We gathered for a powerful forum hosted by The City Club of Cleveland and sponsored by the Saint Luke’s Foundation, which featured one of the nation’s most compelling moral voices for justice and equality: Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Many helped bend that arc, but few did so with the moral clarity and conviction of Rev. Dr. Barber.
For decades, Rev. Barber had been at the forefront of movements that united faith, ethics, and activism. As Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, he rekindled the vision of Dr. King’s 1968 campaign, challenging systemic racism, poverty, and injustice through grassroots coalition-building and moral leadership.
Rev. Barber also served as President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and was the Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. He authored five books, including We Are Called to Be a Movement, and most recently, White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy, which made the case for uniting across race and class to confront poverty as a moral crisis.
In a moment when our democratic ideals and social fabric were under strain, this conversation explored how we could build transformative moral movements rooted in justice, compassion, and constitutional values.
Moral Movements for Social Change: A Conversation with Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II
Watch the City Club featuring Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II below.