Thread by @MotherJones

The attack on the Capitol was, for many Americans, an unthinkable attack on democracy. For @RevDrBarber, it was an old hat.

"These people today we are saying are moderates were the extremists who were birthers two or three years ago. And then they were the Southern strategists."

“I was just screaming at the TV when people said, ‘We’ve never seen this but twice,'” Barber. "Are you out of your mind? Poor folk, Black folk, labor, people fighting for women’s suffrage, abolitionists all knew this mob violence, this attack on our bodies and sacred place.”

.@RevDrBarber's daughter, @HealthEquityDoc, is a social epidemiologist. That means part of her job is measuring the amount of death the pandemic has wrought.

"It's been heartbreaking to have to bear witness to the amount of death that we've seen."

But as @HealthEquityDoc also points out—it's not all death and misery.

"We have to choose to be the light. We have to use our gifts. We have to join in the struggle not just for a day, not just for a week, not even just for a month. We have to commit to this for a lifetime."

.@RevDrBarber agrees. Speaking with @nhbaptiste, Barber details his exploration of work by ancestors in troubling times.

"What I cannot find among [Frederick Douglass] and many others is a language of despair... There were times that they hurt—but he always had another voice."

@RevDrBarber is the co-chair of @UniteThePoor, and was joined by his two daughters, social epidemiologist @HealthEquityDoc and public policy graduate student @bekah_soul for a special MoJo Live event.

You can find the conversation in full right here:
motherjones.com/crime-justice/…