EXCLUSIVE
At the invitation of the Vatican, the
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II addressed the Labor Unions International
Meeting: From Populorum Progressio to Laudato Si’ in Vatican City on November
24th, 2017. An edited text of his remarks is below.
“Solidarity, understood in its
deepest sense, is a way of making history.”—Pope Francis
We are
gathered together as faith leaders and trade union leaders because the Holy
Father, Pope Francis, has diagnosed the moral crisis of our time as a divide in
the human family which is exacerbated by social and economic forces.
· The concentration of income in the
hands of a few has become a conspicuous trend in the global economy.
· People “discarded” by our economies hardly
interrupt the naïve optimism of the “trickle-down theory.”
· Poverty grows alongside developments
in technology that could reduce mortality rates, while hunger increases
alongside possibilities of food production at lower costs.
· Personal isolation and anonymity are
far too commonplace amidst a plethora of social networks and communications.
· Misery has become the norm for far
too many who live in the midst of obscene opulence.
· The super-rich arrogantly praise the
market while governments are increasingly unable to impose regulations needed
for the common good.
In the
context of this moral crisis, Pope Francis has made a global appeal with the
encyclical Laudato Si’ “to bring the
whole human family together to seek sustainable and integral development.” In
his call for the care of our common home, he confronts neoliberalism and its
economic theories. He contrasts community with isolated individuals; integrated
development (state-society) with the absolute rule of the market; solidarity
fellowship and care for each other with hedonistic, consumerist and profligate
individualism.
Rightfully,
the Pope has noted at the start of the twenty-first century that religious
leaders must play a leading role in the struggle for justice in dialogue with
all social and political actors. We must articulate a way of thinking that
brings together the complexity of the current situation and proposes an action
strategy for the construction of a just society. Not only is democracy at stake,
but the wellbeing of world itself.
Certain
greedy oligarchs in society care only about money now and not death later. They
are pouring pornographic sums of money into the campaigns of strong men and
strong women with the goal of creating government for profits, not for people.
In this context, trade unions must deal with new issues that go beyond just the
labor issue.
Trade union
organizations must become key factors in the inclusion, participation, and full
integration into society of those who do not have “land, roof, and work.” The
monumental contribution of Pope Francis framing in Laudato Si’ is his clear call to frame work and labor rights in
moral terms. This framing merges our most fundamental religious, human, and progressive
values. It helps us views the common good as a divine call and moral demand of
God to be implemented in the world and worked out in the public square. This reiterates
the message at the heart of Jeremiah 22:1-5:
God’s orders: “Go to the royal palace
and deliver this Message. Say, ‘Listen to what God says, O King of Judah, you
who sit on David’s throne—you and your officials and all the people who go in
and out of these palace gates. This is God’s Message: Attend to matters of
justice. Set things right between people. Rescue victims from their exploiters.
Don’t take advantage of the homeless, the orphans, the widows. Stop the
murdering!
Furthermore,
the Holy Father’s call reminds us that Jesus in his first public proclamation
challenged elitism and the unjust stratification of Roman society by giving a preeminent
place and concern for the poor, the broken hearted, the bruised, the oppressed,
and all those made to feel unaccepted and denied full participation in the
jubilee of justice that God requires.
Pope
Francis’ call for solidarity in the movement on multiple social and political
battle fronts also challenges the labor movement to have a broader conception
of movement building than just fighting to protect industry-based labor rights,
as seen though the narrow lens of job sustainability.
Fifty years
ago, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., viewing the world and the cause of justice
from a holistic, moral perceptive, declared the need to simultaneously address
racism, poverty, and militarism in a Poor People’s Campaign. He called for the labor
moment and the civil rights movement and the human rights movement to see
themselves as one movement. Sadly, there were those who wanted to limit his vision
to civil rights. Many in the labor movement as well as the civil rights
movement and the church broke away from him. King called for a global solidarity
among blacks, poor people of color, and trade unionist as the only hope for
society. He launched the Poor
People’s Campaign to unify poor people and moral leaders. He foresaw a movement
that could combine empirically-based criticism of systems with mass nonviolent civil
disobedience to shock and revive the heart of society.
But he was shot down
while leading a march with garbage workers in Memphis, TN.
I believe
Pope Francis’ call for a moral vision of the common good connected to a call
for solidarity within the labor union economy and ethos is most important. I
join you today as President of Repairers of the Breach and Co-chair of the Poor
People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival in the United States. We
have identified five areas--five moral diseases that must be addressed if we
are to be a people able to address the common good, promote the general welfare, and ensure the
common defense, with liberty and justice for all. We must address systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological
devastation, the war economy, and the immoral narrative of extreme
religionism.
To address systemic
racism, we must unpack the history of chattel slavery in America, sanctioned by
the government that rendered individuals solely on the bases of color as subhuman.
This was done in order to use their free labor to build an economy that today still
impacts the whole world. Without chattels slavery, there would be no America. America
would not be the richest nation in the world and it would not have an imprint
across the world.
We must
address systemic racism as a system rooted in white hegemony and white supremacist
polices, not merely in interpersonal relationships. For instance, voter
suppression is systemic racism. In our movement we have found empirically that labor
cannot be disassociated from the fight for the fundamental right to vote. Every
state in the US that has policies of racialized voter suppression also has high
poverty rates, low access to labor unions, and the most aggressive attacks denying
living wages and health care. Racism is used to divide black, white, brown, and
yellow people who should work together.
Where I come
from, 250,000 people die each year from low wages. In the richest nation in the
world, one out of every two adults make less then and living wage. Beyond just
the United States, one-half of the world’s population—more than 3 billion
people—live on less than $2.50 a day. One billion children live in poverty, and
more than 22,000 die each day because of poverty. We must address poverty as a
human scandal, not a divine necessity. Too often our world treats corporations
like people and people like things.
We must also
address ecological devastation. The number of storms and natural disasters are
increasing at alarming rates. And the Roosevelt Institute notes that areas with
the highest levels of poverty make the greatness impact on ecological devastation.
And we must
address the war that is consistently perpetuated by the military industrial
complex. In America alone 54% of all discretionary taxes collected by the
government each year goes toward war, not health care, living wages, or public
education.
Finally, we
have a public morality that has been distorted by extreme religionism, which attempts
to hijack our deepest values and suggest that we blame the poor for their
problems because of personal failures.
These five
areas must be address within the context of a movement both in the United
States and around the world. Pope Francis’ call for solidarity and a unity
approach is critical in this moment. Labor and trade unions must embrace what
we call a “fusion movement” approach.
We must
challenge inter-locking injustices with an intersectional approach. It is an
ecology of the society that dares to see anti-racism, anti-poverty,
pro-justice, living wages, labor rights, environmental and ecological justice,
educational equity, critique of war mongering, fair immigration laws, universal
health care as a human right, voting rights, and access to the ballot as one movement. Our response has been to
build a Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, which will
include 40-days of solidarity with the poor, with moral leadership from clergy,
labor, advocates, and academics in twenty-five US states and the District of
Columbia. This movement aims to galvanizing a thousand people in each state—twenty-five
thousand in total—who will engage in issue and agenda-based nonviolent civil
disobedience in state capitals and the nation’s capital to shift the moral
narrative. Until our moral narrative is shifted, the agenda for our society
will be limited and uninformed.
We must have
in every nation a Poor People’s March rooted in the goal of subversive hope
that gives people the power to challenge the despair of injustice. There can be
no prophetic implementation without revolutionary, nonviolent movements that
birth prophetic imagination. Pope Francis’ Laudato
Si’ further inspires the effort. But even before the current Pope, God sent
a Prophet named Amos in a time of greed and narcissistic leadership to summing the
people to action.
Amos 5:14-17
Seek good and not evil—
and
live!
You talk about God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
being your best friend.
Well, live like it,
and
maybe it will happen.
Hate evil and love good,
then work it out in the public square.
Maybe God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
will notice your remnant and be gracious.
Now again, my Master’s Message, God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies:
“Go out into the streets and lament loudly!
Fill the malls and shops with cries of doom!
Weep loudly, ‘Not me! Not us, Not now!’
Empty offices, stores, factories, workplaces.
Enlist everyone in the general lament.
I
want to hear it loud and clear when I make my visit.”
God’s Decree.
If we desire
to change injustice, there must be a remnant of people who dare to see the
struggle for our common good as a moral necessity. God’s Decree requires us to
put our bodies on the line in the streets, but it also comes with a promise:
when we cry out in the malls and streets, God will visit us.
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