Bishop William J. Barber II doesn’t have the luxury of tiredness. After leading a three-day march from Wilson to Raleigh, culminating in a Valentine’s Day mass moral rally at the state Capitol, he’s ready to go again.
Barber, founder of faith activist group Repairers of the Breach, sat by Saturday afternoon as teams of workers deconstructed the massive stage facing Fayetteville Street. He was energized by his mission: to love forward. After all, extremists don’t get tired, he said.
“They steal districts in the middle of night,” Barber told Carolina Public Press. “They pass budgets in the middle of the night. It’s like every day they get up with some new meanness, and love has got to have that kind of tenacity, and even more, in hopes of not just stopping them, but turning some of them around.”
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For nearly two decades, Barber has built a legacy of faith activism in the North Carolina political world. He’s most known for his work organizing Moral Mondays in 2013 to protest the newly Republican legislature’s agenda — that effort amassed hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters over a series of months.
Then, the energy was high. Now, it’s just as “hot,” Barber said. Even under the threat of possible rain and sub-20-degree temperatures, an estimated 10,000 people gathered at the Capitol Valentine’s Day morning to rally for a “moral and loving policy agenda” amid recent political moves like the state’s recent redistricting of the First and Third Congressional Districts and passage of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
“Something is happening in this country,” Barber said.
‘This is our Selma’
From Wednesday, Feb. 11, to Friday, Feb. 13, thousands of North Carolinians walked at least part of the way between Wilson and Raleigh as part of the ‘This is our Selma’ March.
Their journey included parts of the new congressional districts redrawn by the legislature in October 2025 to give Republicans an extra seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. State Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, drew the map. He shifted sections of the more heavily Republican Third District in eastern North Carolina to the northeastern First District, currently represented by Black Democrat U.S. Rep. Don Davis.
North Carolina isn’t the only state that engaged in mid-decade redistricting for political gain. After Trump asked Texas to redraw maps to give Republicans a buffer in Congress, it started a war that’s now involved redistricting efforts on both sides of the political aisle in California, Missouri, Ohio, Utah and Virginia.
After North Carolina’s map passed (the governor is unable to veto redistricting legislation in North Carolina), several voting groups sued. They claimed that the redrawn map diluted minority voting power and violated voters’ First Amendment right to vote who they want into office.
The courts did not side with the voting groups. They ruled that while the new map would make it more difficult for Black voters in northeastern North Carolina to elect their preferred candidate, the map was primarily drawn for political reasons, not racial motivations. As a result of U.S. Supreme Court and state Supreme Court rulings, partisan gerrymandering is permissible.
There may be no legal or legislative remedy for last year’s redistricting, but the people have power, Barber said. His premise is this: authoritarians win when people don’t show up.
“We the people have to decide that we’ll stand up against the current hate and meanness,” Barber said. “But we won’t do it with (politicians’) tactics. We won’t become the very thing that we challenge.”
Republicans likely planned on 45% turnout for the 2026 election, he said. If he’s able to lead an effort to get 55 or 60% turnout, that “shifts everything.”
“They tell us, well that’s not gonna happen because it hasn’t happened,” he said. “Well, everybody says what’s not going to be until it happens.”
What’s next as Barber leads movement?
People didn’t come to the rally to stop there, Barber said. They came to figure out how to go to work.
Repairers of the Breach had seven calls to action for participants:
- Sign up to spend a weekend doing nonpartisan canvassing in Congressional District 1 or 3;
- Sign up to organize voter mobilization in a precinct in Eastern North Carolina;
- Sign up for a phone bank or a text bank to reach infrequent voters in North Carolina;
- Sign up to do civic education about the power of infrequent low-income voters through social media;
- Sign up to host at least two local civic education meetings in your community ahead of Nov. 3;
- Sign up to host a Souls to the Polls event during early voting and same-day registration;
- Sign up to make sure everyone in your family is registered to vote, receives voter education, and has a voting plan; and
- Sign up to join online or in-person trainings in moral fusion organizing with Repairers of the Breach.
Rev. Hanna Broome, Repairers of the Breach director of religious affairs, said people are already texting and calling trying to get connected and start working.
“It’s very spiritual, very overwhelming, but it was a great overwhelming,” Broome said about the march.
Retired Superior Court judge Milton “Toby” Fitch was one of many speakers to emphasize the need to turn out at the rally.
“Love declares that no one is property, that every person belongs, and that every voice has the right to be heard at the ballot box,” he said.
“As early voting opens, we are called to turn out as never before, knowing that when we add our voices together, we exercise a power that no one has the right to take away.”
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