“Until we face the lies and mythology of racism, we are still sick and broken as a nation.”

“We want freedom for all people. We want justice for all people. And we will settle for nothing else.”

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim…. To him, your celebration is a sham; …all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”
 Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

In the United States, July 4 is the country’s biggest national holiday, commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence from British rule in 1776. As the nation’s current president is busy installing army tanks in front of the White House for the event, the Reverend Dr. William Barber II led a call for justice for the many people who have never been able to enjoy “the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in this country. The sermon took place at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church on July 3, 2019.

Reading from the speech Frederick Douglass gave 167 years ago in Rochester, New York after escaping from slavery in Maryland, Rev. Barber declared that “until we face the lies and mythology of systemic racism, we are still sick and broken as a nation.”

The reverend announced three major upcoming events: on July 28-29, he will join other clergy for a return to the border the United States shares with Mexico “if things do not get better”; in September, a nine-month, nation-wide MORE (more mobilization, more organizing, more registering, more educating) Tour will be launched; and on June 20, 2020, a Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington, DC will take place.

As 300 candles burned for each of the detention centers holding immigrants and refugees around the country in deplorable, life-threatening conditions, Rev. Barber asked, “How and why do we keep finding ourselves in these moments? Our nation has too often attempted to cover up, parade up, rather than face up to the hate in our nation’s body politic.

“The truth is we cannot celebrate the nation’s liberty without an accounting of whose rights are guaranteed…. For people of color, the rights in the Constitution are a hope rather than a reality.”

Barber had a warning for President Trump about his desire to “Make America Great Again.” He reminded listeners that Benjamin Franklin himself railed against German-speakers in Pennsylvania. “You’d better be careful how far back you go because the Founding Fathers did not include Germans in their definition of whiteness.”

The new nation had an early history of disenfranchisement. Barber explained how gerrymandering voting districts to control and suppress the popular vote had its roots in the North targeting the Irish and the Polish. He went on to describe how today the South is rife with historically entrenched laws and policies that use racism to control poor people.

History also informs our perception of the southern border of the United States. Barber stated that “people from Mexico did not cross the border. We started a war to take the border from them.” He quoted from Henry David Thoreau, whose views on that war in 1846 prompted him to write “Civil Disobedience”:

“When a sixth of the population of a nation, which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty, are slaves, and a whole country, Mexico, is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.”

Barber went further to assert, “How can a people be illegal in a land that was once theirs? To those who say, ‘We don’t believe in open borders,’ no, you believe in stolen borders!” Regarding Central America, where many of today’s refugees are coming from, Barber insisted, “The U.S. destabilized Central America. We destabilized the very Central Americans we seek to demonize.”

Systemic racism, Barber explained emphatically, is not the result of cultural racism. Systemic racist policies came first and seek their justification in racism. He clarified that this is where Democrats falter because they do not understand that the Right needs cultural lies like voter fraud to support their policies.

Instead of believing the myth that the ignorant and hateful need better education to overcome racism, Barber explained that “powerful and brilliant men and women have produced racist ideas to justify racist policies in their era.” Referring to Ibram X. Kendi’s recent book, Barber said that inequality was “stamped from the beginning.”

Jim Crow laws persist in the South in the form of strict voter I.D. laws, gerrymandering, voter intimidation, short hours, long lines, and malfunctioning voting machines. The perpetuation of racist ideas is merely a cover for consolidation of power, because the right’s greatest fear is the “fusion of a white, black and brown people’s coalition.”

“How could Donald Trump follow Barack Obama to the presidency?” Barber asked. “Because,” the reverend repeated, “we never faced the mythologies and the lies.”

Barber then turned to the law. Despite the Universal Declaration of Rights in 1948, the Convention on Refugees in 1967 by which “the law says that any alien present in the United States MAY apply for asylum without discrimination”; despite the U.S. Constitution’s 14^th amendment’s “equal protection under the law for all persons, NOT citizens”; Barber asked, “Despite all these laws, why do we have Latinx people and babies … held like animals … drinking from toilets … dying?

“The asylum seekers are not the lawbreakers. The President is the lawbreaker. The Congress, the people who enable their leaders in our State houses, ICE and Customs and Border Patrol whose agents carry out illegal actions rather than refuse to do so…. If we are silent, then we, too, are the law breakers!

“How dare we celebrate the Fourth as if nothing is wrong!” Barber demanded to know.  His voice thundering, Barber raised his arm and declared, “If Douglass and others did not stand down then, we cannot stand down now!”

Barber continued, “No! This why we have accepted the call to come to the border!”

“Take it away Yara, take us home,” Barber requested as he turned to the chorus and musicians on the pulpit and then sat down to listen to their rendition of “There’s an army rising up. Break every chain.”

As the music quieted down, Barber rose again and came back to the pulpit, almost whispering.

“We want freedom for all people. We want justice for all people. And we will settle for nothing else.”

For more information about the actions, see:

https://twitter.com/RevDrBarber?lang=en

https://www.breachrepairers.org/#watch-video-section