At a time when communities across America are grappling with rising costs, attacks on democracy, and deep inequality, Bishop William J. Barber II is clear: America’s future depends on whether we can turn shared pain into shared power — and whether our leaders will dare to lift all of us, not just some of us.
In this conversation with Word In Black’s deputy managing director, Joseph Williams, at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 54th Annual Legislative Conference, Rev. Barber gets straight to the point. Poor and low-wage people, he says, are the most powerful — and the most ignored — voting bloc in America.
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His warning to the Democratic Party: Ignoring the poor would be “at your own political demise.” Barber cites recent data showing that nearly 19 million people who supported Biden-Harris in 2020 didn’t turn out in the midterms — largely because they didn’t hear a clear plan to tackle poverty and low wages.
“51% of our children, even before Trump, were in poverty,” he says. And millions of Americans are either uninsured or underinsured, so offering a bold economic vision can’t be optional.
Some say America needs another Martin Luther King Jr. to lead us forward. But Barber, who serves as president of Repairers of the Breach, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, and architect of the Moral Monday movement, rejects that narrative.
“Martin Luther King never said he was the leader,” he says, noting that the March on Washington happened because of broad coalition work.
“I don’t think in any period of history it’s just a person. I think that’s a misstatement of history,” he says. Real change, he insists, comes from the ground up — from organizing in communities, states, and local movements that add up to national transformation.
Watch the full conversation in the video above.