Transcripts For CSPAN Bishop 20240705

2000 union troops to proclaim that more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state were afraid. Some local slaveowners initially ignored the directive, but granger demanded they comply with the proclamation. Why is it called juneteenth . It derives its name from combining june and 19th. That day that he issued his proclamation. Juneteenth has we are leaving this for live conversation on ending hunger and part of the in the u. S. William barber is joining other activists and advocates for a threeday summit in washington, d. C. Could this monstrous act be a necessary link in the chain of events toward the downfall of the entire system of slavery . He said what i do know is that every attempt to stop us and allow our progress only serves to intensify and embolden our agitation. This is why we this morning will take a hard look at the ugly reality of poverty death by poverty. The fourth leading cause of death, ahead of homicide. Maybe the fact that we are having to face this is, in some strange way, a necessary link in the chain of events that will not stop us, but will intensify and embolden our agitation. Mother jones said you pray for the dead. But you fight like hell for the living. [applause] Martin Luther king was headed to d. C. When he stopped by memphis. The Poor Peoples Campaign was not started by dr. King, it was the welfare rights women. They were all a team. It was not men against women, it was not preacher against advocates. It was a team effort. A year before his death, he spoke at Riverside Church and declared that three people entered trying evils. And that america could not claim some of the things it was claiming around the world until those things were addressed. The next morning, 150 newspapers wrote negative articles. He lost his invitation to the white house. Most of his own denomination talked against him. Many organizations wrote articles against him. He went on during the course of that year and in december, he preached a sermon about the meaning of hope but he started with despair. He started with the despair, talking about the reality of two americas. One america flowing with the open honey where everybody seemed to have everything they needed. The other america was where death and destitution and poverty was the order of the day. He said yet, in this despairing reality, we have to challenge it. We have to have this Poor Peoples Campaign. Systemic racism, say that. Systemic racism. Bishop barber systemic poverty. Systemic poverty. Bishop barber ecological ewa station. Devastation. Ecological devastation. Bishop barber the war on economy. The war on the academy. Bishop barber and the false narrative of religious nationalism. And the false narrative of religious nationalism. Bishop barber injustices that today, we must face. He was calling the people and the women were calling the people, my dear sister from california reminded me we had been waiting 50 years for this reunion. Not to be an organization, not to be a place where you could fight over what color the napkin is going to be and who is going to hold office. But a movement of people. Advocates, religious and all leaders united together. Because my brothers and sisters, there is one thing i want to say to this congress. This is no time for foolishness. If you are here to fight over foolish things, please exit. Because we dont have time. People are dying. If you are here for any other reason, because nobody has to be here. If you are here for any other reason but love and to embrace one another and move as a movement and be faithful over a few things, we love you. But, this aint no time for foolishness. This is only a time to fight for love, fight for justice and fight for truth. Touch your neighbor and say if youre here for that, im with you. If youre here from that, im with you. Bishop barber touch the other and say if you are here for foolishness, please get a ticket back home. And so, dr. King was on his way here and they made their way to memphis. They were almost going to regroup because they had made the declaration we are going to stay in d. C. Until change comes. There were some strategic errors in that that they talked about. But he went to memphis where people were dying. Two garbage workers were dying, simply because they sat inside of a garbage truck during a rainstorm. And lightning hit, causing the truck mechanics to crush them. Thats what got them in memphis. Folk were dying just for trying to get out of the rain. They were already being paid less than living wage. But they were dying because they werent allowed to go inside. And somebody said doc, why are you going to go to memphis . He said they been trying to kill you ever since. And doc said the issue is not what is going to happen to me if i go. But whats going to happen to them if i dont. [applause] bishop barber and if we cant stop and care about poor people in memphis on the way to d. C. , if we cant build from the state up, there is no need to go to d. C. Down. Thats why, in this movement, ive always said, number one, when you get in a movement, you have to stay in it. You cant ba. 1 event movement. You cant get mad because everything doesnt change in one week or because you had one rally. Secondly, you have to build from the state up. This country never changed from d. C. Down, it changed from birmingham up, from selma up, from memphis up. From little rock up. And so, theyve just given me another note. I have to multitask. Not only did this poem say this and Frederick Douglass and mother jones, our constitution says that the whole purpose for this endeavor and even though as one person said, when the frame of constitution was writing, racism was like a cobra underneath the table. And every time they attempted to move away from slavery, they would poison the conversation. But even so, somehow, maybe it was the finger of god, despite what they were trying to write, that said to ensure domestic tranquility. To establish justice, to promote the general welfare, and to provide for the constitution had a rebirth with the 14th amendment, equal protection under the law for all citizens. No. Equal protection under the law for all persons. It doesnt matter if you are a citizen or not. And we must declare that poor people dying at a rate that is the fourth highest cause of death in america is not ensuring domestic tranquility, it is not establishing justice and it is not promoting the general welfare, it is not providing a common defense and it is not equal protection under the law. And america, since you said that is what you are going to be about, we will make you be about what you said you were going to be about. [applause] bishop barber we have legitimate discontent. Not only that, our declaration says life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But then it says that the people have the right, whenever there has been a long train of abuses, the people have the right to reshape, restructure and change that government. Anytime it is contrary to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And i want to suggest that unnecessary poverty has been a long train of abuse. People not having health care has been a long train of abuse. Not raising the minimum wage to a living mage living wage has been a long train of abuse. Underfunding education has been a long train of abuse. Attacking gay people and trans people has a long train of abuse. And we have a right and a duty. [applause] bishop barber and so, my brothers and sisters, there is one more thing that gathers us here. We must know our calling. And what is our calling and what i call the aftermath. I have somebody put up on the screen, aftermath. The before math was 140 Million People living in poverty and low wealth. 87 Million People without health care or underinsured. Before math was nearly millions of people who were homeless. Before math were people without homes are on the brink of homelessness. Before math was people who cant by gas or unleaded water. The before math was 200 50,000 people dying a year from poverty. 700 people a day. The beforemath. And then covid hit. In fact, the beforemath was people dying and poverty being the fourth highest cause of death. Thats not because of covid. That is what we went into covid with. And then the duringmath was rehundred 30,000 people not dying from 330,000 people not dying from covid but not having health care. In mississippi, we had one family that lost 20 members in a 20 mile radius. That is the during math. During covid, we call people essential but treated them like they were expendable. Go to work, we said. As a nation, and save us. But we wont pay you living wages. Go to work and risk your life but we wont give you health care. Go to work, go to work. Go to work. We will ring a bell at 6 00. We will clap our hands. But that doesnt do anything when you go to work and you feel like you are saving people who dont care if you live. During math, say the during math. During covid, we saw large numbers of people, poor people, dying at a rate 35 times higher than the rest of the country. And it wasnt because covid is commended toward poor people. It was because the nation discriminated in how we made sure poor people had what they needed to survive. During covid. During covid. We saw that we had an opportunity to raise the living wage. And if we had, nearly 50 million americans and others would have been raised out of poverty and poor wealth. The vote comes and its been debated, it has been part of the president ial campaign. And then two democrats and 40 19 republicans and 49 republicans say no to nearly 50 Million People. But they give 68 of all of the relief money to corporations. And we make more billionaires during covid, while more poor people fall into poverty. Because we lifted them for a moment. Poverty numbers went down, they went down because of the stuff we were fighting for. And we proved if you do the right policies, you will end poverty and low wealth. The problem is we did a little bit during covid and then after covid, all of the stuff is being snatched away. Last week, 6 Million People went off of medicaid. Come on. Thats the during math. Here we are now in the aftermath. What do we do in the aftermath . And in the aftermath, the numbers are going back up. In the aftermath, we are finding out that what we went into, we didnt know it was the fourth leading cause of death. In the aftermath, over one Million People died from covid and we have not spent one week morning mourning. Just one week mourning and remembering. My friends, since we are in the aftermath, then we must make a solemn declaration. Those who have died will not have died in vain. We cannot turn back now. In the aftermath, we must intensify and embolden. We must commit in the aftermath to shift the narrative, to build a movement, put a face on the pain and refused to accept things the way they are. We must be greater truth tellers, love showers and justice seekers. We must be in state capitals, we must be in congress. We must be in the streets. We must be in pulpits. We must be seen. We must be heard. We must be felt. We must use every nonviolent tool at our disposal. We dont have to be an insurrection because we are a resurrection and we are not going anywhere. Nowhere. We cannot be silenced anymore. We cannot the unseen or unheard anymore. We cannot accept poverty as a death sentence. We must have a third reconstruction. We must face these interlocking injustices with an intersectional moral Fusion Movement to turn the tide and to help kill the land. And guess what . We are that movement. Tell your neighbor, we are that movement. We are that movement until death is stopped. Until children are protected. We are that movement. Until lowwage workers are paid. And affordable houses are provided and the atmosphere is saved. We are that movement, until Voting Rights are expanded. Until saving the world and living in peace and lifting the poor is more important than spending money to blow up the world and hurt the poor. We are that movement. We will be that movement. We are not going anywhere. We wont be silent, anymore. Are you that movement . Are you going to stand . Since youre alive in the aftermath, stand. Since you made it through covid, stand. Since youre still here, stand. We are that movement we are that movement we are that movement thats right. Thats right. Poor peoples campaign, a National Call for moral revival. We are that. Now we have to deal with the reason we invited cspan because we cant keep this knowledge in here. You cant shock the heart of the nation if you keep your light under a bushel. You cant shock the heart of the nation and be a moral defibrillator in this you know what the problem is unless you know the problem is. Truth is a moral defibrillator. Policies dont change just with numbers. Policies change when you connect faces to numbers. We want to be faithful of a few things. Change the narrative. Put a face on the policies. Do simultaneous committed things so we are not all individual states doing their own thing. Engage as state capitals. Engage in the congress. Be a massive awake the mass of Sleeping Giant of poor low wealth people who now make up 40 of the electorate. And then just keep being consistent. You dont chop a tree down with one hit of the axe. You have to cut where you wanted to fall. We are not just cursing the darkness. The worst thing you can do is talk about what is wrong and not have an answer. That is our angle. Then we keep hitting in the same place. I dont know if we are that movement that will finish what others started. I dont know if we are that movement that will push all the way almost to the end and another generation will finish it. But we are that movement, that intersectional moral Fusion Movement and we are here to stay. We are in every state. You cant kill all of us. Aint no one person going to stop this movement. We love this country enough to call out in impoverished democracy. We love all of the people in it whether you got a card or no card because god made you. You are a creation of the divine. You are welcome in our midst. This session is on poverty death. Just to say that makes you a mistake on the stomach. Poverty death. With the Poor Peoples Campaign, the National Call for moral revival, we wanted to sponsor this first session. Should we really know what is going on, not assume it. We want your eyes to be looking like you see the death and you cant accept it. We want your hearts to be pumping with a moral refusal. Sometimes you just have to have an internal discontent. You dont have to be evil. You dont have to use weapons and knives and kill nobody, but you can have an internal discontent. But you first have to see it. We will not be loud and wrong. They say weve been waiting for movement. We said, weve got one. Give them a hand. [applause] dr. David brady. Dr. Valerie wilson. Dr. Greg gonzales, a Public Health specialist from yale. He has got all of this research. And her own attorney. And our own attorney. And mr. Jonathan hargrove. He is at a conference where people are getting White Nationalism and evangelicalism exercised. Lord have mercy. Before we go to them, we and our movement always start with a face of those who were impacted. We see these testimonies. Are we ready . We have got two minutes. All right. Take your time and sit with it for a moment. I tell you what, lets pray a little bit of precious memories play a little bit of precious memories. Someone lost someone during covid. Who knows somebody that died from not having health care . Lets bring them in the room. I am a pastor so im going to take you into church just a little bit. We went here during a recent funeral. Help me if i mess the words out. We will not let those who died needlessly, their lives be forgotten. Call their names right now. As long as you call their names, they are never really dead. And if you want to stand for them, stand for them. If you want to say i fight in your memory, i buried my father some 30 years ago on fathers day. I know you miss some people. Scholars, if you want to call their names. Come on, some of you who know how to sing out there. , on. They ever flood my soul in the stillness, stillness, stillness after midnight oh, yes precious memories oh, how where are you at, liz . We remember your mama this one, liz. Flood my soul. Hallelujah in the stillness. Oh, yes sit with that for a minute. Go ahead and play it. Remember all the ancestors. Bring them in the room. Bring them in the room. Come on in here, harriet. Come on in here, joe. Your memory is not lost. Come on in here, dorothy day, rosa. Bring up the testimony. Family, would you share your story from alabama . My name is pamela. I live in a mobile home with my two kids. William barber. Nice to meet you. Thank you for being at this conference. I just heard 100,000 over 100,000. Still paying for it. 100,000 20 years ago. They would not give you the loan for the house. Should be illegal to charge somebody public five times more than it is worth. 20 years ago. Predatory lending. Getting people all tied up in debt. On a house mortgage, interest is only about 3 . I feel bad. I am paying all these bills and i cant give them are you someone who was taken advantage . It is criminal. Yes, they treated us wrong. Burchinal god who loves justice, mercy, praise, we thank you today for pamela and her strength of family. We stand against this kind of oppression and we thank you for giving her the courage by your spirit to say i will no longer be quiet or in hiding. Her daughter is in the room i believe. She is 10 years old. She is on a cpap machine because of the mold in this trailer that she cant get out of because of predatory lenders in alabama. I worked 41 years in the cold months. I have black lung. Im here to tell you as long as i have got a voice, im going to fight with everything ive got to try to keep right now there is a move on especially in kentucky for this new right to work law. It has gotten rid of ever United Mine Workers union in the state of kentucky. There is none anymore in the state of kentucky. I have been a union member since 1968. I have black long. I worked 41 years in the coal mines. But to get back your question, when you introduce laws like that, youre not looking at increasing minimum wage. You looking at going backwards. The world of poverty supposedly started 50 some years ago. We got an old saying in the coal mines, it is rough at the face. Where i live, in southeastern kentucky, it is rough at the face because the poverty in that area has not gotten better, it is worse today than it has ever been. And it is not looking any promising at all until something is done. Until all of the fathers who have lost their children, i agree with you. We have lost all three of our children to suicide. In pain and killing drugs. Our children should have been given a fighting chance had they gotten the Mental Health care we all deserve. Our first son, and also grow a law school graduate, the first to leave us, only 33 days later his sister, a junior at uw madison, wisconsin, completed her suicide. When she went for help, she was turned away. Too many visits come isabel. Her surviving brother spoke in front of her casket and said this, by standing here i feel like i am betraying them. Two years later, death closed in an uncaring world the loneliness of unresolved grief aided by opioids before the sentinel set income his note said, sorry. There should have been crime scene tape around every one of their bodies. There should be crime scene tape around every one of our childrens bodies that fall in the streets. When the destroyer came to our lens from across the ocean, he worked faces of disease, war, starvation. Enslavement, boarding school, trafficking all of our young. He lives here still. The destroyer lives here still. One in three native people live in poverty. The suicides of our young since 1999, suicide is up 71 for our men. 139 for our women. I am from the joining parish in what is called cancer alley. Cancer alley, worse than that in the quest to commit genocide against the poor black people of that 80 mile strip. We have been deemed a sacrificial zone. Not only have they dubbed us cancer alley, they have actually officially said we are a dispensable people. They came into our community in st. John and put this horrible Chemical Plant 1500 feet away from us, all black elementary school. I live in the same household with my 88yearold fatherinlaw who is also a kansas farmer. I want to tell you something that scares me to death. Kansas farmers are committing suicide at a far greater rate than the national average. Why . Because they are stressed out. They are stressed out. Theyre usually in debt up to their eyeballs because they cant pay for all of the equipment it takes to run a farm. They are in the most dangerous line of work there is yet many cannot afford to buy health insurance. They were day in and day out and they rarely get a break. And they dont talk much sometimes. They are kind of silent. They analyze things. Every now and then, my 88yearold fatherinlaw says something that gives me pause, that he has thought about suicide because hes getting old and crippled. My husband is all of the heavy lifting. Every now and then, heres something and im like, what did he just say . And everybody everybody in our Community Knows some combine death might sound a little fishy , like how exactly was that an accident . Yeah. Every farmer that i know know someone that has committed suicide and every farmer i know worries about the water because water is life. Family, would you share your story from alabama . Can you hear me . I am waiting for them. Thank you. I know that sometimes there is a kind of nervous laughter, but be respectful. We are that movement that puts everybody in the room. I had a conversation with tom and 70 said and somebody said, why do you just do things with women . And yet to hear that. This is the space. We put a black woman in the same space as a Kentucky Coal miner . We put a kentucky, and the same space as a native indigenous brother and his suicide children because we recognize everybody has a right to live. [applause] and while silos are important sometimes, we have to have at least a movement, amoral movement in every moment in history that connects the dots and the injustices and recognizes you dont have to put racists over here and classism over here and devastation over here because the truth of the matter is, if you die from cancer, youre going to die black you dont die black, white, democrat, republican. You die dead. That doesnt mean we disrespect the disparity. We do. The numbers are important. We do the percentage of segregation. That is white in we can tell you that there are 26 million poor for the wealth like people, 60 of the black population, 30 of the poor low wealth white people. We look at the percentage differences. We look at the impact. But what we also know is if you are poor and cant pay your light bill when the lights go off, we are all black in the dark. [applause] and there has to be a moral Fusion Movement that says you wont divide us anymore. And recognize it is the same forces that attacked the lgbtqia are the same was that it had Voting Rights and the same ones are taking health care in the same was attacking health care are taking living wages as blocking the environment and funding the military and the same was funding the military are oftentimes engaging in religious nationalism. If they are we have to be smart enough to come together and stay together. That is what moral fusion is about. It is not about being an organization, it is about being an organism. Dr. Brady, who has brought this research to light, he told me something. I cursed a couple of times because he said, did he just say this stuff is readily available . I said, if it is sitting there, why isnt every what is it every night her about debt but poverty is killing more people than police . We invited him to come. We will have a conversation and hes is what it take a few minutes and walk us through the footnote of our first action. He is going to walk through the logical, Empirical Data that undergirds our legitimate discontent. All right . Dr. Brady. Thank you. [applause] do we have slides . No slides. All right. There were going to be some slides and thank you, first of all, for being here. It is an honor to be on the stage and also a real honor to be useful, to have generated some sort of science knowledge. We do have slides. All right. To generate knowledge that can be useful for this moral campaign. I really like the call we had earlier fight poverty, not the poor. Ive been saying for years we need to think of it as a problem of poverty, not the poor. The typical way americans take about poverty is to think of or individuals. The choices, behaviors, traits of those poor individuals. It is a better way to think of poverty as a systemic problem of america. When i say systemic, i was a poverty is systemically high. First, poverty affects a huge population. By the measure i use, about 17. 5 of americans were poor in 2019, which is roughly 57 Million People. This is a huge share of our population. This is a reasonable number. Let me interject. We do poverty and low wealth, youre looking at actual poverty. Your data, you could go further and add poverty in the wealth as we do because we think it is essential but for this point, he wants to drive home yes, just low income. I will define it in a moment. Just low income in that sense. This number is quite high. One of the ways we can see it is huge is that Pew Research Center analyst surveys americans and asks americans, what are the biggest problems in america . Of the problems americans mentioned, the most highly mentioned are the affordability of health care, violent crime, illegal immigration, violence, unemployment. There is been attention to evictions, mass incarceration, and covid. But pew has never listed poverty is one of the biggest problems that americans say they face. As we see in this figure, 64 times as many people that experience poverty as experience and eviction, 32 times as our incarcerated, 17 times as many people are victims of poverty as are victims of violent crime, and more than 5. 5 times people in poverty as undocumented immigrants. In the first year of covid, twice as many people that were in poverty as were infected by covid. In addition a poverty being a huge problem, a second way to the give up poverty is a big problem is to say it is very high compared tall other rich democracies all other rich democracies. What we have learned is party is very consistently high. We have seen consistently for several decades the u. S. Hovers around 17 poor where the typical country has a poverty rate of as low as 9 or 10 . What is unusual about the United States is it is consistently high. A third way in which poverty is systemically high is it is egregiously or outrageously high for certain groups. We often say america has high Child Poverty but the reality is Child Poverty for white kids especially is not very different than what you see for Child Poverty in germany or france. What . True. In the United States, only 10 of white kids are poor which is too high but that is still higher than all of germany and france has be the reason the United States has high Child Poverty as we have egregiously high Child Poverty for black, latino, and native american children. In the United States, about one third of africanamerican children are poor, no country in the history of rich democracies over the past 50 years has had a Child Poverty rate that high. Go to the next slide please. Perfect. You can see it here, really it is the black, latino, and native American Kids that are pulling up the american high child jot american high Child Poverty rate and the dash rate is the typical rate for Child Poverty. We have these groups that we punish with Child Poverty. Two other ways is it is surprisingly high for those that play by the rules, even for people that meet the standard of socioeconomic achievement in america. They get married, have kids, after theyre married, they finish high school and then they work. Even for those groups poverty is high. One of my favorite statistics is there are about three times as many poor people in working households as there are in jobless households. Of course we all know we are representing these different states, povertys are pervasive across United States and across all groups. In south dakota where i grew up in california where i live now and washington dc, you can advance to the next slide. One of the things we have learned in social sciences, we have not learned much but one thing we can say with confidence is poverty is bad for your health. It is the it is associated with nearly every health outcome. When my friend is a pet Famous Health researcher and i asked him, are there any diseases or Health Conditions that are not associated with poverty . He really had to stop and think any thought about it for a time and was like, maybe bring cancer . So that just tells you brain cancer . Every Health Condition is in poverty. We know unhealthy is better for poverty so if you get sick or disabled or are depressed and you cant work as much, it also works that way. But it does not matter, poverty leads to deprivation, material and relative deprivation, it is dreadful, bad for your meant stressful and bad for your health and exposes you to toxins. We have to be careful according to her Health Researchers about how we cause about causes and risk of death. When they talk of a cause of death, they mean the physiological thing that breaks down in your body. Heart disease, lung disease, something breaks down physiologically in you. What we mean by a cause of death is more of a risk factor. Poverty is a cause of the causes of death. It is a risk that put you at risk of death. In this sense, we can think it is fundamental cause of death. In this sense, poverty is a risk factor like smoking or drinking or other, it is bad for your health. Even though we know poverty is that for your health, and we know poverty is definitely bad huge in the United States, it is remarkable that we did not have the number before of how many deaths are associated with poverty. I thought surely has gotten somebody has gotten this number and estimated this number before. I learned and learned this was not the case. I can talk about why that is in the q a. I will tell you briefly about the study is to understand the evidence that we generated that is hopefully useful for this movement. The study, what you do is use panel data and you are following the same people every two years. So imagine you start in 1997 and interview these people and then you come back two years later. In 1997, you knew if there were poor or not and by 1999 and 2001, 2003, so forth, you know whether or not they passed away. So a clean way to think about this is if you are poor in 2017, what were the odds you died by 2019 . Versus somebody that was not poor in 2017 . Part of what i hear you saying is if we want them to hear this, this is not just throw something together, we used Real Research and when you look at this, you can look at it over a period of time. I also hear you saying help people understand what we often talk about is you get locked into poverty and you can get literally locked in. David sure. There are two ways to think of poverty, are you currently poor, poor this year, we also look at what we call cumulative poverty. Over the past 10 years, what proportion of those years were you poor . We can estimate the effect of each of these on your probability of passing away. Beyond that, i will add we will give you these numbers we have been saying it is the fourth leading cause of death or as big as the fourth leading cause of death. But those numbers are conservative and i mean conservative as they are probably underestimates. I will tell you so you understand the numbers why they are conservative. There are lower bound estimates, probably much higher than this. First of all we do not have children, we are looking at children 15 years or older. A big cost as infant mortality and that is associated with poverty. We control for other factors, we know whether or not people have chronic conditions like alzheimers, then diabetes and so forth, whether they have experienced an acute health event like a stroke or heart attack and we can control for those even controlling for those factors we are finding the effects of poverty. Further, we stopped our analysis in 2019 before covid. As we all know, covid killed a lot of people because of poverty. Moreover, all the social science studies we do, especially our own, were missing a lot of poor people. Our surveys and bias are biased to under represent or people. We dont count on house people because we have a Household Panel survey. If you dont have a household, we cannot interview you. Dont count institutionalized people and most likely many would be poor. Think about who doesnt answer their Big Questions or surveys, it is for people. Low income people are less likely to do surveys. In southern california, i asked my students, many of whom are undocumented themselves or children of undocumented immigrants, say the Census Bureau knocks on your door, would you tell them how many people live here and how much money this household has . Now. So we are missing these disadvantaged populations so our estimates are conservative. Think of poverty as a risk factor that can be expressed but it is a conservative estimate. If you go to the next slide, so the way to think about this is you come up with estimates and we can tell you poverty would increase the probability of mortality by a factor of 1. 4, current poverty, be it poverty today, will increase mortality by 1. 4. Cumulative poverty, the proportion being poor over the past 10 years, indicate in this case all 10 years, increases the probability of mortality by 1. 7. Those numbers are called hazard ratios and i find them hard to understand. Look at this graph, it gives you a sense of what the numbers mean. The blackline are those not in poverty and the xaxis is the age of these people. As you see the blackline, these people are surviving, this is survival curve, but then they pass away as they get older because unfortunately age critics mortality. The yellow line is for those in poverty. What you see is there survival starts to fall off much sooner than those not in poverty. Especially in the ages of 40s, 50s, and 60s, you see a much lower survival rate amongst those in poverty than amongst of not in poverty. Think of it this way, poverty is killing people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, prematurely, versus those not in poverty. This is a big amount of mortality that this leads to. You can see ways to compare this. We can be technical and say it is not a cause, it is a risk factor, but i can tell you that poverty would be as big as the fourth leading cause of poverty. Current poverty, just right now being poor, this amounts to 6. 5 of deaths, about 183,000 deaths in the United States or about 500 deaths a day. That is just current poverty. Current poverty leads to more death, lower respiratory diseases, stroke, alzheimers. We worry a lot about crime in america and we are obsessed with crime and poverty kills 10 times as many people as homicide. Many of the homicides and cells are linked to poverty. Poverty kills more than five times as many people as from firearms and 2. 6 times as many as drug overdoses. Those risks are associated with poverty as well. Cumulative poverty kills more. They have been poor for a long time as many are and it is as much 10 of deaths and almost 300,000 deaths. I will move onto the next slide and summarize this more, big picture. We should think of poverty as responsible for a huge amount of mortality. I underline estimates are conservative. It is probably higher than this. Even if you dont want to call poverty a cause of death, it is big as big as the fourth leading cause of death. We could say it is more than the fourth leading cause of death. Beyond that, what is ahead of it . Cancer, heart disease, and on the slide before it, go back one. Lower rep is lower respiratory diseases. And dementia is a big cause. Go back to the last leg, i would argue this gives us a clear understanding of puzzles we have had, a key piece of the puzzle. Its not news. Everyone knows there are in normal racial and ethnic disparities in america that africanamerican people are likely to live four to five years younger than dive four to five years younger than my people and this is a key piece to that puzzle. There are Racial Disparities to poverty and that is a reason why there are big disparities in mortality. We have all known the United States has high mortality compared to other rich democracies that we do not live as long as in germany and japan and france and other places. The reason, a big reason is we have these high rates of poverty. Beyond that, i would say i want us to think about this in terms of a cost benefit exercise. What i really want is not just to have a moral victory, we are a moral campaign and movement but i dont want to be satisfied with moral victories. I want to win, i want to change discussion and the debate and influence policy so we reduce this poverty. And let me help you out this is why we have the conversation. Those that often think morality is the feelgood, it is not. You cannot be moral without economic victory. David right. If you want to change policy, that is the difference, we put morality like it is over here and then cost. A budget is a moral document. David absolutely. A health bill is a moral document. And here, you have to be careful. You dont want to win but overhear we just being moral. No. The constitution says justice. Not a damn thing justice about poverty being the fourth leading cause of death. David i was thinking in terms of if your team is losing a game and comes from behind and gets really close and almost wins the game but you came back and battled hard, we might call that a moral victory. Rev. Barber we talking about winning. We will win now or later. We are not satisfied with compromise, thats the problem now. Too many folks are satisfied with a little bit. This movement, that is why in this movement if somebody said we are going to raise the minimum wage to 12, no, we want it to be what it ought to be. Im just going to agree and say that is why we have to have social scientists and theologians sin the same space. We gotta get our language in the same space. Lets shake hands on the social scientists and preachers want to win. All right now. David so one way to think about this, i wanted to get evidence and reverend barber is much more useful than i will be so i will offer evidence that we can use. We can use this evidence, so if somebody sadly passes away and there is some company that is negligent, they are responsible for the death, there will probably be a lawsuit and they will pay the family for the loss of that person and their family. [indiscernible] david if we have a new government regulation, they do a costbenefit exercise and are like how many lives does this save . How much does it cost . Everybody agrees that you can put a dollar value, sadly, sadly, on human life. You can put a dollar value on it but lets play this game. Its 5 million to 10 million per life. If you lose a breadwinner to a family you have to compensate that family. Lets put a dollar value on these 183,000 deaths. Lets say we do it very conservatively, 183,000 is a conservative estimate, i would estimate the value of a human estimate conservatively, lets say 1 million. That is cheap. Even if you do that, that results in 183 billion that would be saved by reducing poverty. 183 billion dollars, more than we spend on snap or what we know as food stamps, more than 10 times what we spend on temporary assistance to needy families, more than we spend on the itc, ctc, and what have you. The cost of social policy should be compared against the cost of all of this death from poverty. If we do that cost benefit analysis, we convince policymakers it is costeffective to fight poverty, this gives us hopefully a useful argument in our campaign. Guest you dont know rev. Barber you dont know how useful you are. Heres what we are arguing in the movement, that what you just said is in fact economics used to be only studied under the concept of moral philosophy. Economics was not a cell alone. We took it out tomorrow philosophy so economics could be seen as benign and its not, economic skills. In the jewish scriptures for instance, it says a nation must loosen the bands of weakness, meaning pay people what they deserve. Then it says nations cannot repair its economic breaches until it does that. In a real sense, im glad youre doing this because what we are saying is it is immoral to in fact make or people pray prey not pray. The script or says war under those who legislate people and rob the poor. The scripture teaches a nation will never be prosperous as long as it is hurting the poor. What happens here is we are showing the nation that there is intersectionality. You cant be in congress and every time you get into office you swear yourself into office on a bible, koran, or the torah and you dont know what is in either one of them. [applause] especially when it relates to how you treat the least of us. The least of things. David i will say how do we use this for political motivation . Compassion and sympathy and emotional revocation are always good things and many people can do this better than me. What i would also say, we also should argue reducing poverty is in the interest of everyone and thats helpful to make this argument. Rev. Barber its important you say that. I argue numbers, baby. This movement argues numbers and that is why we have you because as long as we have a separation like it feels good but it is good for no, it is both things. The nation will never get itself together as long as you have a permanent poverty in this nation does not have to be. [applause] poverty does not have to exist. Let me start there. Thank you for this research. [applause] you are one of ours now, doc. Let me ask you a question, what number do you use as a baseline for poverty . And we started this movement, we did studies where we looked up poverty and low wealth. And the number came out to be 43 of the nation and 53 of our children, over 140 Million People poverty and low wealth, Economic Policy in this. Somebody tried to question us and they said really theres only 30 million to 40 million poor people. I said what number and they said the government says if you make 13,000 per year, you are not poor. So there are legislators and congresspeople that argue at 7. 25 you make 15,000 a year which puts you in the low middle class and you are not poor. [laughter] can i say what i would say if we were on the football line . Can you wam out a minute and then i will come to the. A crazy number to try to limit poverty, 13,000 if you are not poor. David the best way to define poverty is defined it simply, it means simply you do not have enough resources, however we measure resources, to meet your needs. That is all it is. You dont have enough resources to meet your needs. We can measure resources a different way. I look at income because im a boring academic and we have data on that but wealth is a resource too. All we agree is a shortage of resources relative to your needs. What is usually used is the official poverty measure which is absurd. It is utterly absurd, incredibly low threshold, underestimates poverty massively, everybody agrees it is not a good way to measure poverty, so what im using is a classic International Way to say what is the middle of the income distribution, the Median Income distribution, and what is one half of that . We will call that a relative poverty. Mine is not perfect. I would entirely like to measure wealth as well but i dont have as good a date on it. Rev. Barber we cant hear you out there on this but thank you. So if you agree with our management we say low poverty and low wealth or low poverty and low wages. Do your numbers, did you diss aggregate by Geographic Area . David not in this study. We dont have the data. We need more studies. It stunned me the government does not have the number of deaths associated with poverty. We have an estimate on smoking, obesity, all kinds of things, why dont we have a number on this . I thought surely i am wrong and somebody has got this number and we have only done really the first of what needs to be many studies on this. Rev. Barber one of the things we know people want to put it in a box and not talk about it. We did an analysis of every president ial debate for the longest time and we cannot find anywhere where poverty got 30 minutes of attention. So here you have an issue affecting that might be one of the studies you do. Can you give me credit on that . [laughter] all right. Yall see that . But seriously, we looked at all of these and said wait a minute, 43 of people are poor and low wages, over 50 of children, and not one person running for president or senate gets past if you get elected. But you have these crazy culture wars and you ask about stuff like banning books and what youre going to do about immigrants, for people who are not coming to america, they are coming back home because america stole from them. My point is that homicide is heard every night on the news and every president ial candidate will say part of what im going to do is to keep you safe. Yet here is the status so it is so important. When you hear this, to greg and valerie, and you hear davids peace and you look at it, we talk about what is killing people, black lives matter, talk about Police Killings and talk about the deaths during covid, but when we look at the lives lost a poverty, black lives, white lives, latino, native, as a Public Health specialist, you are in the same year my daughter is when you hear bradys presentation, what do you want to say about that to this movement and the nation . The nation is listening. Talk to us a little bit. A couple things. One is over 175 years ago a doctor in germany came and said medical statistics be our guide and we will look to see where the dead lie thicker among the workers of the privileged. To see where im going . Medical statistics will be our guide. We will look to see where the deadline thicker among the workers a privilege in a field called social medicines and this dr. Basically discovered poverty kills 175 years ago. One of the first things they teach you in Public Health school, terrel and i both went to public else go, that is not just the bodies that keep you healthy. I wake up every morning and take my antihiv and everything in of alive 25 years later because of them but, guess what . 80 of our health is not about medical, it is about the social determinative health. It is about income but about housing, about education, about all the things we need to keep ourselves safe and happy and healthy. 80 of health is based on the social determinants of health. We talked about how poverty kills but lets talk about Life Expectancy in the u. S. The institute for Health Metrics in seattle ranks us in the 40s worldwide for Life Expectancy. That doesnt mean just france and germany, it means many countries much poorer than we are. Do you know what they say . I 2040, we will be in the 60s in Global Health in terms of Life Expectancy. So it does not surprise me poverty kills, it has not surprised many people in Public Health that this is the facts but what we need to do to lift ourselves up as address poverty but also social protections that keep us safe. All the protections that keep us safe. You need a good place to live, a good job, clean water, proper sanitation. This is what we fought for and Public Health, using Public Health as a science and doing it academically, we were campaigners. The history of Public Health is the history of social movement and history of sanitation movement, clean water, disposal, all we have done it before. So this is a proud history in this movement that links back 150 to 175 years ago. We need to realize those who have power make choices that creep poverty. They dont get it wrong by mistake or by a near ands, and this is not me, these are two economists, a guy named tirone from m. I. T. And James Robinson from the university of chicago and they wrote a book called why nations fail. They went back to the current time and it is about they went back to b. C. And to current times. Rev. Barber say it again. Why nations fail. People are poor or in poverty because other people make choices, choices that benefit them. There are incentives built into the system the key people sick and keep people poor. A sociologist from Princeton University wrote poverty, poverty, by america. Its the same thing for Public Health. We are sick and dying not because of who we are, it is because of choices other people make. We spend more on health in the United States and almost every other industrialized democracy and we have these outcomes that are 40th in ranking, 50th in ranking for Life Expectancy. Rev. Barber so gregg, desmond is on our team and we pull in all scholars because every movement has to have these footnotes. When you hear us as a movement, because we dig deep into data. I want to be clear on that, this is not a feelgood Type Movement , we dig into data because data, where your treasure is is where your heart is. You cannot talk about morality unless you show me the way you spend your money. And who is benefiting that and where you stand in relationship. But when you hear us say we need a third reconstruction to end poverty and low wealth and low wages, to end it, does that sound like some way outlandish dream we should not be pursuing, or is it rife, like with the special reppo tour for poverty said at the u. N. Where he said weve got three lives that are just lives three lives that are lies, the life scarcity. The lies we dont know what to do or that poverty is simply poor peoples bad choices and rather than bad choices, economic choices. He said what the third lie is is that we dont have the moral compass we dont have the more capacity three shape our policy. All of those are lies. We have all of that, the issue is when we do it. If you are going to call for ending poverty and low wealth, you might as will stay out of the game because you have plenty people that just want to tweak it a little bit and feel good. So when you hear that as a Public Health scientist, you think we out there somewhere . Gregg i would say where you sign up . [applause] seriously seriously. This is not about poverty, it is about existential politics, about whose way of life gets through. If you start thinking about the environment, theres an environmental epidemiologist at the university of toronto who said this is about whose way of life gets to survive. Is it exxon mobil or shell and shall, or is it miami will r water . This is if we survive as a species or not. This is not just about poverty, it is about poverty but it is about the existential politics about who gets to survive. Rev. Barber literally the heart, soul, life of the world out of the democracy and he to remember, we do not have time for foolishness. We are not done with tiddlywinks, we can beat up on each other cannot beat up on each other. Telling truth in lies is the first major revolution. We talk about the abolition of poverty, the abolition of poverty. That we need to put that and we need to push and see which politicians and others are willing to say that and we have to push them to do that and have a movement that pushes it and will not back up. You cannot agree with that. You are an economist. Economic policy institute. You all do not do your politics for democrats, republicans, you do not do it based on policy, it is based on facts. Talk about what you hear i dont want to say based on what has been said and the cost of this, the moral cost meaning moral, it means human, economic, all of it. All encompassing. Please respond if you feel comfortable in doing it, after looking at the data, and we were to recover what i think his name was ingalls in the 18th century said about the policies and if policymakers know on the front end that a policy is causing death, and they implement it anyway, you must call what they are doing policy murder. Our policy death. Or policy death. Manslaughter means he did not know. Do we have any excuse of not knowing and what is your response . I do not want to tie you into a box. Valerie i want to start off with where we were talking about the numbers and where these numbers come from. We throw a lot numbers out, i think davids definition of poverty gets to it on a very basic sense, poverty is having an adequate Economic Resources to meet your basic material needs. I also like the idea that you all are bringing in a broader definition and thinking about in terms of poverty meaning inadequate income and low wealth. The reason i say that is because income and wealth are two different things. Your income is what you have come in on a regular basis, whether that is weekly or monthly, typically a paycheck for most people in this country. Also other kinds of resources and benefits that people receive. Your wealth is all you have access to if those came payments were to stop. Even when we find by income standards people make these typically what am i trying to say . May be literally, above the poverty threshold, and many more people are much closer to that because if that income were to stop there is nothing there to catch them. [applause] and so, that is why i think it is important to have that broader definition of when we are having these types of discussions. I also think a lot of the language that was used during the pandemic and in crafting the Pandemic Response is interesting and instructive as you were making points about the morality of our policy making and whether we know what to do and if we have the resources to do it. A lot of the language we use in that, we said at epi that the pandemic policy response was generally effective for limiting the deaths and the length of the crisis. We did not just throw pennies at it, we had a big Economic Policy response. The other thing that we hear as a relates to that is we had a policy response of that magnitude because we werent responding to a massive global Public Health crisis. The thing we can use that kind of language in response to the pandemic, but in light of the ideas that poverty is the fourth leading cause of death, i would say those should apply all of the time. There is always an economic crisis in many communities around the country there is always a Public Health crisis in communities around this country and that we fire so that we have a response at the scale of the problem. I what argue the things we did during the pandemic by expanding access to allow income support like the unemployment insurance, the child tax credits, economic impacts, getting a check, the government is sending checks because they know people need money to meet their basic material needs. We know what it takes to address the issue of poverty. They also did things that directly impacted like food insecurity. For children, School Age Children regardless of where you were on the income scale, were providing free meals. Why is that not something that can be done during a time that is not just a global or National Crisis . Rev. Barber i am hearing you all saying something that i think we need to say. We had a covid pandemic started in 2019, but we had a poverty pandemic and epidemic for the covid pandemic. We have session we had been addressing the poverty pandemic, before covid, covid would not have been so bad we would have been more prepared to deal with covid valerie this is addressing housing insecurity and i think preventing people from being put out of their homes during the pandemic. We know what to do and it is a matter of actually getting it done. This issue of what poverty it costs is one thing but also the issue of who benefits. From poverty. Rev. Barber i will come to valerie in a minute. I want you all to think that question over, one thing in this movement is we often find that a missed diagnosis is going to make you sicker. [applause] a missed diagnosis does not make you sicker, you get a misdiagnosis about who is poor, your only way of looking at poverty is if you say it is peoples own personal decisions. That goes to the critics of the new deal. It goes all the way back to the critics of the dreamer bureau after slavery where there is articles written saying that people do not need money and they discounted all of the damage that was done during slavery. It is a misdiagnosis. If you misdiagnose what a real living wages, you only make people sicker. If you misdiagnose the need for health care, the other thing is if you race the wrong question. I want to tip a question over and have you guys respond. In front of this movement says part of the problem in a friend of the movement says part of the problem in america is we do not address the issue. We agreed on a number of things that happened in the pandemic, we are not antieverything. The question we are asking is what if the response had been built from the four up poor up . If it was not a middleclass and it trickled down but from the poorest up . I want to raise that question. [applause] secondly, not what will it cost to fix poverty, what is it costing poverty to stay like it is . Can you talk about the cost of things staying as it is . I will go to valerie. Take a shot at it. The cost of things being as they are . All of them valerie the cost of things being as they are, i think it starts with this whole we started the session off, making this nation live up to its promise, who are we as a country if we allow poverty to stay as it is . What does that say about the supposedly greatest country on the earth and the land of the most opportunities . If we know what we can do to address this problem, and only do it periodically for limited periods of time. Our entire existence and our entire idea of what it means to be america is at stake. In addition to the lies that are being lives that are being lost due to poverty. And we had gone into the pandemic with Life Expectancy in the rankings it would have met that we would have dealt with health care, food assistance, all of the things that undergird our health. We went in number 44 and we paid for it. Rev. Barber weight waityou did not just say, with all of the rocking we do bragging we do about being better, and i love this country and i love it enough to critique it, you did not just sit here and say we went into this pandemic the 44th in Life Expectancy . Gregg we did and we came out with the highest per capita deaths from covid and the highest among the g7. We did not invest in social productions and it came back to bite us basically. [applause] rev. Barber that is the cost is hundreds of billions of dollars if you want to think of it that way. Even if i would be delighted with the abolition of poverty and even if we moved american poverty from being an outlier to a typical rich democracy which means we cut it in half, that would save over 100 billion, one of the ways to think about this is in the early 1980s we ran an experiment where we gradually expanded medicaid across the United States for children. Before the 1980s it was rare for poor kids in the south to get medicaid afterwards and there was slightly more access to medicaid. 30 or 40 years later we can see where those kids went and it saves millions, billions of dollars because they are healthier, they do better, they live longer, they are less likely to have chronic disease. There is the shortterm cost but there is also the longterm cost in that work squandering the potential of the country. Rev. Barber thank you. When Economic Policy institute, when we did our third deconstruction budget we told you to tear it apart. Go after it, critique it and you guys came back and said not only was the budget good, it was in the black. Two invest in these things, it does not leave the country in the right, it would actually put the country in the black. Is that still true . Investing in these things will not break us, it would actually build us as a nation . Valerie let me give you a particle example of how that works. I was talking about the pandemic policy response and all of the different resources that were made available, what that also did was contribute to a very old robust labor market. Now we are looking at really low unemployment and barge in large part because we made those investments and he provided resources to people that everybody could participate in the economy. That helped to boost job growth and ultimately what that also contributed to was that we saw for the first time in like 40 years that wages grew the fastest for lower wage workers. There are grossly insufficient to care for families but we did see the basic growth. Making those investments contributed to the barter economy and raised wages for those at the bottom. The next thing we need to do is raise the minimum wage so we are able to protect those gains and continue to raise. Rev. Barber if we had had investments in our lower employment at high wages, will be in better shape . But to have a lower unemployment and then low wages is actually another misdiagnosis. It defeats the purpose to some degree. On this issue, i need to ask you all something. If i am wrong, say it. We have been hearing on the news during the inflation about the reason the way that you do with inflation is you have to stop wage expansion. You have to keep wages low. In order to deal with inflation, what happens is Companies End up arguing that you cannot do certain things for poor and low weight persons because if you do that it increases inflation. We have had people tell us that is a misdiagnosis of why really have inflation and the first ash in the first place misdiagnosis of what really causes inflation in the first place. What really causes inflation . Who want to take a shot at that one . [laughter] valerie i will take a shot. The cause of inflation in this particular environment where we are in, no. There are a lot of things and contribute to inflation. We were having a Global Pandemic and all of the things that brought in terms of people shifting their assumptions from services to more goods and we had the whole supply shock that everybody found it was harder to get things out of the causes prices to go up and there is a war in you. That raises prices to some extent. Or put profits contributed corporate profits contributed. Rev. Barber price gouging [applause] rev. Barber that is some of that valerie the real question we are thinking about wages and whether or not it is going to influence inflation you have to consider whether wages are growing faster than inflation. That is when it becomes a problem. Wages go up and prices go up and he does have to go up again because prices are high and it keeps spiraling. That is not the case. At this point, no, we do not need to suppress wages to bring inflation down. In fact wage growth has been slowing in recent years and months. Wage growth is actually helping to dampen inflation as opposed to making it work. Rev. Barber and gregg think about cost being out of control, health care industry. It surely is not because of the wages are high for the nurses and the assistance and the janitors, it is because of drug industry is making tons of money, the Insurance Company is making too much money, all of them are milking medicaid and medicare, the health care is a perfect example of the inefficiencies in the american economy, when our cost are out of control it is not because of the workers are doing too well. Rev. Barber the whole lie is that the Movement Like this, they just want to hand out and they just want welfare, i know that. I am going to say to the nation what the lines are. That is what i am saying. You have to tell what the lies are. To misdiagnosis israel. So is the lie that health care is a handout. It is equal protection under the law. It is promoting the general welfare. It is just the right thing to do. Even i want to raise one more question. We are some numbers that say if we had just raised the minimum wage to 15, when two democrats and republicans block one vote, millions of people closed to 40 Million People close to 40 Million People would be out of poverty and it would pump money into the economy and if in fact corporations were not getting so much corporate welfare and pay their workers, you are not have to be trying to kick people off of public assistance because people would be having different sufficient wages and incomes. Am i wrong on that . Take a shot in. Valerie rev. Barber i will get to you. I just want to take one shot at it. If you really want people off of public assistance, pay them what they deserve because a lot of people work. Yes sir . Sir, this is my friend, she is like a daughter to make, we know we are doing, we are not having foolishness now valerie thank you, sir. Bishop we are good brother 59 or 60 of workers whose total income is below the poverty line will receive a pay increase at the minimum wage. The minimum wage would have a scene of the get impact on those living below the official poverty line. Rev. Barber as we had planned. [laughter] the reason why we asked valerie to do this at this point. She is a constitutional lawyer, she was a part of the successful legal team that won against Voter Suppression in the south. [applause] it was the first of its kind Voter Suppression fight case where we brought together black people, white women, students, churches, synagogues, former military, rural people. Urban people as places in a case against racist Voter Suppression. We won and even the Supreme Court that was put there, stacked, they thought to agree with had to agree. When our case came forward. What they were doing was a former racism with surgical intent that was hurting the entire democracy and she introduced me to a concept through a couple of other terms called valerie impoverished democracy. Rev. Barber that is why we wanted her to close this. It is by design she also did not grow up in this country, she was not born in this country. She has often said i do not understand what i am seeing. Why . Considering where i come from. I asked her out of her heart, not just out of her legal mind, she is the associate manager and director of the Public Policy and public pr center at yale. Valerie, you have heard closing arguments. [laughter] valerie before i talk about our nation, as dr. Brady and dr. Barber has shared about the value of the argument, of alleviating poverty and the moral argument for leaving poverty, it is the right thing to do and it is our duty and i think one of the things that our nation has gotten so good at is this pr argument. Despite that we have to do, the research that has to be done, the analysis that has to be done for things that should be true. It is this nations duty to provide for people, that is what governments are for. And so i think it is important to add a third one to that list. It is the right thing to do, it adds value to the economy, it is our nations duty and other things we have been doing in this movement is to shift the narrative not just about how do people talk about poverty, but also having people reorient their mind around what their nation owes them as citizens and as people. Living as human beings in a country. I think one of the things that i wanted to talk about is the time to put a mirror up to the United States of america. I have lived in the United States and in nigeria for almost the same amount of time. I have spent my time in both countries. This is the country that i love and that had helped my parents and a country that has helped me as a first generation immigrant. I also think that we have to tackle these issues, we have to stay say to this nation and undo the lies, we have to make sure we are understanding how we are sweeping under the rug things that are upsetting. I thought it was important that we started this presentation with peoples voices, stories. It is easy to sweep it under the rug when you do not see people or feel them or do not hear them. One of the things we have done in this country is sometimes over analyze but not listen to the people. That is one of these things about this movement is doing. I grew up in nigeria and when i hear Research Like this and i read poverty by america by matthew diaz and i cannot imagine this is the same america that people stand in line to get visas to. Still standing in line today. This is the same america people are clamoring to get into. Of course, of course, poverty in other impoverished nations is much higher and that is true. By design, by design, this country had set itself up for the world as a leader on democracy, a leader on innovation, and people are suffering. It is time that we stop hiding behind this exceptionalism, it is just not true. I just i am so grateful and i think one of the things and thank you sir but my role really was to convene us, but one thing that the center does and aims to do is to bring into conversation. Voices from a legal perspective and a religious perspective and an Economic Perspective and a Public Health perspective, we have to talk to each other and so this has been a fantastic conversation and really will ground us as we move through the rest of the congress. I turn it back to you. [applause] rev. Barber write this down, by design when you go and buy a car, and it starts operating differently than it is designed, you do not say well, at least it runs three days. Their are only runs once you do a recall the recall is based on design faults. You fix it. You fix it. You fix it. You do not throw the car away. You fix it. Nobody is asking throw america away but we are saying fix it by design, you said this by design you said this even in your great hymns you say america, meant by every flaw mend thy every flaw. We mourn when we see soldiers die and the soldiers are every day, the everyday people. That work hard. The struggle and survive and a system that does not have to be by design you that it was not supposed to be this, so fix it. We need to have the first reconstruction to fix it. That was killed and murdered and torn apart, we had a second reconstruction, to fix it. 9054, the brown decision all the way up to 96 yet, that movement was murdered, killed, and destroyed. You have never finished the reconstruction. We are saying is the reconstruction spirit may have at times been killed and pushed back but it rises again. It rises in us. Fix it. And then we heard fix the bowl. It is not even like you have to do 50 things we have 28 things in the reconstruction agenda, 28 things. The 28 things that will benefit everybody. We have to have the moral truth and stop lying and saying it is not broken. In order to show it is broken with put faces and facts together. You have to bring conversations that inform movements, this is not a benign conversation or conversation isolated from movements. That is why it is designed like this. Putting the footnote in the facts of the foot shoulders altogether foot soldiers altogether and we walked by faith and not by sight and we can keep going and keep going. My brothers and sisters, from the videos to now, every number you heard up here represents some person. We have been here for an hour and 20 people have died from poverty. I know enough about americas history to know that when it is broken and he cries it does not change. It was only when she had to look at all of the unnecessary caskets coming from vietnam that she changed. We cannot let these deaths be on unseen. This is our time to be on emmett tills mother. You are going to look at this. We are not going to blow you up. We are not going to shoot you. We do not need that. You are going to look at this your going to see this we are not going to allow for them to die in silence and alone. We have to walk with our casket. We have to put pictures up and go everywhere we go, you will see it and you will feel it because the design is not being followed. The corrected design is not being followed. We can fix it and it needs to be fixed. What we do not need is misdiagnosis. False narratives. As my grandmother used to say, put lipstick on a pig. [laughter] [applause] and your neighbor and say you are not my enemy. I want us to be very careful in how we talk to one another. This is not a space where nobody is trying to hurt anybody. We have a design for today. I understand from a space of people have been in before but this is the love space, we are not here to do everything, we cannot do everything in this conference, we are not here to fix every little thing that happens and has happened inside of your community, we will have a special session to do that. We want capitol hill and put this before the nation and prepare what will happen next year, we need every state involved putting this before state capitals we need comebacks, the most massive way in june we need to have a massive turn out at the polls and need to do a few things so well. Need to put a spotlight on this so big. We need to create a microphone so loud. We cannot and will not be denied. We cannot bring those from the dead back to life. We can challenge and stop more deaths from happening. [applause] and so we close the session, if you are here, there is a song that they song and people who misinterpret the singing, there are two valeries they misinterpret it because they think wendy focusing if they meant like when the man was singing it and meant a long time, imminent passivity. The song says hold on, just a little while longer, justice has called me and it says martin dunn told me and rosa has told me, what is the song . They done told me that everything is going to be all right . What it was was a way of singing to encourage you to stay in the fight. I do not think i will be judged and you will be judged if we do not accomplish everything we fight for. I think we will be judged if we do not fight. [applause] i know that you cannot have interchange until you call for it and face it and work for it. What i do know is something that billy mays said. The sins in life is not not reaching your goals, it is having not done the reach. One of the greatest sins of this country is low aim. We compromise on peoples lives because we have low aim. We think all we can do is just a little bit of tweaking on poverty. Low aim. We have to call this nation to higher ground. [applause] if the team is here, i want everybody to stand. Has this been helpful . [applause] would you celebrate these scholars . [applause] are you glad they are on our team . Are you glad we have david . We have greg we have valerie and valerie a host of other people come out and liz will close us out in a minute. The media, do you have any questions . We have some questions from the media. What you raise them . Would you raise them . Give them a mike thank you for convening this multidisciplinary panel, so much of your work in North Carolina was rooted in place in moral witness and will you continue that kind of site the specific sitespecific work where there is a community where a large part of the black community is in poverty and the White Community is wealthy . Rev. Barber it is not an issue of continuing. Where my body goes, my fight goes [applause] it is not that i will continue, it is already happening. Just last week, 1199 in new haven and in connecticut, standing up and using the moral monday movement to go to jail at the state capital and to fight for a living wage. Im not going anywhere to lead a movement because i do not believe in helicopter leadership and im going there to join in wherever the movement is. Next question we want the media. Across the country people like chris smalls and independent amazon unions have been following the law rev. Barber one question about what we were talking about, it is good, im not talking down to you, this part of the media is for you to ask questions about what we talked about and we have to be disciplined. Do you have a question to these scholars . Yes, do you think the u. S. Was the 4 of the World Population and 12 of the deaths from covid globally, that actually the fact that so many poor people are under insured and uninsured actually drove the deaths to automate all of america unsafe . Rev. Barber thank you my friend gregg as we said, 3 of Health Outcomes are due to things that are close to bodies, we are under vaccinated. Poor people and people of color have trouble accessing vaccines but we went in 44, we went in at 44 Life Expectancy with low social production and a shredded safety net and a weak Health Care System and that is why we had such bad outcomes compared to our pure nations. Rev. Barber i want you guys to know, he is my friend, we love each other. Next question . Real question from the media for the panel i am from peoples world. You said early on that we are talking about what to do and you said early on about what not to do, this is no time for foolishness if you are here, for foolishness, give us some idea of what foolishness rev. Barber like on capitol hill and getting caught up in the cookies and the brink and the weather being focused on the issue drink rather than being focused on the issue. The up turning on each other in this room rather than recognizing that we may be flawed but we are all we have we have to build one another up rather than tear one another down. Foolishness would be trying to make this about democrat or republican rather than critiquing both parties where they need to be critiqued. Foolishness would be acting like we came from differences because we do not know the power that we have. Thinking you can have one event and that is all that you need to do and have a moment rather than a movement. Nobody in this room has time for foolishness let us go to the phones standup hold on a little while longer hold on a little while longer i know justice is coming too today marks the juneteenth holiday commemorating the y in 1865 when the last enslaved African Americans in the u. S. Learn that they were free. In 21 President Biden signed a bill approved by Congress Making to 19th a federal holiday. Members of congress and elected officials have been tweeting about the holiday including the president , he writes juneteenth is about americans fling the progress we can make for america and about remembering histo and not erasing it. It is about reading books not banning the that is what great nations do and we are a great nation. Greg abbott of texas says juneteenth marks the arrival of the emancipation proclamation to texas and the end of slavery in the United States and texas was the first state to make neteenth an official holiday, today and every day, we strive towards a more Perfect Union with liberty and opportunity for all. Chuck schumer tweets i was honored to take the senate floor on june 15, 2020 want to pass the bill to make juneteenth a federal holiday at last. We faced down an objection and passed it unanimously. It is the first new federal holiday in nearly four decades and it is the first and only recognizing slaverys. Or and a presideial candidate writes on juneteenth we leate freedom for all, our founrss framework created an unprecedented pathway for every american, no matter their race to enjoy life, and liberty. 156 years agotarted a new day in america as the last enslaved people claim their rights. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these companies and more including charter communications. We are just getting started. Going 100,000 miles of new infrastructure building a hundred thousand miles of new infrastructure for those who need it most. Charter communications supports cspan a Public Service along with these other television providers. Giving you a front row seat to democracy. Ongress returns for legislatsiness and votes, this is the last week of work before the fourth of july holiday. The house gaveled back in on tuesday at noon eastern, indian Prime Minister will address joint meeting of congress out of the House Chamber on thursday while lawmakers also vote to attempt to override president bs breach of legislation blocking hisederal Student Loan Debt forgiveness program. Th senate is back in n on tuesday at 3 00 p. M. Eastern, senators lso hold legislation repealing the epas role on emissions standards for heavy duty trucks. 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