Why Rev. William Barber Got Arrested At The Capitol

After Donald Trump won a decisive second term in November, conventional wisdom quickly congealed: #Resistance was dead. There was no Women’s March. The regular weekend protests in D.C. weren’t coming back.

But then came the“Hands Off” demonstrations around the country last month, which drew thousands of people opposed to Trump’s agenda, Elon Musk’s DOGE and a host of other conservative causes, and signaled a potential revival of the anti-Trump protest spirit.

Rev. William J. Barber II, the prominent North Carolina pastor-civil rights activist-theology professor, fully embraced that approach last week, gettingarrested in the Capitol Rotunda while praying against Republican budget cuts.

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Barber rejected the notion that the resistance had ever died. Rather, he sees its work as part of a movement that has advocated for the poor and marginalized across eras, dating back to the abolitionist movement against slavery. It’s a movement that has seen its setbacks — ask Frederick Douglass about despair — but with each passing month, year, decade, the effort grows.

“Movements and resistance are built on top of one another,” said Barber, founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. “And you don’t pit them against one another.”

Barber also weighed in on the notion from some in the Black community that now was not the time for them to be active in protest movements, that it wasbest to sit this one out. He wouldn’t criticize anyone’s choice, but he made clear the success of any resistance would be built on a “fusion movement,” a multiracial, interfaith grassroots coalition.

And, Barber, who also serves as the director of Repairers of the Breach, a social justice organization, said prayer sessions for the group’s “Moral Mondays” actions will continue at the Rotunda — even when he can’t be there, as was the case this week

“The movement will be there,” Barber says. “And I’ll be back.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

During the first Trump administration, the #Resistance was very visible. We had the Women's March and the Black Lives Matter protests… 

Don’t forget the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival, was in that mix all over the country. 400,000 people in the street.

I remember that. But today we have people, including people in the media, arguing that the resistance is dead, that people on the left are exhausted. What do you think is the difference between the resistance movement then and today during Trump 2.0?

I think the analysis is all off. We can't judge every year, every season by every season. It's not how you look at history. You know, there was a resistance that went on 40 years before Dr. King and John Lewis ever got to Selma. There was a resistance in Montgomery before Rosa Parks ever sat down. Movements and resistance are built on top of one another. You don't pit them against one another.

I tell folks the greatest thing we should be focusing on, something that Frederick Douglass said when the Dred Scott decision came back. The abolition movement said, “It's over. There's nothing we can do. The courts are against us, the law enforcement is against us. The academies are against us. The Congress is against us…” Frederick Douglass went into a kind of depression. [Then he gave a speech] about how monstrous this Dred Scott decision was. But then he says, “We must receive this decision in a cheerful Spirit,” because history is filled with evidence that every attempt to [undermine] the abolition movement has only served to intensify and embolden our agitation.

I hear what you're saying, and yet at the same time, we're in a very different era. So what do you see as different about the resistance movement today? We're in Trump 2.0; it’s 2025. What's different from 2020 or 2016?

[Trump’s administration wants to] cut a trillion dollars from the budget and defund the so-called administrative state.

Musk and DOGE, they believe in what's called technocratic feudalism. So what we have right now is a crisis of civilization, a crisis of democracy. They believe that the masses shouldn't really be involved in civil society. They believe the masses are too dumb. They are the great ones, the smart ones, and they kind of got a technocratic mafia, if you will, and then got a president.

The reason we launched Moral Mondays is because we did an analysis. Give us the real analysis of what's going on, for instance, just with this budget. And when the reports came back, the reports are so bad that whatever tiredness we might have, then shake it off. Because these folks are talking about, by the time they finish this budget, they would have so bloodied the government and would have hurt not 1,000 people or 100,000 people, but millions of people.

The worst thing we could do now is turn back, which is why Moral Mondays launched to really arrest the attention of the nation and say to America, “Do you realize that right now, folks are trying to take 36 million people out of Medicaid?”

You were you were arrested last week at the Capitol rotunda while praying against these Republican budget cuts — 

One of three.

That's right, one of three people arrested. Police said they arrested you after multiple warnings for, quote, “praying out loud.” Can you talk a little bit about what you were hoping to accomplish?

We didn't go in to get arrested. Who would think he would get arrested for praying? [Laughs.] But we did go in to say that this nation, when you look at this budget, this nation needs pastoral and prophetic care. We went into praying. We sent every member of Congress our analysis of the high moral consequences of this budget.

We requested a meeting with Mike Johnson, and we want to meet with [Hakeem] Jeffries, and want to bring high-level religious leaders that lead millions of congregants into a meeting with them and challenge them based on the Constitution they swore to uphold, and based on the damage that they're talking about doing.

Because for us, praying is not just going through personal piety. Prayer for us is a prophetic act. What we’re saying is, you cannot keep praying in this Congress, P, R, A, Y and open Congress with prayer, and then turn around and pass a budget that preys P, R, E, Y, on the most vulnerable people in this country.

 Can you explain a little what you mean by a “prophetic act”?

In the Bible, in Jeremiah 22 it says, “Go down to the palace and pray and alert the leaders that they're wrong.” Our praying is a form of mourning. It's a form of saying how bad it is. It's kind of like what Pope Francis said, “We must, we must, we must, we must, we must pray.” And praying is a form of challenge. Prayer is not just, “Lord, give me this.” It is an act of defiance to those that would want to hurt others. It is a challenge.

It's putting legs on our prayer. It's arresting the attention of the nation. That's why all of the clergy are wearing vestments. We want to be conspicuous. We are called to cry out in the public square. We are called to say to every nation that you're not going to be judged by how great your Wall Street account is.

You're going to be judged by how you treat the poor, how you treat the immigrant, how you treat the sick, and by all of those measures, this budget fails. It fails. And not only does it fail, it is deadly. It is destructive, it is deceitful. Eight hundred people are dying a day from poverty. What's going to happen with this budget is more people are going to die. One estimate: 36 million people taken off of Medicaid would lead to something like 56,000 unnecessary deaths.

Prayer is a very defiant act. [The theologian] Walter Wink called it rattling the cages of God and shaking up the systems of the world. And so we are here, right now, in this moment, to say, “We're not afraid. We're not bowing.”

As the anti-Trump protests were ramping up last month, there was a debate online among Black political influencers, particularly Black women, that it was time for Black people to sit this one out.

There were fears that if Black people protested publicly, there would be increased police presence, like during the George Floyd protests. But it was also kind of cast as, “We've done our part. Now it's time for us to rest. It’s time for people of other races, particularly white people, to take to the street.” What are your thoughts on that?  

I don't have an opinion on it. My mind is totally focused on fusion organizing. In every generation, people have the right to decide what they want to do but this is what I said, “If they cut 36 million people from Medicaid, that's Black people and brown people, that's white people, that’s Asian people. That's people's lives being destroyed. If they cut money from housing, that's going to hurt Black people and brown people, the white people and Asian people, and people's lives are going to be destroyed.

Everybody has to make that decision. We don't fight each other. If somebody decides, “I don't want to be arrested, but I'll be a witness, or I'll register voters, or I'll preach about it.” Everybody can find a place. What we have to learn how to do is recognize that the movement is a marathon. It's not a sprint.

You’re one of the most prominent members of the religious left in America today. What do you think about how the Christian right has sought to wield power? Some MAGA supporters even say that Jesus' teachings are too “woke,” particularly when they're defending Trump's policies. What do you make of that?

You know, it's one of the reasons we founded the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, which was to challenge the religious malpractice and heresy of the so-called Christian… I don't use [the phase] the “Christian right.” I can't. There's no scripture that says you’re on the Christian right or the Christian left. I don't use that language. I don't use conservative versus liberal. There’s no scriptural text that does that. None. Not one.

The greatest sin in the Bible, second only to idolatry, which is self worship, is mistreatment of the poor, the women, the widows, the children, the immigrants, or what is called the least of these.

The prophets say, Isaiah, chapter 10, “Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their right and make women and children prey.” Jesus said, when he started his ministry, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor.”

You notice that they [MAGA] never say that their agenda is a Jesus agenda. They don't do that. You won't ever hear them talking about Jesus and the least of these, they just can't. And the reason is because their agenda has a Jesus problem and a biblical problem. It does not line up.

Many people today get their news from clips that go viral on social media, rather than watching the evening news. How have you changed your activism to accommodate this reality?

Oh, yeah, we have a thing called 14 points for moral organizing. We must use every form of social media, boost our organized account on every form of it. We use all of the videos, we use social media, we use press conferences. You have to fight in the air, on the ground and in the seat. You’ve got to fight using regular media. You have to fight using the written press. You have to fight by traveling and going and pulling people together. We're going to be everywhere we can with our message.

[Among the goals of] neo-fascism is to act so fast and furious that people think that they don't have a chance. So people either doubt the truth or they don't feel the truth enough. And then they like to put faces on their numbers, which oftentimes more progressive movements can be a little weak on that.

I've never done a major gathering or rally and didn't have a large portion of the front end of the program dedicated to impacted people, putting a face on the problem. We have a Black person, a white person, a brown person, all colors standing together. We want to show the world that this is what these cuts are doing. One group of people may bear a deeper brunt, but numerically, it’s impacting all of us.

So we have to use every form of social media, even the shorts, TikToks. You need to go get your young folks. Say, “Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.” Anything we do, we put it out on social media, we video it and we cross-post it. So our cross posting may reach as high as 10, 20 million people,

How will you measure success with your movement?

When you start a moral movement, like when Rosa Parks sat down, you don't know if it's going to catch a fire or not. You have to prove that you have not succumbed to the lies, that you've not given your allegiance to those that say, “Nothing can happen, nothing can change.” And secondly, a movement has to have keeping power. You know that we're not just cursing the darkness.

We don't present just the problem. We present an agenda.

Success is looking out and seeing that it's a fusion, that is white folk from Appalachian Kentucky organizing with Black folk from the Delta Mississippi, organizing with Latino people from the Tenderloin in San Francisco, and all in between.

Success is we have Republican legislators because of the heat that they're getting back home. The speaker has said, “We don't want to have a budget that cuts Medicaid.”

Success is not only having a movement that protests, but says, “Okay, they're not going to do this in the darkness.” Number two, we're going to prepare legal challenges. We're not going to give up the legal front. Number three, we're going to mobilize voters. We're going to mobilize not from a partisan perspective, but from a principled space and show people this is what the people currently in office are trying to do and have done. And guess what? Success is teaching them you really don't have to take this.

Success is getting people to see their power. And poor and low wage people now have more power than they ever had.

Have you ever brought your concerns directly to the White House, or have you had any interaction with the Trump administration?

We've sent out letters and requests. They've never come to us and said, “We desire to meet.” But we have an open letter that's going out to both sides, Mike Johnson and to [Hakeem] Jeffries, saying that we want a delegation of pastors, influential religious leaders, impacted people to come in and specifically deal with this budget and how bad it is. Whether or not Johnson and the MAGA group are going to accept it, we don't know. But what we do know is we're not stopping raising our moral critique.

To say it's a moral movement, it is to say, “It's not only worth living for, it's worth struggling for, and it's worth dying for.” You know, somebody said to me the other day, “Why would you with chronic debilitating arthritis, why not just stay home or just write about it?” I don't talk about this a lot, you know, I have death threats. And my question is, “Why wouldn't you, with whatever little bit of life you have, not use it for the betterment of humankind?

So you’re saying you're willing to die for the movement, for a moral movement?

When it comes to fighting for children to have health care and poor folk to have the basics of life, and fighting for them to be heard, not just for me to be heard…

All of us are going to die one day. From Covid, we learned that the best we have is six minutes. Because if you lose your breath for six minutes — the question is, what are you going to do with your six minutes, your six hours, your six days, your six weeks, your six months, your six years, or your 60 years? That's the question. Are you going to use it on the side of justice or the side of lifting people in love and truth? Are you going to live in the mythology that the greatest thing to do with your life is get up in the morning and figure out how many people you can hurt?

What scares you the most these days and what gives you the most hope? 

The people who get up every day in this country and have reason to say, “The hell with it,” the reason to say, “Why am I working hard every day for $2.13 as a waiter, when a CEO is making 300 times more than the average worker?”

And yet they still believe change can come.

Are you optimistic? 

I'm hopeful. I don't have the luxury of being optimistic.

Optimistic means that you know you have a certain level of happiness [for] things that [might] happen. Hope begins when people see unjust reality, and it doesn't quiet their spirits, it disquiets their spirits. And they decide they can no longer put up with reality as it is, and they begin to put their hands toward the work of changing. It is in that moment that you find hope.

So I'm hopeful, and hope is a very powerful thing. I'm hopeful that transformation can come. Will it come without some tears and sweat and hurt and incarceration and feeling talked about, lied on and trying to break the spirit?

Oh no, no. Won't come without that.