Reverend William Barber has a long history with North Carolina. He served as the president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP and led the Moral Mondays presentations that began during Donald Trump’s first term in office. He is also co-chair of the national Poor People’s Campaign.
He has called for political progress in the state on issues such as voting rights, access to healthcare, a living wage, LGBTQ+ rights, public education, women’s rights and the environment.
As of April 28, the North Carolina pastor and two other individuals from the Moral Mondays movement were arrested by the U.S. Capitol police. The reason? Praying in the rotunda of the US Capitol to prevent congress from passing a federal budget with a reported $1.5 trillion dollar total in cuts.
Barber has pointed out the contradiction of the arrests of the interfaith Moral Mondays movement and the recent creation of a DOJ task force, purportedly created to abolish anti-Christian bias in the federal government. He has publicly confirmed his Christian faith as the driving force in his community advocacy work. “But people come in to say this budget does not line up with our values or even the Constitution, and we get arrested,” Barber said.
If the legislation in question is passed, it would have a dramatic impact on life-saving assistance for the economically impoverished, while providing huge tax breaks for the country’s wealthiest.
In addition to Barber, those arrested include Rev. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a writer, preacher and assistant director for partnerships and fellowships at Yale University’s Center for Public Theology and Public Policy; and Steve Swayne, director of St. Francis Springs Prayer Center in Stoneville, North Carolina. All of the men were members of a larger gathering participating in a Moral Mondays rally held outside the U.S. Supreme Court building.
A video clip posted on Facebook (from an organization called Repairers of the Breach) shows police urging the three men to stop their vigil and leave the rotunda or face arrest while announcing that they were participating in an “unlawful demonstration.” When the decision was made to move forward with the arrests, all other civilians and media were immediately ushered to the outer chamber and eventually out of the building entirely.
The video also shows (prior to their arrests) Wilson-Hartgrove, Swayne and Barber (president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach) praying and reading aloud from pre-written documents that announced their concerns:
“We are here crying to you, oh God, because we have heard the cries of your people,” said Barber.
“We have also read the budget resolution of this congress,” Wilson-Hargrove continued, “which calls for $1.5 trillion in cuts to life saving and life sustaining programs in order to give a tax break to billionaires.
“Deliver us, oh lord, from the deceptive lie that says our nation will be better off if those who have little get less, and those who have too much get more,” Swayne added.
The three men then read aloud: “Against the conspiracy of cruelty, we plead the power of your mercy.”
Police closed the doors to the rotunda, while Barber, Swayne and Wilson-Hargrove remained inside. The fact that media were not allowed to cover the actual arrests raises concerns about the Trump administration’s desire to squash factual news and information from reaching the public.
The three were reportedly handcuffed and later charged with crowding, obstructing and incommoding, confirmed as a violation of a District of Columbia ordinance in public demonstrations.
“We weren’t cursing. We weren’t talking extraordinarily loud,” Barber said in a story carried by Qnotes media partner The Charlotte Observer. “They gave us three warnings and then they arrested us, saying our prayer was an illegal activity.”
As reported previously in Qnotes and The Charlotte Observer, Barber has been arrested for civil protest-related activities on several occasions, dating back to 2013 and the initial Moral Mondays public gatherings. From the Observer report: “…the Republican-led state legislature was moving to cut education funding and unemployment benefits, opting out of Medicaid expansion, restricting abortion rights, limiting voter access and relaxing environmental protections, all of which Barber said was ‘regressive’ and ‘extremist’ and had the worst impacts on poor people, women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, minorities and the uninsured.”
Voicing his concerns over the proposed legislative budget activity currently under consideration, Barber referred to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Originally meant to expire at the end of this year, Republicans in Congress want to extend, which could potentially add more than $4 trillion to the federal deficit from fiscal year 2025 through 2034.
Said Barber: “There is no way they can cut $2 trillion from the budget and not undermine Social Security, Medicare and free and reduced-price lunches for school children.”
