By PBS News Hour, May 17, 2020
The Rev. William J. Barber has long tackled the issues of race, poverty and hatred. His Poor People’s Campaign in June will hold a digital assembly and march on Washington to draw attention to civil rights issues. Hari Sreenivasan spoke with the reverend about the impacts of COVID-19 on communities of color for our on-going initiative "Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity in America."
Hari Sreenivasan:
Reverend William Barber, thanks so much for joining us.
When you see those statistics about how disproportionately affected people of color are in this, why do you think that the country is not as shocked as they ought be?
Rev. William Barber:
Well, first of all, we're not getting all the statistics. I mean, we get like in Mississippi, 80 percent of the people in one area that died from COVID-19. It might be we're not as shocked because we weren't dealing with it before. And we weren't shocked when a quarter million people were dying from poverty and no income.
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