Nearly 100,000 people took to the streets in Raleigh, North
Carolina on February 8 in a Moral March to say "NO" to the state's sharp
right-wing political turn and "YES" to a new, truly progressive
America.
They weren't just marching for one issue or another. They were marching
for every issue progressives
care about: economic justice; a living wage for every worker; support
for organized labor; justice in banking and lending; high quality,
well-funded, diverse public schools; affordable health care and health
insurance for all, especially women; environmental justice and green
jobs; affordable housing for every person; abolishing the death penalty
and mandatory sentencing; expanded services for released prisoners;
comprehensive immigration reform to provide immigrants with health care,
education, and workers rights; insuring everyone the right to vote;
enhancing LGBT rights; keeping America's young men and women out of wars
on foreign soil; and more.
"They weren't just marching for one issue or another. They were marching for every issue progressives care about..."
All this in Raleigh, a metro area of barely more than a million
people. It's as if a million and half turned out in New York or DC, or a
million in San Francisco. When was the last time we saw such huge
crowds in the streets demanding a total transformation in our way of
life? This could be the start of something big.
And it was all led by . . . God?
Many of the marchers would say so. Many others would doubt it. The march
organizers invited
"secular and religious progressives alike," people of every faith and
no faith at all. And that's what they got. "The march brought together a
diverse group from Baptists to Muslims and gay marriage supporters," as
USA Today reported.
But no one doubts that it was all started by a man of faith, the Rev. William Barber.
“We will become the ‘trumpet of conscience’ that Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. called upon us to be, echoing the God of our mothers and
fathers in the faith,”
the Disciples of Christ minister told the
huge crowd, exhorting them to "plant America on higher ground." Then he
prayed: "Lord, Lord plant our minds on higher ground. Plant our hearts
on higher ground. Plant our souls on higher ground. Lord, lift us up,
lift us up, lift us up and let us stand. Plant our feet on higher
ground."
The night before the march he led what
a local TV station called "a spiritual pep rally" the Abundant Life Christian Center, designed (
the organizers said)
to prepare the marchers "by spiritually invoking ... love, peace, and a
source of power beyond what can be seen with our eyes or calculated
with our minds."
Those organizers, many of them clergy and religious leaders,
are well aware
that "some secular progressives object to the use of this kind of
language because of its religious overtones. ... Sure, Barber prays in
public, uses church language and premises many of his beliefs and
arguments on his understanding of the teachings of his faith -- he’s a
preacher for Pete’s sake! But his policy messages, his organization and
his objectives are thoroughly secular and open to all, whatever their
beliefs or lack thereof when it comes to religion."
It's not surprising that his politics would be thoroughly secular.
He's got a BA in political science and a PH.D. in public policy as well
as pastoral care. He's proving himself to be a shrewd, hard-headed
organizer and political tactician. 100,000 progressives don't just
appear out of nowhere.
In fact, the Moral March was initiated by the “Historic Thousands on
Jones Street (HKonJ) People’s Assembly Coalition,” started by Barber and
other religious leaders back in 2007. It took plenty of hope and faith
to believe that within just seven years a small group could swell to
such a huge crowd.
But building this mass movement also took political smarts. And HKonJ
has shown plenty of smarts, especially at the North Carolina state
house. They played
an important role in
passage of a Racial Justice Act, obtaining Same Day Voting; winning
workers the right to unionize; getting a former Democratic governor to
veto Voter I.D. Laws, an unfair budget, and repeal of a Racial Justice
Act.
In 2013, as a Republican governor and legislature moved their state
ever further rightward, Barber and his allies stepped up the action.
They began weekly sit-ins at the state capitol on "Moral Mondays," which
eventually saw just short of
a thousand people arrested.
"Clergy were especially prominent" in those actions, the
Washington Post reported. Local Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and United Methodist leaders
issued a joint statement
supporting the action: “It is a matter of faith with respect to our
understanding of the biblical teachings and imperatives to protect the
poor, respect the stranger, care for widows and children and love our
neighbors.”
Now Rev. Barber sees this potent mix of faith and progressive politics as a
model for resistance across the country: “We
must reduce fear through public education, through the streets, through the courts and through the electoral campaigns."
"If you are going to change America you have to think states," he
says. “We believe North Carolina is the crucible. If you’re going to
change the country, you’ve got to change the South. If you’re going to
change the South, you’ve got to focus on these state capitols.”
Spin-offs of the Moral Monday movement are already starting up in
Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama.
And you've got to change state politics at the county level, Barber
advises. So he and his group are launching "North Carolina Moral Freedom
Summer," a statewide registration and mobilization effort for voters in
all 100 counties of North Carolina.
But that's just part of a larger program that also includes voter
education, a social media strategy, and a legal strategy. "Many of these
things, not just the voting rules, are going to be challenged in the
courts using our state and federal constitutions," Barber promises.
That's a lot of smart strategic thinking.
As far as he is concerned, though, there's no way to separate smart politics from devout faith. He
takes his inspiration equally
from the Constitution, where he finds deep values to promote "the
common good," and from the Bible, which he sees teaching that love and
justice should be at the center of public policy: "Isaiah 10 says, 'Woe
unto those who make unjust laws that rob the right of the poor.'"
“Clergypersons are choosing to move in a prophetic tradition to
challenge injustice and wrongs in government and systemic transgressions
against our values," Barber explains. "It’s our Jewish friends,
Christian, Universalist, Muslim friends and others who are willing to
put their voices and bodies on the line. That is significant when
pulpits get on fire for justice.”
And wherever he goes, his "thundery oratory" will be filled "with biblical references to Pharaoh, Goliath, good and evil," as
ReligionNews reports.
"Good and evil." That's the key to the power of this new movement. It
has gone beyond single-issue politics by find the common thread tying
all progressive issue together, the thread spotlighted in the name of
their action: The "Moral" March.
In North Carolina they understand what
George Lakoff has been telling us
for years. The left is losing the political argument by sticking to
specific issues and factual evidence. Conservatives are winning because
they "speak from an authentic moral position, and appeal to voters'
values." So progressives "have to go up a level, to the moral level" and
start dealing publicly "very seriously and very quickly with the unity
of their own philosophy and with morality." Otherwise "they will not
merely continue to lose elections but will as well bear responsibility
for the success of conservatives in turning back the clock of progress
in America."
In North Carolina they are talking very seriously about morality,
saying out loud that the same moral foundations undergird all
progressive policies.
And they've discovered the power of that word "moral" to unite
religious progressives with secular progressives, who elsewhere are so
often scared off by any talk of God and Jesus and the Bible.
The HKonJ organizers understand this very well. As
their website says, they intentionally highlight the word “moral," even though
some secular progressives object to the use of this kind of language
because of its religious overtones. It sounds too much like Jerry
Falwell’s Moral Majority. But of course by that logic, progressives
couldn’t use words like “liberty” or “freedom” either. After all, both
of those words have also been monopolized by the far right in recent
years. Indeed, there’s a strong argument to be made that progressives
have too often shied away from the use of such overarching language --
thus ceding it without a fight to the right. Put simply, there is
nothing inherently religious in the word “moral”; it is a powerful and
important word that’s plenty big enough to be of great use and profound
meaning to secular and religious progressives alike.
Those nearly 100,00 Moral Marchers in Raleigh pose crucial questions
to progressives across America: Are we ready to move beyond our own
issues to join a unified, strategically savvy progressive movement
encompassing every issue? And are we willing to do what it takes for
that movement to succeed: to drop our suspicion of religion, to lift up
the word "moral" as a bridge across the religious-secular divide, to
judge religious progressives by the content of their policies and not
the color of their vocabulary?
If enough progressives answer "yes," this could indeed be the start of something big.
