
Vermont Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is coming to Duke.
Sanders will join the Rev. William Barber, past president of the North Carolina NAACP in a conversation, The Enduring Challenge of a Moral Economy: 50 Years After Dr. King Challenged Racism, Poverty, and Militarism,” moderated by by Duke Chapel Dean Luke A. Powery.
The discussion will be held January 19 at eight p.m. at Duke Chapel. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Tickets will be available to the public beginning January 12. The talk will also be live-streamed on the chapel’s website.
According to a press release, the event is part of Duke’s 2018 Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration and Duke Chapel’s Bridge Panel series, “which seeks to connect people from disparate walks of life in order to discover shared pathways toward the beloved community of God.”
“In joining with others to begin organizing the Poor People’s Campaign 50 years ago, Dr. King was working out of a Christian conviction that racial equity, economic justice and peace among nations were interrelated issues — and all matters of faith,” Powery said in the release. “Through this public conversation, we have an opportunity to bring together the insights of a preacher and a politician on the present-day work toward a just, moral economy.”
Barber stepped away from the NAACP to revive the Poor People’s campaign. He is national co-chair of that campaign, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro.
Sanders served sixteen years in the U.S. House of Representatives and eleven years in the U.S. Senate and sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.