for most of 2020 well even with a vaccine even with progress with colbert because the truth of the matter is people are going to want to jump back out there and be in these confined spaces i don't want to laugh at a movie with a mask on and i don't hear how much you're wiping down the seat ring in the air if i can stay safe stay alive and enjoy my favorite feature film i'm a do that in the comfort of my whole eat my favorite meal while doing it you know sure we will see what happens so good to get your insight john murray thanks for joining us from washington d.c. good to have you with us on al-jazeera. what you want to say with me several wrong a reminder of our top stories the united states has recorded more than 210000 new coronavirus infections in 24 hours 2700 people have died u.s. president elect joe biden says that he'll ask americans to commit to mask wearing for the 1st $100.00 days of his administration italy president strict measures on

movement during the holiday season after recording 993 deaths in 24 hours it's the country's highest daily death toll so far the u.n. secretary general has called for a unified global response to corona virus as the number of deaths worldwide has reached 1500000 untenured terrace was speaking at a special pandemic session of the united nations for the 1st time since $945.00 the entire world is confronted by a common student got of this of a nationality and needs you to your face the world us organization provided factual information and scientific guidance that should have been the basie's for equality in a few global response unfortunately many of these recommendations were not followed and in some situations there was a rejection of facts and and a lot of those of the united. and when companies go in there don't die in action

dividers goes in every then action aid workers say thousands of ringer refugees are being coerced into moving to a remote island off the bangladeshi coast which the u.n. warns is prone to storms and flooding navy officials say more than $1600.00 refugees are heading to the island. from cox's bizarre they're refusing to return without guarantees for their safety and their rights evacuations are under way in indonesia's north sumatra province following flash floods heavy rains of that of the region for a week 3 people have died so far china has released video showing its lunar probe lifting off the surface of the moon the cheney 5 spacecraft took 6 minutes to reach orbit they collected 2 kilograms of lunar rocks while it was on the lunar surface those are the headlines more news in half an hour the bottom line is next to stay with us. thank you we know what's happening i really don't really know how to get that they feel that others cannot i was just thrown. back to put them on their best

fires and then i'm going i'm going to give you. the way you think you kaldis story is what can make a difference hi i'm steve clemons and i have a question does morality matter anymore did it matter ever in american politics let's get to the bottom line. since election day a few weeks ago many american politicians have been talking about the need for the nation to heal but the rift between people inside america is really deep and there's frustration on both sides of that divide those who voted for donald trump and everything he stands for are wondering who is going to stand up for them now and millions of voters on the democratic side feel their hopes and aspirations put me to ask as well trump once told writer bob woodward that he wanted to bring out the reagan people who are americans doomed to be motivated and divided by fear and anger and is there a way to really heal the nation today we speak with one of the most unique voices

in american public life reverend william barber the 2nd is the co-chair of the poor people's campaign a national call for moral revival a social justice movement that mobilizes the poor to be agents of social change reverend barber it's great to be with you today what i'm hoping to get at in that important work that you are doing is the question of what that common ground could be as you think about healing the breach and addressing at the same time many of the core problems of the nation what does that agenda look like. well steve 1st off thank you so much and what is so interesting about that question that you just raised is that we actually have answered this asses that of ancient as our bible asses that are as old as our constitution and our

deepest religious values but the problem is one of the 1st problem is we began all of our conversations i think we have to miss ologist that constantly keep us in our division maybe even 3 in light of what you just quoted from char one is the miss ology that there is some grand place behind us behind us where everybody was unified it is interesting to me that the constitution began with a confession that the reason we are writing the constitution is to move towards a more perfect union which is an admittance that we were not perfect behind us it cause us to look forward and to look back what only to do as one of our great him says to me and every flaws. but instead sometimes in politics we start 1st talking about how to get back to these glorious days of american exceptionalism and i think

that is that. the 2nd mythology that i think is this notion of language of left versus right and now we say left right and centrist often wonder where does that language come from that i know historically comes from the french revolution those on the left or against the monarchy those on the right were for the monarchy i guess those in the center were for a mixture but we're not in the french revolution and to automatically try to put people in these false categories left and right and center actually i think creates division but also minute. doesn't allow us to say some things are not left versus right there right versus wrong and if we look at out deep is moral and constitutional foundations we have to be able to say some things are wrong are unconstitutional are morally. unacceptable and economically insane and

a constitutional it out of line we have to be able to do that otherwise we end up giving equal more status the 3rd thing a thing in the midst 'd of a trump ism that we have to deal with is the danger of putting all of the problems was saying that on him he is a big cause but he had a lot of an able as and just like you said in your opening when he said he wanted to bring out the rage he's not even quoting himself he's quoting pat buchanan 'd and kevin phillips and the people who or what richard nixon in the 1960 s. to develop a strategy called positive polarization that is that has been that was designed to split the country for political power and it's been used by republicans from reagan to to to to nixon to. even george bush is used it and many of the politicians in the south so we have to have some honest

conversation 1st if we're going to have serious healing that's a script in the bible that says only the truth will set you free and we've got some truth telling that must be done in america so that we can at least have honest conversation about what healing these to take place like you do president elect biden is not talking about left and right he's not talking about division he's talking about this is the time to come together but i think you and i both know there are a lot of americans that are not hearing those words in the same yanked him right he says he's right when he says it's time to heal and it's admirable that he would raise that in that way. i would caution a little bit i know he says that people are not our enemies they are americans. but the awesome people who are the adversaries of poor and low wealth people and black people and moving forward in this country if they had not ever says their policy is

a certain adversarial to justice 'd and to what we are called to be. deepest constitutional that is and 'd if their policy is adversarial than the question is are they adversarial or just a pos knock it i understand what he's saying in the sense that you don't just have to go around saying that evolution and nobody can work with and they're beyond change even though we have to be realistic there are some people that are totally committed we know what happened for instance when obama ran for office and while there were people totally committed we've watch what has happened in this senate over just not this truck but with the senate that totally committed to it in an adversarial way to being fat when it comes to supreme court justices we look at a mitch mcconnell he has refused to fix the voting rights act for over 7 years that's an add politically adversarial position he's refused to even let living

wages come to the floor even though we have 62000000 americans working for less than a living wage and i would say and as i have talked to people from appalachia to alabama they see that as an adversarial position and they see it as a problem that the people are in fact not acting like quote unquote americans when it comes to the least of these and as dr king once said they give 'd socialism to the wealthy and then give rugged individualists to the poor and the least of these and we have to recognize that politics is about fighting for things it is about recognizing that i don't believe this disown cost center as you point out also say that to the. the president because there are some trying to say what you need to be essential what is a senate how do you pick up people what is the center of a stab this in just if you get half the thing what is dissent providing for the

common defense you give half the people common defense or promoting the general welfare so you get half the people the 'd promotion of general welfare in a sense that's what we have now and it leans more toward the greedy take francis to 1st cares act 84 'd percent of that money went to corporations and bank it did not go to the people and the essential workers and those who voted and forced that are adversarial now i wouldn't call it an evil and i would say they're beyond transformation i'm a preacher i wouldn't say that they that there is a possibility but right now we know that they have in tranche. added to say to war those who are being hurt the most before cove it after cove so what i would say to president elect is you promised some things when you ran and you promised to fight for some people and we have seen what. evil public policy can do over the

last 4 years and how committed some people like trump mcconnell are they will do whatever they can with power people need to see what good people would do with power what good policy looks like you said that you wanted $15.00 an hour if you do that that will heal the nation because there's no scaling of the soul of the nation that doesn't heal a body of the nation you said you would expand health care we need to fight for that the 1st $5000.00 days 1st 50 you said that you would make sure essential workers had the sick leave an unemployment and and the rent forgiveness and mortgage forgive that they must see a president now that will fight for that you said you would deal with systemic racism in terms of voting rights and police reform that needs to have. when in the 1st $5200.00 days people need to see now that there will be a true fighting for all americans if you we are our people you said immigration for reform was necessary we would stop caging and losing children we would properly

address native americans and make sure that they have what has been promised to them as the original people you must do that and i think the president last night must go into the places where people have been sown lied to that they think a democratic president and vice president are gets to go to the south go to appalachia let them know that the current policies we have now are costing us a trillion dollars out of a loss because of child poverty $2.00 trillion dollars in and lost wages because of wage gap did ter flip it over and showed him if we expand health care how many people will be helped black brown indigenous white how many people will be lifted if we pass living wages of every race creed color and just geography it let the american people know what the cost of inequality is as joseph stiglitz says what is it costing us and if people steal their body the body of the nation heal then the

soul of the nation will be heal but it can't just be rhetoric and it can't just be some serial kind of coming together that does not have a fleshy reality that does not have an embodiment of the stab this man of justice. powerful my question is a lot of americans who voted for joe biden were voting against donald trump and they were voting for what they saw as a return to normal and i know that normality is not something you think we can go back to but i'd like to hear for those people who do have that as their motivator in this moment. what cuts you think have to be made what divisions have to be made to wake those folks up so i think jesus is pretty clear. on the human condition and jesus was saying of his own ministry you know oftentimes people present jesus as

just being a nice guy who just love people and i know he was killed because he threaten the empire because his love and the kind of love connected to justice that lifted the poor the least of these all of those that have been rejected by roman polish truck to those of cicero called the tricks of the city. jesus wasn't around them jesus said to caesar's you're not jesus said to the empire it is wrong 'd to have also a few people with wealth and the rest living in desperation what jesus called the pope cos and greek those who've been made poor economic exploitation he said the nations would be judged by treat the least of these and that created division that's what jesus meant is that that the gospel of the truth. creates division and what he meant by that is there has to be a division from jews and so when people say for instance in america that we don't

have the resources but when code began we saw 2 and 3 trillion dollars immediately given to corporations while people who are on the front lines still have not got what they need desert division we can accept that there has to be a cutting asunder of that and exposing it for what it is every senator and congress person they get free health care they get the best health care we have to call that out how can you get the best free health care what a public option paid for by the people that's what i mean by public option and then you don't want joe constituents is to have the same thing truth and lies cannot exist together ok and be ok and that's what jesus was saying that that times that has to be a division and a true for the matter is we just can't do an election what is an election about it is a division of the asians one peep group present step in for the country another group presents definition and then the people decide that i do think

a lot of people voted against it but that's not a small thing that is major support reject trump ism and to reject all of it is cut necked to the extreme ism and the division that has that gone on because copyright created himself he is an american and he was created out of the american reality at least part of it and part of that america. the reality has been an american reality it is always trying to go back to division and trying to live and that division them believing that that is the way to have power and as i said he spoke to an audience not that he created but it had been created for some 50 years before he ever ran for office so so division is a part of our reality even in the health we used and when i was in the country my grandmother used to have something called lansing a boil it spitting a bore so the plots could come out in order for healing to take place and in the

real sense we have to do that because in addition to the people that voted against which is huge we now know from early returns to 55 percent of people making less than $60000.00 a year poor low wealth people voted against. it last time brought poor low well people voted against drop the volume what this have because some 34000000 poor lower people didn't vote a 6000000 more voted this time than voted last time and they didn't vote for normal they didn't vote just to go back to pre-code it because pre-code it was 140000000 poor low well people in this country voted 3 percent of the nation 66000000 white people 26000000 black people 61 percent of all 'd black people pre-code it was 87000000 people without health care or under insured pre-code it was 62000000 people working for less than a living wage pre-code it was $4000000.00 people getting up every morning look at

bat and let it pass and came back and let it water creek over it was $0.54 of every discretionary dollar going to the war economy and less than $0.16 of every discretion ed dollar going toward health care infrastructure in education creek cove it actually. preconditioned us. in some ways to be more be harmed by the pandemic most most public health officials will tell you that in addition to the turbulent almost criminal like in f. response to the pandemic of the trumpet ministration in addition to that it was the finishes of poverty and systemic racism that has given the opening for this pandemic to be even worse than it could have been the majority of the people that are dying seem that close here are poor and low wealth people the majority the people being hurt up poor and low wealth people who did not have the wages prior to

cope and the health care trying to cope and the sickly and unemployed prior to cope so large numbers of people if they voted against front they also were not voting to stay where we are i believe and a lot of people are also a lot of a what voting for us not to return to normal because normal was not good nor he was not good moment to paint gives us another chance 'd to address what the bad normal was so that hopefully we can move to some new possibilities in this nation why has the republican party been able to have such almost a monopoly on evangelical christians as a long conversation as the. trace any given his active highlight exactly brit we can't these are not new struggles you know we started out in this country saying women couldn't vote white men who didn't have man couldn't vote

black people couldn't vote black people with 3 fifths of a person and a native americans could be exterminated all of those evils people found the ways to mis interpret and engage in theological malpractise to support what they were doing you know out and tell people that economics used to not be. a space branch of thinking unto itself it was a part of moral philosophy but it is hard to have economics at the bottom are lost and then also have slavery and know that morally speaking you cannot. you know support slavery deepest religious values destine do that but we've had this problem in america with twisting the script as a slave master religion the religious and religious people that stood to get what payback cooperations the stand against the new deal and call 'd franklin delano roosevelt a socialist the religion is who undergird the clay and the religion is who right

stood against the king and when i say stay religious notice i'm not saying christian and even this time of event well it was the way the media talks about evangelicals like how many bad but i wouldn't be counted because the weight of media often talks about evangelicals they talk about white evangelicalism which is really more of an emphasis on white and he that the tickle isn't so here's what's the problem is it's just like the constitution a lot of people will say they have a religious perspective but they haven't read it can't last it up with scripture they can't line of that with the teachings of jesus or the teaching of the prophet they are right when it is a religious perspective but it's their religion it's not the religion of christan it is not the religion of judaism and just like when they say they have a constitutional position but when you read the constitution it doesn't sound anything like what they're talking about so we have a lot of people and i have to say there's a train at logan perpetrating a fraud engaging in modern day heritage and that's why more and more people are

coming out we asked the putting out a 14 point plan 1st $1500.00 days rooted out deepest religious traditions that are people's constitutional traditions this wait for the bad administration to say here are things that have to be done if we're going to be constitutionally consistent marland defensible and economically saying what would be our red line disappointment for you in the incoming administration that they could get this wrong and not take the enlightened path that you're encouraging and to. well it sounds like steve you have written you have read the post 963 martin and i'm so glad you have because some people think all he said was i have a dream which is the closing of the speech of the march and wasn't it wasn't even the title of the speech the title of the speech was normalcy never again norma say never again that's why i want to be agenda items at the march on washington was $2.00 an hour living wage which today would be 15 and then of course you know the

voting rights act and then you know dr king said we have to deal with 3 issues system poverty racism and militarism and it wasn't just dr king it was the welfare rights workers the women who pushed him to do the poor people's campaign so what he said dan is just as true now and as what jesus was saying about i have not come to bring peace but a so what the worst thing that bad administration or in it ministration could do i thoroughly is to set on what the pope called recently in his in cyclical the magic formulas of neo liberalism and trickle down economics which don't work because if they don't lift from the bottom and centrism doesn't do it and moderate i agree with him the old king those that are now talking about now that we've gone we've got to find some centrist way we can't really push for health care for all we may have to slow down on $15.00 an hour for black people it took us from 0 to 400 years

to get to $725.00 we started out making up in a slavery mess i'm $25.00 we've got to wait another 400 years to get to 15 at that rate that's just doesn't make sense what we need to do now is take the constitution of danger united states. that says the 1st goal of a government is to establish justice and the 2nd is that a domestic tranquility in other words you can't get to the method tranquil it is without beginning with establishment of justice and every policy ought to be examined under the lens of the cost to ship does 'd this policy establish justice not is it left not is it right not is it centrist right but does the status justice for those who are hurting the most and they're hurting not because they're immoral but because of the failure of public policy over and over and over and over

again if we don't do this even the fed chairman recently said we're not going to get the economy back that we had we know that wall street doesn't measure backstreet and dirt roads and side roads we cannot exist as a democracy a genuine democracy when nearly 50 percent of the people living in poverty and low well 8000000 have been at it since may i was say to president biden elect donovan and comma rice president comma has. first thing you do is do exactly what you say do not listen to those who tell you to slow down this is an if the. this is a good reconstruction while people are dying poor low well people are dying if you want to heal the nation heal the body and don't have agenda of doing it for just a few or just enough that some people can be comfortable with because those the only become with

a few the truth is they would be comfortable with things being as they are right and that is unacceptable dr william j. barber the 2nd thank you so much for your candor today and we look forward to seeing what you roll out the 14 point plan and other plans you have to help give counsel to this new administration coming in thanks for joining us today thank you so much and your listeners can go to w w w poor people's campaign or go w w w a breach repair or. so what's the bottom line it's hard not to be moved by the powerful moral appeals of reverend barber the spotlight is on america now and the world is watching well america come out of this divided and nasty place stronger and fairer and more just and restore its place in the world as the so-called beacon on the hill my guest believes the breach can be and should be healed that people in the richest nation in the world shouldn't have to struggle to make ends meet but that has been a long struggle and it's ongoing the election of joe biden and kamel harris is one

opportunity to begin to move on a new course but let's face it american history is also full of opportunities that were never changed and that's the bottom. december on al-jazeera it's 10 years since of revolution in tunisia ignited the arab spring al-jazeera looks back at the uprising and asks what really changed across the middle east the stream is where al jazeera is global audience becomes a global community a year after the 1st coronavirus case in china will examine the devastation caused by the virus and the efforts made to eliminate covert 90 people in power is back with more investigative documentaries and in-depth stories climate leaders will gather online to press ahead with

a new stage of the paris climate agreement and examine the possible global solutions december on al-jazeera. sony al-jazeera london broadcast center 2 special guests in conversation people think that racism is having personal vitriol towards black people and there's no understanding of what systemic racism is unprompted uninterrupted success comes with opposition if you're not upsetting people you're not saying the f. 100 needs any allele because there is not a family in britain i believe that has not been touched by empire studio be unscripted on al-jazeera. we've never had a president who has literally for 4 or 5 years repeatedly attacked our democracy. you know closely related to them financially i don't have a narrative i have a question you're hitting their brains where people can't get treated and just feel small even further join me richelle carey and up front is my guess from around the

world take the hot seat and we debate the week's top stories in pressing issues here on al-jazeera. what you all deserve me so romney and paul reminds of all the top news stories the united states has recorded more than 210000 new coronavirus infections in 24 hours 2700 people have died u.s. president elect joe biden says that he'll ask americans to make a commitment to mask wearing when he takes office kristen salumi in wilmington delaware interesting news coming out late here from wilmington and president joe biden saying that he intends to ask americans to mask up once he takes office for 100 days the 1st inkling we have of how his.