Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for having me here. The Poor People’s Campaign, and the moral revival, and the moral Poor People’s Budget that has been proposed is part of a large cultural impulse that is revving up from the bottom of things in America today. And I think, at a certain point, the question is not ‘what are policy makers going to do?’ At a certain point - and this is the point - the question is ‘what are we going to do?’ And I believe that it is time for us to recognize that we need a revolution in America. We need a moral and a political and an economic revolution in America. You know, every time that we read something, like a quote from Luke or from Amos, and it says that God will deliver the oppressed, we talk a lot here about the deliverance. We’re not talking quite enough these days about the oppression. And when we talk about the fact that there is violence from public policy. That is exactly the expression, Reverend Barber, it is policy violence. Because the economic system in America today is a system of economic tyranny.
The economic system that prevails in America today does not just ignore the poor. It does not just turn a blind eye to the poor. There is a systemic war on the poor in America. And there is a reason for that. And that is because the kind of capitalism that is being practiced in America today, an unfettered capitalism with no sense of moral or ethical responsibility to anything beyond its fiduciary responsibility to its stockholders, with no sense of moral or ethical responsibility to the larger stakeholders of the workers and the communities and the environment, needs cheap labor! It needs cheap labor! This isn’t a matter of ‘come on guys, don’t be so greedy.’ This isn’t a matter of ‘come on guys, don’t be so selfish.’ This is a matter of us standing up and recognizing in America, we don’t do aristocracy. In 1776, this country was founded in repudiation of a system in which only a few people got the goods. Only a few people had the right and the entitlement to own land, to own wealth, to own the means of wealth creation, and to own education. Everybody else was a little more than a serf, not that far high above a slave. With this country, ladies and gentlemen, we repudiated aristocracy, and it is time for us to repudiate it again.
Because what is happening in America today is such that for the last forty years, we have been moving in a grand theft. It is a theft, ladies and gentlemen, it is a grand theft of the public resources of this country away from a broad scale embodiment and actualization of American democracy. The idea that all men are created equal. The idea that God gave - God gave - unalienable rights of life and of liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all men and that governments are here to secure those rights. Instead, the government is now handmaiden. It is little more than a system of legalized bribery handmaiden with the very corporate matrix of multinational corporate capitalism which too often gives us only what crumbs will fall from their table. And too many American politicians are coming to the likes of this crowd and saying, ‘I can get you more than crumbs! I can get you a cookie!’ We need to stop asking for a cookie and saying in America, all people are able to feast. All people are able to feast.
The American people have got to stop asking, ‘pretty please.’ The American people have got to stop asking, ‘oh please, could we?’ The American people need to remember, this is America. We all matter.