No legislative rule will silence voice of the people

Contact: Martha Waggoner | mwaggoner@breachrepairers.org 

REV. BARBER: NO GENERAL ASSEMBLY RULE CAN SILENCE THE VOICES OF POOR & LOW-INCOME PEOPLE, WHO WILL BE HEARD  AT JUNE 18TH MASS POOR PEOPLE’S AND LOW-WAGE WORKERS’ ASSEMBLY AND MORAL MARCH ON WASHINGTON AND TO THE POLLS

No legislative rule will stop poor and low-income people from lifting their voices and being heard by those who hold office, social justice leader Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II said Tuesday as he responded to North Carolina’s highest court declining to hear his appeal of a misdemeanor charge of trespassing at the state legislative building in 2017. 

“If these legislatures think people are going to stop protesting and stop fighting and stop challenging them to do right and stop challenging them for using their power in unconstitutional ways, they are sadly mistaken,” Rev. Barber said at a news conference outside the legislative building where he was arrested almost five years ago. 

Rev. Barber, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, which is an anchor organization of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, was found guilty in 2019 of second-degree trespass for leading a call-and-response chant inside the Legislature during a protest calling for Medicaid Expansion and the right to healthcare for the poor. A state Court of Appeals judge said Rev. Barber was removed for the volume of his words, but not the words themselves. Last week, the state Supreme Court declined to review the case. 

“The officers that day said they did not know how loud free speech could be so we asked the court to decide,” Rev. Barber said Tuesday in prepared remarks. “In essence, we were arrested because someone said our message bothered them. The answer to the question of what was allowable was never answered. None of the work of the General Assembly suffered that day, but the rights of the people did. The Bible tells me to raise my voice with others like a trumpet. I cannot and will not remain silent while God’s children suffer for no reason other than the poor choices of our elected officials.”

Just as Rev. Barber’s voice won’t be silenced, neither will the voices of the poor and low-income people whom he and the social justice movement lift up. 

“And one of the reasons why we will be loud is because on June 18th, we'll be marching into DC because we have said ‘Basta!’ – Enough!,” said Ana Blackburn, a tri-chair of the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign, referring to the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls. “The people will no longer stand by and allow democracy to continually spiral in order to silence the people.”

Other speakers at the news conference included attorney Aviance Brown, a member of Rev. Barber’s appellate legal team and an attorney with Forward Justice, and Caitlin Swain, Co-director of Forward Justice. 

“We believe that we were right about the way that the First Amendment applies to the law of trespass in North Carolina,” Ms. Brown said. “In every battle, there is one step back, but we will take two steps forward. We will continue to fight for the people of North Carolina to be able to exercise their First Amendment rights in this General Assembly.”

Ms. Swain said: “There are moments in our history where it is going to take all of us to help correct the course of history when it is veering dangerously away from the commands of justice, equality and love. That is what I have heard from Rev. Dr. William Barber and the Poor People's Campaign when the fragile fabric of our democracy is at stake. That is the time we are in. And it is in times like these that we must use every tool in our toolbox as a society to bring our democracy back in tune with the truth that the power of that government comes from it representing the will of the people whose right to vote and to free speech is fundamental.”