Interfaith clergy hold ‘Moral March’ opposing Sessions

Reverend Barber, a pastor and activist who has emerged as a leading religious critic of President-elect Donald Trump.
“Today we face a moral crisis,” said Rev. Barber, the top official of North Carolina’s NAACP, and president and senior lecturer of an interfaith, interracial activist group called Repairers of the Breach. “A misguided ruler, Trump, has nominated Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general of the United States. But Sessions’ immoral record shows consistent support for ideological extremism, racist and classist policies, and the writing of discrimination into laws.”
Reverend Barber, who delivered a well-received speech to the Democratic National Convention in July, advocating social justice with a thundering, evangelical passion, was visiting Washington in advance of the Jan. 10 scheduled Senate confirmation hearing for Sessions, R-Ala.
With several clergy members of various faiths, he led about 500 demonstrators on the short march from the Lutheran Church of the Reformation to the Russell Senate Office Building, , reciting their grievances against Sessions, and delivered an anti-Sessions petition to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and others.
“Just because somebody’s nice doesn’t mean they’re not racist,” Rev. Barber told the gathering at the church, before they set out for the Russell Building, inching along East Capitol Street NE in the frigid air. This apparently was a reference to Sessions’ personal popularity in the Senate, where he has a reputation for being patient and attentive toward political allies and foes.
“No, you don’t have to be loud and overt to be racist,” the pastor said, his voice rising. “We’re talking about systemic racism. You have to look at policies. How people voted. Not whether they follow parliamentary procedures. What was the impact of the policy?”
The group issued information stating that since joining the Senate in 1997, Sessions has stood against almost every immigration bill that included a path to citizenship for people residing in the United States illegally. He also voted against renewing the federal Violence Against Women Act, has supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and opposed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
In 1986, after being nominated for a federal judgeship, he was rejected by the Senate because of allegations that he had improperly prosecuted Black voting-rights activists and had used racially offensive language as a U.S. attorney in Alabama. More recently, he publicly supported a Supreme Court decision that killed key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that had protected ballot access for African Americans.
After he became one of Trump’s earliest supporters in Congress, endorsing the billionaire businessman’s Republican candidacy in February, Sessions played a role in nearly every major policy decision by Trump, who has called for restrictions on Muslim immigration into United States.
At the pre-march rally, clergy members were vehement in denouncing Sessions.
“We will not return to an era of hatred that we have…worked tirelessly already to eradicate,” said  Rev. Butler, chairwoman of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
“The role of the attorney general requires a demonstrated commitment to providing equal protection under the law,” Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block, director of Bend the Arc Jewish Action, told the crowd. “Jeff Sessions unequivocally fails that test.”
 
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