Cold but sunny temperatures are in store for the thousands of marchers headed for the annual Historic Thousands on Jones Street march and rally (HKonJ) in Raleigh this morning. Long-simmering issues that get crowded out by the daily drama in Washington, D.C. and the coronavirus outbreak in China are voiced here each year.
The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP and over 200 social justice groups will gather in Raleigh as they have since 2007 to promote issues affecting poor and marginalized people in America. Lately, that feels like most of us. And that is the Rev. William Barber’s point:
This year’s celebration … comes after a series of successful legal challenges and political pressure campaigns in recent years by the NAACP and others. Those efforts helped roll back voting restrictions and race-based gerrymandering of voting districts in North Carolina, Barber said.
[…]
“It’s a critical year,” Barber said in a telephone interview with The News & Observer this week, after addressing the Congressional Black Caucus’s 2020 National Black Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. Barber, a co-founder of the National Poor People’s Campaign, said his message at the summit was similar to one he has often preached: that America could be transformed if it addresses the needs of the poor.
The coalition came together over a platform of 14 points ranging from public school funding to living wages, prison reform, immigrant rights, environmental justice, and voting rights. The theme of this year’s march is “When We Vote, We Win.” The Rev. Anthony Spearman, state NAACP chapter president, said the goal is a rallying cry to encourage voter participation in this year’s elections.
Disappointing turnout in the Iowa caucuses this week could be an early warning sign of “Trump fatigue” the American left cannot afford to let settle in.
The Battle for the Bible: Christian Nationalism and the Movement to End Poverty was a one-day conference Barber headlined in late January along with Wendsler Nosie Sr., former chairman of the San Carlos Apaches. Frederick Clarkson wrote this week at Religion Dispatches about the conference to combat the ascendancy of the religious right:
Toward the end of the evening, the panelists sought to transcend the ways that race has been used to divide people against one another, and to recognize and grapple with our often multiple racial identities. Rev. Barber noted that he’s White, Tuscarora (a Native American tribe) and African American, and has had to “recover from some deep hatred” from the time the Klan burned a cross in front of the home of his uncle—who provided him with a shotgun in case they came in through the back door.
Nosie added that it’s vital to stay on “the spiritual path” to avoid becoming like what we oppose, but he warned that it won’t be easy. “By fighting these fights and standing for these issues… its coming two, three four times strong against you, to keep you from being a part of the healing.”
“We are all in this together” he continued, emphasizing that everybody needs to be decolonized—“its not just us!” Everyone, he said, needs to understand those forces “that are keeping you where you are at.” Referring to those he encounters across the nation as he rallies support for Oak Flat, he told his people: “I don’t think the people who call these places towns and cities understand that they are living like us: on reservations.”
That certainly puts a different spin on things.
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