The Rev. William J. Barber II brought the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival to Mobile on Friday, four days ahead of the Super Tuesday primaries when voters in Alabama and 13 other states go to the polls.

The elections play a crucial role in determining who Democrats nominate to face off against President Donald Trump in November.

But Barber and those who spoke during the meeting and rally at Stewart Memorial CME Church had another date in mind: June 20. That is the day of the campaign’s “mass poor people” march and rally in Washington, D.C.

“We want to drive this agenda into the heart of this nation,” said Barber, before a large crowd that came to listen to the sometimes fiery North Carolina-based pastor whose fight against poverty has drawn comparisons to the civil rights icon, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The stop in Mobile was the kickoff to a four-day visit to Alabama. Barber said he will visit Selma during this weekend’s 55th annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee, host a host a workshop Saturday dealing with the connection of voting rights and poverty, and will make a stop in Birmingham. Barber also said he plans to visit some of the flood-ravaged communities in South Alabama “to see how poor people are dealing with the floods.”

Barber said the visit to Alabama “is by invitation” only.

“We don’t just show up,” he added. “Everything we are doing is heading to June 20, 2020.”

There is some election-related activity that the campaign is working on as the campaign -- formed just a few years ago to promote a mass anti-poverty initiative -- looks to boost voter participation in low-income areas. On Sunday, the campaign will call on 55,000 people to “get five people a piece to go to the polls” and to “consider our agenda.”

“We can’t tell them who to vote for,” said Barber, who has been a sought-after preacher by the Democratic presidential candidates during the campaign. Three of them – Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, and Pete Buttigieg – have visited Barber’s Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, N.C. Sanders visited on Ash Wednesday.

“You cannot ignore what (more than) 140 million people are going through,” said Barber. “It’s constitutionally inconsistent, morally indefensible, and economically insane to have 143 million people living in poverty, 43% of your population, and it’s not at the center of your political discourse.”

He added, “Too often Republicans racialize poverty, Democrats run away from poverty. America must deal with the reality.”

Barber co-leads the campaign with Rev. Liz Theoharis. Together, they are pushing for a multi-faceted platform of policy changes such as raising the national minimum wage to $15 an hour, expanding Medicaid in states like Alabama, and getting preclearance provisions added back into the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Barber said the policy issues of poverty should be at the forefront of political discourse in Alabama, where he points out that 2.1 million residents or 45% of the public is poor or low-income. That includes more than half of the state’s children.

Barber said there is an untapped potential in the poor or low-income voting bloc that he feels politicians have long forgotten. In a CNN commentary he recently co-wrote with Theoharis, Barber noted that in the more than 20 debates leading up to the 2016 elections, not “a single hour" was dedicated to poverty or economic insecurity among both Democrats and Republicans.

One of the issues that the Poor People’s Campaign is looking to elevate is environmental injustice. In Alabama, that issue alone has been longtime a problem in lower-income communities like Mobile’s Africatown.

Among the speakers during Friday’s meeting was Ruth Ballard, who is a resident of the community that is located just north of downtown Mobile and has recently generated international headlines following the discovery last year of the slave ship Clotilda. The vessel was the last-known slave ship to enter the U.S. in 1860. Following the Civil War, 32 West Africans aboard the ship settled in Africatown and developed the community near the Mobile River.

The community’s population declined over the years as paper mills began to operate nearby. Ballard and others living in the mostly black community have long accused those neighboring paper mills for creating unhealthy living conditions.

“When I was growing up, it was not uncommon for us to have run outside and grab our clothes (that were outside drying) and bring them in,” said Ballard. “If we didn’t do that, we’d have to rewash the clothes because of the brown and black spots all over them.”

She added, “You could wash ash and chemicals off the clothes and off the car. But you can’t wash them off the inside of the body.”

Ballard added, “What is happening to the poor communities across the country is that we must rise together in a movement so strong that future generations don’t have to face the same environmental injustice that has caused so many deaths in my community.”

Barber said he hopes that issue, along with the others his campaign is pushing, won’t get ignored as the election calendar ticks toward November.

“These political consultants will tell these candidates -- don’t talk about poverty,” said Barber. “We have to rise together. There are things we have to demand. We have to nationalize. We are going to have to make this nation know that dealing with poverty is not some radical idea or a left idea. How can you be a nation and ignore 43% of your population?”