look like? An agenda that actively battles poverty and social injustice, one that calls out so-called “Christians” who will rally against abortion but sit on their hands when it comes to the needs of the poor — especially when “the least of these” were so important to Jesus. He also spoke of building broad, diverse and persistent coalitions across race, class, religious and gender identity boundaries.
Suffice to say I’ve watched that clip several times since, shared it many times (in fact, I’ve posted it at the bottom of this interview). And when I learned that Dr. Barber would be in Memphis as part of the National Civil Rights Museum’s commemoration of Dr. King’s assassination, I scrambled to make sure I got a chance to have a conversation with him.
Along with a handful of other journalists, I got my chance after Dr. Barber had keynoted the Teach-In Breakfast at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. I started by asking him about those coalitions.
Lee Eric Smith: How do you get that message to, say, “conservatives” in Appalachia — people who otherwise might never hear that message?
Rev. William Barber: One thing you have to know as a preacher, make sure your choir is with you before you go outside. So, part of the goal today was to recall and remember and revisit in order to re-engage, this idea that the Civil Rights Movement, the movement for justice, the movement against poverty, were always fusion movements.
Often, people leave out those factors. For instance, people tend to limit Dr. King to just being a black leader. Dr. King always was a fusion leader. Even in Montgomery, people forget the many white and Jewish clerics and others that stood with him. Sometimes we look at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and we forget the diversity that walked across that bridge coming here to Memphis. Dr. King had been in Appalachia, he’d been in Memphis, he been with sanitation workers, been in the Delta.
How do we get it to Appalachia? Well, we now have a group called Repairers of the Breach. It’s a traveling course in public theology. We teach moral analysis, moral articulation and moral activism. Just a few weeks ago, we had 125 clergy and activists from across the country, people from places like Appalachia and from urban areas, being trained in fusion politics.
We didn’t just have services. We had moral revivals. We went to communities that otherwise, maybe, people wouldn’t have gone. People came that you might not expect. We found there’s a hunger. In a Birmingham moral revival at a Jewish synagogue, we had whites, blacks, Latinos. We had Black Lives Matter, we had Muslims, we had Hindus. We had people who didn’t necessarily have a religious faith but believe in a moral universe. We had all those groups coming together and understanding the intersections of poverty and racism and militarism and public education and health care. We can build relationships if we’re bold enough and committed enough.
And that’s the last part, you have to do this long term. Moral Mondays in North Carolina didn’t start in 2013 when Republicans came to office. It started all the way back in 2007 when Democrats were in office. Because the moral critique says you challenge everybody. Dr. King didn’t just challenge one party. You challenge everybody. Of every piece of policy, we’ve asked these questions: Is it constitutionally consistent? Is it morally defensible? And is it economically sane?
We understand that movement-building cannot just be based on the election every two, four years, it must be long-term. It took us three years to turn some things around in North Carolina, but because we were committed and there all the time with civil disobedience, there with a commitment to movement and not a moment, we saw the results in the fruit of that labor.
LES: How do you build the patience and the endurance for a long-term movement? Especially among people who typically don’t have a lot?
Barber: Actually, the fact that they don’t have a lot becomes a reason why they’re really interested in a transformational movement. Particularly when you have a movement that actually frees them to stand against what is keeping them from progressing and keeping them in an unequal situation. It’s amazing how many people who are impacted, stand in this moral movement. It actually lifts them. Don’t underestimate that. Once people figure out they can stand up, they have a tenacity that is unimaginable in many ways.
Fox 13 Memphis: I have one quick question. Rev. Barber, what is your message to the people of Memphis? What has it been?
Rev. Barber: Well, we need a serious historical analysis of where we are. We need to do a serious theological and faith assessment because the church and people of faith are either too quiet or too loud about the wrong things.
We need to have a serious agenda around economic empowerment and dealing with poverty, health care, public education, criminal justice reform, environmental protection, and protecting the rights of all people, black, brown, gay, straight, immigrants. And then we need to commit to a strategy, a movement strategy that’s about the long-term battle. And we can’t bow down in this moment. We can’t just say, oh it’s just over, there’s nothing we can do. We must stand up and challenge extremism.
One of the reasons I came to march with the Fight for 15 is that movements have to be from the bottom up. Black Lives Matter, they’re challenging racism and economic injustice right here in Memphis, they’re fighting for some of the same things Dr. King was fighting for.
It’s a tragedy that 400 families make an average of $97,000 an hour and we’re locking people up who simply want $15 an hour. When, if the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, the minimum wage would be almost $20 an hour. Dr. King said it 50 years ago, people should not work and not be able to live. He said that is as bad as ancient cannibalism. That’s what Dr. King said. He actually said in this city, that if America doesn’t treat Lazarus right, he talked about the rich man who wouldn’t even give Lazarus crumbs. They both died. The rich man went to hell, Lazarus went to heaven.
Dr. King said in this city and we need to hear it again today: He said, America will go into an economic hell if she does not do right by working poor people and the least of these. It was true then, and it’s true now.
