Carolina Quotes
Republicans have racialized poverty, and Democrats have run from poverty. And we’re forcing them to deal with the reality. We are very political, but we’re not partisan... There is not some separation between Jesus and justice; to be Christian is to be concerned with what’s going on in the world... All the victories we enjoy today—voting rights, Social Security, minimum wage—100 years ago were seen as virtually impossible...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.

William Barber II Connected to the Carolinas

Source

Quoted in There Is Not Some Separation Between Jesus and Justice. How Rev. William J. Barber II Uses His Faith to Fight for the Poor, by Mary C. Curtis, Time Magazine, (21 Feb 2020)

year
2020

Cite this record

“Republicans have racialized poverty, and Democrats have run …” William Barber II. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-60E1A7B158. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/60e1a7b158

More from William Barber II

Our military budgets continue to rise, now grabbing more than fifty-three cents of every discretionary federal dollar to pay for wars abroad and pushing our ability to pay for health care for all, for a Green New Deal, for jobs and education, and infrastructure, further and further away. The wars that those military budgets fund continue to escalate. They don’t make us safer, and they’ve led to the deaths of thousands of poor people in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and beyond, as well as the displacement of millions of refugees, the destruction of water sources, and the contamination of the environments of whole countries. The only ones who benefit are the millionaire CEOs of military companies, who are getting richer every year on the more than $350 billion—half the military budget—that goes directly to their corporations. In the meantime 23,000 low-ranking troops earn so little that they and their families qualify for food stamps.

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We cannot return to normal. Addressing the depth of the crises that have been revealed in this pandemic means enacting universal health care, expanding social welfare programs, ensuring access to water and sanitation, cash assistance to poor and low income families, good jobs, living wages and an annual income and protecting our democracy. It means ensuring that our abundant national resources are used for the general welfare, instead of war, walls, and the wealthy.
Letter to President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Members of the 116th Congress, Poverty Amidst Pandemic: A Moral Response to COVID-19 (March 19, 2020), co-written with Liz Theoharis, Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival

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