Not Everyone Was Surprised by the Attack on the Capitol

Black Americans and social justice workers are plenty familiar with mob violence, the Reverend William Barber explains

Rev. William Barber II at an interfaith service in 2020.Amy Katz/Zuma

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The January 6 attack on the Capitol was, for many Americans, an unthinkable and shocking attack on democracy. For the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, it was old hat.

“I was just screaming at the TV when people said, ‘We’ve never seen this but twice in America,'” Barber said in a conversation with Mother Jones earlier this month. “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.”

“What we saw, what the world saw,” he said, “was what finally happens when you seed racism and lies.”

In a wide-ranging discussion of America’s reckoning for racial justice amid a pandemic that has disproportionately infected and killed people of color, Barber, who is the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, is joined by his two daughters, social epidemiologist Dr. Sharrelle Barber and public policy graduate student Rebekah Barber. The discussion, hosted by Mother Jones columnist and reporter Nathalie Baptiste, was originally recorded on February 4.

Watch the full conversation below:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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