The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement

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KBOO
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Air date: 
Mon, 05/02/2016 - 8:00am to 9:00am
The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement

 

Hosts Celeste Carey and Cecil Prescod speak with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, co-author with The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II of the new book, "The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement," in which 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.

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.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove describes 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.

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