The second keynote speaker, the Rev. William J. Barber III, had been delayed by a minor automobile accident from speaking the preceding evening. Founder of the Moral Monday movement and president of the NAACP in North Carolina, Barber is leading a moral revival all over the country.
He called for a political Pentecost in this country, a new power--a transformation, a paradigm shift. We need a new language. The political terms "left" and "right" stem from the French Revolution. The dichotomy liberal versus conservative is also obsolete. Liberals can be conservative. It's easier to get a gun than to vote. In moral language, right versus wrong persists. Jesus never charged for health care.
Barber looked back to the end of the Civil War and the brief ascent of blacks into equal citizenship, including a fusion coalition with whites, and political participation, a form of Reconstruction that was soon singled out as done by the racist film The Birth of a Nation and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Today we are under similar attack because we're strong. We have a heart problem, though, and need a moral defibrillator and an MRI, which stands for "Morality, Racial justice, and Income equality."
Voting repression loudly points to a thriving amount of racism, unreported. Twenty-two states have passed repressive laws. Racial and class problems are inseparable, said Barber. He spoke of his own health history--of being told he would never stand again but he did, as well as walk, a Pentecost now revisiting politics.
*****
Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich and his wife, filmmaker and environmentalist Elizabeth Kucinich, followed. The Congressman took out a copy of the Constitution and said he always carries it around in case the original version disappears.
We should not let this country be bought. On hundred people over 70 years old occupied a fire station for 100 days demanding that it rebuilt. And they succeeded. We must create possibilities people say are impossible. We must work miracles. That's why we're here.
We may be in hell but we're going to resurrect the United States and we can.
As Kucinich stood on his toes to kiss the willowy Elizabeth, she stated that she WAS the sister giant. She noted that we are in a position of power. We must envision 2020 to create our vision--which piece of the jigsaw puzzle each one of us is. We are all interconnected in the midst of the pull to subjugate and dominate.
Urged by the audience to discuss soil in agriculture, one of her specialty topics, she said that we don't have to kill bugs. We were given the Garden of Eden and look what happened. We have 50 to 100 harvests left in our soil. We can build soil health and thus nutrition into our food. Trump is opposed to change. To fight anything, you have to grow it.
*****
The Co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Opal Tometi, traced the recent birth of her organization, which went viral quickly, to the heinous murder of Trayvon Martin.
She lamented the disconnect between race and justice that permeated former President Barack Obama's supposedly "postracial" tenure. We need an uprising to do something about racism, she said. This silence has got to end.
It hurt when George Zimmerman was exonerated of the murder charges. "We were stunned, cynical, knowing that justice would rarely rule in favor of black lives." The subsequent reaction was "the most courageous uprising in recent history."
Racism shows up in every sphere of willful social ignorance, she said, different from the accepted saw that all lives matter.
Racism is part of this country's DNA. How do we go forward? All of us must get involved in a political community. New York City recently added 1000 police to its communities, despite other, more pressing issues like the need for social workers and better schools, which might diminish the demand for police.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
