Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President of the North Carolina NAACP November 11, 2017
This is a transcript of the "Post-Election "Moral Message Moving Forward" NC NAACP Press Call" held on November 11, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYxAQv6IC5I
I apologize for any errors in transcription.
SHIRI: Welcome to the North Caroline NAACP press call. My name is Shiri and I will be your operator for today's call. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would like to now turn this call over to Tyler Swanson. You may begin.
SWANSON: Thank you. Tonight, Reverend Dr. William J Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP is making an ultimate public statement to all one hundred branches of the ... of the NC NAACP, members of the Forward Together moral movement, and the state of North Carolina. Dr. Barber will take questions immediately after his statement.
BARBER: Hello to all of my friends and brothers and sisters of the more than one hundred branches of the NAACP, and all of the members of the Forwrad Together Moral movement of the HKonJ Ppeople's Assembly, the devout clergy who had been a part of this work, all the young people, ... be on this call with you tonight.
I want to first thank God for another day and another day's journey. And I want to thank you for your hard work during this election cycle. More than sixty mall marches to the polls you led. Hundreds of training, over 20,000 new registered voters in the NAACP work alone, along with Democracy North Carolina. The fight and the victory of the voter suppression via HB 589 that was won by our lead attorneys, ... and Douglas Stine and so many others. Winning the purging change put more than 5,000 voters back on the rolls in the last few days of this election cycle. Demanding and winning extended hours after an unusual and questionable computer glitch, every branch adopting precincts, pulling together over two hundred lawyers, we made over a half million robo-calls and over half a million voter education pieces of literature were handed out throughout North Carolina, and we were the only state in the south where the Trump-ism waned, because of your work did not capture the govenership, the attorney general's office, or a majority of the State Supreme Court. Next week, we will have our branch representatives and our lawyers at every board of election and every county to witness the canvassing and to ensure that every vote is counted; every provisional ballot is [unforgotten].
But also, like you, I want to own that late Tuesday night, I felt a great sadness for America. Not a democratic or a republican sadness, but a sadness for the heart and soul of the nation. As one writer wrote just yesterday, "on January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American president, a man of integrity and dignity, who pulled us out of a recession and attempted to give health care to millions who did not have it; who also had a generous spirit, and we will witness the inauguration of a candidate who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible for this writer to react in this moment with anything less than revulsion and a profound anxiety. The president we will see come into office whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties, scientific practice, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. This is a candidate whose election strikes fear; whose vulgarity was unbounded, who strikes fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and above all the many varieties of "other" and "othering" whom he has so deeply insulted. The African-American "other," the Hispanic "other", the female and Jewish "other," and the Muslim "other." Going on, the writer states "trump ran his campaign sensing the feeling of dispossession and anxiety among millions of voters, white voters in the main, and many of those voters -- not all, but many -- followed Trump because they saw his slick performance, once a relative sideshow when it came to politics, was more than willing to assume their fear and resentment of a new world that conspired against their interests. He articulated their fears rooted in racism and classism. He offered no answers, but merely said, and I place this in my own notes, that you are right to be afraid-very afraid-Obama is the boogeyman of a coming diversity that will undo the world you have grown up knowing, and I and I alone, he said, can save you. This is what occurred early Wednesday morning after a running a campaign that was enthusiastically endorsed even by the members of the KKK: Donald J. Trump thanked his supporters for victory and promised to be president for all Americans. A shock to almost every pollster and political pundit, his victory has been hailed as an unprecedented political upheaval.
But we must understand history and know that the reactionary wave that swept across America this past Tuesday is not an anomaly in our history. It is instead an all too familiar pattern in the long struggle for American reconstruction. Anyone who watched the election returns that come in on the television Tuesday night will remember the red band that stretched from my home state of North Carolina south and west across the nation. The former confederate states, the solid south, proved once again to be a reliable base for Trump, but he joined a long line of white men who have leveraged this base to get to the White House. Like so many things in America's racial history, the solid south was born of compromise. Confederate states were re-admitted to the union based on their affirmation of the Reconstruction Amendments which abolished slavery, gave voting rights to African Americans, and guaranteed equal protection under the law. But Federal troops were required to guarantee these rights to African American citizens. Appealing to both racial fear and resentment against occupation, southern politicians developed the Mississippi Plan to take back the politics of the country by any means necessary. Thorough voter suppression, intimidation and violence, they swept the south in 1876. But they didn't quite win the White House, hence the compromise of 1877. Rutherford B. Hayes could be president if his government instead would promise to remove federal troops to the south. He had lost the popular vote, but he was given the electoral college. And it didn't take long for the solid south to pass state laws abridging Americans' right to full citizenship. Yes, the union had won the civil war, but the compromise of 1877 taught African Americans that the fight for reconstruction was not done. By 1883, the Civil Rights act of 1875 was repealed by the US Supreme Court and deconstruction was in full gear, undergirded by the immoral religious movement called the Redemption Movement, committed to "Make America Great Again," and by 1896, "separate but equal" was once again the law of the land. In the long story of our struggle for freedom, every advance toward a more perfect union has been met with a backlash of resistance.
This is not new. Nor is this just an anomaly in American history. The same kind of backlash followed the legislative victories of the Civil Rights movement. What many historians called a Second Reconstruction, the Civil Rights act, Voting Rights act, Fair Housing act, were fruits of the decades of struggle. Adding African Americans to social security rolls was the fruit of decades of struggle waged by people who knew they might never see victory in their own lifetimes. But the backlash against them wasn't limited to southern segregationists. Richard Nixon's "Law and Order" campaign of 1968 was an intentional effort to win the south and some other parts of the nation by appealing to racial hate and fear without using racist language. His advisor, Kevin Phillips, who later repented of this strategy, called it the "Southern Strategy." He said, "find out who hates who." The Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond and ... took over the Republican Party and vowed to undo all the advances of the civil rights movements and to play wedge history games to split black and white voters, many poor who should have been and needed to be allies. They found funding from wealthy oligarchs who used this division to elect candidates that would embrace trickle-down economics underneath their race card politics so they could line their pockets with wealth while fooling the working class poor white person that the real enemy was the money going to entitlement programs for black and brown people, and the sad truth was that the majority of those entitlement programs money were actually going toward to the very poor whites that kept and keep voting against their own self interests.
Donald Trump's unanticipated victory could not have been possible without the election of Barack Obama as America's first African American president. His election is a part of America's history of backlash. Of course, Trump entered national politics by waging a crusade against the possibility of Obama's citizenship. It proved to be the perfect way to touch the psychic wound of so many Americans who have not faced our legacy of racism. Anyone familiar with the Mississippi plan of 1876 or the Southern Strategy of 1968 can only be surprised by the ease with which Trump adapted them for the 21st century. Trump's attaches on immigrants, Muslims, and the LGBT community were political ploys based on fundamental racial fear at the heart of the American experience. When he told white Americans that he was their "last chance" to make America great again, he was touching the wound passed down since the "Lost Cause" religion of the 19th century.
America must now not waste time asking ourselves how this could have happened. It happened because it is the habit, a habit written deep in our public memory. If we are willing to see ourselves as we are and have been, we will also have to see our potential for prophetic resistance, even in times like these.
I'm a preacher and I'm reminded that when the prophet Samuel cries out to God in the Old Testament, asking why the people have elected to follow a strong man rather than the Lord's justice, God's reply to Samuel is "they have not rejected you, They are rejecting me." Those who had struggled against injustice in this country must not take the results of this election personally. We cannot afford to blame our neighbors or demonize [our sentiments of] Trump. We are together inheritors of a legacy that has rejected justice. That is the struggle in America right now. This election serves as a rejection of our deepest constitutional values by so many and our deepest moral values. But that is not all that we have rejected. We are also the heirs of great dissenters, who even in the midst of past times of rejection, stood for right even when they were a minority of one; who found ways to be resilient and to be revived even when rejected. When the Jim Crow laws of the solid south were upheld by the US Supreme Court in the case of Plessy vs Ferguson, only one justice, John Harlan of Kentucky, dissented. But his dissenting opinion laid the growndwork upon which Thurgood Marshall and others built their case over a half century later in Brown vs Board of Education. When Woodrow Wilson showed Birth of a Nation at the White House--the first movie to be screened in the Oval Office--a century ago, a racist movie, a movie of lies, a movie that claimed the elections of blacks and whites that worked for the government of America in 1800 had been rigged-- W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B Wells, and the interracial NAACP challenged the most powerful man in America to face his racism. When three civil rights workers were brutally murdered in the first days of Freedom Summer, black and white students chose to press on together, not to retreat but to be resilient, and they continued to come to the south, challenging Mississippi's brutal racism. Their mentor, Fannie Lou Hamer, taught them by example that we who struggle for freedom, who are sick and tired of being sick and tired, never turn back. She was nearly beaten to death in Winona county jail. She was in jail when [Medgar Evers] was killed. But she came back singing louder, fighting harder, demanding her seat at the table of American democracy. She fought even harder than she had before the beating.
After Tuesday's rejection of justice, which is as American as apple pie, we must apply the moral defibrillator to our own hearts and be even more determined and more revived to stand for love, justice, and mercy. Less than a majority of Americans elected a mortal. They did not elect a god to be our next president. God is still alive and still on his throne. They did not un-elect the foundational principles of our constitution. They did not un-elect our moral convictions of our faith. We must remember that fear is a key ingredient in the poisonous, toxic, and intoxicating brew of racism and classism. Once fear is ingested, rationality goes out and self-destruction comes in and affects the whole system.
We who are sober now must help the nation infect the globe that is drunk so much with the wine of the world, from Russia to Brexit in the United Kingdom. We who are sober must help the world find a way to drink the wine of the spirit and become moved by that which moved the spirit of justice, love, power, and hope. Still, even now, we must lift every voice and sing. Still, even now, we cannot forget the lessons that the dark past has taught us, and the faith that it has brought us. And now, especially now, we must forever stand true to our God.
To congratulate him would be to congratulate him for bigotry, congratulate him for meanness and xenophobia, and spreading fear and racism. It would be like congratulating a Christian for being hateful or congratulating a child for failure. No, our role is different. We cannot do simply what is called on to do for political correctness. We must council him. We must council him as the ancestors of those who fought for so much. As out faith teaches us, we must council him that before you take office, put your hand on the Bible, repent. Repent of all of the meanness that you spread, and do it with works of repentance. Commit yourself. That's what we use council him to do. Commit yourself, Mr. Trump, not to follow the divisive agenda that you have peddled. There is still the Creator God spoken of in our scriptures and in our constitution. And that God grants inalienable rights to all of us. And that God declares that justice must roll down like mighty water and righteousness like a mighty stream. Mr Trump, like all others, like even us, are mere mortals. We should not ever use power in ways that contradict those inalienable rights guaranteed by God.
To those who gloat in this election, be reminded that pride comes before the fall. We must say to those that want to hate, "don't hate!" Love and truth are more powerful and more redemptive. To those who didn't vote, we must say to them, "don't ever sit out again." To Democrats, we must say, "stand your ground! Stand your ground upon principles of justice. Don't go along just to get along. Not now. This is not the time for the politics of playing games with the lives of the most vulnerable. Now is the time to be statesman and stateswomen, not mere partisan acts." To Republicans, don't lean into extremists! To those who have taught them how to play the cards of division, now take a moment and reach and listen to the better angels rather than those of extremists. Because now, all eyes are on you. You have power in all three branches of government. And know there will be no excuses!--nowhere to hide!--for the decisions that you make. History will see you, the world will see you, the whole country will see you.
To those who call for healing, remember that you can't have healing without treatment, which we need more than just a cry for "peace, peace!" where there is no peace. We need to treat our social condition. We need searching treatment. Serious treatment of the heart and should of our nation. And to the children: don't be what you have seen! Don't be racist. Don't be bullies! Don't be haters! Be better! Be better than that because you are the future and you are our "now," both at the same time. We need your idealism right now. We need your voice of hope and hopefulness right now.
And finally to the faithful, it is our time even the more to be in the public square. This is no time to just hide, no time to just say "God will fix it." It is time for us to engage nonviolently wherever we have to for the cause of love and justice. Like Samuel, we can't mourn and walk away. We must still be prophets, even to Saul. When Saul is right, we will uphold Saul. But when he is wrong, we must prophetically challenge him.
In fact, let me close this statement with words God gave another prophet who was heartbroken over the trouble in his nation and the kind of ruler that was on the throne. It was Jeremiah. God said to Jeremiah in chapter 22, "These are God's orders: Go to the royal palace. Go to the place where the king sits on the throne and tell those who sit on the throne and who have power, you and your officials and all the people who go in and about of the palace, this is God's message: You attend to matters of justice. Set things right between the people. Rescue victims from their exploiters. Don't take advantage of the homeless, the orphans, and the women. Stop murdering people with your politics. If you obey these commands, God says the kings who follow in the line of David will continue to go in and out of these palaces and you will be honored. But if you don't obey these commands, then God says the very government -- the very power that you have -- will end up in a heap of rubble. This is God's verdict."
So to all of us, if you believed and stood for justice on Monday, still believe and stand for justice in the days to come.
If you believed and stood for love on Monday, still believe and stand for love in the days to come.
If you believed and stood for justice on Monday, after Tuesday, still believe in health care and living wages and public education and criminal justice reform and equal protection under the law for all.
Yes, we've had a tough Tuesday.
But our principles did not change.
Can not change.
Must not change.
We must be the remnant of resilience, revival, and resistance, and keep believing in the possibility of this nation to be more perfect, more perfect, more perfect.
Thank you so much.
I'll take any questions from the media now.
SHIRI: And then our first question comes from Cash Michaels of Carolina newspaper
MICHAELS: Good evening, Rev. Barber. I hope you're doing well and God is blessing you. The 2018 midterms are fast approaching believe it or not, even though we just finished the presidential election. Have you looked that for ahead yet? And does the movement still have the inspiration and the spirit to at least try to make some changes there as far as our congress is concerned?
BARBER: We have to. We have to get the fight for the Voting Rights act to be restored. We have to remember our history. For instance, when we first won the voting rights act, we didn't have people elected in the congress that planned to do it. We created the context where they had to do it through marching, through civil disobedience, through speaking out. There are hundreds of people on this call tonight if you want to know about enthusiasm. We even can look at places where the Moral Monday movement in this state has been active. and the numbers that extremists thought they would win in the western part of the state for instance are much much lower because we're beginning to break through.
Not with a democratic or republican argument, but with a moral argument where people are beginning to see the many whites and blacks and Latinos, the intersectionality of our reality, and why we have to be together. So in some ways, North Carolina actually has a glimmer of hope in the midst of all of it. Our lawyers--As you know, we won another case that actually used [the efforts and research we raised in the state courts] in the federal courts and they won. So next year, the state legislature is under Supreme Court order to redraw the lines for 2018. We'll be right in the middle of that battle. We're going to continue to organize and push out. We have seen what 22%, 23%, 24% of the elected-in African Americans can do. We're going to try to see if we can get that number to 30%, plus Latino.
Donald Trump said something and it's more true. He said it to be a scare tactic, but we should hear it for what it is also. He was telling his audience that "this is the last time. If you all don't elect me, this is the last time we'll be able to to this." And you know, he's right. Because the demographics are changing. Nobody can stop that change. That change is going to happen anyway. It's coming. They're trying to prevent a future which is going to happen and I'm reminded of something that was said in South Africa by Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela, something that the people say in South Africa, and that is: "Only a dying mule kicks the hardest."
In some ways, if we can remember our faith and remember the lessons that the dark past has taught us, we are moving in some ways that this may be extremism's last gasp. Now what's dangerous about that is that when people have fear rather than faith, and rather than embrace the future they try to hold on to the past, they can do some ugly things. We've known that from history. But we've always overcome by continuing to press our way forward. And we're going to do that as we get toward 2018, 2020, and beyond.
VYLER: Hey, this is Erin Vyler with the Young Turks. Rev. Barber, when I started reporting on these issues, I was a bachelor and I had not a lot to lose. Since then, I've gotten married, I've got a child, and we've seen the FBI acting in ways that reminds us of the 1960s and their persecution of Martin Luther King. If they would do what they did to influence the outcome of this election, I'm not sure what they wouldn't do to try and turn this dissent once they put the man they see as king on the throne. For those of us who are wondering whether it's worth risking everything--
BARBER: This is my question. The very fact that you can raise that question, the very fact that we can even ask what we must do, is because they did risk everything. We can never forget their legacy. There comes a time--I remember the movie "Glory," Denzel Washington had a line, "There comes a time when we've all got to ante up."
Everything I have. Everything my children potentially have. Even this right to vote, even the right to dissent, even the right to have a canvas in a few weeks, even the right to register people to vote is not the result of my ultimate sacrifice, but is a result of the sacrifice of others before me. This is the time. That's why I want people to understand: this is not an anomaly. The commentators on TV are getting it so wrong, "oh we haven't seen anything like this! We haven't seen this kind of division!"
America from its inception was divided, and is divided. That's what we've been trying to deal with over the last two hundred--almost three hundred years. When we said it would be a more perfect nation, it means to keep closing and trying to work on these breaches and divides. And it's always cost. If you go back to biblical history, there always has to be a prophetic voice. You know, I come from a traditional faith that does not understand like what I understand in the bearing of the cross. This is our time. What we have to make sure is that it's not just one dissenter, but that it's all of us. As I said, we must be there. That's why I said we cannot do the "congratulation" thing. We can do the "cautious counseling" thing. That's our role. That's the role of the civil rights community. And if in some way Mr. Trump for instance does a switch and does something other than what he says, sure. We will be there to embrace that. We must first call for it. But if not, we have no other option in this moment but to stand up for what's right.
And this is what I said. For me, I have five children. For me not to be willing--and all of us with children and grandchildren--not to be willing or to be resilient or resistant would put our children more at risk than for us to just go along to get along. [It] would put our children more at risk than for us to be willing to stand up and say "there's some principles I'm not willing to surrender." And again, all of these people are mortals. They're not gods. And we have to continue to believe that and say that and know that. And that's why I went back today and read again that song that we sung. And now that's got to be more than something that we sing. It talks about the faith that the dark past has taught us, the faith we have now, cannot be a sunshine-y day faith. It must be the faith that got the slaves up every morning. The faith that caused the determined to stand up. The faith that caused Mother Jones to stand up. The faith that caused Dorothy Day and Harriet ... to stand up. The faith that made Langston Hughes in 1935 write a poem called "America will be America," even while segregation was going on right in the middle of depression. And right after the Harlem riots, he wrote that. And so we must stand on those sholulders and embrace our calling in that moment.
VYLER: Thank you.
SHIRI: Our next question is from Dean Edwards of Demorcacy Watch.
EDWARDS: Yes, Reverend Barber, this is Dean Edwards with Democracy Watch news. This is kind of a family tradition: my cousin was Charles Garry who represented the Panthers and Chicago Seven and Professor David. I'm half-Armenian on that side so I'm a white man who understands the pain because I grew up with people, with one cousin with [axe] marks in her back. I'm 65 so I'm old enough to have known people who have been through a similar version of the struggle.
Today, we were on a teleconference and one of our correspondents in Seattle, WA was in the street last night doing some coverage. A lot of people are out there for the first time. Or they've been out there but they're out there without leaders, without people telling them what to do. They're responding spontaneously. We have reports from San Francisco of people joining in spontaneously, not doing any planning, but just because it's a momentary thing. They're asking, "What do we do? How do we do this?" Now I can refer them to Professor Sharp, with Albert Einstein or Waging Nonviolence or the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, I can refer them there, but that's really [an intellectual] argument. What would your message be that we could relay as kind of a mini-story to them in the sense of direction for people who feel they are leaderless, that are out there of their own moral authority trying to respond?
BARBER: Well first of all, I honor their right to freedom of speech and what they're doing. And they're being led by their deep consciousness. But I do think you're right: we have to organize for the struggle. One of the things we've got to do is what we've been doing with the Forward Together Moral Movement. We're fighting some deep stuff, but we're cutting through it. What we have seen is just how harsh and hard forces are willing to fight back. And everybody feels so dejected in this election, but we're going to have to take a stance. The democratic party is going to have to take a stance. Independents are going to have to take a stance. Those of us who have committed to this movement: we're going to have to continue the movement. The first thing we've gotta do is continue.
I was reading yesterday what Dr. King did. You know, people forget. You had the march on Washington in August 30th, 1963. Now before that, [Medgar Evers] had been killed. 17 days later four [girls] were burned up in a Birmingham Church, Dr. King went there. He mourned. He grieved. But then he said, "sometimes life is as tough as steel but now we must continue." In another month, the president was shot. But the Civil Rights movement could not quit, did not quit, had to keep forward. And we have to remember those lessons.
I'm doing a national sermon at Miles Clarke in Charlotte to talk about that: our next steps. But part of it is honoring the tradition of resistance, of agitation, of organizing. We have to deepen our coallitions. I'm going to give a lot of time on my work in the days to come continuing to build relationship between black and white and brown people that have been deliberately turned against each other in the south.
I continue to believe that if we're going to break this thing open, national organizations and all, we're going to have to have a major movement in the south. We're going to have to break the solid south. And it's going to come by not democrat and republican arguments, but deep moral arguments showing people their intersectionality, their relationships, their reality, building alliances together, being willing to believe that it is possible just like when white farmers and black people came together after the Civil War in 1868. It can happen again just like it did in the second reconstruction. I'm convinced we have to have this third reconstruction. And I would in no way ever promote my personal book, but I wrote ... a list with about 14 steps before this election that I still believe are critical. And they've got to come from the state up, from the bottom up. We have to take all of this energy in the street and organize it around a strategy of building deeper allies, an electoral strategy, a legal strategy, a constitutional strategy. And we have to do it for a movement and not just a moment. I would recommend that piece, but also as I said on Sunday, I'm going to try to give my limited analysis. But it's going to be an ongoing analysis. Try to speak some of folks from history and from the present and what we need to be about as we move into the future.
But the one thing I know we must do first is be hurt but not be held back. We may have been rejected, justice may have been rejected for a moment, but we must be resilient. And we must revive our own commitment because if we're in this time, then we've been born for such a time as this. And I refuse to give in ultimately to despair.
Doesn't mean I don't cry. Doesn't mean I don't weep and mourn for this nation. I'm worried about America. But if you're worried about something, you go to work and try to work on that which you worry about.
EDWARDS: Thank you sir. I must admit when you were talking earlier, you brought tears to my eyes. I'm not supposed to do that when I'm working. But... you did it. And they were very inspiring and hopeful words. Thank you sir.
BARBER: Love you my brother. Thank you for your family, your sacrifice, and your work over the years.
SHIRI: We have one more question. We didn't collect your information, if you would say your name and your media outlet please.
???: Vanessa Williams..?
BARBER: Hey, Vanessa! From the Washington Post. How are you?
WILLIAMS: I'm good, how are you? My question has to do with: several people have asked me in the last couple of days whether we have been able to determine what role and how much of a role did suppression play in the result. Not only in North Carolina, but, you know, there were concerns in Ohio, in Georgia, all over. I know that some of the losses will continue even after Tuesday, but I'm wondering if there's been an assessment or if there's ongoing assessment of when might we able to get a better sense of what role that might have played.
BARBER: Well I think it's both [hands]. I think for instance there's a suppression we don't often talk about, and that is for instance in North Carolina, even if you had had a majority of progressives of vote, because of the gerrymandering, it would have been hard to overcome and break that. Now that's something we're dealing with next year because the judges ordered that it was racist and deliberate, but they ordered that the fix would come after this election cycle. That's number one. Number two: we know for a fact that suppression had an impact because if you look at the last couple of days, the thousands of potential African-American voters in the last couple of days, many of them would have voted in the first week of early voting but we had 158 less sites in the 40 Voting Rights Act counties in North Carolina than we had in 2012. That's an incredible suppressive tactic. And in fact, the GOP bragged about it. We weren't able really to do anything about it because they met the bare minimum standard of the law, but the very fact that they had the audacity to brag about it should be startling and deeply concerning for all Americans.
Now we're still assessing going forward. What we do know is that this was the first presidential election that you did not have the full protection of the Voting Rights act. So many of the things that were done, you [didn't] have to be pre-cleared. And that's why we can't just demonize Trump. That was done by Ryan and McConnel and [Daymouth...?] And the entire Republican congress that has refused to fix the voting rights act ever since 2013 because they fear the change in demographics could kick a lot in the south and the ability for white and black voters to connect.
What they fear is what happened. And more of it's going to happen, and that is the popular vote: they didn't win it. Now we've got to keep working and working to number one win back the Voting Rights Act, but to continue to build out the popular vote and not by getting behind a Messiah candidate, but by building a movement of resistance to [take root in the south] and a movement of reconstruction because this future and this new demographic is here and is coming and it's going to transform this nation. So in the days to come, we're going to be looking even deeper at what was the impact on having all of these laws be able to take place but not have an Attorney General that has the full power of the Voting Rights Act. That's a question for America and it's a deep concern about even the way the media and the debates were handling.
You think about that. We did not have one debate that was simply on the issue of our democracy, our deep principles. We talked about security, we talked about emails, we talked about sex tapes, we talked about repealing health care, but not one debate in either primary, either party, or afterwards, where the presidential candidates specifically had to deal with the principles of our democracy. And the biggest two: not gun rights, but equal protection under the law and voting rights. And that is a failure of all of those few who helped to line up debates and ask questions that we would spend more time on these other things that we did on the very foundation of our democracy, which is equal protection under the law and voting rights. And that's work that we in the activist moral community must demand never happens again. Because to have an election without those things being dealt with is playing with our democracy rather than being serious about it.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
BARBER: Thank all of you who came on tonight. God bless you. Keep your faith. Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. NAACPers will have a call next week, cause we need every branch at these canvassing, every branch, and we'll have lawyers there as well and we're going to continue in everything we do to lift every voice and sing.
And we will never ever sound retreat when it comes to love, justice, and mercy. May lose some battles. But ultimately, love and justice will win the final war.
Thank you and God bless you.
- This call: NAACP Moral Message moving forward. November 11, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYxAQv6IC5I
- Revival and Resiliency After Rejection. Dr. Barber's sermon on Nov 15, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I2Nq1Tr4Pc
- Rev. Barber: We are witnessing the birth pangs of a Third Reconstruction. Dec 15, 2016. https://thinkprogress.org/rev-barber-moral-change-1ad2776df7c