(RNS) — At the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, the preacher is often aided in his delivery by blasts from the organ that emphasize his points. On Sunday (Jan. 14), the speaker hardly needed the help.
“We need a shaking in this country,” declared the Rev. William Barber, the Disciples of Christ pastor and civil rights organizer, to emphatic applause. “Until low-wage workers are paid, we need to shake some things up! Until everybody has affordable housing, we need to shake things up!” Barber told the packed congregation, bringing them to their feet.
His sermon at Abyssinian was part of a monthlong speaking tour Barber is undertaking to put poverty reduction on the agenda in this election year. It echoed the homily he delivered three years ago at a prayer service for President Biden’s inauguration, where Barber said a “third reconstruction” was needed to address ecological devastation, systemic racism and poverty. He has since expressed disappointment that the White House has not pushed hard enough for results on poverty in particular.
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This time around, he said, prioritizing poor and low-wage workers is nonnegotiable.
His intended audience is not only policymakers, but 15 million of the poor and low-wage voters he claims didn’t vote in 2020. “They could fundamentally shift electoral outcomes in this country,” said Barber, president of Repairers of the Breach and founding director for the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. Barber also co-chairs the Poor People’s Campaign, a revival of a project founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
On March 2, the Poor People’s Campaign and Repairers of the Breach will host 30 rallies at state capitals across the nation, led by poor and economically vulnerable people.
Barber spoke to Religion News Service about how this campaign builds on King’s legacy and Jesus’ ministry and what he’s looking to hear from Biden going into 2024. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What inspired your speaking tour?
We keep going through these presidential elections, and not 30 minutes of a presidential debate is dedicated to poor and low-wage workers. Seventy percent of the country wants to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, which has not been raised since 2009. That’s 15 years. We’ve not fixed the Voting Rights Act since 2013, that’s almost 11 years.
If we’re serious about the legacy of Dr. King and the legacy of justice, we can’t simply remember “I have a dream” without remembering what he said about living wages and lifting up poor and low-wealth people. We can’t forget in 1965, when he said at the end of the Selma to Montgomery march that the greatest fear of the racist aristocracy in this country was for the mass of the Negros and the mass of poor white people to get together and form a political voting bloc that could fundamentally reshape the economic architecture of the country.
How are you hoping to connect with poor and low-wage voters?
We’ve worked since 2018 to build coordinating committees in 40-some states, made up of poor and low-wealth persons, religious leaders and advocates. We’re building deep relationships with worker movements fighting to raise wages. Mass gatherings will create mass action and mass consciousness and will put a face on these issues. We had some 400 organizations join with us in 2022 when we had the first mass poor people and low-wage workers March on Washington, as well as major denominations and religious groups. We’re calling on all of them to reach the people in their immediate circles.
