Bishop Barber Announces Lawsuit
Raleigh, N.C- During a joint press conference with the nonprofit Forward Justice last week, Barber declared his intention to spearhead a statewide campaign opposing the map that threatens to eliminate one of North Carolina’s Black congressional districts. He also mentioned that a lawsuit is being prepared, although he refrained from providing specifics until the suit is officially completed.
Barber, who founded the Moral Mondays movement, and also a professor of public theology and public policy and founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School further stated that his organization, in collaboration with Forward Justice, will hold a Mass Moral Fusion Meeting on November 2, where additional information regarding the anti-gerrymandering campaign will be revealed. While it is unusual to draft new maps a year prior to elections, Barber noted that the strategies employed by state Republicans to formulate them are quite familiar.
”We’ve seen this pattern before,” Barber said. “It’s what I call ‘surgical racism with surgical precision’ — the use of redistricting and voting laws to divide, diminish, and deny” the will of the people.
“The truth is simple: when you steal people’s representation, you steal their healthcare, their wages, and their future,” he said. ”That’s why we will fight back: to make clear that in North Carolina and across America, the people’s will cannot be gerrymandered out of existence.”
Earlier this week, Republicans in North Carolina's state legislature endorsed a veto-proof plan. Barber, however, argued that the implications go beyond just a House seat. Barber asserted that the GOP has a greater influence to implement President Donald Trump's agenda. Among these factors are the reduction of healthcare access, the obstruction of a minimum wage increase, and the dismantling of social safety nets.
