The God of Interruption - An Advent Meditation in the Light of Ferguson

For me, the period of time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s is usually a kind of personal sacred time. Each year I begin this five week season by making a list of all the people, events and things in the past year for which I am thankful. Then I go thru Advent with a sense of yearning, anticipation and renewed hope for a better world. Advent then culminates with the celebration of Christmas with its mixed focus on the birth of Jesus, the coming together of family, and the sharing of presents. Then a week later we welcome a new year and I write down hopes for the year to come. I began this practice nearly 40 years ago when I was in college  and it has served as sort of liminal time where I move from one year to the next, from being fatigued and doubting to having a renewed hope and focus for the future.

However, this year my Thanksgiving to New Year’s sacred time has taken on a different feel. Two days before Thanksgiving the decision was announced that Officer Darrin Wilson would not be indicted in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. A week later a similar announcement was made regarding the officers responsible for choking and killing Eric Garner. Almost immediately demonstrations erupted around the country. Die-ins were held in select shopping malls on Black Friday. In cities from east to west groups of young people marched with hands held high signs saying “Don’t Shoot,” “I Can’t Breathe” and “Black Lives Matter.” Here in Philadelphia there have been marches that interrupted the city’s Christmas Tree lighting ceremony, a die-ins at major intersections during rush hour and following a Philadelphia Eagles game, a service of the Seven Last Words of Black people, and numerous marches throughout the city. Even larger gatherings have occurred in New York and Washington bringing attention to this issue on both a local and national scale.

While I have not participated in any of these marches or demonstrations, I have watched them closely and have been a part of numerous conversations both formal and informal. In these conversations there have been a wide range of emotions expressed from anger to guilt to confusion. Many of my white friends have wondered where and how and whether they should fit in the demonstrations. Others have wondered where the demonstrations will lead and what if any changes will come about because of them.  Some media commentators have focused on the few instances of violence and have questioned whether demonstrators  are “hurting their cause" by interrupting normal activities and generally causing disruption. To be sure in many ways at this point the demonstrations appear to more about expressing anger and frustration at police brutality and more generally a unjust criminal justice system, than calling for concrete specific change.

However, as I have studied the history of social movements, and particularly the Civil Rights Movement, what appears in hindsight to have been a clear, focused effort toward social change was at the time it occurred often chaotic, controversial and confusing. For that reason, I share the demonstrators’ anger and frustration, and at the same time I have hope that emotion can be channeled into concrete action for positive social change. However, if history teaches us anything, that process will be haphazard, confusing, frustrating and filled with stops and starts. Thus it will require clear leadership and perseverance over a long haul.

Coincidentally as I have been going thru my "sacred time," the demonstrations have given me a renewed appreciation for the disruptive nature of the birth of Jesus in his time. The Christmas story we hear usually focuses on a mother, father and a child born in a barn accompanied by angels and wise men. However a part of the story often overlooked is the social chaos that ensued because of his birth. According to the gospel of Matthew, when King Herod realized a child-king was being born in his midst, he ordered mass infanticide in hopes of killing his would-be adversary;  the people of the land were terrorized. As a counterpoint to Herod’s action in Luke’s Gospel when Mary learns of her pregnancy, she sings a song which in part said:

God has brought down rulers from their thrones 
but has lifted up the humble.
 God has filled the hungry with good things, 
but sent the rich away empty.

Then when the infant Jesus was presented in the temple a few days after his birth, the prophetess Anna and the prophet Simeon proclaimed the child was the harbinger of a new age..

The birth of Jesus, while at one level benign and blessed, at the same time set in motion a process of significant change. Contrary to the image of a silent blessed night, the birth of Jesus was accompanied by violence, chaos and fear, as well as hope for a better day. At the heart of the Christian story is a God who enters history for the purpose of interrupting and disrupting the status quo in order to bring hope and justice to hurting and oppressed people.

Angela Glover Blackwell, the CEO of Policy Link, an organization dedicated to promoting equitable and sustainable economic development in low income communities, grew up in St. Louis and recently spoke about the events in Ferguson over the past few weeks. Like Black people in nearby Ferguson, Glover as a child remembered being treated as a second class citizen because of her skin color. Reflecting on recent events in light of Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s, she suggested that the demonstrations are a sign that people have hope. When people have hope and their expectations are not met, they get angry and act out. Thus, while recent events may appear on the surface to be chaotic and at times even violent, Blackwell believes they are a sign that people want better and are willing to speak up and work for it.

In the same way, the birth of Jesus was a sign of hope for his time and for ages to come. Perhaps in interrupting and disrupting our normally festive Christmas season, these demonstrations remind us that God is again breaking in to move us to work for a society where race and class are no longer the determining factor as to who is treated fairly and humanely, and who is not. They are a sign that people of faith and conscience, working together can and must fight to create a world where the lion and the lamb can lay down together and where the young black man and the white police officer can achieve reconciliation at a table of mutual respect, common concern and equitable justice.

A Sinner and A Saint Pass Away

This past week saw the passing of two notable figures from the Civil Rights and Watergate eras. On Monday, May 19 Vincent Harding passed away at the age of 82. He was a long time Civil Rights activist, speechwriter and friend of Martin Luther King Jr., theologian, and historian of the African American struggle in the United States. In recent years he was an elder who often shared perspective and wisdom from his long decades of activism. This past summer Krista Tippet interviewed on her weekly radio show “On Being” in which he reflected on the lessons of the past and his hopeful view of the future of progressive Christian activism.


While I only met Harding once and that only briefly, he was a person in recent years I had come to greatly respect. His book There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America opened my eyes to the heroic resistance of Africans to their enslavement and torture, thereby challenging the myth of the “passive Negro” who was simply victimized by the European slave traders. While acknowledging the brutality of slavery Harding describes in detail the ways in which the Africans asserted their dignity and humanity in a dehumanizing and inhumane era. The book captured for me gentle fierceness Harding displayed in his writing and speaking over the decades.

My one meeting with him occurred in 2009 when I participated in a conference on peacemaking in Philadelphia. Each night at the end of the proceedings Harding would offer his reflections and challenges to the mostly white liberal crowd. As an elderly African American in a mostly middle aged white crowd, he seemed an odd participant in that gathering until I realized that as a Mennonite (a overwhelmingly white peace church), Harding had been both a lifelong peacemaker and a boundary crosser who spoke truth wherever he went and to whomever he was speaking. As part of that conference, I was one of twelve people who committed and civil disobedience against a gun shop known for its active participation in the straw purchasing/illegal gun trade in Philadelphia. Out of that action Heeding God’s Call, an interfaith gun violence prevention organization, was born. To this day HGC continues to call attention to the need for common sense gun legislation to reduce the senseless killing from illegally purchased firearms. While only indirectly involved, Vincent Harding was a source of inspiration to many of us coming out of that event and that conference. His example and his words will be missed.

Nine days earlier on May 11, at the age of 79 Jeb Magruder died at his home in Danbury, Connecticut. Unlike Harding whose influence and image grew positively with age, Magruder spent much of his life undoing disgrace over his involvement in the Watergate scandal that took down the administration and presidency of Richard Nixon in the 1970’s. For those too young to remember, Nixon aides inexplicably broke into the offices of then-Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern; during the 1972 presidential election campaign those offices were located in Washington, DC’s Watergate Hotel. The subsequent investigation of the break-in revealed pervasive corruption in the Nixon administration that eventually sent several Nixon aides to jail (including Magruder) and caused Nixon to resign in disgrace in 1975. I remember watching the Senate hearings in the summer of 1973. Until that time U.S. political leaders were generally considered to be honorable men (they were virtually all white men at that time), and what the public didn’t know about their personal lives or backroom dealings it didn’t really want to know. All that changed after Watergate, such that today politicians are generally assumed to be corrupt until they prove otherwise. Furthermore, Watergate is why subsequently any high-level government scandal is always referred to as a “-gate.” The most recent example is “Bridge-gate” which involves aides to New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie using their political power to make driving on the George Washington bride intolerable for residents of Fort Lee, which has a Democratic mayor who refused to support the governor’s run for re-election.

I met Jeb Magruder around 1977 about two years after he had served a seven month jail term for his involvement in the Watergate scandal. He attended a monthly prayer breakfast of movers and shakers in Boston that I was privileged to attend (not because I was a mover or shaker, but because the organizer of the event, Tom Getman, was the regional director for Young Life, for whom I worked at that time). Jeb Magruder came as a special guest and shared his story with the group. I was impressed by the honest contrition of a man who knew he had gotten caught up in something that betrayed his basic values. He did not try to rationalize away his part in the scandal but took full responsibility for his actions, and talked about how the ordeal had changed his life dramatically, so much so that he left the business and political worlds to become a Presbyterian pastor. Following the meeting, I gave him a ride to the train station, and had the opportunity to talk personally with him. When he learned I had recently graduated from Duke University, he told me of a classmate and acquaintance from my class who had been instrumental in helping his son deal with his father’s disgrace. Despite his past experience at the highest level of government, he expressed a genuine interest and respect for my work with street kids in the Jamaica Plan neighborhood of Boston.

While the Watergate scandal has indelibly caused me to be suspicious of those in place of political power, my brief encounter with Jeb Magruder showed me that often decent, well-meaning people can get entangled in systems that distort and contort them into becoming people even they themselves despise. While I did not follow Magruder’s career after our brief interaction, I have since rarely met a person who was so honest and repentant about his sins, and yet who authentically experienced God’s transforming power and grace in the aftermath of his downfall.

Vincent Harding the saint and Jeb Magruder the sinner were people who had a deep impact on the people and events of their time. Their lives significantly impacted the society, institutions and culture in which they lived. I am sure that those who knew them personally can further testify to the power and integrity of their influence. From a far more distant vantage point and briefer interaction, I too was touched by their lives. For these reasons I mourn their passing while celebrating their contributions to my life and to history.

Why I Have Hope

 

About a month ago a good friend called me and informed me that my blogs were depressing him and that he needed to stop reading them for a while. I was bit taken back because despite a frequent focus on the injustices in so many facets of our public life, on a day to day basis I’m a pretty hopeful guy. His comment got me reflecting on what gives me hope in the midst of the corporate greed, institutional racism, government gridlock and general erosion of basic human rights in our country I so often focus on.

Here’s what I came up with.

Upon reflection I would say that my hope comes from three main sources. The first source of hope is the students I am privileged to teach in the Eastern University Urban Studies program. When each new group of students begins our program I tell them that they are special slice of humanity because they have forgone the lures of consumerism and materialism and, for reasons that vary from individual to individual, have decided to dedicate their lives to work in solidarity with the poor, the marginalized, the forgotten and the oppressed. These students are not only extremely committed and intelligent, but they bring a clear belief that they can make a difference in the world. After taking classes in urban problems, racism, broken communities, research, leadership, and the like, their idealism gets tempered with a gritty awareness of how to address the challenges before them, and  they go on to work in organizations and with community groups do the work of justice at the grassroots level. Being able to invest myself in these young folks (most are in their mid to late 20’s) and seeing what they are doing gives me tremendous hope for the future. The battle for justice is long but there are people committed to that process for decades to come.

My second source of hope lies in the many small movements for social justice that are happening and continue to happen: fast food workers advocating for a raise in the minimum wage; undocumented folks and their allies pushing for immigration reform; moms and student resisting the NRA and gun lobby to work for changes in laws around the use and purchase of firearms; and people from across Pennsylvania working together to make a fair funding formula for public education a top political priority in the state – just to name a few recent ones. As I read the blogs and newsletters of progressive organizations, I am reminded that the Montgomery (AL) Bus Boycott in 1955 that brought the Civil Rights Movement into national media attention was preceded by decades of effort by small groups of committed individuals working to bring about change in the segregated South. Rosa Parks was not the first person to refuse to give up her seat on a segregated public bus, Martin Luther King, Jr. was not the first preacher to give voice to black people’s concerns, and Montgomery was not the only Southern city to have faced a challenge from its citizens of color. These things had been going on in communities big and small for a long time; what Montgomery did was light a spark that brought the energy together to forge a movement. I see the seemingly small and disconnected efforts that have been going on for the past several years as moving us toward a time when a larger movement will emerge to challenge the corporate power structure and the government leaders who have sold their soul to lobbyists and the big donors instead of listening to their constituents. A new civil rights movement is coming. I don’t know when, how, where or what it will look like, but I can feel the movement coming; like clouds before storm, like tremors before an earthquake.

My third source of hope comes from the promise of the Bible that God is truly on the side of the oppressed. During this Advent season I have been struck by how often the promise of the coming Messiah is couched in the language of justice. Isaiah 40 speaks of the Messiah being one who “gives strength to the weary and power to the weak” (vs. 29).  Isaiah 11 says that this Messiah “with righteousness judge the needy, with justice give[s] decisions for the poor of the earth” (vs. 4). Mary in her beautiful song upon learning that she is given birth sings that God “has brought down the rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1. 52-53). Paulo Freire, who is my inspiration for many things having to do with justice, said that God gives us the vision of what the world can and should be and then commissions us to go out and make it reality thru what he calls denunciation and annunciation. According to Freire, our job in essence is to denounce things in our current reality that block or undermine that just society from coming into being and work to dismantle them. Then our job is to announce the new reality, the just society God desires to see, and work toward it.  I don’t think that God is somehow going to wave his hand and all injustice will go away, nor am I waiting for things to get better only in the afterlife. Rather I believe God gives us a picture of what life can and should be, and empowers us to make it happen.

This hope is not based in a quick fix or magic transformation. Hope calls me and others like me to a life of struggle, disappointment, frustration and occasional celebrations for small victories. As the apostle Paul points out in Romans 5.1-5, hope is borne out of suffering, but that the hope connects us with an infilling of God’s spirit, the spirit of history, to continue the struggle. In non-theological terms it comes down to knowing one is on the right side of history, working for that which is good, just and true, and moving into the future with a conviction shared with other like-minded individuals. This hope recognizes that the power structures are deeply entrenched and will not easily be toppled or transformed, but it also recognizes the continued concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few is not sustainable for the planet or the country. If nothing else the structure will topple under the weight of its own hubris or more likely it will be torn down like the Berlin Wall, but in any case it will fall.

I was too young to fully appreciate the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s in the moment. However in my study of that movement I know that from it issued forth other movements for peace in Vietnam, women’s rights, and environmental awareness. Could something similar be about to happen now? The increased racial/cultural diversity of our nation, the pressure of global warming, the arrogant intransigence of the one-percenters and the growing unrest within the general population are setting the stage for something to happen. That is why I keep writing and working and teaching and living into that newer, more just and inclusive world; therein lies my hope.

Uncovering the Lie of Democracy While Acting in Hope

As a federal government shutdown looms due to the Republican threats to not pass a budget bill and attempts to de-fund the Affordable Healthcare Act (so-called Obamacare), I am moved to reflect on the role of government in relationship to the poor and marginalized in our society. It is clear that leadership of the Republican Party no longer makes even a pretense of caring about those who cannot afford health insurance, attend underfunded public school systems, live in fear in neighborhoods wracked by gun violence, rely on food stamps for their meals and work for a grossly inadequate minimum wage. Their allegiance are to the business owners and wealthy donors who fund their political coffers. And while I point the finger at the Republicans, many Democrats have been bought off to be silent and inactive in the face of the suffering of the poor. Furthermore, as the new documentary “Inequality for All” featuring former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich, describes, the gap between the haves and have-nots is the greatest since the days before the Great Depression. Increasingly I find myself writing messages to my state and Congressional representatives, most of whom are Republicans that in essence say “you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.” The sad and amazing thing is they have no shame.

Despite the sanitized version of history we learn in school, I increasingly have come to realize that in the 

United States it has always been that way. It took a runaway slave named Frederick Douglass, along with thousands of other nameless runaway slaves and a few brave white abolitionists to force the government to face its responsibility to treat the enslaved Africans in their midst with human decency. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s it took a populist movement made up of farmers and laborers to challenge the government to pay workers living wages and to provide working conditions that were safe and clean. In the 1950’s and 1960’s it took a courageous group of African-Americans, starting with women like Joanne Robinson and Rosa Parks in Montgomery, AL, Septima Clark in Charleston, SC and Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi, followed by clergy like Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth and Ralph Abernathy, and then thousands of young people to force the Federal Government to enforce its own laws against segregation and racial violence. In the 1960’s it took a group of radical students marching in the streets to call attention to atrocities of the Vietnam War and eventually drive Lyndon Baines Johnson to resign the presidency. While we call our politicians “leaders” in point of fact they are often keepers of the status quo on behalf of the few until they are forced to
act in ways that actually serve the needs of the common folk.

The other sad reality is that the vast majority of Americans, rich and poor, of all races and ethnicities, have bought the lie that our political leaders actually serve their best interests. Two years ago the Occupy Movement sought to reveal that lie by showing that the challenge facing the nation was not the debt limit the politicians were talking about, but the vast disparity between the 1% and the 99%. While Occupy itself has faded from view, it helped reframe the conversation. Michelle Alexander in her analysis of the criminal justice system has demonstrated that we now have a “New Jim Crow” that has disenfranchised millions of young men of color through the process of disproportionate incarceration. What is needed is a new populist movement, a new abolitionist movement, a new Civil Rights Movement that again calls our government leaders to account.

As an Anabaptist Christian (of the Mennonite persuasion) I do not expect much from government or look for government to act on behalf of justice and righteousness. I never have regarded the United States as any kind of Promised Land nor accepted the notion that God has given America some unique role in the world. Nor do I find comfort when our politicians, including President Obama, end their remarks with “may God bless the United States of America.” Government and its leaders are as depraved and twisted as the rest of us. However, I do have faith that people coming together on behalf and in solidarity with the poor and oppressed can sometimes force government to actually live up to its creed to provide “liberty and justice for all.”

For the past three years, I have been involved with an interfaith group, POWER, which has pushed the Philadelphia City Council to approve a referendum that if passed would require corporations doing business with the city and their subcontractors to pay all their workers a living wage. This same group is organizing across the state to make establish a fair funding formula for public education in the state of Pennsylvania; this will help assure that underfunded districts like Philadelphia and other cities are not short changed by the state when it comes to support for public education. POWER is also working with several other groups across the country for the passage of an Immigration bill that will help undocumented persons get legal status in the United States. All three of these efforts were not initiated by political leaders, but rather by groups of citizens in essence seeking to force the government to address the needs of all its people and not just a few. Now when these initiatives are passed, our job won’t be done because as we are seeing with Obamacare right now, we will have to continue to pressure our leaders to actually do what they say they are going to do.

 At the same time, we cannot wait for leaders to act. In small ways we need to create pockets of equity and justice in our own communities. Faith communities need to partners with local underfunded schools and continue to provide assistance for the poor. Community groups need to find ways to promote economic development and to bring people together rather than allow them to be divided. Organic and public intellectuals need to continue to speak out to continue to uncover the lie that is American democracy. For myself I will continue to write, to organize and to join with others such as POWER. Therein lies my hope.

Immigration Reform and the Border Surge – A Waste and an Embarrassment

Robert Frost begins his famous poem “Mending Wall” with the words “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” As members of Congress seem to be heading toward an agreement on immigration reform, one of the provisions that will likely be included in the bill will be what AP journalist David Espo and Erica Werner call a “Military style border surge” to “secure the Mexican border.” More specifically the bill would double the number of border agents from its current 20,000 to 40,000, add 18 more surveillance drones and 350 more miles of fence. One would think with such an increase in the Border Patrol, already the nation’s largest police force, we were being overrun by the barbarians of Roman times. In essence, the idea is that the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. without documentation would be given a “path to citizenship” but no more would be let in. However even the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicted such an effort would fail to achieve this objective.(For the Espo/Werner article, click here).

I find the whole discussion about building a better wall to be an embarrassment as an American citizen. For the first 36 years of my life, I lived in a world dominated by the Cold War in which the entire globe was divided between those favorable to the United States versus those nations favorable to the Soviet Union. We lived in a constant awareness that at any moment we could be vaporized by a nuclear missile ignited when the “cold” war went hot. The premier symbol of this divide was the Berlin Wall, and the accompanying fence that ran between East and West Germany.  However in 1989 President Reagan proclaimed “ Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” and through intense negotiations relationships between the two countries improved and the Berlin Wall came down in dramatic fashion, allowing East and West Germans to pass freely from one side to the other and eventually reuniting that country which had been divided for over 40 years.

After that I thought we might be done with walls; but then Israel built its wall to separate the Jews from the Palestinians, and now we have been building our wall with Mexico supposedly to protect us from terrorists and unwanted immigrants. But as Reese Jones from NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America) points out, the wall is only partially about security; it’s really about protecting our wealth and preserving our culture from unwanted (read non-white) influences. *

What is so tragic about this rationale is not only its short sightedness, but also that it completely ignores the huge disparities between those who live north of the border  and those who live south, and the role of the United States has had in promoting and preserving that disparity. To understand the U.S. role one must go all the way back to the 1850’s when U.S. leaders began talking about “Manifest Destiny” which essentially stated that the U.S. would choose to shape the world to its own image. This helped to strengthen the 1823 Monroe Doctrine established during the presidency of James Monroe that European countries could not engage in trade or aggression in North, Central or South America without facing military aggression. In essence the U.S. said Latin America is ours to mess with and no one else.

And mess we did: from propping up military dictatorships, to grabbing and defending huge tracts of land to enabling U.S. companies to exploit resources from fruit, to oil to precious metals. In the 1980’s the CIA worked with dictators in countries like Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to suppress populist movements seeking to reform and regain control of their countries. In the 1990’s the U.S. passed NAFTA (North American Free Trade Act) which allowed U.S. companies to relocate to countries like Mexico with lower labor costs and less stringent safety and environmental standards. However, while companies could move freely laborers could not. What these 11 million undocumented folks represent are mostly people seeking to find work to support their families living in countries devastated by over a century of U.S. exploitation.

So not only is the wall an embarrassment, it represents a complete denial of U.S. responsibility and accountability for the situation we currently find ourselves in.  Several studies have found that if given the chance to travel freely between their home country and the United States, most Latin American immigrants would do so. They come here looking for work so they can provide for their families and then return home.  The sheer persistence of those who seek to come to the United States for these purposes make the so-called border surge a joke and a waste of money.

What if instead of spending billions of dollars on border patrols and a border fence ($4.7 billion was spent between 2007 and 2011*), we invested in teachers, new schools, health care workers, and quality housing for all? What if instead of billions of dollars on running undocumented immigrants through the criminal justice system ($5.5 billion in 2007 alone*), we invested in youth programs, college loan programs, and disease prevention? Not only would we be able to serve the needs of U.S. citizens but all those who are here temporarily as well.

A couple weeks ago I traveled through the Southern United States visiting sites that were prominent during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the beginning the Civil Rights movement focused on breaking down the walls of segregation that sought to completely separate blacks and whites in all areas of life. I was amazed and appalled at the lengths to which white Southerners would go to maintain segregation often leading them to engage in violent acts that made them look barbaric and inhumane in the eyes of the world.

That’s what this border fence and the accompanying security force looks like. We even have our own version of the KKK; they are called “The Minuteman.” We look to be big bullies with our rifles, guns, drones and barbwire fence saying “No way can you play in our sandbox!” In the eyes of the world, we look to be arrogant, cold-hearted, violent and inhumane; and we are. Moreover, with time, like the walls of segregation, like the Berlin Wall, this wall will too come down, and we will be left to recover from being the sorry fools who allowed it to be built in the first place.

**these insights and figures are excerpted from Reece Jones’ book Border Walls (link here)

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My New Hero: John Lewis

Several years ago I began collecting pictures for what I call my Hall of Heroes, people through history whose lives and work have inspired me. The idea was to one day put all these pictures into one great big collage. When I started there were some obvious choices: Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mohandas Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Malcolm X and Clarence Jordan. In subsequent years I have added many others: Frederick Douglass, Myles Horton, Paulo Freire, Fannie Lou Hamer, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko and Sojourner Truth. As I wrap up my nine-day bus tour of Civil Rights sites, I decided to add one more to the list: John Lewis.

Born in rural Alabama, Lewis entered the Civil Rights scene in 1960 as a student at American Baptist Seminary in Nashville when he participated in the lunch counter sit-ins. The next year in 1961 he volunteered as one of the original 13 “Freedom Rider” who rode commercial buses thru the South and challenged the segregated facilities in Southern bus stations; he got beaten on the head by an angry mob and some jail time for that.

He was one of the founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was the organizer for SNCC in Nashville until 1963 when he became the director. In that role he spoke on behalf of SNCC at the 1963 March on Washington, causing quite a controversy for wanting to publicly criticize the Kennedy administration’s proposed Civil Rights Bill as inadequate. Two years later in Selma, AL even though SNCC was not supportive of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Lewis decided to march anyway, leading the procession with Rev. Hosea Williams on “Bloody Sunday” when Alabama state police assaulted the marchers with clubs, horses and tear gas; Lewis again got beaten on the head. He was eventually voted out as director of SNCC, and Stokely Carmichael was voted in. In 1981 after working in community affairs for an Atlanta bank, Lewis began his political career by getting elected to the Atlanta City Council. Today he serves a Congressman from Atlanta.

As we toured the various sites, John Lewis just kept showing up, sometimes as a leader, but always as somewhere there offering his skills and literally his body to the cause of justice. It seemed he was the “Forrest Gump” of the Civil Rights movement, everywhere you looked, sometimes in the forefront, but often in the background serving in whatever way he could. In interviews Lewis has always impressed me as someone who humbly deflects credit from himself and often praises others. While I have never met him personally, he comes across as a servant leader par excellence.

So I have added John Lewis to my Hall of Heroes. On the trip I bought a book on the history of SNCC and Lewis’ memoir of the Civil Rights movement. Since he is still living, I plan to write him letter; who knows, I might get to talk with him at some point. My hope is to learn more about this humble man, who practiced a “ministry of presence” in all that he does, who often did not get the credit he deserved and when he did, often redirected it to others, a man who continues to serve as an example of one who seeks in Gandhi’s words “to be the change, [he] wants to see.”

Relearning History

During our second to last day of our Civil Rights Tour, we toured Nashville with Mr. Kwame Lillard (pictured below in front of a statue of W.E.B Dubois) who was one of the hundreds of students in the Nashville who occupied lunch counters and called for boycotts of the white-owned stores and businesses that held to strict segregationist policies and practices in Nashville. In 1960 with the energy and pressure from students from the four historically black colleges in the area, clergy and other individuals, the mayor agreed to order all the businesses in Nashville to desegregate and for schools to likewise become integrated. The next year many of these same students, plus hundreds of others both black and white, rode buses in "freedom rides" through the South to challenge the segregationist policies of the those states. Many of them were  beaten and nearly all were put in prison until the FCC ordered that all interstate vehicles and facilities be desegregated as required by federal law. As Mr. Lillard shared with us, Nashville was a center of many civil rights activities and many of the leaders of the movement got their start in Nashville.

Yet few history books mention Nashville when talking about the Civil Rights Movement and so the city is better known for its country music than its critical role in the Movement.  The Nashville story is just one of the many aspects of the history of this country that is either ignored or conveniently forgotten. The dominant narrative asserts that the United States is a bastion of freedom and justice. Yet the true history is far more complex than the story told in most U.S. history textbooks. Whether talking about the near genocide of Native Americans, the colonization of people living in the lands annexed during the Louisiana Purchase, the internment of Japanese-Americans during   World War II, the exploitation of workers from Ireland, Eastern Europe, China and Japan, or the horrific enslavement of African slaves, there are huge aspects of "U.S. history" that have been swept under the rug.

Kwame Lillard and others in Nashville are seeking to document and create museums to remember their Civil Rights history. In nearly every city we have visited, we have heard similar stories of dedicated citizens, many of them veterans of the Civil Rights movement and their descendants coming together to create museums, memorials, tours and curricula to help all people of all races remember that this is part of our history just as much as the Boston Tea Party, the Civil War and the New Deal. More importantly this history is still being felt today in the problems and struggles we currently face.

This is not a history just for African-American folks but for people of all races. As a white person, I am saddened and deeply shamed by the actions of white people supposedly acting on my behalf. However, more than that I am moved to tell others these stories so we may not repeat the atrocities of our past. For the history of racism is a part of white history that has been conveniently either domesticated or forgotten, literally "white-washed." We who are white need to learn from this history not only the gross atrocities committed but the mindset that perpetrated and allowed them to happen. For as Martin Luther King reminded us in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" those who choose to step aside and not stop evil that is being foisted upon others, are as bad as those who perpetrate the evil. The passive reluctance of so-called "moderate" whites is as much a part of the Civil Rights story as the heroic actions of those who challenge the racist structures and practices of their times.

The lesson of this history is that none of us can stand aside when violence, injustice and discrimination are being enacted against anyone in our society whether they be gay, immigrant, woman, poor, young, old, from another religion, or a person of color. This a lesson we have not yet fully learned and so need to revisit again and again.

Reliving Memphis - The Parallels With Philadelphia

Today (June 11) we visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN, which is located on the site of the Lorraine Motel (pictured below) where Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Dr. King was in Memphis to lend his support to black sanitation workers that had been trying to form a union for several years and to gain basic things like a living wage, health care and better worker conditions. Though they were public employees employed by the city they received lower wages and fewer benefits than their white counterparts. Furthermore, they were never allowed to apply for promotions.  Even though these workers put in their 40 hours, their income was below the poverty line. They came to work in hand me down clothes and had no work security. That is why they wanted a union. However, the city did not enter into good faith negotiations with them and so eventually they went on strike. Their main slogan was "I AM A Man", i.e. I am someone with dignity who should be treated as a full human being. The mayor of Memphis refused to negotiate with the workers saying that the law forbid them to strike. Eventually they did go on strike in defiance of the mayor's edict.

By 1968 Dr. King had begun to connect the racism in the country with issues of poverty and war. To that end he and his advisors had begun to plan a Poor People's Campaign in which thousands of people would build a tent city called Resurrection City on the Mall in Washington, D.C. (reminiscent of the 2011 Occupy Movement) When Rev. Billy Kyles, a local pastor and civil rights leader, invited King to Memphis, he jumped at it because the garbage workers strike linked the issues of poverty and racism. He lad a march to the downtown area that unfortunately turned violent; King was vilified and ridiculed for not being able to lead a non-violent march and so returned to Memphis a few days later determined to lead a non-violent march in solidarity with the workers. On the evening of April 3, he delivered his famous "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech, in which he alluded to his own death. The next day he was assassinated on the balcony of Lorraine Motel.

There are many things that touched me about the story surrounding his death - the events leading up to it; the linking of poverty and racism; King's own struggle with depression and fear of his own death; the camaraderie and commitment of all the people around him. However, as I reviewed the story of the garbage  strike, I could not help but think of the current struggle in Philadelphia that the interfaith network POWER and baggage handlers and other airport service workers are having with the the city government right now. Like the the garbage workers, these airport workers are earning poverty level wages without health benefits or job security in very physical jobs where injuries can cost you your job. While technically they work for the airlines because they are outsourced workers, really they are working for the airport which is governed by the city. POWER and the unions have been advocating for living wages and benefits for these folks. Also like Memphis, most of these workers are persons of color. It's Memphis 1968 all over again!

Ironically, many of the members of city government, including the mayor, are beneficiaries of the civil rights struggles and yet don't seem to see the parallels. In many ways these city officials feel beholden to large corporations like US Air which has threatened to decrease its operations in Philadelphia if a living wage provision for these workers is instituted. While one would like to believe that the gains of the Civil Rights Movement have taught us some things, in many ways we find ourselves in the same situation  as King, Kyles and they Memphis garbage workers. The parallels between then and now make me think that the efforts to get economic justice may require more militant nonviolent direct action not only against the city but also the corporations that are keeping the city government and the citizens hostage to the corporate greed. What that action would look like I don't know, but the words of Frederick Douglass continue to ring true that the powerful don't give up power willingly, it must require the powerless to rise up and say "Enough."

If we want to honor the "dream" of Dr. King, it must start with addressing the inequities for which he gave his life.

We Are Doomed to Repeat History, If We Don't Know Our History

Today, we visited Selma, AL, the site of a major voting rights campaign in 1964-65. Selma is best known for "Bloody Sunday" when marchers crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge heading out of Selma and were met by a wall of state troopers and local police who beat them back with billy clubs and tear gas. A few short weeks later, after Martin Luther King had been invited to join the Selma movement, did they receive an armed guard by those same State Police (who had been deputized as national guardsman) as they marched from Selma to Montgomery confronting the powers of the Alabama State Government under Gov. George Wallace, who had tacitly approved of the police's earlier violent action. 

However, before and after the cameras and the national media attention left Selma, there were hundreds of brave people, many of them children who bravely confronted the powers that disenfranchised nearly all the black people in western Alabama from voting. We had the honor of meeting two of those people, Frederick Douglass Reese and Joanne Bland. Rev. Reese was president of the Voting Rights League, president of the teachers' association and the pastor of a local church, who bravely marched with others to the courthouse demanding to be allowed to register to vote. Again and again they were pushed away. Ms. Bland, who gave us an "alternative" history tour of Selma was only 12 years old when she marched over the Edmund Pettis Bridge, but by the time she was 11 had been arrested 13 times for going with countless other young folks to the courthouse demanding that her parents be given the right to register to vote. 

In their presentations to us, both Rev. Reese and Ms. Bland stressed that this history of civil rights is being suppressed today. In Alabama children only learn a cursory history of Civil Rights as part of state history in 4th grade. Only in the last 10-15 years  have the key sites been restored and a visitor center built commemorating the events of 1965. Talking with some current high school students on our trip, I learned that they learn very little if any history of the Civil Rights Movement except some key events like the Montgomery bus boycott and the "I Have A Dream" speech. Meanwhile in neighboring Mississippi there are few, if any commemorative sites to the events of the 1950's and 1960's that occurred there. Apparently the power structure would rather we forget our history.

While I feel like I am visiting place of near holy significance, I realize that for most white Americans, the Civil Rights is past history that is over and done with and that it need not be remembered any more. However, the message we repeatedly heard today is tell this story, don't let it die; the struggle continues, even though some victories have been won.  When we look at the recent efforts leading up to the last election to restrict certain people's right to vote, we see that the desire for the powers-that-be to limit or take away certain people's rights - especially those who are people of color and who are poor -- still exists and must be resisted. Too many people like Joanne Bland and Rev. F.D. Reese shed their blood and gave themselves to the struggle so that those rights might be available to all citizens. 

Civil Rights Tour - The Struggle that Has Been and Continues

The last Two days (Sunday and Monday) have been spent largely in Atlanta and then Albany, GA. In Atlanta we had the opportunity to visit the ML King Center and the hear Juanita Abernathy (Ralph Abernathy's widow) share her reflections on the Civil Rights battles in Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma and elsewhere. Then today we visited Albany, GA and heard Rutha Harris, one of the original Freedom Singers. The Freedom Singers were a group of young folks who went all over the country singing songs of the Movement, raising money for the battle in Albany for SNCC. One of the things that struck me in listening to both of them is that though the key events of the Civil Rights movement are nearly 50+ years past, they are still alive for them

While I was quite familiar with many of the key Civil Rights struggles, I learned some things especially in Albany. For Martin Luther King Albany was often considered a "defeat" in the media because despite filling with jails with hundreds of protestors, the key demands were not immediately won, as in Montgomery. One of the lessons social movements have had to learn is that early victories, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, do not necessarily "transfer" to other settings. This was the case in Albany. Sheriff Pritchard learned from the mistakes of other law enforcement officers and responded non-violently to the protests in Albany, which made him more sympathetic to the media and thus drew attention away from the Civil Rights cause. So King left Albany feeling like he had "failed."

However, the SNCC and CORE workers in Albany continued their work and eventually won huge victories in breaking down segregation in law enforcement, schools and voting rights. One of the interesting things of about Albany is that they didn't just attack one expression of segregation (bus terminals, voting, etc.) they attacked the Jim Crow system head on and despite many set backs won huge victories. Their perseverance and tenacity in the face of failure, frustration and struggle is a great example. Frederick Douglass pointed over 150 years ago that the oppressors never give up power without a struggle. Albany is testimony to the value of ongoing struggle.

As we battle the issues of today: gun violence, economic disparity, unequal public schooling, and conservative, corporate backlash, I am reminded that victory is not easy, quick or without frustration. 

Civil Rights Tour - Getting Ready

Starting tomorrow - June 8 - my wife and I will be joining approximately 35 other folks for a 9 day/8 night bus tour of some the most famous sites of Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 60's. We take off at 6 am from Beaver Falls, PA and by 4:30 pm we are due to be at our first stop in Greensboro, NC at the Woolworth's where students sought to integrate the lunch counters. On this blog I hope to share my reflections and insights on the trip.

Cynthia and I sought to do this trip on our own a few years ago but were discouraged by super-high gas prices. So when this opportunity to go on a Civil Rights tour came to our attention we jumped at it. In preparation for the trip I have watched a documentary on the Freedom Riders, and read the memoir of Robert Graetz one of the leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. While I have read and studied a great deal about the Movement, I expect it will come alive in ways that can only happen when you are there. In my effort to write up the stories of white allies for racial justice, I have learned the stories of some of those lesser known folks who contributed their part. It will be good to put their stories in context.

The trip has been organized by Dr. Todd Allen, a professor at Geneva College, who has conducted these tours for several years. (Todd is the brother of MAUS student Crystal Allen, who also will be on the trip.) Along the way we will be met some former Freedom Riders, Ralph Abernathy's wife, and one of the sisters of the girls killed in the bombing of 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham.
It promises to be life-changing trip, and that is why I look forward to sharing my experience with you.

In light of my last posting on the need for a new Civil Rights Movement, I hope to reflect not only on the meaning of the events back THEN, but also what we can learn for NOW. With the return of "separate but not equal" public schools, a criminal justice system that feeds on the inadequate educational system in the so-called "school to prison pipeline", and the de facto reinstatement of what Michelle Alexander calls "the New Jim Crow," there is much we can learn. What are the insights we can learn from the Civil Rights Movement for confronting today's economic and social disparities? What does non-violent direct action look like when violence against the poor and persons of color is so institutionalized? How do movements for racial and social justice come together? I hope to gain insights for these and so many more questions we face today.


The other night at a meeting of representatives of POWER, the interfaith community action network in Philly, the comment was made: no one said advocating for the poor would be easy. It certainly wasn't for the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, and it won't be for us today. Nonetheless, my hope is that there our lessons one can take away from this trip.

Look for the postings on this blog and on Facebook.