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Brian Lehre: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we have a very special guest for this Martin Luther King Day, the North Carolina-based Reverend William Barber, president of the group Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the movement known as the Poor People's Campaign. He's got the incoming Biden administration's ear. Reverend Barber, we're so honored that you could join us first of all, and people who know Dr. King's story, know that when he was killed in 1968, the main focus of his work was what he called the Poor People's Campaign. You use that same term to describe your main work. Can you describe for our audience, including some people unfamiliar with you, how much you were explicitly trying to pick up where Dr. King left off?

William Barber: Thank you so much for having me. In 2017, myself and Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, and a host of us, Dr. Harris, who also leads the Kairos Center and I lead Repairers of the Breach decided that we really needed to take a hard look at where we were 50 years later, 50 years after the war on poverty and the original Poor People's Campaign. Doing that look in conjunction with poor and low wealth people, we came to the conclusion that there was so much unfinished business and so on. It's on the new year's Eve night of '17, right after Trump had been elected, we were very clear about what we needed to do. First of all, bowing down to Trump's racism and rantings was not an option, and that we needed to go forward. We needed to be on the move.

In 2018, we launched the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival. Now, we were also reminded that some people say it was Dr King's campaign, but it also was the welfare rights workers campaign. They went to Dr. King and said, "We have to deal with this issue of poverty in this country." The first thing we did in 2018 was, Brian, we commissioned a study with the Institute for Policy. We want to say, "What's the real truth about systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, denial of healthcare, the war economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism?" because we see those as the five interlocking injustices and what's the truth about that and why did there need to be a transformative intersection or fusion movement built from the state up that would begin to challenge these realities?

Very quickly, what we found was that when you talk about systemic racism, for instance, you got to talk about it, not just in terms of racism towards black people, but toward brown people and then toward indigenous people. Secondly, we found out that there were 140 million poor and low wealth people in this country 50 years after the original Poor People's Campaign. Not 39 million, 140 million poor and low wealth people. 62 million people working without a living wage.

We found out there were 89 million people either uninsured or under-insured. We found out there were five million families that get up every morning and buy unleaded gas and can't buy unleaded water. We found out that we spend today 53 to 54 sets of every discretionary dollar on the war economy and most of it goes to defense contractors. We found out that religious nationalism is too strong, too powerful in too many ways informing our politics. We launched the campaign by invitation. That year, we were invited to 36 States where local, poor, and low wealth people, religious leaders, and their advocates wanted to form coordinating committees to begin this campaign.

Brian: With respect to income inequality, the statistics as I understand them, show that it got better for a while just after and during Dr. King's lifetime, but has fallen back to segregation [unintelligible 00:04:35] disparities by many measures. Some people say Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty and poverty won. What do you think failed for the antipoverty programs of the past and why?

William: One of the reasons, again, we started this campaign is because we knew from talking to economists like Joseph Stiglitz, who wrote a book called The Cost of Inequality, not the cost to fix it, but what is the price? What is the cost of inequality to leave it the same? What we found out that we have everything we need today to deal with poverty, but we didn't have the wheel. One of the things we lost was a mass movement to continue pushing it, which is why we launched it in 2018 this building of the campaign. We did 50 days, six weeks of direct action in 41 States in the District of Columbia. 5,000 people were arrested and then on the last week, we had more than 30,000 people come to DC and over a million online to say we were launching this new campaign.

Then in 2019, we put out a budget, we put out a full budget of what could happen if we focused on poverty before the Congress. We actually presented to the Congress. We had our own Congress, 10 of the presidential candidates that would run [unintelligible 00:05:53] and we said that part of what has happened is we stopped about poverty in the public square. If you think about it, we've had debates the year after year after year on the presidential level, senatorial level, you never hear a one hour on poverty. You don't hear 30 minutes on poverty or racism. It's not discussed. Its middle class and working people, we deal with neo-liberalism or trickle-down economics, but it always starts with half the people and up. It doesn't start from the bottom up.

This past year, we were planning to have, on June 20th, a mass poor people's assembly March on Washington. We didn't have because of COVID, but we had it online at 2.7 million people showed up. One of the things we've proven is that there is a willingness to have a mass movement. That's one of the things we lost. The other thing we lost is we didn't lose the war on poverty. We left the field. We left the field. People forget it was Donald Rumsfeld and I can't recall his name, Dick Cheney, who were put in control after Nixon was elected to dismantle many of the programs that were put in place under Johnson.

The war on poverty was working and then we left the field. We also after realized the leaders were killed, there's not like the leaders just quit. Dr. King was murdered. He was shot. Bobby Kennedy was shot, was murdered. We have to look at all of those factors when we talk about what happened. We didn't lose it. We left the field.

Brian: I see that with Joe Biden about to take office that he spoke at one of your Poor People's Campaign events in September and you got to meet with leaders of the transition team the week before Christmas. Do you think he's serious about fighting poverty?

William: I think he'll be as serious as we are. I think that has said, he said to over 1.7 million people that tuned in that night in September that ending poverty was at the center of his theory for change. I said to him that night and we said to him earlier in Easter this year, I did a podcast with him, and I said, "These things are forced upon you now. In the midst of COVID, since then we've seen eight million more people fall into poverty."

Brian, here's the thing. They didn't just fall into poverty. They fell into poverty based on the current poverty measurement, which is 55 years old and it was bad when it was started. The reality is going into COVID, we had 140 million people in poverty, going into COVID, and it's only gotten worse. What I said to president-elect Biden is that these matters are forced upon them. America cannot continue with 43% of her people, almost 50% of the people, living in poverty and low wealth. Additionally to that, we know that this COVID, the cost of this pandemic is estimated to be $16 trillion. We know we lose a trillion dollars every year from child poverty. We lose $2.6 trillion every year according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute to gender and racial wage gaps. We lose money.

We know that 250,000 people are dying a year from poverty, according to a study by Columbia, before COVID. That's 700 people a day. The question for America is can America be? I don't believe-- we don't believe America can be who she promises to be if her first promise is to establish justice. That's her first promise. In other words, you can't get to domestic tranquility without establishing justice. What we've said to him is if you're serious about healing, the nation, the body is sick, the healing can't just be mysterious soul healing. It has to be a body healing and the body of America is sick with systemic racism, systemic poverty and those other areas that we talked about.

Brian: At the campaign stop in September, he told you, quote, "ending poverty will not just be an aspiration". I'm reading his words. "It will be a theory of change to build a new economy that includes everyone", and those are strong words if he means them. In fact, so strong that I'm going to say them again so they sink in for our audience, quote, "ending poverty will not just be an aspiration. It will be a theory of change to build a new economy that includes everyone". Joe Biden said that.

What would it take to make ending poverty the real organizing principle of a president's economic policy and with the many areas, your five basic building blocks and so many things that feed into this, are there things you would put as priority one priority two, if he was going to come out of the box and spend some of his political capital on some big things?

William: Not only did he say that, he said I wanted to join your movement as well. That was also part of that. When we met with the transition thing, so Susan Rice, ambassador Rice who's now going to be over domestic policy. We said to him, all of that-- we didn't want to meet with, president elect Biden and vice president Harris right now we met with them. We've heard what they've said. If you go back, Kamala said something similar to what he said in 2019, we want to meet with them once they are inaugurated, we said, number one, you need to have a White House level convening and summit with poor and low wealth people at the table, economists, public health specialists and moral leaders at the table.

One of the things we did when we met with their policy team, Brian, we had 32 people there. We had poor and low wealth people in the room. They didn't just hear from me. They heard from white farmers and white folk from Appalachia and Black folk from Alabama. They heard from Latino people from El Paso, because whenever we go in a room, we bring everybody in the room. That's one of the things you have to, first of all, see the people. Now we said, this is what needs to happen. First of all, we need a full and complete comprehensive, just response to COVID, which ensures healthcare for everybody, which ensures everybody gets free vaccines, which ensures a rent protection from evictions rent, moratoriums without having the credit problems on the back end, mortgage moratoriums. We need everybody to get a living wage. He ran on that.

We don't need that to happen two years. That needs to happen now, $15 and a union. We need a guaranteed income through the midst of this COVID we need to guarantee health care and I [unintelligible 00:12:53]. You can call it whatever you want to. Everybody ought to have health care, not just access. They all have healthcare as a human right, as a fundamental human right. We need major infrastructure investment in poor and low wealth communities and there are a number of ways of doing that. We need to redirect the bunch of the bloated money in the war economy and the military budget towards these issues.

If we don't recover, not just from COVID, but if we don't change this reality of 140 million people living in poverty, we are talking about national security for real, our public health officials that advise us, one from Harvard, one from UCLA, one from Drexel said to us that the fissures of poverty and racial disparity is what has given this COVID such a hold in our society. They reminded us that while people are dying, there's a second disaggregation, poor and low wealth people are really the ones dying, whether they're white or black, because they are the ones that are the essential workers.

They are the ones in the jobs that are low wages. They're the ones in the jobs that didn't have healthcare. Poor and low wealth people are dying at a disparate number and we've got to change that.

Brian: Reverend William Barber from Repairs Of The Breach and the Modern Poor People's Campaign, our special guest. Reverend Barber, I'm thinking about the history of the 1960s, when president Kennedy and then president Johnson took office and they were pro civil rights more or less, but Martin Luther King was pushing them to get more serious and get more real. Is there anything from that history that could help model from today or for today, how major civil rights leaders like yourself and others could exert the most influence?

William: There's never been a time in American history that you didn't have to push that you didn't have to have agitation. I believe we're headed-- We need a third reconstruction. We had one 1868 to 1890s, one 1954 to 1968. We need a third reconstruction today. I think we have to address all five of these issues interlockingly. They're not separate. I think that we have to understand, like Dr. King did, that the movement must be intersectional and interracial, that we must take up the issues, not just what affects Black people, but what affects all of us. I often when I'm in the South and in Appalachia, I teach people, sometimes the all white audience I'll talk to them about the first map I put up on the board to help them see is I showed them the map on voter suppression, racist voter suppression.

Then after that, I overlay that map with poverty and I showed them all the people that get elected because of racial voter suppression and where they stand on living wages and healthcare and dealing with poverty. Nine times out of 10 in that room, people will say, "wait a minute, do that again". When I show it to them again, they said, we're being played against [unintelligible 00:15:59] and I said, exactly right. That is why voting rights has to be as much an issue for white folk as dealing with wages has to be an issue for Black folk. It's not separate. That's one of the legacies of Dr. King.

He said to us in 1965, we often don't read this speech. The one at the end of the Selma to Montgomery, he said that the reason we have a segregated society after 1868 after the first reconstruction was because of the fear of the aristocracy of the masses of Negroes and white people joining together to build the beloved community and create the voting block. Dr. King knew that-- That was even around the voting rights bill. It wasn't just to get voting rights for Black people. It was to create fusion coalitions of Black and white and Brown people building a political base that changed reality. We have to engage in that way.

I think that we have to realize that politics is not just about getting people elected, but it's about pushing people. For instance, Johnson got elected in '64. He beat Goldwater, but the movement stood behind him, but not long after he was inaugurated in January, the movement was in cell. They didn't wait. They started pushing him, even though he didn't get elected to do Voting Rights, they pushed him to do that. They changed the context and that's what-- the political context and that's what we have to do.

Brian: You mentioned coalition, some of our audience might've seen your New York Times op ed a few weeks ago called What Biden and Harris Owe the poor. One thing you do in there that caught my eye is that you rejected the idea that their mandate, even in a polarized country, is to compromise with Donald Trump's base. I want to ask you could, the two things be compatible because Trump's space, let's say white working class, non-college educated Americans in large measure are also struggling economically and also feeling economically marginalized.

This is a common ground question, could Biden and Harris give that base the economics that they want while addressing the poverty that afflicts black and Brown and native Americana?

William: What I think is that we have to talk to all Americans. I movement goes up to Appalachia, just like we go to Alabama, we're in California, just like we're in the Carolinas. What we find is that there's a remnant of people who want change. There's a remnant of people that are hurting. I went to Eastern Kentucky in Harlan County, Kentucky, that where the poor people-- where the war on poverty actually started when Johnson announced it. I asked the people that went it-- "do people come back?" and they said, nobody visits us. Democrats or Republicans. I said, "why did this vote Republican?" They said, "a lot of us didn't vote at all. They didn't vote at all. Those that did, we voted because we needed the attention". We decided to do an analysis, Brian. We did a study called unleashing the power of poor and low wealth vote.

This is what we found out. We found that poor and well, people make up almost 30% of the electorate now. Almost 64 million people. We found that in 2016, on the 29 million voted. We found it in 15 states in this country, in the South and in the Midwest and the upper Northeast-- If one to 19% of poor and low wealth people were organized regardless of race, creed, and color around an agenda, they could change who sits in the Senate and who sits in the White House.

We used that data in this election. We reached out to over thrre million people in 10 states, we saw significant number of people who had not voted were poor, low wealth vote because we talked to them about an agenda and not just a person. What we found, what we see now is over 55% of poor and low wealth people making less than $50,000, not black people, poor and low wealth voted for Biden, that's six million increase from 2016. He ran on openly. He and vice president elect Harris, ran on what? Living wage, expanding healthcare, dealing with racism openly. They got an increase almost 11% increase in the number of poor and low wealth people. Forget color, just poor and low wealth people voting. We know that that can work because 72% of poor and low wealth people want a wage increase.

Even 63% I think of Republicans want healthcare. What we need to do is run on the issues where people are hurting. What we have said to the Biden campaign, it's not about compromise. It's about putting forward a vision of transformation and change. People are sick and tired of normal. It is about putting forth policies that meet people where they are mourning M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, where they are hurting.

If you do that, a lot of the folk won't stay with demagoguery like Trump. They won't stay with it. Now some will, but you can win the majority because this past election showed that 55% of poor and low wealth people voted for this ticket. They didn't vote for normal. Now, if they don't see change, you might not get them back, but if they see them pushing [unintelligible 00:21:35] 15 and a union, if they see them truly expand healthcare, if they see them deal with systemic racism, from issues affecting black people, Latino people and indigenous people, that's how you build that political coalition that can transform elections all over this country.

It's not that farfetched. Really quickly, it only would take 1%, took 1% of poor, low wealth people in Michigan to change it like that. With our study shows only 19% in North Carolina, only 4% in Florida. We're not talking about extreme numbers. We're talking about we're right at the tipping point. If presidential and senatorial candidates will run a campaign that speaks to the lives of poor and low wealth people.

Brian: Reverend Barber, we know from your times op-ed that voters in November supported at least 14 ballot initiatives across the country, consistent with an anti-poverty agenda. That probably didn't make enough news. What were some of those and what did they tell you?

William: Isn't it sad that it doesn't make enough new-- Some of the media only wants to talk about the black vote, which was powerful, but what were black people voting for? That's the bigger question. They talk about the suburban vote, but they don't want to talk about this block. That's 30%, 64 million people. We saw ballot initiatives that said voted for $15 in the union, voted for increase in the midway.

We saw ballot initiativesthat voted to expand healthcare. Even before we got to the election in November earlier in the spring, I think it was in Missouri, Kansas city, Missouri, they voted. People are hurting. That's the thing we're trying to get politicians that you can not ignore 43, nearly 50% of your population. For instance, in Georgia right now, there are one million people who are without healthcare.

I don't mean blavk, white, brown, just one million people, that 1.9 million people in Georgia that have made less than a living wage. Work every day. Some of them work more than 40 hours a week. We're saying they can't even run on that. Touch them, talk to them, speak to them but too often our politics Republicans have racialized poverty, Democrats have run from poverty and what we need to do is address poverty and low wealth. We know fundamentally as these ballot initiatives have shown, as the voter turnout has shown this year, that that is really the only place you can expand the electorate and beat back extremism.

Brian: We have a few minutes left with Reverend William Barber, leader of Repairs of the Breach and the modern Poor People's Campaign. You mentioned meeting with Susan Rice when you met with the Biden Harris transition team. Some people say Susan Rice, "why is she in charge of domestic policy? She's a foreign policy expert". That's what she did with Obama. Did you get a sense from her? Do you know her well enough to think she's going to have a particular impact on domestic policies like you've been talking about?

William: We met with her and I think it was seven other people. I don't have-- eight other people. I don't have all the names. She was very attentive and since then has written and said she's very keen and interested in dealing with this issue. She recognized it. Brian, this is the thing that we look at every campaign. Some people focus on the personality that's in the position or the color that's in the position. We say that is important at times, but what's more important is the positions they take and who they center in their policy that they plan to engage or the policies they plan to implement.

Our job is to make sure that poor and low wealth people are in that center place. Our job is to put it in front of them. That's why when we met with them, and this is the first of many meetings, we had been in touch with them after the election and we've got commitments going forward. Our job that day was to put in front of them the face of poverty and low wealth. What I do know is that the folk in that room, there was a certain quietness that showed me they had not been in rooms like this.

They had not seen white farmers standing with black fast food workers in the same room, pushing the same agenda. They had not seen white coal miners from Appalachia standing with black women from Alabama, fighting for healthcare. I think that's our greatest flaw and that's why once COVID is over, we are going to have a mass poor people's assembly march on Washington. We're going to put the face of poverty and low wealth before this country, because too often our politics has either marginalized it or racialized it, or just refuse to deal with it.

What we are saying that Ms. Rice, ambassador Rice and others, we can no longer dismember people in this society. Just talking about middle class and working class is not going to get it. We have too many people, real life, real living breathing people who are poor or no wealth in every race and it's got-- For instance I'll close with this, 60% of black people are poor and low wealth, that's 26 million people. 30% of white people are poor, low wealth. That's 66 million people.

Among black people are 30 sometimes higher in percentage of people in that race that are poor. There are 40 million more poor and low wealth white people than they are. That's what Dr. King was trying to get us to see. That's what he wanted us to see. That we can unite this country. He said, being by dealing with poverty, racism, and militarism. We say poverty, systemic racism, ecological devastation, denial of healthcare and the war economy and the false [unintelligible 00:27:53] national religious nationalism. Those are interlocking injustice that require an intersection of fusion Mora movement.

Brian: Last question, I hear you on it's not the personalities and power who matter it's who they center, but Dr. King was also so successful as the face of a movement that did reach across racial lines. Could you see yourself or anyone else right now-- I mean potentially you with the access that you have with the power of your voice, with as much as your movement has gotten out as the Martin Luther King to Biden's Kennedy or Johnson, would you want that role?

William: Well, what I see my role as is doing what the Lord has called me to do. I'm bred serious as a Christian preacher, that the first scripture that Jesus preached was the spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor and the word poor there is potokos.It means those who have been made poor because of economic exploitation, that's the Greek translation of those ancient words. This movement and with my co-chair Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, we've decided we're to be servants of a movement. What we do is we put people in the room, we believe in the agency of poor and low wealth people.

When we decided to have this meet with the transition team, they invited a few of us. We said, no, we can't meet like that. They said, "What?" They said "who you want to bring?" We said, we want to bring a bunch of people with us. They said, how many? We said probably 30, because the uniqueness of Dr. King, I remember what he said in the poor people's campaign. I'm taking poor people to the Capitol and we're going to stay there until the nation shifts.

He was shot before he was able to do that, but that was his goal to use whatever strength he had, whatever personality he had, whatever power he had, whatever persuasion he had along with Latino leaders, like Cesar Chavez and native leaders and the welfare rights of women to gather poor people to bring them to the nation's Capitol, because he believed in that agency.

I still believe in the agency of poor and low wealth people, whether they're from Appalachia, Alabama, North Carolina, North Dakota. Whether they are Apache or Latino to whether they are from Montana or Mississippi, that's who we are organizing. That's the only group that can fundamentally shift this nation and shift the politics of this nation.

Brian: Reverend Barber, it's always an honor and an inspiration to be in conversation with you. Thank you so much.

William: Thank you so much. God bless you, Brian. Take care.

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