CRE 151: A Prophet for the Poor

 CRE 151: A Prophet for the Poor

To build a mass movement for economic justice, Reverend William Barber argues, we need to let go of the idea that poverty is an exclusively Black or urban issue.

 

1.      In the middle of the West Virginia coal wars -between 1910 and early 1920 Logan County sheriff Don Chafin (being paid by the mining companies) ordered his men to fly biplanes over striking black and white miners

a.      Dropping bombs filled with gunpowder and metal bolts on their heads

b.      One of the miners was a black Holiness preacher

                                   i.      He survived the Battle of Blair Mountain, went on to have a daughter who would marry a navy man just returning from World War II to find Jim Crow waiting for him

                                    ii.      That couple was part of the civil rights movement, and they had children of their own, who introduced them to the struggle. One of their children was William J. Barber, who has become the voice of America's poor.

2.      Barber wears many hats

a.      President of Repairers of the Breach

b.      Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign

c.      Founding director of Center for Public theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School

d.      Latest book -White Poverty -looks at America’s poor -all of its poor

3.      Many politicians ignore the poor -on the advice of their consultants

4.      Elected officials tend to be rich -many in Congress are millionaires

5.      Typically, pastors are not

6.      Barber: I am bothered by people who say so much about what God says so little about and so little abut what God says so much about -especially the plight of the poor and rejected in society.

7.      Statistics on poverty 2022

a.      12.45 % Americans lived in poverty

b.      Between 37.9 and 40.9 million people (about the population of California)

c.      These might be an underestimation

d.      These data assume that a family of four is considered poor if they make less than $29,679 a year

e. However, the 2023 Gallup poll found that most Americans believe that such a family needs at least $85,000 to get by.

f.        Those considered meet the criteria or who are officially poor  ignore

                                     i.      Those who do not qualify for public housing but still never will be able to afford a mortgage

                                     ii.      Those not poor enough to receive Medicaid but can’t afford private insurance

8.      Barber prefers a more inclusive definition

a.      One who does not have a minimum of $400 emergency fund that could cover basic monthly necessities

b.      With this estimate there would be approximately 140 million are poor or low-income in a country of 337 million people

9.      Most experts would endorse Barber’s position that the poverty line is too low

a.      But would stop short of his claim that nearly half of the country are poor

b.      But Barber’s designation is reflected on what he has seen

c.      People living out of their cars while earning wages that place them above the poverty line

d.      Those who have empty dog food cans in the kitchen with young children but no dog.

10.  Statistics: hardship endured above the official poverty line

a.      More than 20 percent of households with incomes 200 percent above the poverty threshold experience food insecurity

b.      Medicaid covers roughly 40 percent of all births in America

c. In February and March 2023, the Census estimated that a quarter of renting households making between $50,000 and $74,999 a year would face eviction in the next two months.

11.  Barber chooses to highlight white poverty because far too many believe it is primarily a black problem or an immigrant problem, or

a.      a Southern problem

b.      a Democratic city problem

c.      The problem

d.      Poor have only themselves to blame for their miseries

12.  Going back to Frederick Douglass (My Bondage and My Freedom -1855) we note that poor, non-slaveholding whites before the Civil War was the laughingstock of even the slaves.

13.  W.E.B. Du Bois described white laborers being compensated for their meager pay with a public and psychological wage

14.  Langston Hughes included “the poor white, fooled and pushed apart”

a.      Toni Morrison did the same

15.  Barber considers white poverty as part of his project for building a mass movement for economic justice

a.      Rejects the notion of activism and civil disobedience only for Blacks

16.  As observed by Trinidadian American sociologists Oliver Cox or Du Bois(-Black Reconstruction in America -1935) racism drives a wedge between poor white and poor black people

a.      Whose needs and interests are in fact, deeply aligned

17.  Most poor people are white

a.      But a larger proportion of Blacks and Hispanics, and Native Americans live in poverty

b.      Many white people have difficulty admitting they are or have been poor

c.      White people have stated that they were poor but didn’t know it

d.      Which is strange as the same kind of poor amnesia is not known among either Blacks or Hispanics

e.      Black and Hispanic poverty can be harsher than white poverty

                           i.      White people's sense of acknowledging their poverty means on some level, denying their whiteness

                         ii.      As observed by Frantz Fanon, It is understood that one is white above a certain financial level

18.  Experience of surviving economic hardship provides the primary basis for solidarity among the poor

a.      If you can’t pay your light bill, we’re all Black in the dark

19.  Why do poor white Americans support politicians who refuse to expand Medicaid, strengthen unions, invest in public education, or fund affordable housing

a.      They remain faithful to economic elites while appealing to a broad electorate

b.      The right advances policies that enrich corporations and the upper class

c.      While developing/amplifying cultural narratives that stoke social divisions

                  i.      Tax cuts for the rich

                           ii.      Abortion restrictions for the rest

                        iii. It Only serves to advance racism, not social justice

20.  Martin Gilens -Why Americans Hate Welfare (1999) demonstrates that most Americans support almost every aspect of the welfare state

a.      Support falters when the public mistakenly assumes that most recipients of government aid are Black

b.      Fewer Americans supported the Affordable Care Act when it was referred to as Obamacare

c. Simply asking people what they think about immigration makes them less likely to support redistributive policies and charitable giving.

21.  Regardless of if they believe in zero-sum thinking whereby nonwhite gains require white losses

a.      Or they assumed that nonwhite people are lazy and a drain on society

b.      Many poor white Americans continue to endorse policy agendas that directly harm them

22.  Barber has seen these schemes falter

a. Once, during a meeting with Kentucky miners, Barber learned that politicians that came to town talking about how gay people threatened their values while empowering multinational corporations to conduct mountaintop mining without consideration for the wellbeing of miners or their environment.

23.  These assholes who told us our [gay] kids were going to destroy the community have handed it over to companies that are willing to blow up the mountains -as one miner stated.

24.  Another said: They’ve been playing us against one another

25.  Barber: In these moments -the path forward is recognizing that “white folks are potentially the largest base for a movement of poor people

a.      But how can they unite poor and working-class people across racial and political divides.

26.  Barber investigates Evidence of white poverty’s violence so we can see the cracks in the system.

a.      needed to push back against forces that undermine political coalitions across lines of race and class

b.      Requires overcoming resistance from both right and left

                           i.      A right that sows division through the culture wars

                           ii.      The left engages in a politics of grievance that emphasizes our differences at the expense of recognizing our shared struggle.

                                                           iii. elites resist reaching across the social divides because their authority and often careers are rooted in representing a narrow set of issues.

27.  Thus, we must reject identity politics if we are going to move forward

a. In identity politics, no one wins a competition to prove that their pain hurts worse than another’s.

b.      The graveyard makes no distinctions based on identities

c.      This is not the seminar-room mode of activism common in academia

d.      It is in the trenches, community organizing, meeting people where they are at, getting arrested for demanding health insurance for the poor

e.      Listening to older women tell West Virginia Joe Manchin after he refused to support a higher minimum wage -I knew your momma.”

f.        Its not bumper sticker or even social media activism

28.  Mass movements -include people who you don’t see eye to eye on everything

a.      The kinds of folk (often from extremes) who recoil at the thought of even shaking hands but fighting on the same side.

b.      This is much like when, during the Great Depression, Black communists were joined by ex-Klansmen in their fight for political and economic reform

c.      It does not mean seeking compromise with violent fringe groups on the right, but it does not mean to suggest something of political purity

                                   i.      It means aligning based on specific issues

d.      We have no permanent enemies nor permanent allies -only permanent interests

29. The history of poor and working-class struggle in America has been a history of white against Black, citizen against immigrant, urban against rural

a.      A history of fighting over scraps

30.  There have been powerful moments when people overcame these divisions in the interest of class solidarity           

a.      Eg. The Congress of Industrial Organizations a committee of the American Federation of Labor

             i.      Formed in 1935, it operated as an independent organization from late 1938 to 1955

 

1.      Create a campaign around the mantra “Black and white” unite and fight

a.      Unlike the overtly racist AFL, The CIO asked members to pledge never to discriminate against a fellow worker on account of color, creed, or nationality

b. In 1935, CIO Unio Drive, a white steelworker, urged his coworkers to forget that the man working beside them is “white, Black, or Jewish.”

c.      He is a working man like yourself, being exploited by the boss in the name of racial and religious prejudice

2.      The CIO recognized that their fight was not a fight with fellow workers belonging to different racial groups or political parties

3.      But with corporate elites pulling strings

4.      If this were accomplished nearly a hundred years ago, when racism was more brazen, surely it can be accomplished today

b.      Easy to get overwhelmed with the power of old myths

c.      But as with current music, fusion is all around us

                        i.      These songs can be difficult to hear these days, with story after story about how divided we have become

d.      But we talk about the division itself divides

                                          i.      Might our divisions, even as they deepen, also deepen our commitment to overcome them. 

e.      We must look past the polarization that is often used by political pundits and commentaries to describe our nation.

                                        i.      When you look at the bleachers of a Friday night football game or the post office line, we see a far less divided nation than what is projected on social media and political talk shows

                                       ii.      Many of our beliefs are not as intractable as they first seem

31.  Social sciences are beginning to affirm what old-school organizers long about believed

a.      That face-to-face conversations can soften prejudices and change people’s attitudes about welfare policies

b.      Recent study in the American Journal of Political Science (2019) demonstrated that increased support of enrolling unauthorized immigrants in Medicaid was produced by canvassing door to door in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Caroline

                                 i.      They shared the stories and perspectives of unauthorized immigrants

                                   ii.      Or simply having a brief conversation about unrelated topics

c.      Four months after the study, voters exposed to the viewpoints of unauthorized immigrants were far likelier to voice support for a plan to include those immigrants in government healthcare programs

d.      We all can become effective social change agents without extensive training in what divides us across racial or political divides

                                           i.      Ifg we dare to leave the comfort of our neighborhoods and media bubbles

                                        ii.      If we are willing to simply engage with those who are different from us

e.      This means that we don’t see red or blue counties as unorganized ones

                                       i.      Where the largest block of voters aren’t Republicans or Democrats but rather poor people who often do not vote

                                 ii.      60% of non-voters lived in households making less than $50,000 a year

                                 iii.      Most in this bracket who did vote -did so for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020

                                     iv. Poor people might just be the new swing voters -the sleeping giant that, if awakened, could decide the nation's future.

                                    v.      The poor have the most to gain from politics that establish a living wage, expand affordable housing, and promote workers rights

                                  vi.      Will they become more active in the future elections. That is the question that remains to be answered..