Time March 2–9, 2020The Rev. William J. Barber II
SPEAKING UP FOR THE POOR
By Mary C. Curtis
For 27 years, The rev. William J. BarBer ii has
been the pastor at a church in the small city of Golds-
boro, N.C. But on a recent afternoon, he could be found
at a hotel in Raleigh, about an hour away from home. His
work as an activist takes him to the state capital often
enough that he’s well known there. Not long after, he’d
move on to an event in Charleston, S.C., and then to
Iowa, where he’d lead a march demanding a presidential
debate on poverty.
Barber is ever in motion, and he’s still picking up
momentum. He’s hardly stopped since he attracted na-
tional attention as the leader of the Moral Mondays pro-
tests held at the North Carolina capitol in Raleigh begin-
ning in 2013. His newsmaking actions were founded on
the idea that being a person of faith means fighting for
justice— whether by working beside a conservative mayor
to protest the closing of rural hospitals or by calling for
an NAACP boycott of the state in response to the legisla-
ture’s actions, like its infamous “bathroom bill.”
In 2018, the 56-year-old minister—a MacArthur
“ genius” grantee who founded the community-
organizing group Repairers of the Breach—put a new
spin on that work. He and the Rev. Liz Theoharis of the
Kairos Center at Union Theological Seminary launched
the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral
Revival. Under the principle Barber calls “moral fusion,”
they take a holistic view of the relationship among injus-
tices, from ecological devastation to systemic racism, and
he believes solutions must come from listening to those
most affected. “We believe they have agency,” Barber
says of the 140 million poor or low-income Americans,
“and their stories need to be heard, their faces need to be
seen. They have the answers.”
The campaign now has a presence in a majority of
states and is planning an assembly in Washington, which
it hopes will draw thousands, for June 20.
Any resemblance to the work of Martin Luther King Jr.
is intentional: King launched his own Poor People’s
Campaign less than a year before he was assassinated
in April 1968. It was also in 1968 that
Barber—who was born just days after
the 1963 March on Washington—
moved with his family from Indiana to
North Carolina. His father, a teacher
and preacher, had gotten a call from a
black principal asking him to return to
his home state to help with the cause
of integration. The young boy found
himself on the front lines of that fight.
In the process Barber learned an early
lesson: “There is not some separation
between Jesus and justice; to be
Christian is to be concerned with what’s
going on in the world.”
And so, at his church in Goldsboro,
politicians are welcome to worship
and stay for a conversation, and many
do. But they’re not allowed to preach.
Neither Barber nor his organizations
endorse candidates, though they do
endorse issues. “Republicans have
racialized property, and Democrats
have run from poverty,” he says. “And
we’re forcing them to deal with the
reality. We are very political, but we’re
not partisan.”
Barber, who received a diagnosis in
the 1990s of ankylosing spondylitis, a
form of arthritis that fused his vertebrae
in place, says he has seen enough pain
in the world that he’s not going to let his
own pain stop him. He’s got work to do.
“All the victories we enjoy today—
voting rights, Social Security, minimum
wage—100 years ago were seen as virtu-
ally impossible,” he says. “Everything
we won, people had to start winning in
the midst of opposition that looked like
it was overwhelming. I believe that’s the
moment we’re in right now.”Curtis is a North Carolina–based
journalist and speakerThe equalizers
16 PEOPLE AND GROUPS WHO ARE FIGHTING TO LEVEL UP
CAMPAIGN
TRAIL Barber at
Pullen Memorial
Baptist Church in
Raleigh, N.C., on
Jan. 27, before
a backdrop
showing the North
Carolina house of
representatives
chamber where
he was arrested
in 2011INEQUALITY| VOICES
LEARN MORE
See a video about
Barber’s battle on
time.com