On MLK Day, Rev. Barber calls on President-elect Biden to ‘invest’ in all people
The Poor People’s Campaign, a national movement co-founded by North Carolina’s Rev. William J. Barber II, commemorated Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday Monday with a virtual event that focused on policy changes pitched to President-elect Joe Biden, who is sworn into office on Wednesday.
Barber spoke at Monday’s National Interfaith Service of Love, Light and Leadership, along with Campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Bishop Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, and others.
The Poor People’s Campaign, named for the 1968 Poor People’s March on Washington that King organized before his assassination, has launched a platform of 14 policy priorities for Biden’s first 100 days in office, which include enacting COVID-19 relief that includes free testing, treatment, vaccines and direct payments to the poor; a $15 minimum wage; guaranteed quality housing and healthcare for all; a federal jobs program; immigration reform and more.
“The Biden administration, the Harris administration, will need to reject the supremacy of austerity, the ideology of scarcity,” said Theoharis. “We’ll have to invest in an economy that guarantees healthcare and housing and food for all its citizens.”
The event started with split screen footage of recent Poor People’s Campaign marches alongside last week’s mob violence at the Capitol, juxtaposing the police intimidation and arrests of peaceful protesters with the lack of police action against the Trump supporters last week.
“We gather on this King day, coming just days from mob violence on the U.S. Capitol, and not simply the violent acts of a few but a spiritual expression of a deadly poison of a seriously sick society,” said Rev. Dr. Alvin O’Neal Jackson to over two thousand viewers streaming on Facebook and other platforms.
“A society whose systems have too often benefited the few and left out the many. A society and system that degrades and takes life and denies healthcare to millions, even in the midst of a pandemic.”
Theoharis spoke about the disproportionate impact of the economic recession on low-income and poor people, and quoted Dr. King: “’God never intended for some of his children to live in inordinate, superfluous wealth while others live in abject, deadening poverty ... And since we didn’t make all these things by ourselves, we must share them with each other, and I think this is the only way we are going to solve the basic problems and the restructuring of our society, which I think is so desperately needed.’”
Barber closed the event with a sermon honoring King’s legacy, recalling a line from King’s final speech before he was killed in Memphis the next day: “’Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point.’”
“King’s legacy is not to be played with,” Barber continued. “People nor politicians can just say they support the ideals of Dr. King. Many of them don’t even know what those ideals were and how costly they were and how a half century later we face similar need to give ourselves to the struggle because many of the things he prophetically told us we still choose chaos over community.”
Barber spoke about the mob violence at the Capitol last week as a continuation of the racist violence King fought against.
“The same forces of reactionary rage that killed Dr. King erected gallows on the National Mall just a few days ago,” Barber said.
“The potential for violence is not over now. It is a proverbial river of gasoline waiting for a demagogue like Mr. Trump to drop the lighted match in it again,” he said.
That potential for violence will not be solved by impeachment alone, he said but requires “an agenda for those who are hurting — healthcare and living wages. We can’t just arrest the mob and then be at ease in Zion. No, we must arrest the attention of the nation with an agenda to reconstruct democracy.”
Barber also spoke about Democratic wins in Georgia and political organizing among low-wealth people as evidence that change is possible.
“What we know as ‘trickle down economics’ doesn’t work. Neoliberalism — investing in the middle class alone — doesn’t work,” Barber said.
“If we’re really going to reconstruct American democracy, build a beloved community, it must be from the bottom up. Nothing would be more tragic than for us to turn back at this point.”
This story was originally published January 18, 2021 at 4:12 PM.
