On December 31, 2018 — New Year’s Eve — Kairos Center Director and Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival Co-Chair Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis preached at the Poor People’s Campaign’s Watch Night service in Raleigh, NC. Here are her remarks.
Good evening North Carolina! Good evening United States of America! Good evening Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival!
It is an honor to gather with you on Watch Night as we remember the struggle we have engaged in this year and as we prepare for battle in 2019.
And boy are we ever going to have to nonviolently fight in 2019! We have to battle the poverty that is impacting 140 million people across the United States!
We have to battle the voter suppression and mass incarceration and unjust immigration policies that threaten to tear us apart and are killing our democracy!
We have to tear that immoral border wall down!
We have to study war no more!
We have to come together and fight to protect very needed social programs that are under attack, like Medicaid and SNAP!
We have to fight for $15 and a union in every state, in every community, and once we win that we have to fight for more!
We have to protect the air, the water, the land and all life — black life, young life, indigenous life, old life — from the devastation and death caused by greed and power!
Economists are not looking very hopeful about 2019. Some are saying that the 2007/2008 economic crisis that so many of us are still suffering from is going to look like a picnic compared to the economic dip that is to come this year or in 2020. And who’s going to be most impacted by further poverty, job loss, and housing crises? The poor and dispossessed. Those who are just a healthcare crisis or a storm away from poverty. And so we’re going to have to fight even harder. We’re going to have to fight smarter.
[aesop_image img=”https://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/IMG_2386.jpg” panorama=”off” alt=”Liz Theoharis” align=”center” lightbox=”on” caption=”Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis preaches at the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival’s 2018 Watch Night service in Raleigh, NC.” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]
But I am still hopeful. We may be past Christmas but this is still a time of waiting, of anticipation, of readying ourselves for the fight for justice. We are here at Watch Night. And Watch Night is a very hopeful night.
But it’s not hopeful because we’re waiting for others to free us. It’s not hopeful because we think the new Congress or new laws going into effect are going to free us alone. It’s not hopeful because we’re going to have an opportunity in two years to elect a new President. That’s not what Watch Night, in its true meaning, is about.
Watch Night commemorates that New Year’s Eve in 1862 when slaves and free blacks and abolitionists in the south and the north waited for the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. And Watch Night is about preparing for the freedom that oppressed people make, not that powerful people grant.
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What we know from history is that Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t just about ending slavery. It was about the Union Army enlisting slaves to fight the Confederacy. In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to those in the four slave states — Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri — which were unnamed, nor to Tennessee (unnamed but occupied by Union troops since 1862) and lower Louisiana (also under occupation). And it specifically excluded those counties of Virginia soon to form the state of West Virginia. It also specifically excluded some regions already controlled by the Union army. Emancipation in those places would come after separate state actions or the December 1865 ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. In all, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to about 800,000 slaves.
What we know when we study history is that the Civil War was originally about preserving the Union. Ending slavery happened because slaves and ex-slaves and moral leaders who hated slavery organized a movement. It happened because of organizing and strategizing and power-building among the slaves, among free blacks, among those white people who wanted to end slavery because of the abolitionist movement; because of those freedom fighters who were able to make the Civil War about ending slavery. They were able to fight for the 13th Amendment which made slavery and indentured servitude illegal everywhere subject to United States jurisdiction. They were able to fight for the complete abolition of slavery — not leave 800,000 people in slavery, not wait for two more years of war and fighting to end slavery.
[aesop_quote type=”block” background=”#31526f” text=”#ffffff” align=”left” size=”1″ quote=”Ending slavery happened because slaves and ex-slaves and moral leaders who hated slavery organized a movement.” parallax=”off” direction=”left” revealfx=”off”]
And this broader understanding of the hopefulness of Watch Night — the hopefulness of slaves and free blacks and other abolitionists preparing for a battle that has everybody in, nobody out, that comes from below, that’s about building power among the poor, the oppressed, the people — needs to be lifted up, remembered, commemorated, celebrated and learned from for our battles today.
And so I stand before you on Watch Night in 2018 and think about the passage in Exodus where it says:
Then Moses said to the people, ‘Commemorate this day, the day you came out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, because the Lord brought you out of it with a mighty hand.’ (Exodus 13:3)
We are here tonight to be hopeful, to celebrate. Not to celebrate cheap grace and easy victories. But to celebrate that we have woken up. We are building a movement. And we who believe in freedom will not rest until it comes.
Because I don’t need to tell this crowd the American project has never been easy. And it’s never been perfect. Our quest for a “more perfect union” has always required moral discernment, moral dissent and, yes, at times, moral disruption of the forces of injustice.
Our Declaration of Independence held forth a democratic vision of equality for all while also calling native people savages. Our Constitution imagined a new land of liberty while also only giving voice to land-owning white men.
But this year a new movement is being born. This movement has its roots right here in NC and the Forward Together Moral Mondays Movement. It has its roots in the efforts of poor and homeless people to organize across the country. It has its roots in 25,000 people gathering on the National Mall, gazing at the U.S. Capitol and crying out, “Somebody has been hurting our people and its gone on far too long, and we won’t be silent anymore!”
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For indeed too long, we’ve talked about public policy in terms of liberal versus conservative, Democrat vs. Republican. But some things are simply right versus wrong.
It’s time to change the narrative, to correct damaging, painful ideas that have been propagated for too long. The idea, for instance, that “Poverty is the fault of the poor.” No it is not, and the enduring narrative that if millions of people just acted better, worked harder, complained less, and prayed more, they would be lifted up and out of their miserable conditions is damaging and must be corrected.
Or the idea that it’s not possible for everyone to survive and thrive. America is the richest nation in the world; it has sufficient resources to protect the environment and ensure dignified lives for all its people. It just has a priority problem, as more and more of our wealth flows into the pockets of a small but powerful few and into our bloated Pentagon budget.
[aesop_quote type=”block” background=”#31526f” text=”#ffffff” align=”left” size=”1″ quote=”The enduring narrative that if millions of people just acted better, worked harder, complained less, and prayed more, they would be lifted up and out of their miserable conditions is damaging and must be corrected.” parallax=”off” direction=”left” revealfx=”off”]
Or the idea that poor people are too lazy and crazy to organize. It’s only when those most impacted get together with clergy and activists and moral leaders that change is possible and society is transformed.
Voting rights, health care, living wage jobs, and clean water are the moral issues of our day. And we stand for equality in education and living wages and affordable housing. But just articulating our agenda, our vision is not enough. We also need moral activism. We are required sometimes not just to dissent but to disrupt what is disruptive.
So from Mother’s Day to the Summer Solstice this year, thousands of people in 40 states committed themselves to a season of direct action to launch the Poor People’s Campaign. For six consecutive weeks, poor people and clergy and activists and advocates gathered in state capitals across the country and in Washington, D.C. for nonviolent moral fusion direct action, weekly mass meetings, teach-ins, and cultural events. The result was 219 actions, hundreds of educationals and cultural events, and 40 days with over 5,000 people presenting themselves for nonviolent civil disobedience and tens of thousands witnessing — the largest and most expansive wave of nonviolent civil disobedience in 21st-century America. It was covered in every national media outlet. Tens of millions followed on social media.
And more than just a series of rallies and actions, a new model of organizing in this country has been catalyzed. From Alaska to Alabama; from California to the Carolinas; from Flint, Michigan, to Oak Flat, Arizona, people are coming together to organize moral outrage around poverty, racism, ecological devastation, and militarism into a transforming force, to turn the poor into agents of change rather than objects of history.
[aesop_image img=”https://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/IMG_7391.jpg” panorama=”off” alt=”Rev. Barber Watch Night” align=”center” lightbox=”on” caption=”Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II preaches at our Watch Night service in Raleigh, NC.” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]
These leaders and tens of thousands more are rising up and taking action together. I should tell you about moms and grand moms in Michigan who passed a water affordability plan to insure everyone has the right to clean affordable water.
I should tell you about low wage workers with the Fight for $15 who have won increased wages for millions in this country.
I should tell you about families in Kentucky who entered into the statehouse — although initially banned — and delivered toothbrushes to elected officials to demand that they stop attaching work requirements to Medicaid and dental care and vision plans.
I should tell you about homeless white millennials in Washington State who are entering into the prisons there — they have the highest youth incarceration rate for non-criminal offenses — making connections with young people in Ferguson and St. Louis, and organizing young people in jail and preventing white supremacists from recruiting these young people into racist organizations.
I should tell you about how families in Alabama have started to come together to unite families in Lowndes County who have raw sewage in their yards, and moms whose children died because they didn’t have healthcare in Montgomery, and veteran civil rights leaders in Selma who cry out Vote or Die, and community ministry workers serving some of the poorest people in Birmingham, all coming together to build the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
In this moment we are shifting the narrative. We are building power among the poor, moral leaders and all people of conscience. And we are impacting the policies that make people poor. The leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival are like the leaders who gathered on Watch Night in 1862 and got ready to use the moment to build a movement. We will be free. We will be free. We are building a movement from the ground up that will bring freedom and liberty to all the land. And we will commemorate the people who come forward ready for a nonviolent fight for justice.
[aesop_quote type=”block” background=”#31526f” text=”#ffffff” align=”left” size=”1″ quote=”The leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival are like the leaders who gathered on Watch Night in 1862 and got ready to use the moment to build a movement.” parallax=”off” direction=”left” revealfx=”off”]