I first learned of Repairers of the Breach while watching Joy Reid, the host of AM Joy on MSNBC, interview Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, who is the president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. Rev. Dr. Barber served as president of the North Carolina NAACP, the largest state conference in the South, from 2006 – 2017 and currently sits on the National NAACP Board of Directors. Among his many academic, social justice and leadership credentials, the achievement that means the world to me, because of my great admiration for FDR, is the honor bestowed on Rev. Dr. Barber as the 2015 Laureate for Freedom of Worship Award of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Awards. http://rooseveltinstitute.org/fdr-four-freedoms-awards-1/
The website of Repairers of the Breach, https://www.breachrepairers.org/about, defines its mission as follows:
“Repairers of the Breach is a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization that seeks to build a moral agenda rooted in a framework that uplifts our deepest moral and constitutional values to redeem the heart and soul of our country. We challenge the position that the preeminent moral issues are prayer in public schools, abortion, and property rights. Instead, we declare that the moral public concerns of our faith traditions are how our society treats the poor, women, LGBTQ people, children, workers, immigrants, communities of color, and the sick–the people whom Jesus calls “the least of these.” Our moral traditions point to equal protection under the law, the desire for peace within and among nations, the dignity of all people, and the responsibility to care for our common home.
Repairers of the Breach was founded in 2015 by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II as a way to organize, train, and work with a diverse school of prophets from every US state and the District of Columbia. Based in Goldsboro, North Carolina, Repairers of the Breach works nationally to advance a moral agenda that uplifts our deepest constitutional and moral values of love, justice, and mercy. Our training institute (the “Moral Political Organizing Leadership Institute Summit”) provides moral activists with the support and tools they need to engage moral analysis, moral articulation, and moral activism regarding public policy…
In 2017, Repairers of the Breach joined the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, the Popular Education Project, and hundreds of local and national partners, to launch the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. This multi-state movement has emerged from more than a decade of work by grassroots community and religious leaders, organizations, and movements fighting to end systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, environmental destruction, and other injustices.
To repair the breach caused by centuries of systemic oppression and injustice in our country, we must organize, train, and work together with this diverse school of prophets and moral activists who represent every state and the District of Columbia. They shall be called, ‘The Repairers of the Breach: The Restorers of Our Communities’.”
“Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”— Isaiah 58:12
