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Title details for The Third Reconstruction by The Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II - Available

The Third Reconstruction

How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear

by The Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
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A modern-day civil rights champion tells the stirring story of how he helped start a movement to bridge America’s racial divide.
Over the summer of 2013, the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II led more than a hundred thousand people at rallies across North Carolina to protest restrictions to voting access and an extreme makeover of state government. These protests—the largest state government–focused civil disobedience campaign in American history—came to be known as Moral Mondays and have since blossomed in states as diverse as Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York.
At a time when divide-and-conquer politics are exacerbating racial strife and economic inequality, Rev. Barber offers an impassioned, historically grounded argument that Moral Mondays are hard evidence of an embryonic Third Reconstruction in America.
The first Reconstruction briefly flourished after Emancipation, and the second Reconstruction ushered in meaningful progress in the civil rights era. But both were met by ferocious reactionary measures that severely curtailed, and in many cases rolled back, racial and economic progress. This Third Reconstruction is a profoundly moral awakening of justice-loving people united in a fusion coalition powerful enough to reclaim the possibility of democracy—even in the face of corporate-financed extremism.
In this memoir of how Rev. Barber and allies as diverse as progressive Christians, union members, and immigration-rights activists came together to build a coalition, he offers a trenchant analysis of race-based inequality and a hopeful message for a nation grappling with persistent racial and economic injustice. Rev. Barber writes movingly—and pragmatically—about how he laid the groundwork for a state-by-state movement that unites black, white, and brown, rich and poor, employed and unemployed, gay and straight, documented and undocumented, religious and secular. Only such a diverse fusion movement, Rev. Barber argues, can heal our nation’s wounds and produce public policy that is morally defensible, constitutionally consistent, and economically sane. The Third Reconstruction is both a blueprint for movement building and an inspiring call to action from the twenty-first century’s most effective grassroots organizer.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 12, 2016

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780807083628
      • File size: 871 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780807083628
      • File size: 1031 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      October 1, 2015
      A battle-hardened pastor calls for a faith-based, grass-roots movement for social justice. Now that the white power structure has "found quieter, more subtle ways to suppress the electoral power of black and poor people," it's time, writes the author, for a Third Reconstruction to combat extremists. With the help of Wilson-Hartgrove (New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today's Church, 2008, etc.), Barber offers a narrative that's part memoir, part civil rights history, and part organizer handbook. The author came to national prominence in 2013 as the leader of Moral Mondays, where for 13 consecutive weeks, hundreds of North Carolinians went to jail, peacefully arrested after protesting the General Assembly's assault on a wide range of issues dear to progressives. These demonstrations drew tens of thousands of participants and attracted the national spotlight, a success attributable to years of patient coalition-building based on truths Barber drew from the Bible, history, and his own personal experience. He links his life story]fighting for unions, for death row inmates, heading up North Carolina's NAACP, pastoring a small church]to the civil rights battles of the past, identifying common themes and successful tactics that run from Frederick Douglass through Martin Luther King to the present. It's the religious component that makes his story particularly interesting. Fully aware of the suspicion Bible-speak arouses in modern progressive circles, the author still insists on viewing the justice struggle through a moral prism, one always backstopped by "a Higher Power." His coalition welcomes people of all religions, including those "who struggle with faith," and he pointedly rejects attempts by opponents to divide the movement on controversial issues like same-sex marriage. Sufficiently hip to the modern leftist vocabulary to name-check the likes of Saul Alinsky or Cornel West, Barber more often employs language]"yield to the Spirit"]likely to baffle or irritate his largely secular progressive audience. A heartfelt dose of old-time religion mixed with modern-day activism.

      COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      November 1, 2015

      Pastor and chair of the NAACP's Political Action Committee Barber tells of leading the Moral Mondays movement, which organizes protests across the South against racial and economic injustice.

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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