Biden tells Moral Monday audience how he would work to end poverty as president
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden says he would work to unite the country if he is elected, not divide people by their race, neighborhood or faith. He made the comments during an online event Monday night led by the Rev. William Barber II and the national Poor People’s Campaign.
“We’re going to talk about our obligations together,” Biden said during a segment set aside for him to address the virtual assembly. “Ending poverty won’t be just an aspiration, but a way to build a new economy.”
The economy his administration would help build, he said, would reward hard work with a living wage and care for the most vulnerable, including providing affordable housing and health care, protecting the environment and caring for children.
In such an economy, Biden said, “You don’t just survive but you’re able to thrive and grow.”
During the event, Barber said both Biden and President Donald Trump were invited to address the priorities of poor and low-income Americans and the national organization’s agenda. Trump did not respond to multiple invitations, Barber said.
The online gathering, titled “Voting is Power Unleashed: National Moral Monday Mass Assembly and Teach-In,” was live-streamed from 7 to 9 p.m. and included coordinating committee members in the organization from across the country.
It included comments, some of them prerecorded, from lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and from community organizers with the Poor Peoples Campaign and Forward Justice, based in Durham, encouraging people to vote, to fill out the 2020 Census, to volunteer as poll monitors during the November election and to push others to vote.
Other noted speakers included Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo, Erika Alexander and radio personality Charlamagne tha God.
“We’re non-partisan,” Barber said during the event, noting that the group does not endorse specific candidates. “But we’re not non-political.”
Barber, who pastors Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, launched Moral Monday events in North Carolina in April 2013 in opposition the Republican-led state legislature’s move to limit abortion, cut corporate taxes, raise taxes on the poor and pass laws that were later found to intentionally suppress minority voting. More than 1,000 people were arrested in Raleigh for acts of civil disobedience through the course of Moral Monday protests that year.
Barber, co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign along with the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, said in an email that Monday night’s program was designed to teach participants “how to overcome the racist voter suppression that hurts both people of color and poor whites, because the politicians who get elected then also vote to block health care, living wages, environmental protections, and other issues that lift up poor and low-income people of all colors.”
Though it was all online, the event followed the format of many gatherings sponsored by the Poor People’s Campaign before the pandemic hit, with singing, testimonials by Black, white or Latino people from around the country who have suffered as a result of poverty, and with a little preaching by Barber.
Biden made his comments in real time, and used the moment to recall growing up in a household with a father who couldn’t always find a job to support his family. While Biden has made millions of dollars as a speaker and author since leaving the Obama White House, he said he could still remember his dad telling him or his siblings to put another piece of cardboard in the bottom of their shoes until he could buy new shoes with his next paycheck.
As president, Biden said, he would push for a free vaccine and treatment for COVID-19; financial relief for those unemployed as a result of the pandemic; support for debt-laden college students and relief for small-business owners; money for psychologists, social workers and nurses in schools; free college tuition; affordable housing; tax credits for first-time home buyers; and protection from gun violence.
This story was originally published September 14, 2020 at 5:43 PM.
