Overview:

After weeks of protest and arrests on Capitol Hill, William Barber is shifting his movement’s focus from Washington to communities nationwide, betting that organizing millions of infrequent voters can change who holds political power.

After weeks of public protests, prayer vigils and arrests in Washington, D.C., activist Bishop William J. Barber II says the national moral movement he leads is entering the next leg of its journey: taking its message into churches, neighborhoods and voting precincts across America.

In a sermon “It’s Time to Wake Up⁠” delivered this weekend at Atlanta’s historic Big Bethel AME Church, Barber told the congregation his Moral Mondays movement is turning its attention from the halls of Congress to a national voter mobilization tour supporting the “100 Days; 1,000 Marches to the Polls” campaign.

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“We don’t need to march on Washington right now,” Barber said when announcing the tour. “All of our money, energy and effort needs to be marching, walking, running and riding to the polls.”

The Yale University theologian, founder and president of the nonprofit Repairers of the Breach, said he had spent several days traveling through three states, working with communities to “educate and empower a vision vote” ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Strategic Shift

It is a significant change in location, but not in purpose. The movement that carried prayer and protest to congressional offices is now concentrating its energy in the states, focusing on amassing political power.

 Barber’s singular message is that people cannot wait for Washington to rescue democracy. They must organize, he says, where they live, confront injustice when it appears and use the vote to demand that government protects all people.

His vision is to mobilize 5 million infrequent poor and low-income voters, including at least 1 million Black men. Organizers plan to use peer-to-peer text messages, phone banking, neighborhood canvassing, voter education and marches beginning on the first day of early voting in each state. Barber framed voting not simply as a civic responsibility but as an act of moral power. 

More than 40 organizations have joined the campaign, and more than 200 local groups have announced plans to organize marches, according to Repairers of the Breach⁠. 

Low-income Americans, he has repeatedly argued, are not a marginal constituency. When organized across racial, religious and geographic lines, they can become a decisive political force.

Sleeping Giant

“In the last election, 90 million people didn’t vote while the majority in Congress was decided by just 7,000 votes,” Barber said. “We must meet this constant and visible attempt to suppress the vote with the most massive voter mobilization we have seen in recent history.”

The marches do not have to be large to matter, he said.

All of our money, energy, and effort needs to be marching, walking, running, and riding to the polls.

Bishop William J. Barber II, REPAIRERS OF THE BREECH

“I’m talking about organizing marches of hundreds and thousands of people or just getting five or 10 neighbors walking together,” Barber said. “I’m talking about multiple marches in every city and community, down every street and side road.”

This next phase will also demonstrate that the campaign is about more than Election Day. Barber is connecting voting rights with health care, living wages, immigration, war, poverty and equal protection under the law.

That connection will be visible Wednesday, Aug. 26, when Barber and other advocates travel to Salisbury, Maryland, for “SOS — Standing With Our Haitian Siblings.” The prayer gathering, press conference and march are scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.

Voting and ICE

Organizers are calling for an end to attacks, arrests and deportations affecting Haitian immigrants following the termination of Temporary Protected Status. The loss of TPS has left hundreds of thousands of Haitians vulnerable to deportation back to their home country, despite crushing poverty, decades of political instability and widespread gang violence.

The crisis has been especially visible in Salisbury, where Haitian immigrants are an important part of the community and its workforce. The Associated Press has reported⁠ that fear of deportation has emptied pews at some churches and forced families inside, foregoing their jobs and schooling for their children.

For Barber, standing with Haitians is not separate from protecting voting rights. Both ask whether the nation will recognize the humanity, voice, and constitutional rights of people too often pushed to the margins.

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Barber’s Atlanta sermon sounded an alarm, but it was also a summons. “Waking up,” in Barber’s moral vocabulary, means recognizing what’s wrong, then heeding the call to do something about it.

Therefore, he argues, the movement’s next journey will be measured by neighbors organizing neighbors, churches opening their doors, communities defending immigrants and voters walking together to the polls.