William Barber II Quotes

The U.S. President's order to carry out a lethal drone strike violated the UN Charter's prohibition on the use of force. The assassination of General Qassim Suleimani represented an act of war against a country with whom the United States was not at war.

If we cannot shift in this pandemic as a nation, and become more merciful and less greedy, and more just and less unjust, then God help us.... One germ, one little germ has shown that it can shut down this whole nation and the world. One little germ, united with itself, has shown what it can do. And if we can't see that in this moment, there's not a bomb that can blow it out, there's not a bullet that can shoot it out, there's not a stock market that can buy it out. None of that. The only way we make it through this — and we come out better — is if we find our way together, we lift up everybody.

Tell me one state where there's been a debate about what they are going to do about poverty. Even in the presidential race it didn't happen. Every problem we face — poverty, lack of health care, lack of a living wage — is created by policy. They can be changed by policy, and poor and low-wealth people hold the power to put people in office that can make a difference.

It doesn’t say rest on your laurels, but to keep on pushing. In this work, sometimes you get heavy criticism. People do say ugly things, ‘You just want money.’ I just want other people to have health care. You know, Jesus healed everybody and never charged a co-pay.

And so anytime when we see millions of people without health care and silence too often by the church, when we see 62 million people without living wages and silence from too many of the churches, we see 140 million people living in poverty, and there not be an outcry from the church, then we actually enable greed by our apathy and absence from the public square.

Senator Harris did a tremendous job in pointing out the economic injustice... we have to stop saying things were well before COVID. It’s almost as though we give that away to the Trump and Pence. The reality is, Wall Street was well. The reality is, those who got his tax cuts were well. The reality is, though, that before COVID, they were trying to overturn healthcare. Before COVID, they were blocking living wages. Before COVID, we were not addressing the issue of poor and low-wealth people. And we have to find a way to say that.

North Carolina was the scene of the crime of the worst voter suppression, after the case out of Alabama and when the Supreme Court gutted Section 5. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that it’s like putting away your umbrella — the Shelby case, it was — putting away your umbrella in a rainstorm. And in North Carolina, Amy, when it was done, the Republicans there said, “Now that the problem has — the headache has been removed, we can do what we want to.” And guess what. Everything Pence just said, we heard in 2013. And they tried to roll back every progressive way of voting. And they actually went to the books and looked at how did it benefit Black and Brown people and young people, and those were the rules they tried to roll back. And the court said it was surgical — surgical racism. And what I saw in North Carolina, what we defeated in North Carolina, what we filed suit against in North Carolina, is now what Trump and Pence are talking about doing on the national level: surgical racism with surgical precision.

Don't fear the word "poor," Barber says: If poor people voted in large numbers, that would change everything... What we found were three things: No. 1, don't go into these communities and say, you just need to vote. Say, we honor you, because we respect that some of them have not voted because they never heard anybody call their name.... We need to say the word "poor." If you look at the number of poor people — 52 million without a living wage, 140 million [overall] — you have to talk to them as human beings. Second of all, say to them, "I am not here to ask you to vote. I am here for you to join a movement that says there's something wrong with our policies that this many people can be left disinherited." Thirdly, I am asking you to believe that democracy is not just an idea, but democracy and justice are on the ballot.

64 million poor and low-wealth people were eligible to vote in the last election. That’s nearly one-third of the electorate. Thirty-four million did not vote. And a study that we just recently did, called power unleashed — “Unleashing the Power of Poor and Low-Wealth Voters,” said that the number one reason that poor and low-wealth people did not vote — this actually was a tri-reason...

The United States has always been a nation at odds with its professed aspirations of equality and justice for all—from the genocide of original inhabitants to slavery to military aggression abroad. But there have been periods in our history when courageous social movements have made significant advances. We must learn from those who’ve gone before us as we strive to build a movement that can tackle today’s injustices—and help all of us survive.

But this measure doesn’t account for the costs of housing, child care, or health care, much less twenty-first-century needs like internet access or cell phone service. It doesn’t even track the impacts of like or the , obscuring the role they play in reducing poverty. In short, the official measure of poverty doesn’t begin to touch the depth and breadth of economic hardship in the world’s wealthiest nation, where 40 percent of us can’t afford a $400 emergency. In a report with the , the Poor People’s Campaign found that nearly 140 million Americans were poor or low-income—including more than a third of white people, 40 percent of Asian people, approximately 60 percent each of indigenous people and black people, and 64 percent of Latinx people. LGBTQ people are also disproportionately affected. Further, the very condition of being poor in the United States has been criminalized through a system of racial profiling, cash bail, the myth of the Reagan-era “,” arrests for things such as laying one’s head on a park bench, passing out food to unsheltered people, and extraordinary fines and fees for misdemeanors such as failing to use a turn signal, and simply walking while black or trans.

Don't you come talking to me about Jesus, unless you're standing with the poor. If we don't address this issue of poverty... we will never energize the 100 million Americans who stayed home in 2016. If you mobilize 2 to 10% of the poor around an agenda, you can fundamentally shift every election in this country... it's better to die having fought for justice than to live and stay on the sidelines and to watch injustice have it's way without a challenge.

We're in a nation where 140 million people live in poverty, 43 percent of this nation... So when [the coronavirus disease] COVID-19 hit, America had all these wounds, these fissures. And pandemics, by their nature, exploit fissures and expand themselves through fissures. So it might hit the people in the fissures: the poor, the low wealth, black, brown, poor white communities, native communities, first nation communities. But it doesn't stay in the fissures. The pandemic might be in the fissures among the homeless for instance, in the fissures among poor black communities, but that same pandemic will make its way eventually to the White House and to the palace.

We cannot return to normal. Addressing the depth of the crises that have been revealed in this pandemic means enacting , expanding social welfare programs, ensuring access to water and sanitation, cash assistance to poor and low income families, good jobs, s and an annual income and protecting our democracy. It means ensuring that our abundant s are used for the general welfare, instead of war, walls, and the wealthy.

War is a crime against the poor civilians of Iran, Iraq, and the whole Middle East region, who pay for U.S. wars with the destruction of their lives, their health, their homes and their country’s environment. It’s a crime against the poor of the U.S. as well who pay with their tax dollars going to the Pentagon instead of to jobs, health care and a green new deal.