Written Testimony of Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Repairers of the Breach before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on The Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties “Oversight of the Voting Rights Act: The Evolving Landscape of Voting Discrimination” Thursday, April 22, 2021 Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today. My name is Rev. Dr. William Barber II. I am President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, and Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Campaign for Moral Revival.1 I am also a leader of the Forward Together Moral Movement, a civil and human rights movement that began in North Carolina and has since been embraced across the South and across the country, and the immediate past president of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP.2 In the wake of the organized coup attempt emboldened by hate, lies, and racism on January 6, 2021 at this U.S. Capitol,3 the people of America and this Congress sit at the crossroads of a historic reckoning calling us to Restore the Soul of our Democracy and enact full protections of our sacred right to vote. Our Constitution says that we must establish justice. Our Constitution requires equal protection under the law, and our Constitution commands that you cannot deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race or color. When you suppress the right to vote, in essence, you are suppressing people's humanity, you are saying that they are not worthy of full citizenship. To suppress the right to vote is to suggest, in theological terms, that other people do not have the same Imago Dei, “the image of God” in you. The brazen, surgically targeted vote suppression sweeping this country is both unconstitutional and immoral. It results in what we should understand to be an impoverished democracy: a democracy deprived of the wealth and representation of its peoples’ voices and the expressive force and legitimacy of the true will of its people.
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Repairers of the Breach is a nonpartisan 501c3 tax exempt, not-for-profit organization that seeks to build a moral agenda rooted in a framework that uplifts our deepest moral and constitutional values to redeem the heart and soul of our country. The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival unites tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality. 2
The NC NAACP is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization composed of over 100 local branches and 20,000 individual members throughout the state of North Carolina. The Forward Together Moral Movement is a multiracial movement of blacks, whites and Latinx seeking a just and inclusive democracy. 3
Rev. William Barber and Rev. Liz Theoharris, “Statement from the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival on the Events of January 6th,” Poor People’s Campaign, last modified January 9, 2021, accessed April 21, 2021, https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/january-6th-statement/. 1