Dozens gathered inside a Florissant church on Tuesday, September 27 to attend the national Moral Revival tour hosted by well-known clergy members. “The Revival: Time for a Moral Revolution of Values,” is a multi-denominational church tour with an effort to “redefine morality in American politics,” according to the tour’s website.
The local event was held at Christ The King United Church of Christ in Ferguson, which is pastored by Rev. Traci Blackmon, executive minister of the United Church of Christ’s Justice and Witness Ministries and one of the tour’s leaders.
“We don’t have a Republican problem. We don’t have a Democratic problem. We have a heart problem,” Rev. William J. Barber II told the congregation. “We have a heart problem, with money and greed, political hubris and ego, and [believing that] beating your opponent is more important than working to uplift humanity.”
Barber, who co-founded the revival tour, is pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina and a national board member of the NAACP. Barber is best known for leading the “Moral Monday” movement – civil disobedience protests that began in North Carolina and have spread across the country.
Barber most recently helped advocate for the dismissal of a North Carolina law that mandated a state voter photo ID requirement. The U.S. Supreme court struck down five provisions of the bill that the NAACP referred to as “racially discriminatory.”
As Barber knows, Missouri faces a voter photo ID initiative on the November 8 ballot, Amendment 6.
“Tonight, I can come as a prophetic sign that you all are going to win,” Barber said. “If we beat them in North Carolina, you can beat them in Missouri.”
Denise Lieberman, a senior attorney for the Advancement Project’s Voter Protection Program, spoke against Amendment 6.
“Missouri already has voter ID,” Lieberman. “You already have to show ID at the polls, so don’t believe the hype. What this does is limit the kind of ID. It takes away the kind of ID that voters rely on to cast a ballot.”
Missouri currently has 220,000 valid voters who don’t have a state-issued photo ID. According to Lieberman, another 130,000 valid voters have IDs that are expired and will no longer be able to use it if voters approve the amendment.
“In Hebrew, the word ‘vote’ is the same as ‘voice,’” Lieberman said. “Our vote is our voice, and it’s immoral to silence people in our society because the right to vote is about basic human dignity. This is a moral issue. Voting is a way that we tell someone they matter.”
Other speakers gave testimonies about lack of Medicaid expansion, the minimum wage not being a livable wage and the school-to-prison pipeline.
Rev. Emmett Baker, of Beth-El Baptist Church in St. Louis, was recently convicted of trespassing at the state capitol for protesting with 23 other clergy members for Medicaid expansion. Prior to getting arrested in Jefferson City for his activism, Baker’s daughter died.
“My daughter passed from something as simple as a blood clot in her leg,” Baker said. “But since she worked at the job she worked at that didn’t offer her any healthcare, she neglected to go to the doctor. The blood clot traveled upward, and she suffered a massive heart attack.”
A 2014 study found that approximately 218 to 700 Missourians will die every year because Medicaid has not been expanded by the Missouri Legislature.
“We cannot take it anymore,“ Baker told the church. “I am mad, I am fed up and I will not stop protesting until this state passes Medicaid expansion.”
Rasheen Aldridge, the youngest Ferguson Commission member and community activist, spoke on the unsettling feeling young activists had during the death of Michael Brown Jr. and the importance of protesting.
Thomas Payton testified about being suspended and expelled from elementary school and getting locked up in juvenile detention for one month at the age of 10. Payton also shared that he spent his 14th birthday in the juvenile system.
“That is an experience that no child should have to endure.” Payton told the congregation.
During the revival, speakers encouraged attendees to get involved in the fight for moral justice by joining organizations such as Empower Missouri, Show Me $15, Missouri Jobs With Justice and Metropolitan Congregations United.
Rev. Traci Blackmon, who emceed for the event, told the congregation how the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, held the night before, failed to mention the issues brought up during the night’s revival.
“I heard little about the living wage for people who are working two and three jobs,” Blackmon said. “I heard little about healthcare expansion, so that everyone could have healthcare for their families. I heard little about voting rights so that we don’t have to revisit this issue over and over and over again. I heard little about women’s right to choose.”
The revival tour leaders are asking clergy of all faiths to preach and teach on justice, love and mercy in the third week of October. The effort is a way of “calling people to be engaged electorally and beyond,” Barber said.
This story is published as part of a partnership between The St. Louis American and the Huffington Post.
