WASHINGTON—Declaring it is time to stop Donald Trump’s war on Iran and shift its $1 billion-a-day cost to domestic needs, New Poor People’s Campaign co-chair the Rev. William Barber II—via a colleague’s computer speakers—and his religious allies brought that message to the militaristic GOP president’s doorstep.
In an anti-war rally in the blocked-off median of D.C.’s downtown 16th Street, with the White House in the background, and the AFL-CIO headquarters off to the side, the religious leaders denounced the war as illegal, immoral, “an unholy war of choice”—as Barber put it—and more.
And they laid blame for it primarily on Trump, but also on the Republicans who seem to blindly follow his lead, out of political fear for their jobs.
The April 20 noontime event was part of a series of “Moral Mondays,” Barber’s New Poor People’s Campaign has mounted for years, starting in his home state, North Carolina, where marchers began by protesting Jim Crow 2.0 political repression.
But this time, the speakers promised, it will be different. Prior Moral Mondays have been on the first Monday of every month. The coming ones will be the first Monday of each week until the war ends—which they urged Congress to legislate. Both the House and the Senate are debating the war, but so far, party-line majorities have stood with Trump and his war.
And the April 27 rally, Barber said, same time, same place, will see more than 100 clergy on 16th Street, who will then commit an act of peaceful civil disobedience, by stepping off the median and sitting down in the street in “non-violent moral action.” They want thousands of people to witness it.
Barber himself could not attend the April 20 event, though he tried. He spent the previous day—Sunday—voicing those same themes at a special symposium at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., but then ran into delays and problems which prevented him from boarding the plane to D.C.
They didn’t prevent him from speaking to the crowd, though, “Even when people try to make a justification” for Trump’s war of choice, which began February 28, “two wrongs don’t make a right,” Barber said.
“This is an unholy war of choice, of a madman [Trump] who wants to be like God and who wants to do things so he can say he did them first.” And he urged listeners, “This is no time to be in the shadows.”
Barber’s “be like God” characterization harkens back to a Trump meme, which the president posted on his Truth Social media platform on Easter Sunday, of all days. It portrayed him in a white robe with red trim, dispensing bounty, just as Christ dispensed loaves and fishes to the hungry. Mass uproar from all across the political spectrum ensued before Trump pulled it.
“This is a war on humanity,” Barber continued. It comes from “a man who places himself as God and who determines who has rights, and which ones.” Earlier, in a statement read by an ally, sent from New Haven, Conn., Barber said right now “is a time for truth-telling and for a radical exorcism” of the lies permeating the country.
Other clergy speaking not only denounced the war but offered comparisons, compiled by another organization, Barber co-chairs, Repairers of the Breach, of what the billion dollars a day could buy if it weren’t spent on weapons and war.
For example, it could buy SNAP (food stamps) for 160 million people, or restore Medicaid cuts which Trump pushed through Congress last year—on party-line votes—for 105 million children. And it could fund paid parental and family leave for 22 million workers. Or nine million university scholarships.
“Instead, we are rushing ships, missiles, and drones to [attack] Iran, Cuba, and all over the world,” said Joe Izzo, of the Friends Committee (Quakers) on National Legislation’s D.C. chapter.
In the statement the staffer read, Barber also waded into the verbal battle between Pope Leo XIV—a Chicago native and the first U.S.-born Pope, versus Trump and his Catholic Vice President, former Ohio Sen. JD Vance. Vance suggested the Pope stick to religion and stay out of politics. Trump’s statement was even nastier.
For his part, Leo has firmly denounced the war on Iran, those who profit from it, those who turn a blind eye to the carnage, or both, and politicians wielding force. “Pope Leo is my Pope,” said Rev. Barber, an ordained Protestant minister. Trump’s “constant demeaning of other nations and other cultures is predatory and must not go unchecked.”
“We must build the movement that we can, to take back our government,” Barber declared.
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