Rev. Barber: Systematic Racialized Voter Suppression is the "Election Hacking" the U.S. Must Address

This was such an excellent and deeply revealing interview that I heard today. I believe that most Americans do not know these facts, many details of which I had been unaware of, but which also did not surprise me. We will not be able to heal and transform the racism which has been a toxic part of our nation since the first days of colonialism until we individually and collectively are courageous enough to see the problem. May we all be part of the Great Awakening that is underway in our times. Another world is possible. - Molly

This is excerpted from today's interview with Bishop William Barber II on Democracy Now!

This weekend hundreds will gather in Raleigh for the North Carolina NAACP State Convention, the last one that will be presided over by Bishop William Barber II as president of the state conference. Rev. Dr. Barber announced he would not run for re-election to his post earlier this year, in order to focus on his work with Repairers of the Breach and the launch of a Poor People’s Campaign. In what he says is a national call for moral revival, Barber is on a 15-state public event tour to address issues of systemic racism, poverty, militarism and ecological devastation, and spread North Carolina’s Moral Mondays movement nationwide in a push that draws on the history and unfinished work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967-'68 Poor People’s Campaign, which called for America to stand against what King called the "triplets of evil"— systemic racism, poverty and militarism. Bishop Barber joins us in our studio and says right now he is focused in part on voting rights. "It is amazing to me that we’re having a conversation about Russian hacking, but we’re not having a conversation about racialized voter suppression, which is systemic racism, which is a tool of white nationalism, which is a direct threat to our democracy."
 

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This weekend, hundreds will gather in Raleigh for the North Carolina NAACP State Convention, the last one that will be presided over by Bishop William Barber as president of the state conference. Reverend Dr. Barber announced he would not run for re-election to his post earlier this year, in order to focus on his work with the Repairers of the Breach and the launch of a Poor People’s Campaign. In what he says is a national call for a moral revival, Barber is on a 15-state public event tour to address issues of systemic racism, poverty, militarism and ecological devastation, and spread North Carolina’s Moral Mondays movement nationwide.

AMY GOODMAN: The effort draws on the history and unfinished work of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s ’67-1968 Poor People's Campaign, which called for America to stand against what King called the "triplets of evil"—systemic racism, poverty and militarism. On Tuesday here in New York, Bishop Barber was presented with the Andrew Goodman Foundation’s Hidden Heroes Award "for courageously defending the moral values of American democracy," joining us here now in our New York studio.

It’s great to have you here in studio for the first time, Bishop Barber.

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Thank you so much, Amy and Juan. Thank you so much.

AMY GOODMAN: There is a lot being made in the media right now about Facebook and their Russian ads. You had a very interesting response to that last night about who’s manipulating the elections, who gets to vote and who doesn’t.

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Yeah, I’m very concerned that while we should focus on the Russian hacking, but that we’re missing that the greatest hacking of our system was racialized voter suppression. Let me give you some numbers for your audience.

Eight hundred and sixty-eight. That’s the number of—the number fewer, that we had 868 fewer voting sites in the black and brown community in 2016, black, brown and poor community.

Twenty-two. Twenty-two states passed voter suppression laws since 2010. That’s where 44 senators were represented, over nearly 50 percent of the United States House of Representatives. And at least 16 or 17 seats in the Senate—rather, in the House, probably would not be where they are partisan, if it was not for voter suppression.

Today is 1,562 days—1,562 days since the Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Now, Strom Thurmond only filibustered the Civil Rights Act of ’57 for one day. This Congress, under McConnell and Ryan, has filibustered fixing the Voting Rights Act for 1,562 days. We talk about Trump winning in Wisconsin by 20,000 or 30,000 votes. There were 250,000 votes suppressed in Wisconsin. In North Carolina, we had over 150 fewer sites doing early voting.

So it is amazing to me that we’re having a conversation about Russian hacking, but we’re not having a conversation about racialized voter suppression, which is systemic racism, which is a tool of white nationalism, which is a direct threat to our democracy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you say "systemic," it really has almost become a science, voter suppression. How can you either gerrymander districts, how can you systematically reduce the amount of people voting from those districts that you know are likely to vote against you, all—and without actually talking about race, but actually having the same impact on reducing the vote of the black and Latino community?

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Yeah, it’s very dangerous to only talk about race in terms of interpersonal issues. You know, "Do you have a black friend?" I mean, systemic racism is what has hampered this country. And we’re seeing the worst attacks on voting rights that we’ve seen since Jim Crow. In the state I was in, it took us six years. The state spent $6 million to take people’s voting rights. Now, we won.

AMY GOODMAN: North Carolina.

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: In North Carolina. And the Supreme Court, the Roberts Supreme Court, agreed unanimously twice that the gerrymandering in North Carolina and the voter suppression—not photo ID, but taking away same-day registration, early voting—was systemic voter suppression.

Now, interestingly enough, Amy and Juan, Trump and the two senators from North Carolina are trying to put a guy by the name of Farr—F-A-R-R, Farr—on the federal court. And Farr is the attorney who led the fight for voter suppression and supported Jesse Helms in all of his racial tactics.

So we have to have a very serious conversation about what systemic racism is. We have 34 states now with potentially voter suppression laws. We’re talking about over 54 percent of African Americans. We’re talking about how it will impact brown people and poor white people. That is the hacking that we must address. And in any other country, we’d be up in arms about that—I mean, you know, even if they were moral arms, not necessarily violent arms—about people literally stealing elections—stealing elections, not winning elections, but stealing elections—through voter suppression. And all of this was systematic in the way in which—part of what helped Trump and Ryan and others get into office.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But yet, the president then names a commission—

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: A phony—yeah, yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —a commission to investigate voter fraud.

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Which is a fraud in and of itself. Which is the same line that they said in North Carolina was the reason they passed these race—intentional racist voter suppression law. They said they were trying to protect citizens from fraud.

And I want to emphasize, the Roberts court, Clarence Thomas, those all voted unanimously to say this was not just disparate treatment, it was intentional, intentional racism and intentional racist gerrymandering. And we have to deal with that, because what they know, without intentional racism and intentional gerrymandering, you could begin to see victories in the South. If you register 30 percent of African-American unregistered in the South and connect them with Latinos and connect them with progressive whites, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi and possibly South Carolina could flip. If those flip and those change, then the whole body politics shift. So the end of the Southern strategy is right at hand. But we have to deal with systemic voter suppression. And Trump and Ryan and McConnell and those allies are continuing to try to push the issue away from that and focus on the phoniness of fraud.

To continue this interview, or to watch the full video interview, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/4/rev_barber_systematic_racialized_voter_suppression