Spotlight PR brings quality public relations assistance into reach for mission-driven causes as well as socially conscious entrepreneurs, celebrities and executives.

Month: December 2019

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber to Join Actress and Activist Jane Fonda for “Fire Drill Friday”

Posted on

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, Founder of the Forward Together Moral Movement, to Join Actress and Activist Jane Fonda for “Fire Drill Friday” 

Goldsboro, NC – The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of Repairers of the Breach and national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, today announced his participation in actress and activist Jane Fonda’s “Fire Drill Friday” protest on Friday, December 20 in Washington, D.C.

The Rev. Dr. Barber was architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement, which launched Moral Mondays. The weekly protests brought North Carolinians from all walks of life together in a fusion movement to challenge injustice and ensure that immoral laws were not passed under the cover of night. The protests began with just a couple dozen people in April 2013 and grew to the tens of thousands in short order.

“We never take protest lightly,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of Repairers of the Breach and national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. “But there comes a time when gentle admonition is insufficient. We are joining Sister Fonda with the hopes further raising the interlocking injustices of ecological devastation, which Greta Thunberg and other youth strikers have so passionately fought against, the war economy, systemic poverty, systemic racism and the distorted moral narrative championed of religious nationalism.”

Fonda has held weekly actions in protest of climate change and in support of climate refugees since Oct. 2019. She has said she was inspired to host the weekly actions after watching the Rev. Dr. Barber’s Moral Monday protests, a series of weekly protests at the North Carolina General Assembly, and Greta Thunberg, who famously said, in reference to climate change, that ‘our house is on fire and we should act like it’, and the Youth Climate Strike movement which Thunberg began. Thunberg was named TIME’s 2019 Person of the Year.

Rev. Dr. Barber’s participation in Fire Drill Fridays comes amidst the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival’s, “We Must Do MORE” tour, a nine-month, 25-state tour to mobilize, organize, register and educate people for the movement who vote. The tour, which kicked off in Sept. 2019 in El Paso, TX, and just held its seventh tour stop in San Francisco, CA on Dec. 11. The We Must Do MORE tour highlights the plight of the poor and build momentum towards a Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington on June 20, 2020. The Rev. Dr. Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Center at Union Theological Seminary are national co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

WHO:             Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II

Actress Jane Fonda

WHAT:          Fire Drill Friday

WHEN:          Friday, December 20, 2019

WHERE:       Washington, D.C.

 

###

Killer Mike Destroys the Oligarch in Fiery Remarks at Bernie Sanders’ Justice Town Hall

Posted on

Killer Mike Destroys the Oligarch in Fiery Remarks at Bernie Sanders’ Justice Town Hall in Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte, NC – – In a Bernie Sanders’ Justice Town Hall event in Charlotte, NC, activist, rapper and businessman Michael Render, pka Killer Mike, brought the audience to their feet with a fiery statement on the need to repudiate the oligarchy. His remarks followed comments from organizer and co-director of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, Mrs. Naeema Muhammad who shared that fecal waste from over 10 million pigs is reportedly spread across Eastern Carolina, a harmful practice that she said began after Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

The text to Render’s remarks is below and you can watch him speaking here and here:

“[Bernie] Sanders is the only politician I have seen in recent years who is not a member of the oligarchy. He is not a member of a special interest club. He does not accept money from people who then overcharge you for medicine. He does not accept money from companies that will charge you $80 for a CD once your child is in prison for a bullshit marijuana charge, while the politicians who help put your child there, children sit on the boards of marijuana companies. He’s the only guy. So, my question starts to be at this point, ‘why aren’t you voting for him?’ Why aren’t you voting for someone who does not wish to be your king, your emperor, or despot, or tyrant?

“What’s wrong with us, that we can look at television and see a tyrant? You see a fascist on television. You see someone saying that if they are removed, civil war will start. That is magnum primo 100 mennessa suomessa methenolone enanthate a threat. That is not a suggestion. That’s telling my people to arm up. And if you aren’t willing to take that down through the ballot box, then we certainly gotten what you deserve, and that’s a casino owner. Anything goes in a casino.

“The question is ‘how far will your morality let you go, before you wake up?’ You shouldn’t have to get to Hong Kong levels. It shouldn’t have to be like in Paris, where you’re fighting in the streets. But you should be willing to. And the government should know that I am willing to. I am willing to fight. I am willing to fight with all my might. And if we have not done that… If the government does not fear us in a year, we have failed ourselves.

“If politicians don’t act, we have failed Mrs. Muhammad as her neighbor. If another black man is incarcerated from marijuana, while the oligarch’s children sits on the [marijuana] boards, we have failed.  It is time to get mad as hell. It is time to focus your anger. It is time to let the light of joy, of happiness and love focus into a fine laser and pinpoint every evil in our system and eradicate it now. Vote these bastards out of office and elect one another. It is not about “I,” it is about us. It is not about him, [pointing to co-panelist Phillip Agnew], it is about him. It is not only about the lovely Mrs. Muhammad; it is about us. You, me, us, we, yall, all of us, should be marching to the polls and taking 10 people. Because if we aren’t, then we have bowed to our masters and your philosophy should be to kill them politically.”

From North Carolina, Render will travel with Senator Nina Turner, national co-chair for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign, and Phillip Agnew, organizer and Bernie Sanders surrogate, to Greenville, South Carolina. He will meet with Rev. David Kennedy of New Missionary Baptist Church and tour The Echo Theater, which he is transforming into a cultural center. Rev. Kennedy’s work is portrayed in the movie, Burden which stars Forest Whitaker and will be in theaters in February 2020.

Render is a Grammy-Award winning rapper and one half of the rap duo Run the Jewels, whose single “Legend Has It” recently went gold. Render is also host of the Netflix series, “Trigger Warning with Killer Mike,” co-owner, with his wife Shana, of the SWAG Shop Barbershops in Atlanta, Georgia and a two-time volunteer surrogate for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential bid.

###