Campaigning in a church (AGAIN!)
Rev. William Barber of Greenleaf Christian Church and Liv Boykins of Rep. Conyer's staff at the pulpit
But Barber shared more with his flock. "We must remember," he said as he spoke in support of Conyers' universal health care bill, "we must always know,'Power concedes nothing. It never has and it never will without a struggle,'" the pastor hearkened to the words of Frederick Douglass. He told his church that being ready for a fight to secure this most basic of rights should underscore the validity of the cause.
"I wonder do those so bent on saying Merry Christmas understand that when they cut student loans, Medicare and Medicaid, programs for the poor they reduce merry to an empty phase and their action look nothing like Christ."
The Leadership of the NAACP is the Lobby for the NAACP period!
Our business is the business of Civil Rights and Social Advancement. We are to do the work of the people and the work of justice.
There's plenty about Rev/Mr/Dr/Rev Mr Barber to go around. The following events taking place at Smithfield's was in re the Rev's support of "illegal immigrants" (aka: People of Color as the Good Rev would most certainly coin it) and was written by a pro-illegal immigrant
website:
---Civil Rights & Faith Leaders Ejected
On July 19th managers at Smithfield's Tar Heel plant refused entry to a delegation of civil rights and religious leaders, forcing them to stand outside in the 100 degree North Carolina heat for an hour before escorting them off company property—evcn though they had been invited to meet with company officials!
The group had an appointment to meet with plant managers to discuss the treatment of workers, but when they arrived, a company spokesman demanded that they relocate to what he called a "neutral" site to conduct their meeting, apparently concerned that the presence of the delegation would encourage workers to speak out against plant conditions and injury rates.
When the delegation declined to move off site, Smithfield officials refused to allow them inside the plant, keeping them in the parking lot for an hour before calling security to escort them off the premises.
The delegation was made up of a handful of North Carolina's best known and respected voices of faith and civil rights, including North Carolina NAACP President William J. Barber, Rev. John Mendez of the National Council of Churches, Rev. Nelson Johnson from Interfaith Worker Justice, Rev. Joyce Hollyday from Word and World, and Rev. Gaston Warner of Duke Chapel, a Methodist divinity school.
During the standoff, the delegation was joined by more than one hundred additional religious and lay leaders, who were in the area for a social justice conference [MY NOTE: RIIIIIGHT...]. Hearing about the actions of Smithfield managers, the group changed their afternoon plans, turning out to stand alongside the delegates and demand that Smithfield leaders uphold their promise to the faith and civil rights leaders.
Read more from the Associated Press coverage of the standoff.
And from a pro-
UNION website:
-- Smithfield has been engaged in a long public exchange with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which has been trying to organize the plant for more than a decade. The plant is the largest hog slaughterhouse in the world, processing up to 32,000 hog a day in Tar Heel, a tiny town about 80 miles south of Raleigh.
--end snip