Minnesotans called upon to address racial gaps in education, jobs

Like a prophet of old, the Rev. William Barber II is going to inspire us to march with him – or he’s going to make us squirm. Saturday in downtown Minneapolis, 250 people marched – fired up by a speech that was rousing, visionary, and blunt.

It was a speech that quoted from Isaiah, Pope Francis, Hubert Humphrey, Coretta Scott King, Paul Wellstone, and others. It was a speech insisting that communities face – and fix – what they currently ignore: a deep stratification of wealth; the marginalization of poor people; and systemic racism and classism in schools, at work, in housing, in health care, in criminal justice, in banking, in environmental protections, and in the public arena.

“To face this reality is not a class war,” Barber says. “It is a call to conscience.”

Changing the discussion
Barber is the founder of the “Moral Mondays” in his home state of North Carolina. He has led civil disobedience – and been arrested – in challenging that state’s legislature over voting rights and other key policies. He now is taking his call for a “moral movement” to union conventions and community groups nationwide.

His “moral movement” focuses not on abortion, or same-sex marriage, or prayer in schools – issues that rarely appear in Scripture, he points out, but have at times dominated the political agenda. Instead, Barber identifies caring for the poor as the core of the gospel, the core of his message, and what he says should be at the core of public policy.

“We removed discourse about the poor and inequality,” he says. “Somebody bamboozled us. We forgot that in the Hebrew tradition and the Christian tradition, there are more than 2,500 Scriptures in the Bible that says public policy must focus on how you treat the poor, how you treat the sick, how you treat women, how you treat the stranger, how you treat the least of these.” 

The principles that matter
Injecting faith and values into public policy is entirely appropriate, Barber says, both as a matter of necessity and a matter of principle. “We are all bound to one another, whether we like it or not,” he says, before adding: “Equal protection under the law is not an idea; it is a foundation and cornerstone of American democracy.”

Further, he says: “These are not just policy issues. These are not just left vs. right debates. These are not conservative vs. liberal discussions. These are the centerpieces of our deepest traditions of faith, our values, our sense of morality, and the very soul of our democracy.

“We must remind those who make decisions regarding public policy: If you’re going to put your hand on the Bible and swear yourself into office, you ought to know what’s in that Bible.”
What is in that book repeatedly, he says, are calls to “get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debt, bring the homeless into your home, lift up the poor…. This is what equality looks like. This is what equity looks like.”

Making change happen
Barber was in Minneapolis to confront a state that has some of the worst racial gaps in the nation in education, employment, and economic opportunity for people of color.

“The reality is, the costs are too high if we don’t address systemic racism and poverty,” he says. “It costs us our integrity as a nation. It costs us our soul as a nation. And so we must always raise the call for equity.”

Charity and trickle-down economics will not change that reality, he says. But a movement can.

“You don’t know what happens when people get together,” he says. “Things change.  When we all get together, what a day! What a day of rejoicing! When we all fight for justice, when we all believe in possibility, when we all stand together, what a day! What a day! What a day! What a day of justice it will be!”

The rally at Peavey Plaza and the march up Nicollet Mall were organized by Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Local 59.