"On the eve of a historic week," Dr. Bernard Richardson, Dean of the historic Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, led to Reverend William Barber II's rousing speech. In it, he intertwined American history with inspirations from the Bible to urge listeners to use their voices and vote. Your vote is your trumpet, he declared in his "A Sermon to the Nation from Howard University."

Barber indicated he used the traditional African American saying, "If we ever need the Lord, we sho' need him right now," to coin the phrase, "If we ever needed our voice and vote, we need it now."

A march through history dominated the lively sermon as he reminded the audience of America's history, including attempts to expand slavery into Texas, The Alamo, and the defeat of the Mexicans who had already abolished slavery. He said of today's Mexicans, "They are just coming back home to the land we stole from them."
(Mexico's first African-Native American president, Vicente Ramón Guerrero Saldaña, abolished slavery on September 16, 1829)

We are just regurgitating the "craziness of yesterday," he said to laughter as he laid out a litany of similar historical events and their impact on our lives.
Your voice is your trumpet; he concluded as the media and security prepared the area for a Kamala Harris Election Night Watch Party.

He ended by spelling out to the Rankin Chapel at Cramton Auditorium audience that 88,000 votes in battleground states allowed Donald Trump to become president. However, four million poor and low-wage people did not even vote in those states. And that Biden won with 44,000 votes in the battleground states, and 5 million poor and low-wage voters did not vote.

"If we ever needed our voice and vote, We need it now," he declared as he left the stage as Co-Chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival.