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Hope you find something that makes you think.
I am a published historian (PhD) in US history, a liberation theologian (MTS), documentary film maker, minister, author, and speaker. I am known for my advocacy for undocumented immigrants and for having been the first Baptist minister to officiate at a legal same-sex wedding.
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Why? Who benefits?
—Dr. Alice Hunt, President, Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois, USA
—Prof. Dr. Fernando F. Segovia, Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, The Divinity School, The Graduate Department of Religion, The Center for Latin American Studies, Vanderbilt University
This is a very important film. As a woman of at least average intelligence, being unaware of so much in the film, I cannot help but think others who care deeply are unaware also. I see this film as a plumb line of sorts for individuals to see, recognize, and accept our part and responsibility in not only this atrocity, but in its solution. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!”
—Darla O, Baton Rouge, LA
—David Person, Host, WEUPTalk, WEUP_AM Member, Board of Contributors, USA Today, Freelance arts reporter, National Public Radio Huntsville, Alabama, USA
—Rev. Howard Williams RIP, Minister of Spiritual Formation, Weatherly Heights Baptist Church, Huntsville, Alabama, USA
—Eric Lee, LabourStart.org, London, England
—Olivia M. Gutiérrez, Mérida, Cancún, México
—Victor Palafox, Undocumented, Alabama, USA
—Lisa A. Dordal, poet “Commemorations”, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Growing up in Chicago in the 70s, I was aware of the Chicano Power movement and the liberation struggles of other immigrants. The fight was a collective effort that tied into the Black Power movement in Chicago. Growing up next to families from Mexico as well as Puerto Rico was not an issue for me; we lived, learned and played with families from these countries.
Now as the exploitation of migrant workers through the horrid H-2 program pierces my heart, I am thinking of my friends with whom I have shared drink and bread. I am growing in disgust and rage as my sistren and brethren suffer labor and human rights violations. As a student of African History versed in the trans-Atlantic slave trade as well as having family that had been sharecroppers, this H-2 program is not dissimilar from either system.
I have now seen this brilliant documentary by my friend, Ellin Jimmerson, narrated by the great Martin Sheen. I am completely taken, it was not just well filmed, I was moved…more to rage and wish for action than tears.
What hit my heart the hardest was indeed Mary Bauer's work on “fixing” the H-2 program and the issues at Etowah Detention Center here in Alabama which I have engaged as protest with friends of mine.
The Second Cooler stands as Protest Art, the long history of humans using an art form to protest oppression, repression of evil regimes. It is also for me a powerful presentation for those who wish to organize around migrant justice, the ill and demented treatment by representatives of the United States Government of citizens of the Earth.
Our organization, Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust, supports the Human Right To Home. This is the right for ALL people to live, move and thrive wherever they please on the planet. Thank you Ellin and friends for putting this incredible work together. The Second Cooler is an in depth and well organized documentary, one of the most important docs at this time.”—Rev. Majadi Baruti, Udja Temple, Birmingham, Alabama, USA
I also appreciated that she went deeply into NAFTA. It is clear that it is much more than a “free trade agreement” and more the imposition of an economic model that has caused utter devastation in Mexico as its brother CAFTA is doing in Central America. So few reports on the border make those connections to the root causes, and by learning the impacts of U.S. foreign policy (in this case in the economic realm) we can begin to understand other critical dimensions of the border. And that is the beauty of The Second Cooler —the border extends from Oaxaca to Alabama and beyond. I felt that very core understanding throughout.
In that sense, too, I loved how she expertly tackled the “migrants will only do work that Americans won’t do” cliche via the on-the-ground and union perspective from Alabama—that ultimately called for a united, rather than divided, front.
The Second Cooler is a brilliant documentary with on the ground interviews with people who bared their soul, eliciting not only strong waves of compassion and empathy, but also a diverse and multi-faceted analysis that didn’t shy away from big theories and ideas such as global apartheid. Thank you.”
—Todd Miller, Author, Storming The Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security, Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches From the Frontlines of Homeland Security , and Empire of Borders: How the US is Exporting Its Borders Around the World.
—Dr. J. David Gillespie, Dana Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, Presbyterian College, Professor of Political Science, The Citadel and The College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, USA. Author, Politics at the Periphery: Third Parties in Two-Party America (1993); Challengers to Duopoly: Why Third Parties Matter in American Two-Party Politics (2011)
—Douglas S. Massey, Office of Population Research, Department of Sociology, Princeton University, Director, The Latin American Migration Project and the Center for Migration and Development, President, American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2006-present, Antonio García Cubas Prize, Best Book on Mexican Art, National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mexico City, 2001, for Milagros en la Frontera / Miracles on the Border, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
—J. Wayne Flynt, Historian, Professor Emeritus, Auburn University. Author and co-author of 11 books. His Poor But Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites (1990) and Alabama: A History of a Deep South State, were nominated for Pulitzer Prizes. Editor-in-Chief, online Encyclopedia of Alabama. Co-founder, Alabama Poverty Project and Sowing Seeds of Hope (Perry County)
—Jose Cuicahua-Perez, Dreamer, Pelham, AL, USA
—Jennifer Sherman, Huntsville, Alabama, USA
—Aylene Sepulveda, Huntsville, Alabama, USA
Films like The Second Cooler force viewers to be aware of these interconnections and remind us of our own accountability.
We also have to remember Spirit, and that the lands into which the undocumented immigrants and guestworkers are coming from were the lands of their indigenous American ancestors, and this is a kind of return, centuries later, with intermingled blood. Nonetheless, not to see it as a return, a re-population of original lands is a blindness."—Susan Diane Mitchell, Birmingham, Alabama, USA
Quite correct, Americans are not innocent bystanders. The no-holds-barred capitalism where Mexico, US and Canada make favor with auto manufacturers, energy and conglomerate agriculture companies collude to exclude, impoverished humans from sustenance, without even thinking, is just purely sinful.
This was an important film. I really appreciate Ellin’s diligence. I’m assuming that all these people being interviewed are being interviewed by her without her face and voice in the film. I don’t know if she’s fluent in Spanish, but to hear these displaced people talk about what they have been through and what they have seen is just stunning.
We have created a system where not only companies, but these coyotes are able to exploit the most vulnerable people on the face of the earth. It is frightening to hear what these people are facing in the desert.
The number one issue here is the question of why do they come? I’m a capitalist, but what we are seeing here is pure evil.—Dr. George S. Mack." Managing Director, BioDecade
—Keith Brekhus, sociologist, activist, political writer, and co-host, the Liberal Fix radio show.
—Marshall C. Eakin, Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
—Rev. Dr. Glen Thamert, Member, The Sanctuary Movement
This film is more than a documentary. It is important to note the irony between world reaction and compassion regarding the violent deaths of six (white) people in an urban shopping center versus the lack of public outcry and compassion for the hundreds of (brown) migrants killed due to unjust border policies. Why aren’t we paying attention to how these violent acts are connected, and how they share deep roots with white supremacist violence and economic oppression throughout US history? It is a compelling and tragic human drama played out across the world, the tragic loss of life and liberty due to unjust immigration policies and practices.
As an educator and faith leader, I am always looking for ways in to the difficult conversation of just immigration policy. The Second Cooler draws us into the drama, weaving the history of civil rights together with the US/Mexico border reality, art, music, and personal story that moves and transforms those who watch it. The Second Cooler is like no other immigration documentary that I have seen. It shows the issues from both sides of the border and portrays how we all lose because of our broken immigration policies and practices. It is an elegant and poignant and enormously important film.
—Rev. Delle McCormick, Former Executive Director, BorderLinks, USA Samaritan volunteer, Tucson, Arizona, USA
—Paula Clayton Dempsey, Minister for Partnership Relations, Alliance of Baptists
—Pat H., Fayetteville, Tennessee, USA
—Stephanie Barger, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
—Kay Campbell, the Huntsville Times
The Second Cooler is a migrant justice documentary for English and Spanish speaking audiences which unravels why twelve million Latin American migrants are in the U. S. illegally and brings major implications into focus.
The Second Cooler will change any viewer's perspective. It is a documentary about illegal immigration shot primarily in Alabama, Arizona, and Mexico. The premise is that Arizona is the new Alabama, the epicenter of an intense struggle for migrant justice. The documentary’s purpose is to bring basic immigration issues into focus. Those issues include the impact of free trade agreements on migration, the lack of a legal way for poor Latin Americans to come to the United States, the inherent abuses of the guest worker program, the fact that many migrants are indigenous people, anti-immigrant politics, the reality of thousands of migrant deaths at the border, and an escalating ideology of the border.
The Second Cooler differs from every other documentary to date on the subject. It raises a well-focused question: “Who benefits?” from illegal migration. It has interviews with 25 undocumented migrants, including three children under the age of 12. It follows several of them throughout the film. In addition, it includes interviews with 55 professionals including historians, lawyers, clergy, labor union organizers, politicians, a Border Patrol agent, human rights advocates, and others who untangle the threads of a complicated issue. When a viewer reaches the end of The Second Cooler, he or she will understand why 12 million migrants are in the United States illegally and will be able to offer an informed answer to the question, “Who benefits?”
The documentary has an original score, original songs, and uses murals and other visual art extensively. It is fully sub-titled in English and Spanish throughout.
Martin Sheen is a stage, film, and television actor and a political activist. Born to an Irish immigrant mother and a Spanish immigrant father in Dayton, Ohio, his birth name is Ramon Gerard Antonio Estevez. He re-named himself Martin Sheen after Roman Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen when he became an actor.
Martin Sheen’s television credits include The Execution of Private Slovik (1974) for which he received an Emmy Award nomination, The West Wing (1999-2006) in which he played President Josiah Bartlett and for which he won a Best Actor Golden Globe Award (2001), and an appearance on his son Charlie Sheen’s comedy Two and a Half Men. A recent film is The Way, directed by his son, Emilio Estevez.
Sheen is a pro-life, anti-nuclear weapons, pro-workers’ rights activist. He is particularly committed to closing the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, otherwise known as the School of the Americas, located on the Ft. Benning, Georgia military base. He believes that the Institute is closely associated with Latin American military dictatorships and political torture. He has been arrested numerous times for non-violent civil disobedience.
Martin Sheen has an honorary doctor of letters degree from Marquette University (2003). In 2007 he realized his lifelong dream of studying at the National University of Ireland in Galway. Notre Dame University awarded him the Laetare Medal, given to prominent Roman Catholics, in 2008.
Sheen generously donated his time, his talent, and his name to The Second Cooler..
People often ask how I got Martin Sheen to do the voice-over. Or as Consulting Producer ,Hank Rogerson, put it: "How did you get the Voice of God?" Here is the story: Handy Avery, Minister of Music at my church, asked how thing were going with the doc. I said that it was about time to find an actor to do the narration. He suggested Martin Sheen might be about right. I died laughing. Two weeks later, Handy called and asked if I was sitting down. Said Sheen had called the church himself, asked for Handy, they talked, and 30 minutes later, Sheen said, "Tell Ellin to come to Santa Monica in 3 weeks and we'll do it." (Bear in mind I had not yet written the script.) Turns out Handy had sent Sheen an email (don't ask me how he got his address). Sheen had been out of the country and when he got back and checked his email, there were about 40 people asking for his help. Nothing appealed until he got to Handy's. When he got through reading it, Sheen said tears were streaming down his face. I have asked Handy what on earth he said in that email. All he says is, "I did my best work in that email."
Elinor Sterne was a social worker. During the 1950s and 1960s, she was a Civil Rights activist in Albany, Georgia, a town so infamous for the level of its racism and devotion to segregation that it became one of the first places targeted for civil rights resistance efforts by Freedom Riders. Under the notorious Sheriff Laurie Pritchett, it was the first town to jail Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elinor Sterne and her lawyer husband, Edwin L. Sterne, were vocal opponents of segregation and racism.
She and her husband housed Freedom Riders in their home, taught their daughters to say "Yes, Ma'am" and "No, Sir" to their black elders, and kept on keeping on even when the lives of their children were threatened by anonymous phone callers.
Reminiscing from her nursing home bed about those days and reflecting on her decision to give the producers of The Second Cooler their front money, she remarked, "Once you've demonstrated for freedom, it never gets out of your system."
Elinor Sterne (1927-2018) was Ellin Jimmerson's mother.
Bill Jackson has been mixing documentaries, shorts, episodic television and records most of his life, and has earned an Emmy Award for outstanding Sound Mixing for HBO's Entourage. His other recent credits include House of Lies, How to Live with Your Parents, The Finder, Breaking In, and Awake. Jackson was a musician in his youth and spent much of his early career as a recording engineer in the record industry. He has engineered a number of gold and platinum records for such artists as Los Lobos and Sheila E, and was introduced to film work through composer Danny Elfman with whom he had worked on several album projects for the band Oingo Boingo.
Documentaries that Jackson has mixed include The Long Bike Back, Behind the Blue Veil, The Paw Project, Fate of a Salesman, Granny's Got Game, Fight Like a Girl, Curtain Up, Surviving Disaster, Last Ride of the Chatham Bookmobile, Keeping the Kibbutz—PBS version, Rick Carter—A Day in the Life, Facing Forward, USIP, My Marilyn, C-C-Cut, Beyond the Mesas, Gullah, Beautiful Resistance, Whoosh, Bonus DVD for Lady and the Tramp 50th Anniversary Edition and Cinderella Special EditionDVDs.
Other Films for which he has either recorded and mixed music, or mixed the final dub of the film include Goldilocks (shot with an iPhone 4), Affliction, Albino Alligator, Army of Darkness, Article 99, Back To The Beach, Batman, Batman Returns, Beetle Juice, Bereft, The Big Squeeze, Cabin Boy, China Moon, Cold Blooded, Cold Feet, >em>Dark Man, Dead Presidents, Desperado, Dwegons, Edward Scissorhands, Face Like a Frog, Freeway, Ghostbusters II, Good Will Hunting, Hair Show, Heat, Hot to Trot, La Bamba, Little Big League, Meet the Deedles, Meet Wally Sparks, Midnight Run, Mission Impossible, Mississippi Burning, My Chauffeur, National Lampoon's Senior Trip, Night Canvas, NightBreed, Nightmare Before Christmas, No Small Affair, Onami, Orgazmo, Pass The Ammo, Pee Wee's Big Top, Phenomenon, Point Break, Purple Rain, Radioactive Dreams, Romy & Michele's High School Reunion, Scrooged, The Secret Garden, Shout, Shrunken Heads, Summer School, The Tigger Movie, Things to Do In Denver W/Y Dead, To Die For, Under Siege, Winter Sea, and Wisdom.
You may contact Bill Jackson at: 818.284.6412, mail@jacksonland.com.
2015, his short film LOST WEEKEND was featured on Robert Rodriguez’s El Rey Network, and as a part of NALIP’s Latino Lens showcase. Remezcla was also kind enough to list him as one of the top 10 Latino filmmakers you should know.
He is also a drummer, comic book reader, and an all around nice guy.
“It didn’t take much to convince me to come onboard The Second Cooler] I can only hope that the journey we took in getting these interviews will likewise inspire others to ask questions, get involved, and more importantly, create change. Mask it what they will, this is an issue about human beings that are dying because of a system that seemingly gives them little or no option. I hope this film will make people stop and think the next time they walk into the grocery section of their local Super Wal-Mart.”
You may contact Adam Valencia at: 520.313.9248, and at gigantisaurus@gmail.com
You may contact Miles Merritt at:
M/K Productions, 7 Buen Pastor
Santa Fe, NM 87508
(505)466-4218
She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and law degree from Fordham University and works as a patent attorney for a start-up biotech company developing stem cell based therapeutics.
You may contact Gail Kempler at:
M/K Productions, 7 Buen Pastor
Santa Fe, NM 87508
(505)466-4218
Wilson was Ellin Jimmerson's editing assistant since the beginning of The Second Cooler project.
During his time as a Creative for Apple Inc., Wilson won numerous awards for his creativity. He also won a contest in which his cinematography was chosen for a worldwide Apple marketing campaign. He has recently developed skills for digital animation and is looking to bring that to the commercial and documentary markets. Wilson is currently accepting new projects. In his free time he enjoys spending time with his son, Elliot, and his wife, Megan. He is a sports fanatic and loves playing as much as he can. He also enjoys going to dinner and the movies.
You may contact Matthew Wilson at:
(256) 542-1207 or matthew@getawaken.com.
Toussaint-Ortiz joined the United States Army when she was eighteen years old. She was sent to Ft. McClellan near Anniston Alabama. She felt that, although she was ready to die for people in the U. S., she was unwelcome and unsafe in Anniston. Nonetheless, Toussaint-Ortiz, who achieved the rank of 2nd Lieutenant, became a U. S. citizen while she was in the Army. When she realized that Spanish-speaking soldiers with drug and alcohol problems received improper treatment because of the language barrier, Toussaint-Ortiz decided to become a counselor. After being discharged from the Army as an Enlisted, she earned a B. A. in Mental Health from the InterAmerican University of Puerto Rico. Most of her work has been as a social worker and case manager. Her desire to work with Spanish-speaking people in need was re-awakened in the late 1990s when undocumented migrants began to appear in large numbers in Alabama.
In 2007, she founded the Huntsville International Help Center ministry, which is associated with the Madison Baptist Association and the Interfaith Mission Service, Inc. The center provides information and referral for victims of domestic violence, parents and children involved with the Department of Human Resources, guest workers and others. In May 2010, Toussaint-Ortiz obtained a degree in paralegal studies. In September 2010, she started a home based business, Ortiz Consulting and Educational Services, doing business in English and Spanish.
You may contact Rosa Toussaint-Ortíz at:
http://www.saica.cc/chaplain.htm (Community Services Chaplain, SAICA, AL)
rosa@huntsvilletucasa.com
www.huntsvilletucasa.com
Prucha has taught Spanish for thirty years, most recently at Randolph School in Huntsville, AL. She also works as a translator, including translating English to Spanish for The Second Cooler. In addition, she does volunteer and mission work. Prucha is married to Stephen J. Prucha and has two grown daughters. She has been a resident of Huntsville, Alabama since 1990.
You may contact Marina Vélez Prucha at: marinaprucha@gmail.com
Dr. Kaiura has over ten years of teaching experience, and currently teaches all levels of Spanish courses at the University of Alabama Huntsville. In addition to her interest in teaching culture and literature, she also has a particular interest in teaching medical Spanish and Spanish for other professional applications. She has also studied and travelled in Mexico and Spain.
Natasha Diez is headquartered in Mexico City. She has a degree in international affairs from Universidad Autonoma de Mexico and a Master’s degree in international business. Her work experience includes jobs with Fundacion Juan de la Cosa and the European Parliament. She has experience in television and academic publishing. she worked for a Mexican cable station, Unicable, on a talk show for teenagers.
Melanie Faithful has over 20 years of experience in marketing and publishing, with experience in both the trade and academic arenas. She has devoted the past 10 years to academic publishing initiatives in Latin America. Politically active since 1979, she has a sustained interest in human rights, peace and justice, and the environment.
Jordan Bullard was with Prospect Hill Community Health Center in Caswell County, North Carolina, offering health care services to guest workers. He also provided original songs for The Second Cooler including Samuel in Chains which was inspired by time among agricultural guest workers.
You may contact Melissa Bailey at (919) 833-5333.
Jordan Bullard was with Prospect Hill Community Health Center in Caswell County, North Carolina, offering health care services to guest workers. He also provided songs for The Second Cooler including Samuel in Chains which was inspired by time among agricultural guest workers.
Jeannie Economos is with Farmworker Association of Florida. Its long-standing mission is to build power among farmworker and rural low-income communities to respond to and gain control over the social, political, workplace, economic, health, and environmental justice issues that impact their lives. FWAF's guiding vision is a social environment where farmworkers' contribution, dignity, and worth is acknowledged, appreciated, and respected through economic, social, and environmental justice. This vision includes farmworkers being treated as equals, and not exploited and discriminated against based on race, ethnicity, immigrant status, or socioeconomic status. Economos has worked for over 20 years on issues of the environment, environmental justice, indigenous and immigrants’ rights, labor, peace, and social justice. Since 2007, she has been the Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida, coordinating pesticide trainings for farmworkers in Florida, identifying workplace violations of Worker Protection Standards, and conducting health care provider trainings on pesticide exposure of farmworkers. She is also engaged in local, state, national, and international coalitions and collaborations related to farmworker rights and health and safety, pesticide reduction, sustainable agriculture, and food sovereignty. She is currently co-coordinator of the Lake Apopka Farmworkers Memorial Quilt Project whose purpose is to raise awareness about the impacts of pesticides on the former farmworkers on Lake Apopka.
To find out more about Farmworker Association of Florida, please visit www.floridafarmworkers.org.
You may contact Jeannie Economos at (407) 886-5151.
Miguel Angel Montalvo was a lawyer specializing in migrant farm worker rights. A member of the Florida Bar Association, his law degree is from the Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Nebraska. He was fluent in English and Spanish. A native of Guanajuato, Mexico, Montalvo went to the United States as an agricultural worker harvesting tomatoes and fruit in Immokalee, Florida. He went on to teach English as a second language to prisoners at Hendry County Correctional Institution. After an internship with the Florida Rural Legal Services in Belle Glade, Florida, he joined its migrant farmworker workgroup as an attorney where he worked from 1994-1998. Afterwards, he founded his own practice in Immokalee, Florida where he specialized in criminal defense, family, worker's compensation, immigration, and personal injury cases. In 2010, Montalvo returned to Guanajuato, Mexico. He offers on-call legal assistance conducting outreach and worker education throughout Mexico for legal proceedings in the United States. He was the owner of El Tapanco in Salvatierra, Guanajuato, a business which produces grass fed, antibiotic, and steroid free organic cattle and fine grains.
Caitlin Ryland is an attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina, Farm Worker Unit in Raleigh. The Farmworker Unit is committed to providing high quality civil legal services to address the special legal needs of migrant and seasonal farmworkers in North Carolina. To find out more about Legal Aid of North Carolina, please visit http://www.farmworkerlanc.org.
You may contact Caitlyn Ryland at (919) 856-2187.
Joanna Wellborn is with Student Action with Farmworker. She was born and raised in the foothills of Western North Carolina. While studying Sociology and Spanish at Appalachian State University, she participated in the Into the Fields Internship in 1996. She has studied documentary photography at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Maine and at Duke's Center for Documentary Studies. Student Action with Farmworkers is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to bring students and farmworkers together to learn about each other’s lives, share resources and skills, improve conditions for farmworkers, and build diverse coalitions working for social change.
SAF works with farmworkers, students, and advocates in the Southeast and nationwide to create a more just agricultural system. Since 1992, SAF has engaged thousands of students, farmworker youth, and community members in the farmworker movement.
For more information on Student Action With Farmworkers, please visit saf-unite.org.
You may contact Joanna Wellborn at (919) 660-3693.
Sr. Obdulia Olivar is a member of the Roman Catholic Guadalupan Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, a priestly Guadalupan Mission. She works with illegal migrants, guest workers, and other Latinos in the area around Montgomery, Alabama.
Sr. Elsi Rosa Reyes is a member of the Roman Catholic Guadalupan Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, a priestly Guadalupan Mission. She works with illegal migrants, guest workers, and other Latinos.
Sr. Rose Marie Martell is an immigration specialist with Catholic Social Services in Montgomery, Alabama. She is a member of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity, a congregation of Roman Catholic sisters which serves in economically depressed areas.
Paul Rodríguez is a landscaper in Huntsville, Alabama.
Before joining the SPLC, Bauer was the legal director of the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers, the legal director of the Virginia ACLU, and an attorney for a legal services program. She is the author of two SPLC reports that have gained national attention—Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States and Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South.
Bauer has testified before the U. S. Congress on issues involving the exploitation of migrant workers.
Beason, who is from Gardendale, Alabama, is one of the most conservative members of the Alabama Legislature. He is a leading opponent of illegal immigration and of the outsourcing of U. S. jobs.
Beason was Vice-Chairman of the Alabama Legislature’s Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission which was established to “conduct a fact finding study on immigration issues and to issue a commission report outlining suggestions and proposals to address the issues of illegal and legal immigration in Alabama.”
Campbell is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). He served as chair of the International Law Section of the Alabama State Bar from 2000 to 2002 and is a founding member of that section. He has served as co-chair of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Immigration Law Committee’s Section on Labor and Employment Law. He was a member of the ABA’s Coordinating Committee on Immigration Law from 1994 to 1998.
Campbell provides legal services and personal and corporate legal representation to US citizens, foreign nationals, and multinational corporations in the US and abroad. He established the Alabama Center for Foreign Investment, LLC, Alabama’s federally designated, statewide Regional Center, and was appointed its General Counsel in 2006.
In 2008, Campbell was a member of the Alabama Legislature’s Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission.
According to Fife, in the early 1980s, the United States government, under President Ronald Reagan, offered political, economic, and military support to government-sponsored death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala. Entire villages were massacred. Refugees poured out. The international community pressured the United States to recognize the victims as refugees and offer them temporary asylum until conditions changed in their countries and they could return.
The United States government refused to recognize them as refugees. Instead, when U. S. agents picked a refugee up on the border or in communities around the country, they put the refugees in detention centers then returned them to the death squads in handcuffs.
According to Fife, the “deportation to death had to be resisted.” In 1981, Southside Presbyterian was the first church in the country to offer sanctuary to Central American refugees. It launched what became known as the Sanctuary Movement which eventually provided safe haven to thousands of refugees in over 500 churches and synagogues around the country. This “new underground railroad” moved people at highest risk to Canada which respected refugee rights.
In response, the US government infiltrated the churches and synagogues, according to Fife, with agents pretending to be volunteers.
In 1986, the government brought alien-smuggling charges against Fife and others including two Catholic priests, five men and women religious, and the Director of the Tucson Ecumenical Council. During the trial, the judge prohibited the defendants from speaking about five subjects: international refugee law, United States refugee law, conditions in El Salvador, conditions in Guatemala, and religious faith.
Fife was convicted and served five years probation.
According to Fife, the US government is continuing its violation of human rights on the border. It has instituted a border enforcement policy involving militarization and death as a deterrent to illegal crossing. Fife calls the strategy of deterrence a “gross violation of human rights.”
To resist this strategy of deterrence, Fife co-founded No More Deaths whose volunteers try to save the lives of migrants in Arizona’s Sonora Desert. In 2002, he co-founded Samaritan Patrol whose volunteers take food, water, and first aid supplies to migrants in the desert.
Fife continues to call attention to US policy and high-level officials who, he believes, continue to illegally and unconstitutionally violate human rights and international law with its border and other policies.
Based on an interview with Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, April 23, 2007.
A Chicana native of Douglas, Arizona, Rubio-Goldsmith completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in Law and Philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She has taught at Pima Community College since 1969 and, since 1983, at the University of Arizona where her focus has been the history of Mexicanas and Chicanas.
Rubio-Goldsmith has taught courses on Mexican and Latin American history and has developed curricula on Afro-American, Yaqui, and Tohono O’odham histories. Her research interests include Mexican women on the U. S. / Mexico border and women who fled the Mexican Revolution to southeastern Arizona. She is an activist committed to immigration rights, women’s rights, and civil rights in general. She is active with Pueblo Por La Paz in Tucson and with the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico.
H2 Guest Workers
Grupos Beta’s workers function as federal police, medics, and social workers. They try to deter migrants planning to cross and rescue those who have attempted to cross and have become injured or lost. They also arrest the “coyotes” (human smugglers) who guide them into the United States in violation of the laws of both countries.
His tireless work and advocacy on behalf of his clients has impacted the lives of innumerable people. After moving to his ranch in Mexico, Miguel continued his advocacy on behalf of the farmworker and immigrant community, and in particular on behalf of H2A and H2B guestworkers. In the past ten years, Miguel’s tireless and almost legendary efforts allowed U.S. based advocacy groups to reach an entirely new level of effectiveness in combating the worst abuses of guestworkers in the US. Several legal precedents of national importance are a direct result of Miguel’s work.
Miguel never forgot his humble roots believed that every person no matter their background or station in life deserved to be treated with the utmost respect. He had an easy smile and a quick wit. A cowboy at heart, Miguel also was a talented artist, a lover of the great outdoors, and an avid reader of great literature.
Miguel Montalvo offered his testimony about the H2 guest worker program for The Second Cooler. In addition, he acted as a producer for the H2 sequence, organizing interviews, driving director, Ellin Jimmerson, and cinematographer, Adam Valencia, to numerous far flung spaces, with his wife, Laura Vasquez, offering his home and hospitality to them, and interpreting. He was a wonderful man.
P. Paraza les aconseja a los migrantes que están para cruzar sobre los peligros graves asociados con cruzar. También les aconseja a los migrantes repatriados de los EE.UU.
He was with Hispanic Ministries of Dothan, Alabama, USA when we interviewed him.
In 1965 Sheen received a Tony Award nomination for his role in The Subject Was Roses. He appeared in such television shows as Route 66, The Outer Limits, and My Three Sons before making his film debut in The Incident in 1967. In the 1970s Sheen had roles in Catch-22, adapted from Joseph Heller’s novel, Badlands (1973) co-starring Sissy Spacek and inspired by the story of serial killer Charles Starkweather, and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). He gave memorable performances in Gandhi (1982), Wall Street (1987), The American President (1995), and Catch Me if You Can (2002).
Sheen’s most recent movie is The Way (2010 )directed by his son Emilio Estevez.
Martin Sheen’s television credits include The Execution of Private Slovik (1974) for which he received an Emmy Award nomination, The West Wing (1999-2006) in which he played President Josiah Bartlett and for which he won a Best Actor Golden Globe Award (2001), and an appearance on his son Charlie Sheen’s comedy Two and a Half Men.
Sheen is a pro-life, anti-nuclear weapons, pro-workers’ rights activist. He is particularly committed to closing the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, otherwise known as the School of the Americas, located on the Ft. Benning, Georgia military base. He believes that the Institute is closely associated with Latin American military dictatorships and political torture. He has been arrested numerous times for non-violent civil disobedience.
Martin Sheen has an honorary doctor of letters degree from Marquette University (2003). In 2007 he realized his lifelong dream of studying at the National University of Ireland in Galway. Notre Dame University awarded him the Laetare Medal, given to prominent Roman Catholics, in 2008.
Shepherd has been affiliated with the Lilly Foundation, the Holocaust Education Fund, and the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum. He has been an invited presenter at the International Association for Genocide Scholars. He was Co-Director of the 2004 Lilly Fellows National Research Conference on Christianity and Human Rights, is the political analyst for CBS’s affiliate station in Birmingham, and serves as Amnesty International’s Legislative Coordinator for the state of Alabama. He is currently at work on studies of comparative genocide with a special focus on Guatemala.
Shepherd’s upper-level teaching includes Politics in Developing Nations, U. S. Foreign Relations, and Latin American Politics, Genocide, and Human Rights.
An adjunct professor at The Cumberland School of Law, Samford University since 1999, and a frequent speaker on current immigration issues, Tedrow carefully monitors developments in immigration law and policy and provides her clients with strategic advice concerning both short and long-term immigration alternatives.
Tedrow currently serves as the First Vice-Chair of the Atlanta Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association covering Alabama and Georgia, and has served on various committees including advocacy for immigration law reform and specific immigrant and immigration law issues before being elected to the executive board in 2009.
Tedrow is the author of numerous speeches and articles on immigration issues. Her awards include Best of the Bar by her peers and one of the Best Lawyers in America for 2001.
Tedrow brings a singular and personal interest in immigration to her practice. She is a naturalized citizen who came to the United States from Budapest, Hungary as a refugee. Her parents had escaped the violent Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by swimming a large waterway into Austria with their two small children—Klari and her sister.
Vásquez-León’s research interests include environmental anthropology, political ecology, fisheries management and maritime anthropology, rural development and agricultural cooperatives, environmental justice, and human dimensions of global environmental change. Her research focuses on the interrelationships between human agency and large-scale structures, with an emphasis on how contradictory processes occurring at a global scale (e.g. neoliberalism and environmentalism) affect state policy, scientific management of natural resources, notions of “sustainable development,” and environmental conservation.
Vásquez-León has on-going projects in the areas of Gulf of California Fisheries, Farming in the Sonora Desert, and Grassroots Collective Organization in rural South America which is funded by the United States Agency of International Development (USAID).
Among her publications are Free Markets and Fair Trade: Collective Livelihood Struggles, The Cooperative Model: Two Case Studies from Paraguay and Walking the Tight Rope: Latin American Agricultural Cooperatives and Small Farmer Participation in Global Markets.
The Hewlett Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Advanced Study of International Development have funded their research. He has served on several scholarship review juries including the National Science Foundation, the Inter-American Foundation, and the Fulbright Commission.
At the University of Arizona Center for Latin American Studies, Whiteford teaches a graduate seminar on "Immigration, Inequality, and the Frontiers of the Americas." He also teaches with others an undergraduate seminar on and the US border. / Mexico.
His numerous publications include:
The Impact of NAFTA on Small Farmers in Mexico, co-edited with Juan Rivera and Manuel Chávez, New York: Scranton University Press, Political Ecology in the Water Culture of Querétaro, co-edited with Sergio Quesada Aldana. Querétaro: Autonomous University of Querétaro, 2006, Security, Water and Development: The Future of the United States-Mexico Border, co-edited with Alfonso Andrés Cortez Lara and Manuel Chávez Márquez, Tijuana: College of the Northern Border, 2005, Globalization, Water, and Health: Resource Management in Times of Scarcity, co-edited with Linda Whiteford, Santa Fe: School of American Research, 2005, Managing a Sacred Gift: Changing Water Management Strategies in Mexico, co-edited with Roberto Melville, La Jolla: Center for United States / Mexico Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2002, New Political Economy of Globalization and Regional Blocks, co-edited with Manuel Gomez Cruz, Rita Schwentesius, and Manuel Chavez, Mexico: Autonomous University of Chapingo, 2001, Crossing Currents: Continuity and Change in Latin America, co-edited with Michael Whiteford, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1998, and Workers from the North: Plantations, Bolivian Labor and the City in Northwest Argentina , Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
Wilson has defied tribal leadership’s ban on placing gallon jugs of water on reservation lands for use by for illegal migrants traveling through them.
April 26, 2016, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson.
March 23, 2016. Kinomondo Series, Texas Christian University. Fort Worth, Texas.
Q&A with Director, Ellin Jimmerson, follows screening. Free. Public.
May 9, 2015. 6:30 PM. United Methodist Church of the Resurrection. Leawood, Kansas.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson. Free. Public.
May 9, 2015, 2:30 PM. Countryside United Methodist Church, Topeka, Kansas.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson. Free. Public.
May 8, 2015. 7 PM. Trinity United Methodist Church, Lincoln, Nebraska.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson. Free. Public.
May 7, 2015, 7 PM. St. Paul United Methodist Church, Omaha, Nebraska.
Q&A with Director, Ellin Jimmerson, follows. Free. Public.
April 9, 2015, 7 PM. Wingate Hall, Wake Forest School of Divinity, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson. Free. Public.
March 18, 2015, 7 PM. College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.
Q&A follows with the film's Mike Wilson.
February 26, 2015, 6:30 PM. Wingate Hall, Wake Forest University School of Divinity, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson. Free. Public. CANCELLED -- WEATHER
February, 5, 2015, 7:00 PM, Liberal Arts #120, Building 18, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona.
Q&A follows with Robert Neustadt. Free. Public.
November, 21, 2014, 6:00 PM, Flying Monkey Arts Center, Lowe Mill, Huntsville, Alabama.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson. Admission: $10.
October 28, 2014, 6:00 PM, Birmingham Southern College, The Norton Theater, Birmingham, Alabama.
Q&A afterwards with Ellin Jimmerson. Public.
October 9, 2014, 7:00 PM, Bank of America Theater, National Hispanic Cultural Center, host, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson.
September 25, 2014, 5:30 PM, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Charger Union Theater, Huntsville, Alabama.
Q&A afterwards with Ellin Jimmerson. Reception follows. Public.
September 21, 2014, 3:00 PM, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 510 W. Main Street, Franklin, Tennessee.
Q&A with Ellin Jimmerson afterward. Public.
March 30, 2014, 3:00 PM, Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois.
Q&A with Ellin Jimmerson afterward. Public.
March 28, 2014, 6;30 PM, Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois.
Q&A with Ellin Jimmerson afterward. Public.
February 21, 2014, 3:30 PM, Vanderbilt University, Panel Discussion on Art, Advocacy, and Action
with Ellin Jimmerson, Brenda Perez (Worker Dignity) and Stephanie Teatro (TIRRC). Immigration is the theme.
February 20, 2014, 6:00 PM, The Cal Turner Program on Moral Leadership, Art, Advocacy, and Action Symposium.
Benton Chapel, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee. Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson.
February 15, 2014, New Mexico Faith Coalition for Immigrant Justice, St. Pious High School, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson. Free. Public.
January 10-16, 2014, 6:30 PM, Friday & Saturday, 7:15, Sunday, Tuesday-Thursday.
The Magic Lantern Theater, Spokane, WA. Public.
OFFICIAL SELECTION!
November, 17, 2013, Boston Latino International Film Festival, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. Public.
OFFICIAL SELECTION!
November 15, 2013, El Cine Palacio, Blue Mall, 7:15 PM, Dominican Republic Global Film Festival, Santo Domingo. Public.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson.
OFFICIAL SELECTION!
November 8, 2013, 2:20 PM, Red Rock International Film Festival, Zion Canyon, Utah,
Hurricane Fine Arts Center. Public.
October 28, 2013, DeSales University, Center Valley, Pennsylvania.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson. Public.
October 27, 2013, St. Luke's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 417 N. 7th Street, Allentown, PA 18102. Public.
Q&A follows with Director, Ellin Jimmerson.
July 26, 2013, Trinity United Methodist Church, Airport Road, Huntsville, AL. Public. Fund-raiser benefitting the Interfaith Mission Service, Inc. and the Huntsville Immigration Initiative, LLC, the producer of The Second Cooler.
$3,000 raised!!!
June 23, 2013, Sunday, 5:45 PM, Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Manhattan Film Festival, New York City, New York, 10011.
Winner, Film Heals Award!
June 15, 2013, Sunday, 7:30 PM, Mary Pickford Theater, AMFM Festival of Music, Art, and Film, Cathedral City, California.
Winner, Film 4 Change Award!
Winner, Special Humanitarian Award! for Director, Ellin Jimmerson
OFFICIAL SELECTION!
April 14, 2013, Sunday, 3:00 PM, The Screening Room, 127 East Congress, Arizona International Film Festival, Tucson, AZ. Public.
April 6, 2013, Alliance of Baptists Annual Gathering, First Baptist Church Greenville, Greenville, SC. Private.
March 8, World Premiere, Peace on Earth Film Festival, Claudia Cassidy Theater, Chicago, IL. Public.
Winner, Best Feature Documentary!
October 25, 2012, Restorative Justice Conference, Columbia High School, Huntsville, AL. Private.
October 13, 2012, US Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, AL. Private.
Mizue Aizeki is a documentary photographer and social justice organizer based in New York, New York. Aizeki works primarily at the intersection of the criminal justice and immigration system to stop the deportation of immigrants with convictions.
Jordan Bullard is a singer / songwriter from Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina who lives and works in New York City. He accompanies himself with guitar, cello, and harmonica. He graduated from Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina in 2006. He received a Masters degree in Spanish in May, 2009 from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
In 2010, Bullard recorded a seven song album called Border Songs: Movers, Shakers, and Prayers. His searing, highly-personal songs are documents of his experiences filtered through the Bible and Christianity.
Bullard lent three of them to The Second Cooler. “Commonwealth” interprets a passage from the book of Ephesians and is a prayer of hope that the US will bring down the dividing wall of hostility and be unified as citizens of the community of God. “Geronimo’s Daughter” was inspired by Domitila Geronimo Silva, from Guerrero, Mexico, an indigenous woman who spoke very little Spanish. A Border Patrol agent had hit her in the back with a rifle. While the Migrant Resource Center was documenting the assault, employees of the Mexican Consulate came and documented it as well. They took “a very awkward and sad picture of her. Domitila (Geronimo’s Daughter) was not happy to have her photo taken. The bit about manufactured dreams of men in suits and ties is me addressing the American Dream. Because I saw countless American Dreams dashed while I was on the border. I was feeling helpless. I wanted to communicate my belief that blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Why do we continue to hurt them? Why do we not treat people as blessings?” “Birmingham” was recorded for The Second Cooler at Ellin Jimmerson’s request. Bullard wrote it after meeting a guy named Sergio in Agua Prieta who had been a green energy technician in Texas working on windmills. He was married to a US citizen and had two children who were US citizens. He wanted to do the right thing and get his papers in order. He went to the US Embassy in Ciudad Juarez where he was told he could live legally in the US if he returned to Mexico for two years. That meant two years away from his wife, his kids, his work. So he had no option but to cross back into the US. The song was written in the midst of SB 1070 fervor in Arizona which, says Bullard, “very much parallels aspects of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s in Alabama. So the song is a question to the politicians in the US: “Do we really want to do this over again? Do we really want another Birmingham?”
Proceeds from the sale of Border Songs: Movers, Shakers, and Prayers benefit the Migrant Resource Center in Agua Prieta, Sonora, México.
You may contact Jordan Bullard at: jbobbylew@gmail.com.
Randal “Randy” E. Culbreth was a photographer based in Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham and its history were often the subject of his photos. Culbreth’s collections include 2,000 photographs of stained glass windows in Birmingham and Atlanta churches including the bombed and replaced “Jesus Knocking at the Door” in Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church and the window given by the people of Wales in memory of the four little girls who died in the bombing there. A number of his window photos have become subjects of his own compositions.
Culbreth’s interest in politics, economics, and the relationship that he, as a child of God, has to marginalized people subtly underlines much of his photographic work. As he has said, “I daily place my life in God’s hands. He chases me down daily to remind me that He loves me, even me, especially me, without qualification.”
As proof of that love, Culbreth has been actively involved as a volunteer or board member of a number of legal clinics, arts community non-profits, and faith-based organizations in Dallas, Atlanta, and Birmingham. “If you want to better your own life,” he says, “improve someone else’s.”
Harchanko is an electric cellist and composer based in Salem, Oregon. He has written extensively for traditional instruments, large ensembles, digital media, and film. Harchanko received an ASCAP Film Scoring Fellowship to the Aspen Music Festival and has received fellowships from the Lilly Endowment and the University of Texas. His works have been performed across North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia including performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Colourscape installation, France’s Bourges and Videoformes festivals, The Korean Electroacoustic Festival, and New Music Tasmania.
You may contact Joe Harchanko at: harchanko@gmail.com.
Leticia Huerta earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1985 and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting in 1991 at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.Huerta has exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, Texas, the San Antonio Museum of Art, in San Antonio, Texas, the Meadows Museum in Dallas, Texas, and the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, Texas have collected her work. Huerta has attended residencies at the McColl Center for the Arts in Charlotte, North Carolina, Coronado Studio in Austin, Texas, Self Help Graphics in Los Angeles, California, and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont.
Huerta is a native San Antonian. Her family dates back several generations in San Antonio and Brownsville, Texas. She maintains a studio and home outside of San Antonio. You may contact her at leticiavhuerta@yahoo.com.
Michael Hyatt’s interest in photography began in 1968 after he saw the documentary work of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. This led to an active eleven-year period doing street photography in Boston and Los Angeles. His portfolios from this period focus on Boston’s Italian neighborhood and on the residents and transients in and around the Chapman Hotel at the corner of 5th & Wall Street in Los Angeles.
Between 1986, when he moved to Arizona, and 2002, he photographed a variety of subject matters. Then in October, 2002, Hyatt began documenting the efforts of Humane Borders, the volunteer organization that places water stations in the desert to help prevent migrant deaths, and lobbying for more humane border policies. A year later, he began documenting the humanitarian work of Samaritans, a group which takes food, water, and first aid supplies onto the migrant trails, and of the No More Deaths coalition of migrant relief groups. During this period, the University of Arizona Press invited Hyatt to photograph Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument west of Tucson on the US / Mexico border for its Desert Places book series. The result was Organ Pipe–Life on the Edge, published in August, 2004. Soon after, The University of Arizona Special Collections, associated with The Center for Creative Photography, commissioned Hyatt to produce a limited edition box set of photographs. Hyatt’s contribution was Along the Migrant Trail which contains thirteen gelatin silver prints sized 4″ X 5″. The set is displayed in a jewel box with a cover sleeve, list of photographs, and a booklet describing the work illustrated with three additional photographs.
In May, 2007, The University of British Columbia awarded Hyatt and cultural geographer Juanita Sundburg a Hampton Research Fund Grant titled Documenting New Cultural Landscapes of Immigration in the United States-Mexico Borderlands. The same month, Great Circle Books in Los Angeles published Hyatt’s monograph Migrant Artifacts: Magic and Loss in the Sonoran Desert. In April, 2008, it won an annual Eric Hoffer Independent Book Publishing Award in the category of Art. Photographer’s Forum included the book’s cover photograph in its Annual–Best of 2009.
To view Hyatt’s award winning book Migrant Artifacts: Magic & Loss in the Sonoran Desert go to Photography, then Books at:
www.michael-hyatt.com.
Valarie James is a sculptor, writer and Benedictine Oblate from the Arizona/Mexico border, specializing in Contemplative Arts. She has designed and created public memorials that mark those who have died in the desert crossing the U.S./Mexico border and most recently, a collaborative International Installation on the hardship and hopes of family and migration.
Classically trained in Pietrasanta, Italy and the Academy of Art in San Francisco among others, James is a former Art Therapist and Sculpture Instructor. She and her art have been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, Fiber Arts Magazine, Italy’s Corriere della Sera, and on Univisión in Miami to name a few and the artist’s own border arts essays have been published in the Hummingbird Review and Science of Mind.
Microwave Dave is an Alabama traditional blues musician who, with his band, “The Nukes,” has an international following. Writer Stephen King ended his seven year column on popular art in Entertainment Weekly by writing, “I want to beg you to . . . [go to YouTube and] check out Microwave Dave and the Nukes blasting ‘Highway 49’. . . .That electric slide will change your way of life.”
The Huntsville Immigration Initiative, LLC commissioned Microwave Dave to do two pieces for The Second Cooler which he provided enthusiastically and pro-bono. The resulting “Why Did You Take My Job?”, a song in the modern country blues idiom, expresses real anger over the recklessness of corporations and politicians who just can’t get enough, coveting even blue collar workers’ factory jobs. His Ry Cooder influenced Lowebow instrumental, “Guests Who Work,” suggests the alarming nature of the Federal guest worker program.
You may contact Microwave Dave Gallaher at http://www.microwavedave.com/home.htm
Barbara Mitchell has sewn and stitched most of her life. She has taken courses in drawing, watercolor, acrylics, and art history. Her media are fabric and fibers. She makes contemporary art quilts, clergy stoles, liturgical banners, fiber-wrapped wall hangings, and one-of-a-kind purses.
All Mitchell’s designs are original. They include such abstract designs as “Everything is Not Always in Black and White” and such representational designs as “Exploring Turtle Island.”
Early in 2011, The Huntsville Immigration Initiative, LLC commissioned a piece of fiber art for The Second Cooler. Ellin Jimmerson wanted her to help interpret the devastating impact of the Central American Free Trade Agreement on the once-thriving textile industry in Fort Payne, Alabama. Reflecting her interest in architecture, she conceived and executed “Transitions,” which interprets a sock factory moving from a brightly lit building to a closed and dark one.
Mitchell’s website is www.barbara-mitchell.com. You may contact her at contactbabette@barbara-mitchell.com.
Alberto Morackis was a muralist, painter, and illustrator in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. He was a principal artist at Nogales’s important Taller Yonke (Junk Workshop). He exhibited individually and collectively in Mexico and the United States. He received numerous honors from the Sonora Culture Institute and the US / Mexico border art competition “Ford-Pollock-Suigueiros” funded by the National Council for Culture and the Ford Foundation. He was a member of Nogales’s Municipal Council for Culture and Arts from 1999-2000.
Only a few weeks after we interviewed him in his studio, Morackis died unexpectedly of pneumonia. Our interview was his final one.
Photo by Joel Smith
Tucson’s “Pablo” is a third-generation tile artist, troubadour, and volunteer with Humane Borders, a group which legally places water for migrants in Arizona’s Sonora Desert. When he performs, he always wears a migrant’s bandana which he has found in the desert. Of the habit he says, “I wear them because they carry the spirit of my people–the brown Aztecs, Mayans and all the other indigenes, some who survive and some who perish in our back yard–the unforgiving desierto.” He lent two of his songs to The Second Cooler and a third to the documentary’s CD.
You may contact Pablo at pabloperegrina@gmail.com.
Quíroz is Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, USA. His contemporary narrative paintings have been exhibited internationally and reviewed by many magazines including Art in America, Artforum and many others. His satirical paintings are noted for his outraged attention to murderous injustices including the killing fields of Cambodia, rafters of Haitians drowning in the Caribbean Sea, and people “disappeared” by their own governments in South America. For many years, his aluminum cutouts detailing certain realities of illegal migration were on the U.S. border wall on the Mexican side in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.
Reynolds formally trained in radio at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies after which she worked with Atlantic Public Media on Cape Cod and with the Peabody Award winning Transom.org, while reporting for the local NPR station, WCAI. She has also reported, written and produced for the WNYC newsroom and for the New York Press Club Award winning political news website, WNYC's It's a Free Country.
Her work has taken her around the globe and has been aired on NPR's All Things Considered and Weekend Edition and other national programs including Studio 360 and The Story. She has taught radio with WNYC's Radio Rookies, a youth radio project in New York City, the Transom Story Workshop and at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU.
Guadalupe Serrano lives in Nogales, Sonora, México where he is an active muralist, painter, and illustrator. He is a member of Nogales’ highly-regarded “Taller Yonke” or Junk Workshop. Serrano produces art for public, urban spaces. Among the Workshop’s most significant works are the highly colored, mixed media series depicting migration issues installed on the Méxican side of the United States Department of Homeland Security’s corrugated metal and barbed wire fence which divides the US from Mexico. The series was co-produced with the late Alberto Morackis.
Serrano later generously donated the use of his paintings, “Untitled (with Angels and Border Wall),” “Untitled (with Helicopter and Border Dogs),” and “Juan Soldado.”
Photographer Joel Smith is a United States Air Force brat and Marine Corps veteran. He resides in his place of birth, Tucson, Arizona, USA. Currently, he is Operations Manager for Humane Borders, a 501 C-3 non-profit organization which places emergency water stations on routes used by migrants coming north through the Sonora Desert. He graciously lent multiple of his photos to The Second Cooler
You may contact Joel Smith and find out more about Humane Borders at www.humaneborders.org.
Tony Zapata is a hip hop artist living in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. He was born in Monclova, Coahuila, Mexico, a city located three hours from Mexico’s border with Texas, USA. His family moved to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico looking for better economic opportunites. When things didn’t work out, and they became increasingly concerned about the violence of the border, the family migrated to Georgia, USA. Later, they moved to Alabama which, they felt, was a friendlier state to live in.
You can buy them at: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/realrevolution and at: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/tonyzapata or on i tunes at:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/real-revolution/id373700119?ign-mpt+uo%3D4 and http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/elmomento-esperado/id305552008
You may contact Tony Zapata at:
tony z - tonyzzboyz77@hotmail.com
"Highly recommended!"
"In the dialogue and debate about the place of LGBTQ persons in Christian churches, too often only the voices of straight, white, usually male, scholars and theologians are heard. Rainbow in the Word introduces us to the beautiful voices of LGBTQ persons themselves, people who, against all odds, have kept the faith and who can speak for themselves. No conversation about these courageous and articulate Christians should take place without their own voices being heard. Highly recommended!" — Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration
"Beautiful book!"
"An interesting thing happened to me the other day, I had met a young man who was down on his luck. While we were talking, he said , "I've never liked it when people say, 'act normal', or 'be normal'," he said. "I have always thought that was a negative thing to say to someone, why don't we say, be natural, or act natural... that seems so much truer to who you actually are". I loved that, then I opened my new book, Rainbow in the Word and one of the chapters is "The Non-Normative Jesus", I thought, "wow ,how cool is that! "Bravo, Ellin Jimmerson and all the wonderful collaborators of this beautiful book!!"— Lauren K.
Great read!"
"No better treatment of the LGBT issue for serious Christian readers."—Dr. Lynn E. Mitchell, University of Houston, author of Walking in the Light: How Christians Face Ethical Issues
"A love song to the Christian scriptures"
Ellin Sterne Jimmerson is an ordained clergywoman, film-maker, and prophet who has spent most of her life asking hard questions and seeking nuanced answers that take the Gospels seriously. Anyone who offers Dr. Jimmerson a facile answer walks away in tatters—her love of the Scriptures and their implications for how we treat each other won't allow for platitudes and memorized answers. Her Rainbow in the World: LGBTQ Christians' Biblical Memoirs interrogates our assumptions about Queer People and their approaches to the very texts that have many times been used as a weapon against them. The bravery that these writers show in their willingness to undergo this task and their answers to Jimmerson's hard questions should inspire all of us who love the Christian Scriptures. There are works from several genres here: apologetics, confession, poetry, autobiography--all with a strongly personal hermeneutic that draws the reader into a deeply wounded yet joyous approach to our shared heritage. I highly recommend this for any mature reader—but especially for those who are seeking to answer the hard questions about how our love of the Scriptures fits together with our understanding of sexuality, gender and identity." — Dr. Pamela H. Long, Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama
"Water to a parched land"!
"There is so much noise in the church these days, particularly the United Methodist Church, as debate continues as to whether LGBTQ people have a right to be recognized as people—children of God even—within church institutions. And the more the debate continues I am more and more convinced that conservative, anti-LGBTQ groups are dedicated to simply creating noise. The louder the noise the more attention is drawn away from the theological truth that the biblical narrative is one that is entirely about liberation. Noise distracts us from what matters and that is the voice of those directly impacted: LGBTQ people themselves.
And so this is what I find so refreshing about a book I recently read and tremendously enjoyed and one I hope you will read as well: Rainbow in the Word: LGBTQ Christians’ Biblical Memoirs, edited by my friend, Ellin Sterne Jimmerson. Through a collection of writers that take the reader through Scripture and who personally and theologically reflect on passages, we are reminded of how utterly stupid and futile, yet harmful, the debate about full recognition of LGBTQ people in the church is. It is too late! LGBTQ people are not only our sisters and brothers in Christ; they are our pastors, teachers, theologians, and prophets. Right now the only viable path forward for the church is to listen and learn. Not to do so only creates more harm.
For me, I am listening and learning and Rainbow in the Word is an incredibly helpful tool in that process.
I found myself, as I read this book, looking at the biblical passages that the chapter reflections were based on. It made me hungry for Scripture! And as with all good theology, I found the reflections from this collection of authors (most of whom I have never heard of before, which is so refreshing!) to be encouraging and challenging.
Here are just a few moments from the book that stand out to me.
Jonathan Freeman-Coppadge’s personal reflection on Abraham building an altar to sacrifice his son Isaac was so vulnerable and powerful as he shared his struggle to live into who God has created and called him to be amidst the unholy condemnation that has sadly sounded through his heart and mind for far too long. But praise God for liberation!
Likewise, Kenny Pierce, in his reflection on Esther (a book I dearly love) reminds us that sin is the failure to recognize our identity and God’s call upon our lives, especially among LGBTQ people. He writes prophetically and liberatively, "I've come to believe that the great sin on the part of our community - and the larger church and society that would stifle this very nature God has created - is that of silencing our stories."
Once again Kenny Pierce writes a haunting reflection based on Isaiah and taken from a memory of caring for AIDS patients. It was his personal interaction with one patient who was in the late stages of the disease that uncovered Kenny’s own struggle to look past him; to make him invisible. I was so challenged by this chapter in particular – not to be so busy serving the world that we forget the humanness of those we serve, even and especially when that humanness if difficult to look at. This chapter still haunts me.
Richard Barham’s chapter on Jesus naming the good fruit and his own journey towards full acceptance of himself and past the harmful compartmentalization that stunted his spiritual growth and acceptance for so long, reminds us all of the power of the Jesus’ call is for every aspect of our lives and not just those deemed acceptable by others.
Jennifer Hasler identifies her story of transitioning to Mary’s song and story. Like Mary, Jennifer felt fear and uncertainty in transitioning to who God created her to be. And it was because she transitioned that she has found that her faith is not merely an “intellectual pursuit,” but an authentic and profoundly transformative relationship.
Lastly, Andrew Dykstra’s describes his own liberation when he realized that “Jesus himself did not present as heteronormative…When I finally came to believe that Jesus stands in solidarity with all of us by being like us. I felt like a prisoner set free. By relinquishing privilege, by choosing to be a ‘eunuch for the Kingdom,’ I believe Christ elevates those of us who are non-normative, embracing us who were once excluded.”
Amen. Dykstra rightly summarizes the power of Rainbow in the Word, the voices of those who once had been castigated and marginalized (and tragically, still are far too often) are embraced by Jesus the Liberator." —Bill Mefford, Fig Tree Revolution
"One amazing read!"
"Life stories can remake today's theology," James W. McClendon, Jr. once said, and in this movingly penned. intellectually diverse, and spiritually transformative volume of story-theology, Ellin Jimmerson and her contributors show us how. Rainbow in the Word offers earthbound earthbound models of Christian desire for transcendent meaning, which is no small accomplishment. This book's wisdom has been forged on life's touch anvil, yet each tale in it will endure, branded by the ability to take theology in some unexpectedly new directions. One amazing read!"— Darren J. N. Middleton, Texas Christian University.
"Amazing, loving book!"
"A book for all folks who would want a Scriptural understanding of how non-normative individuals come to know themselves as Beloved Children of God. I’m a cis-gendered RN who started caring for HIV/AIDS patients during the 1980’s. I had little understanding of what being gay meant other than that my patients were not just suffering physically but mentally as well as spiritually. The Christ I learned from them lives, and the essays offered here give an antidote to the toxic cherry picking and clobber verses. Pastors, LBGTQ, allies, parents, it’s for everyone." — Creewoman
"Informing heads, reaching hearts"
"Are you a secular person or someone of deep religious faith? Are you "straight" or do you fall within that broad, diverse demographic category bearing the label LGBTQ? Whatever your answer to that question, personally and in the depths of your essence, you should read this book. Gifts of inestimable value, that's what you will find from the contributions of the people who offer their observations, reflections, and conclusions in this anthology. In common with other LGBTQ people, the participants have experienced judgement and hostility. They have also engaged with the entirety of biblical text, including those "clobber verses." The insights they provide in their reconciliation of faith and essence are meaningful and profound. It is a slim volume, a newly-opened door to the participation of others in books possibly to come." — Dr. David Gillespie, political scientist
"Invitation to a dying church"
"An entire reformation was birthed when the Bible was given to the common worshiper. It's amazing what the Spirit will do when she is not withheld from those who need her most. In Rainbow in the Word, Ellin Jimmerson invites a dying Church to free itself from the constraints of its long-held homophobia and exposes it to the biblical insights of today's most marginalized voices. New life will emerge on the other side of this."—John C. Dorhauer, General Minister and President, United Church of Christ.
"Inspiring, devastating, healing!"
“Rainbow in the Word: LGBTQ Christians’ Biblical Memoirs offers a diverse collection of narratives told in a unified voice: God not only loves queer people, but God is revealed through queer lives. Indeed, the narratives remind us that the marginalization of queer people from Christian practice amounts to a marginalization of God, Godself. The stories are told primarily in the mode of testimony and, in that mode, they redeploy a traditionally conservative Christian form for progressive purposes. They are poetic, at times inspiring, at times devastating and at times healing. And most of all, they open up the Christian Scriptures in compelling, creative ways.” — Natalie Wigg-Stevenson, Assistant Professor of Contextual Education and Theology at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto
"Will draw you closer to God"
"God always invites the uninvited, welcomes the unwelcome, includes the excluded, and loves the unloved. Even when we don't. These beautiful stories by LGBTQ Christians will draw you closer to God and God's inviting, welcoming, inclusive love." — Nathan Hamm, social media theologian
"Refreshing and powerful!
"I love that this book about LGBTQ Christians and their interactions with the Bible dispenses with the debate over whether the Bible condemns homosexuality or non-normative gender expression, etc. It goes right to the heart of the experiences of real people. And like Kenny Pierce, one of the contributors, points out in one of his essays, there is holy, healing power in sharing stories and experiences. To often, the right/wrong debate in conservative circles paints LGBTQ identity and Christian identity as incompatible, but these essays show how wrong that kind of reductive thinking is, because here we have earnest believers wrestling with their faith, God, and the Bible like so many Jacobs. Based on the responses of their communities, they have had so many reasons to simply let go and give up the fight, but you can tell in their stories that they have held on, refusing to let go, and have found blessing as a result." — Dr. Leslie M. Kaiura, PhD, University of Alabama in Huntsville
Rainbow = God's promise"
"Ellin Sterne Jimmerson has assembled deeply personal memoirs of people who experienced rejection by their religious communities because they did not conform to societal expectations of gender expression or sexual orientation. However, these writers refused to go away. Each person in their unique way seized from Scripture stories that resonated with them, that conveyed to them God’s deep commitment to them. They found a God who gives preference to the marginalized, a God who is one with the excluded. In the written word, they each found God’s rainbow." —Andrew Dykstra, contributor
"Unique invitation to brighter hues"
"When so many conversations around LGBTQ people in the church centers around debating our legitimacy, Rainbow in the Word reminds us that our sexual identity is not a liability to be defended but inessential contribution to the Church's understanding of Scripture and of God. This unique book invites us into richer hues and brighter colors as we encounter the Creator whose divine image is reflected in us all."—Jamie Arpin-Ricci, author of The Cost of Community
"An enlightening journey"!
"An enlightening journey into the Bible through the eyes of LGBTQ+ individuals. This is a new view of the Bible, not in defense of the validation for LGBTQ+ people or the continued dialogue in defense, but a look at how LGBTQ+ people have been empowered and found strength within scripture. This is encouraging to see for family and friends of LGBTQ+ people and for LGBTQ+ people who often do not find a resemblance of their life in their spiritual homes." — Riley, GoodReads reviewer
"Wrestles blessings from sacred texts!"
"Queer voices in Theology are important, especially after the release of documents like the Nashville Statement that attempt to establish a very narrow Evangelical orthodoxy.
I am probably very traditional in my theology even as a queer man — several of these essays made me uncomfortable. Yet these short reflections demonstrate a deep love for the Bible and the God revealed by wrestling a blessing from these sacred texts, and especially in the person of Jesus the Christ." — Robert, GoodReads reviewer
Ellin Jimmerson conceived, compiled, and edited Rainbow in the Word. She holds a Master of Arts in US History from Samford University, a Master of Theological Studies with a concentration in Latin American liberation theology from Vanderbilt Divinity School, and a PhD in US History from the University of Houston. Her specialization is the intersection of politics and Christianity. She wrote and directed the award winning migrant advocacy documentary, The Second Cooler, narrated by Martin Sheen. An ordained Baptist minister, Jimmerson gained international attention when she officiated at the first same sex wedding in Madison County, Alabama. Following the wedding, she resigned her position as Minister to the Community at her home church in Huntsville, Alabama which subsequently was disfellowshipped by the Southern Baptist Convention. She is the author of numerous articles on issues surrounding both immigration and lgbtq rights. You can follow her on Facebook (Ellin Jimmerson) and Twitter @EllinJimmerson.
Prof. Matson wrote the Foreword for Rainbow in the Word. She is the Director of Field Education and Assistant Professor of the Practice of Ministry at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Prior to coming to Vanderbilt, she served as Chaplain at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville, TN. Prof. Matson holds a BS in Religion from Phillips University in Enid, OK (1977) a Master of Divinity (with distinction) from Phillips Theological Seminary in Enid, OK (1982). Additionally, she has completed a residency year in Clinical Pastoral Education and has done graduate study in Ethics. Prof. Matson's professional interests and expertise include theological reflection on practice, the global dimensions of theological education, and the capacities needed for religious leaders in our times. Prof. Matson is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). She is currently a Member-at-Large on the Steering Committee for the Association of Theological Field Education.
Richard Barham was reared in Bridgeport, Alabama. He started preaching on a regular basis at age fifteen. He graduated from the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) with a Bachelor of Arts in history and a minor in religious studies. He attended the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Before coming out, he served as an interim pastor at First Baptist Church of Bridgeport, Alabama and as pastor of Kennedy Baptist Church in Kennedy, Alabama. After coming out, Barham served as the associate pastor at Covenant Community Church in Birmingham. Since December, 1999, he has served as the senior pastor of Spirit of the Cross Church in Huntsville, Alabama. He has volunteered for various community LGBTQ organizations and has served on the board of directors of the AIDS Action Coalition of Huntsville (now Thrive Alabama), Soulforce Alabama, and GLBT Advocacy and Youth Services (now Free2Be). He is a frequent guest on local college panels and local media regarding gay and religious issues.
Riley Chattin is a Spiritual Director in Roanoke, Virginia. He is a self professed seeker of truth in Christianity. It was in gender transition that he experienced the undeniable connect to God that we all share.
S. R. Davis is genderqueer and teaches high school students with developmental disabilities. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy and a Master of Arts in English from McMaster University, a Bachelor of Education from York University, and studied theology at Emmanuel College of the University of Toronto. She is passionate about disability rights, opera, and the novels of Marilynne Robinson. She lives with her partner, one-year-old daughter, and a retired racing greyhound named Lady Gaga in Toronto, Canada. Please contact her @SRLimDavis.
Lisa A. Dordal holds a Master of Divinity and a Master of Fine Arts, both from Vanderbilt University, and currently teaches in the English Department at Vanderbilt. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Robert Watson Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals including Best New Poets, Cave Wall, CALYX, The Greensboro Review, Vinyl Poetry, and The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Mosaic of the Dark, was published by Black Lawrence Press (2018). She lives in Nashville, Tennessee. For more information about her poetry or to be added to her mailing list, please visit her website at lisadordal.com.
Andrew Dykstra was born in the city of Bolsward in the province of Friesland in the Netherlands. With his parents and his sister, Sofie, Dykstra immigrated to Canada in 1952. He was raised in the Reformed Church (RCA) but at age 22 became a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Feeling that there was no home for him there as a gay man, Dykstra eventually withdrew for twenty years but returned in 2000. He retired from the printing business in 2016 after working in various capacities for 47 years. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada where he is an active member of Immanuel Seventh-day Adventist Church. He can be contacted at adykstra@teksavvy.com.
Jonathan Freeman-Coppadge is a writer and a new father. He is the fiction editor at Oyster River Pages, and he teaches English at Groton School where he lives with his husband and their son. You can find him on Medium and Twitter @jdcoppadge.
Jennifer Hasler is a part time Theology student at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a full professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She transitioned from male to female between 2006 and 2012, keeping both her academic position, and more importantly, her family together. Hasler has been married for twenty-one years and has two children, ages seventeen and fourteen. Her entry was written to commemorate the 18th Transgender Day of Remembrance, a solemn day in the transgender community which remembers those who were murdered during the previous year. She particularly wanted to remember Gwen Araujo, a Fremont, California trans woman who was killed by four men after forcibly finding out she was transgender.
Jeff Hood holds a Master of Arts, a Master of Science, a Master of Divinity, a Master of Theology, and a Doctor of Ministry. He is an activist theologian and author of fifteen books and numerous articles. In 2013, Hood was awarded PFLAG Fort Worth’s Equality Award for activism and service. In 2016, Hood's book, The Courage to Be Queer, was named the third best religion book of the year at the Independent Publishers Book Awards. Through consistent media appearances, Hood has been able to share the message of queerness with a broad audience. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Ray Jordan currently serves as the Interim Senior Pastor of Central Congregational United Church of Christ of Dallas, Texas, after serving as Central's associate pastor. He has also worked in the public and private sectors as a public school teacher, university professor, non-profit administrator, corporate trainer, and consultant. Although originally from Oakland, California, Ray was raised by his grandmother on a farm in rural Arkansas, where he often traversed the intersectionality of his race (African American), class (poor), and sexuality (gay). Ray holds a Bachelor of Science in Health Education, a Master of Arts in Teaching, a Master of Theological Studies from Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology, and is completing his PhD (ABD) from Union Institute and University. In addition to pastoring, Ray serves on the board of directors of the South Central Conference of the United Church of Christ, teaches classes in Interdisciplinary Studies and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington, teaches classes in Political Science at Southern Methodist University, and spends time with his three children, Trey, Alley, and Joshua Caleb.
Tyler Heston is a second-year Master of Divinity student at Brite Divinity School and serves as the Assistant Minister for Middle School at University Christian Church in Fort Worth, Texas. He graduated with a degree in Religion in Society and a certificate in nonprofit management from the University of Memphis. Raised in a non-denominational evangelical church in suburban Memphis, Tennessee, Tyler joined Kingsway Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) after coming out as gay while he was in college and now serves as a council member for the GLAD Alliance, which works toward “transforming the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) into a just and inclusive church that welcomes persons of all gender expressions and sexual identities into the full life and leadership of the church.” Aside from school and ministry, he enjoys a variety of things, such as Sufjan Stevens, The X-Files, traveling, and eating sushi with friends.
Todd McGraw grew up in rural West Virginia where his spiritual life was basically nonexistence. His family attended church because, like many other families in his community, they knew that to keep up with the Jones, they had to pray with the Jones. They attended church, but for him God and faith seemed distant and bleak. He was a young, gay male struggling to reconcile a religious teaching that shunned homosexuals with the reality that, in spite of all the bravado and gentility, he was gay and could do nothing to change it. He attended the University of Georgia on a swimming scholarship. After college, he accepted a lucrative corporate job in Atlanta. At twenty-three, God became the epicenter of his life. He left the corporate job to attend Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. A youth pastor at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church, McGraw lives in Fort Worth, Texas.
Kenny Pierce, a native of Southern California, came out in 1985 as the AIDS epidemic raged around him in the Greater Los Angeles area, and later during his years spent living in San Francisco. He is passionate about God and about the needs of the changing Church. He is dedicated to building bridges to the survivors and their families and friends, alienated and disillusioned by the Church’s betrayal and silence during the “gay genocide” in those earliest years of HIV/AIDS in America. Pierce lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. You can follow him on Twitter (@KennyRayPierce) and on his blog, "Tangentials".
Stephen V. Sprinkle is Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, located on the campus of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, and has held the office of Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry since 1994. He is the first openly gay scholar in Brite’s history. A native of North Carolina, he holds a Bachelor of Arts from Barton College, a Master of Divinity from Yale University Divinity School, and a PhD in Systematic Theology from Duke University. He is an ordained minister of the Alliance of Baptists. Sprinkle was named 2010–2011 Hero of Hope by the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas for his advocacy on behalf of the lgbtq community and served as Theologian in Residence for the Cathedral for six years. In 2016, he received the Pillar of Freedom Award for his passion, activism, and dedication to the advancement of justice and human rights. He has authored three books and many scholarly articles and holds professional memberships in the Academy of Religious Leadership and the Association of Theological Field Educators. Sprinkle is a human rights advocate, a widely sought after speaker and pulpiteer, and an internationally recognized authority on anti-LGBTQ hate crimes.
Peterson Toscano is a playwright, actor, Bible scholar, blogger, podcaster, advocate against global warming, and gay rights activist. Toscano spent nearly two decades undergoing ex-gay treatment and conversion therapy before accepting his sexual orientation and coming out as a gay man. He bills himself as a "Quirky Queer Quaker performance artist and scholar." He lives in Pretoria, South Africa with his husband, South African writer Glen Retief.
In The Social History of Rome, Geza Alfödy says the
"only institutionalized path for upwards [sic] mobility from the base (e.g. slavery) to the top of the social pyramid (i.e. the emperor) was the career of a centurion who entered the equestrian order through the primipilate."
Painting: The Four Evangelists, Jacob Jordaens, c. 1625
In other words, because it was an “elastic” institutional position, it was about change over time. Yet, because it was change over time that existed in order to shore up the stability of the Empire, the position fundamentally was about opposition to change. Indeed it ultimately served the interests of the status quo.
This institutional safety valve which provided elasticity and mobility for the few ultimately served to underwrite the oppressive lack of mobility of the many. Moreover, Alfödy notes that social demotion was a rare occurrence in the early Empire. Once a centurion or other imperial servant acquired them, privileges such as freedom, citizenship, or membership in an ordo usually were revoked only for criminal acts.
Matthew’s story about the centurion is helpful for liberationist purposes for two reasons:
1. History, as we historians say, consists of stories about change over time. A centurion, whether an imaginative or factual figure, was inherently an “historical” figure because he was about change over time. This change constitutively was about socioeconomics, i.e. upward mobility in terms of status, standard of living, and power with the threat of downward mobility for actions (as opposed to beliefs, for example) which opposed the power of the Empire.
2. Matthew’s story about the centurion also was constitutively a narrative about power because the position of the centurion not only was about protecting the Empire from external military threats it was about protecting the Empire via an institutional advertisement for the benevolence of the state. In other words, the position of centurion had ideological value for the Empire.
PURPOSE
The purpose of this blog post is to develop and point out the value of an “historical” liberationist hermeneutic or method of interpreting the Bible.
I do this from my perspective as a professional historian who understands history fundamentally to be about multifarious, competing, and often high-stakes human narratives developed along the axis of change over time. These narratives always are situated within the historian’s own worldview, constructed by the historian, semantically encoded by the historian, often told in the context of cultural discourses of interest to the historian’s audience, and have premeditated or unpremeditated implications about the status quo or its opponents.
I also do this from my perspective as a theologian influenced primarily Latin America’s theologians of liberation including Leonardo Boff, Oscar Romero, and Ernesto Cardenal.
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN “HISTORICIST” AND “HISTORICAL” HERMENEUTICS
One of the collective strategies of Latin America’s liberation theologians has been to appropriate and redefine the term “historical”. Part of the rationale for this has been the perceived necessity of countering Western Europe / Northern Hemisphere modernist projects which, they conclude, definitely have been implicated in the subjugation, domination, and exploitation of non-Western / Southern people, their cultures, and their economies.
Modernist projects include defining “history” in a way that I am calling “historicist”, i.e. as that which is finite, concrete, and past yet excavatable, transportable and objectively subject to ideologically neutral reconstruction in the present — by professionals.
It is a project which emphasizes the importance of the antique past to what have been Christian academic concerns including desires to reconcile religion with nationalism, colonialism, and capitalism.
One solution has been to stabilize the Bible via the discovery of biblical “facts” and their perceived inverse — biblical “myths”. In biblical studies circles this translates into historical criticism including “quests for the historical Jesus” and by extension the historical Bible, the historical Matthew, the historical centurion, and so on, as well as for the presumed “lessons of (biblical) history”.
While purporting to be non-ideological, the upshot is a definition of Christian “history” which often works to the advantage of the status quo and its self-aggrandizements and in opposition to calls for socioeconomic and other types of systemic change.
In part this is because the definition of history as finite, concrete, excavatable and transportable places a premium on what is past. It is the past itself which is given value, i.e. it is an inherently reactionary — and consequently highly ideological — religious project.
Because of its emphasis on the past as an ideological standard of value (or a value related to power), as liberation theologians have underscored, modernist biblical interpreters’ understanding of history is, in fact, an historicist, inherently reactionary approach serving the interests of the status quo.
I am striving to develop a distinction between “historicist” biblical readings which benefit the status quo and “historical” biblical readings which have the potential of benefiting those who are in opposition to or are harmed by the status quo.
In large part, I am drawing on my professional historian’s understanding of history simply defined as narratives about change over time. In deliberate opposition to an historicist understanding of biblical history, an historical approach would emphasize several aspects of “history”. An historical approach to biblical history would emphasize that history by definition consists of multifarious, competing and often high-stakes ideologically situated human narratives, constructed by historians along the axis of change over time, told in the context of cultural discourses of interest to the historian’s audience and with power implications vis-à-vis the status quo or its opponents.
An historical understanding of biblical history underscores its inherent subjectivity and volatility (orientation to change) rather than its presumed objectivity and stability (orientation to the status quo). It seeks to activate and orient on-going historical narratives now being constructed. In particular, it seeks to orient and direct those narratives about change over time to the advantage of peoples currently existing on the socioeconomic and other margins.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN HISTORICIST AND A HISTORICAL MATTHEW
If we assume human authorship of the Bible, we can construct an identity for Matthew in both the historicist and historical senses. The historicist Matthew (we can be absolutely certain of this) knew how to read, write, and construct a narrative about change over time. He wa a Jew (this seems clear enough) who wrote an interpretive narrative of Jesus Christ. He appears (this is indirectly clear) to have written his gospel sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem and the razing of the Temple by about 70 CE (his gospel reflects knowledge of it).
Matthew appears to have written his gospel in Syrian Antioch around 85 CE (this conclusion is widely although not universally held by Matthew’s most recent historians) in part because earliest citations of his gospel are found in works having strong ties to Antioch and date from about 100 CE. I can say with some degree of certainty, then, that the historicist (excavatable and transportable) Matthew was a Jewish writer who interpreted Jesus and the destruction of the Temple around 85 CE. CE, by the way, stands for “Common Era” and is the equivalent of AD.
Although I am less certain of his location in Syrian Antioch, I am choosing to presume that location because by doing so I can activate a narrative about an historical centurion written by an historical Matthew. The distinction between the historicist Matthew and the historical Matthew is important: the historicist Matthew more or less demonstrably existed; the historical Matthew emphatically did something thereby attempting to change his and others’ biographical narratives about change over time.
One of the things he did was to write about a centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant / son. Borrowing insights from liberation theology, my argument is that this is what made him “historical”.
The Antioch location is historically suggestive. As the Empire’s chief eastern city and principle eastern military outpost, the continual presence of the Roman army was perhaps the single most significant feature of life in Antioch. Historians indicate that there were approximately 30,000 Roman troops garrisoned in or near Antioch during the time Matthew was writing his gospel. As a centurion was by definition the commander of a hundred soldiers and if there were approximately 30,000 troops in Antioch around 85 CE, there presumably were about 300 centurions in Antioch as Matthew was writing.
Moreover, Antioch was claustrophobic. It was about two miles long and one mile wide with an exceedingly dense population of about 100,000 or 205 people per acre making it more crowded than Calcutta in the 21st century.
Three hundred centurions, then, almost surely would have been an omnipresent signifier of the militarily-backed authoritarian reality of the power of the Roman Empire in the city.
In addition to being a key center of the Roman Empire’s military apparatus, Antioch was a linchpin polis in its system of cities, a political network consisting of cities all around the Mediterranean basin with legal, political, and economic entitlements over the agricultural and monetary yields of the countryside attached to it.
In other words, Antioch was also the center of a parasitic economic system.
My purpose in emphasizing Matthew’s presumed Antioch location is to underscore a context in which a centurion theoretically could signify the omnipresence of the Roman Empire and its potential for violence. Additionally, the location theoretically (whether actually is speculative) could have provided Matthew with a context which could signify the reality of an oppressive socioeconomic system, a reality which would have been safeguarded to the benefit of the elites by the 300 centurions, but not to the benefit of servants and slaves.
The Antioch location also suggests that Matthew, the writer of the story about the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant / son, may have had a socioeconomic location closer to that of the centurion than to that of the servant / son. I can make this speculation for no other reason than that the historicist Matthew had discretionary income which allowed for the employment of teachers who taught him to read and write narratives and discretionary time which allowed for the activity of writing.
However, Matthew is not yet a historical figure because he has not yet acted. The thing I can say with certainty that he did (that which makes him historical — the reason for which we remember his actions and his name) was to write a narrative about Jesus which moves along the axis of change over time. Moreover, I am also arguing that the construction of a narrative is inherently a destabilizing act regardless of one’s intentions.
It was Matthew who provided the narrative with its (inherently unstable) words. For example, are we to interpret the word Κυριε Christologically or counter-imperially? It was Matthew who provided the narrative with its inherently unstable narrative framework, (e.g. what significance if any may be attached to all the coming and going?) and it’s only equivocally retrievable ideological or power orientation.
In addition, in creating their own narratives, his historians, including me, make Matthew an historical figure (activate him) by making multiple and competing decisions about theological meanings of his words and narrative arrangements and speculate about his orientation to power by reading his text through the optics of their own ideologies.
I am also arguing that Matthew has constructed a historical narrative by which I do not mean that he excavated an event in Jesus’ past which he then transported undisturbed through time and stabilized in a story. Rather I mean that as I read it, he constructed a narrative which not only progresses through time as the plot unfolds but one which is fundamentally about change over time — the centurion fundamentally reorients his own relationship to the empire by putting himself under Jesus’ authority, Jesus fundamentally reorients his initial response to the centurion’s request by accepting the centurion’s analysis of his role in relationship to the empire, and Jesus fundamentally reorients the relationship of Jews and Gentiles to the kingdom of heaven.
Fundamentally, then, Matthew has constructed a story which at the level of various discourses is about rejection of the status quo and its promises of stability.
One might speculate that the appearance of a centurion in Matthew’s narrative inherently implies a character that has become, in the language of liberation interpretive principles, the subject of his own forward-moving history. The centurion is inherently a historical figure not because he is a finite, concrete man with a name and address in the antique world, stabilized as an unnamed character in Matthew’s narrative, and excavated and transported through time by professionals into the present.
Rather, generally speaking he is historical because he or a forebear was a character whose very existence implies one who at some point in time made a conscious decision to activate socioeconomic change through time by entering the Roman Empire’s only fully vertical socioeconomic conduit, a conduit established in part to reinforce the imperial national security state, i.e. for reasons of power.
I am suggesting that the centurion was a historical figure because he consistently engaged in constructing an autobiographical narrative about change, i.e. ever larger accruals of socioeconomic power and prestige, over time.
I also am suggesting that the centurion was a linchpin figure in the historical empire’s subjectively shaped narrative about change, i.e. in its own ever larger accruals of militarily-backed territorial and socioeconomic power and prestige, over time.
Matthew’s narrative clearly makes it possible to understand the centurion as an historical figure. He moves through space, decisively choosing to go to Jesus who has returned to his home in Capernaum. He speaks, pleading with Jesus to respond to his paralyzed and ailing παις.
I want to linger a moment over Matthew’s use of the word παις to describe the object of Jesus’s healing.
Matthew does not use the word δουγος, as did the gospel writer Luke in a similar story, to describe the one the centurion wants healed. That would have indicated unambiguously that he was a slave. Nor does he use the word υιος which would have indicated unambiguously that he was the centurion’s son.
Instead, Matthew made the decision to use the word παις which indicated a son who is a servant (a socioeconomic inferior) or a servant who is a son (a potential equal). Inherent in the word is that this is a tangled relationship with socioeconomic and familial meaning. So, I have translated it here as servant / son.
The centurion is a historical figure, too, because he attempts to manipulate Jesus by deferring to Jesus’ authority. He suggests how Jesus might activate a cure: “speak the word only” (8b). He presses Jesus by analyzing the nature of the empire and his equivocal place in it. He does not emphasize, as one might anticipate under the terms of Matthew’s movement-oriented narrative, the mobility implied by his place in the empire. Instead, in the only speech he delivers he emphasizes its authoritarianism — he obeys orders of the one above him as do the soldiers and servants beneath him: “I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it” (9).
Most significantly, the historical centurion gets what he wants. He is the subject of his own narrative, altering its historical trajectory.
The historical centurion is not unlike this story’s historical Jesus who similarly moves through space by entering Capernaum, equivocates as to whether he will heal the παις, marvels at the centurion’s analysis thereby deciding to provide the requested healing, delivers his own speech concerning the movements of various groups of people who have a relationship to the kingdom of heaven, and heals the centurion’s servant / son. Like the historical centurion, the historical Jesus alters the trajectory of his own narrative, i.e. he shapes his own story along the axis of change over time.
The point of inquiring about the historical centurion is not to stabilize an identity and an interpretation once and for all and thereby underwrite the reliability of Matthew’s story. Rather, the point is to use a historical interpretive principle in order to create a centurion which can be activated to the benefit of tortured and paralyzed (ahistorical) men, women, and children (those who are analogous to the centurion’s παις) on the edges of current national and global narratives.
The centurion was a historical figure because he was the subject of his narrative about change over time and may be activated in current narratives about change over time.
Conversely, I want to suggest that the παις was an ahistorical figure who by contrast languishes paralyzed, tortured, and mute at the edge of Matthew’s narrative, Jesus’s interest, and current “historical” readings. Whether there was an historicist, factual παις is a dead-end, pointless question.
His ahistorical nature is underscored by the difficulty of drawing a comparison between him and current identities. The reality is that, unlike the centurion or Jesus, we can give him no real historicist identity. Was the παις male or female? Was he / she more servant than child? More child than servant? Was he accustomed to being struck? Was he loved by the centurion as Luke may have indicated? All are equivocal possibilities inherent in the word παις.
More to the point, however, is the fact that we can give him no historical identity as I am using the term. The healing, when it finally comes, comes at a distance, at the request of the centurion, and only in response to the pleading, speech, and analysis of the centurion. In other words, the παις is by no means the subject of his healing. He never asks for healing or for anything else. Implicitly, then, unlike the centurion he is in no position to get what he wants.
Rather, he is the object of his healing, a healing that comes only because the centurion and Jesus have interests in healing him. Moreover, under the terms of this narrative, there is no reason to conclude that the servant / son’s socioeconomic status has been altered by his healing. Apparently he has been healed only because it is of interest to the centurion.
One may legitimately conclude, then, that insofar as this story per se goes, both the centurion and Jesus, who appear here roughly as historical equals, are accomplices to his marginalized existence rather than his liberators.
Conclusion — Who benefits?
Matthew wrote a story which includes a cast of characters (Jesus, a centurion, a servant / son, the centurion’s off-stage soldiers, Jesus’ followers who overhear the exchange between Jesus and the centurion, the ones off-stage who will inherit or be disinherited from the kingdom of heaven), plot (a centurion approaches Jesus asking him to heal his paralyzed servant/ son), conflict (Jesus’ initial response can be read as an equivocation), and resolution (Jesus heals the centurion’s servant / son). His story is historical (a story about human change over time) in which he enters various first-century discursive arenas.
In other words, he says something about Jesus’ relationship to Capernaum, something about the Roman Empire’s military apparatus, something about authority, something about Jews and Gentiles, something about the Kingdom of Heaven, something about inheritances, something about faith, and something about the power of Jesus’ word to heal even at a distance. These apparently (in other words I cannot definitively nail down his discursive intentions) are the things he intends to say something about in this story.
What is more problematic for the reader approaching Matthew’s story with an ideological commitment to people currently languishing at the margins of state, national, and global socioeconomic systems, i.e. with a liberationist interpretive principle (rather than with a commitment to safeguarding the Bible or Jesus), is what he does not intend to say.
In other words, what is more problematic is his (apparently) unpremeditated ideological orientation in favor of the status quo as regards the unequal relationships of power surrounding the servant / son which is also manifest in this story.
Neither the centurion nor Jesus demonstrates any interest in the παις striding boldly across Capernaum, speaking, analyzing, and demanding. Neither demonstrates any inherent ideological affinity for the liberation of the one at the margins of the Empire’s oppressive socioeconomic system and at the margins of Matthew’s story.
This discouraging verdict does not take into account, of course, that Matthew at this point has not been allowed to finish his narrative — his historical project has not yet been concluded
One way out, if a way out is desired, is to argue that one of the biblical projects was an historical one — it was intended to activate the continuing unfolding of a liberationist human narrative about change over time.
SOURCES: Nigel Pollard, Soldiers, Cities, and Civilians in Roman Syria (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000, Brent Shaw, “Soldiers and Society: The Army in Numidia,” in Opus 2, no. 1, 1983, Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations: 50 BC to AD 284 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974), Keith Hopkins, “Economic Growth and Towns in Classical Antiquity,” Towns and Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology, Philip Abrams and E. A. Wrigley, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), and Johannes P. Louw, Eugene A. Nida, Rondal B. Smith, Karen A. Munson, eds., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (United Bible Societies, 1988).
Violence in Ernesto Cardenal's Cosmic Canticle
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Weatherly Heights Baptist Church
Job 14:14, “If mortals die, will they live again?”
Luke 22:19, “Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
I Cor 11:24, “and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’”
I Cor 15:55, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
Good morning.
Death has many agents—mobs that cry “Crucify him!,” war, physical laws of the universe which mandate without any appeal that if you are slammed into by a car traveling at 60 miles an hour while you are standing still you will die. The list of the agents of death is endless. Cancer. The list is endless.
The issue of how long is the list of the agents of death is not crucial to us. The issue that is crucial, the question we struggle with in the midnight hour of our souls, is “Does death have the last word?” Job raised the question. Jesus and Luke raised the question. Paul raised the question. The death question. Does death have the last word?
I am obsessed with the question right now. I am desperate to know whether the after life I’ve heard about as long as I can remember is true or a delusion meant to comfort people like me trying to face up to the next thirty years. I am desperate to know exactly where Leigh Anna is, exactly in what state she is. For me, right now, the question about Leigh Anna and Tad is agonizingly abstract, agonizingly inscrutable, and agonizingly imprecise. It is an agonizing, abstract question with agonizingly abstract answers. What I need is a question to which there is a concrete answer.
And so I turn the question to its flip side, to the question Job and Paul raised—the resurrection question. And I find that the flip side question—the resurrection question—has an answer that, for me, is concrete, knowable, and precise. And as it was for Job and Jesus and Luke and Paul— part of the answer to the resurrection question—can we live again—is found in that which we celebrate this morning—communion. Or to put it better, I think, communal union.
Does death have the last word? Or can we live again? It occurs to me that Jesus gathered the disciples around him for one final pre-crucifixion meal in part because he was in the midnight hour of his soul. It occurs to me that in this particular moment, Jesus was gathering strength, not from the promises of God, not from the church universal, but from his intimate group, his soul mates so that, like me, he could face a future he did not want to face. “Let this cup pass,” he said later. And for him these old companions were the answer to the question. They had all been in communal union; they were part of him. He needed to know they cared about him; he needed to know they would remember him. And so, he asked them to remember him with small, but important concrete actions—not with abstract theological conclusions.
Later on, he said, will you gather together and talk about me? Later on? Would you do the things we used to enjoy? Would you eat bread again? Would you drink wine again? Don’t forget me.
The Bible says that only one person, Paul, quoted Jesus’ words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” And I think it is significant that Paul was also facing an inevitably violent death given his theological politics that chaffed at the Roman authorities—the Roman authorities who had announced in three languages that when it came to the death question they had the last word.
And what Paul wanted to proclaim more than anything else was the certainty that when God resurrected Jesus, God defiantly announced to the Roman authorities that God has the last word over death, not they. Paul was profoundly aware that how the church at Corinth behaved—whether the members were in communal union or individuals divided—was as important to the future of the resurrection question as any individual’s abstract theological conclusion.
Would Jesus’ resurrection continue to be proclaimed and be the church’s foundation? Or would it pass away from human memory because the group at Corinth couldn’t get its act together? Would death have the last word? Or would mortals die but live again? Job had his reasons for raising the resurrection question. Jesus had his. So did Luke and Paul. And I have mine. I’ll be searching for a long time for the answer to the ultimate resurrection question when it comes to Leigh Anna and Tad.
But I want to put aside the question of Tad and Leigh Anna’s resurrection, just for now, and talk about my own. Because I have experienced it. And I want to tell you about it.
And later on, at the house waiting for my older daughter and her husband to arrive, I got up and without saying anything to anyone I went upstairs, not to cry, but to lie down and stare at nothing. And I felt like I’d never have the strength to move again—to live again. And I laid there for a long time, I think.
At some point, around 2 o’clock in the morning, I heard the front door opening and my daughter crying the most horrible cries and immediately I got up. I knew without even thinking about it that she could not be victorious over Leigh Anna’s death if I could not because what happens to me happens to her.
And so I began what for a very brief while felt like a solitary self-propelled quasiresurrection. But I was wrong. My full resurrection had begun before that door opened and I heard my older daughter's cries. Because hours earlier, many teenagers and adults had begun to get the news and had begun texting one another hoping that there had been some mistake. And so no one wanted to call us before they were certain.
But Olivia and we have been in communion for a long time and Olivia understood that we had to be given the news and she mustered up great courage and called us to let us know there had been a terrible wreck and a fire and that Leigh Anna had been hurt.
And after we returned from the scene of the accident and we understood that Leigh Anna and Tad had died, Abigail, who has been in communion with us for a long time, was sitting on the front porch.
And later on Jana, who had been searching frantically for Leigh Anna at the hospital, arrived followed by Bodo and so many others with whom we have been in communion for a long time. And Charlene stayed up all night cooking so that she and Steven could be at the front door by 7 o’clock the next morning with breakfast.
So when I went upstairs to lie down and stare like a zombie you were already there, in profound communion with Al and our older daughter and her husband and me, surrounding us, pulling us back to life again, encouraging our resurrections.
We all have a strong communal union here. A union that is so profound that some of you even stepped in to experience what I could not. At the scene of the accident, Kelly wretched, violently, just as if Leigh Anna had been her child. And Eunice, who had come to the hospital to celebrate the day Leigh Anna was born, drove through the night from Atlanta to wail with me and for me and as me in the death of “my baby,” “my baby.” And while I was silent, Yvonne said that Leigh Anna’s death was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.
And bit by bit Olivia and Abigail and Jana and Bodo and Charlene and Steven and Kelly and Eunice and Yvonne and so many others of you pulled me back from death and pushed me just a bit farther again into life.
And when Mitch gave me a wooden bracelet he had made he pulled me back just a little bit farther. And when Pat knitted a prayer shawl for our older daughter and R. G. called her so many times, they pulled me back just a bit more. And when Dan and David arranged bike rides for Al they pulled me back just a bit more. And when Joyce and Jan and Norma came by after church and drank a glass of wine with us and laughed at nothing they pulled me back just a little bit more. And when Dean said he needed your patience while he grieved he pulled me back just a little bit more. And when Kim said she decided to get her family a tiny, bouncy dog named Leigh2 Bear to help fill the void in her home left by a tiny, bouncy girl she helped pull me back just a little bit more.
And one of the most encouraging of my resurrection moments was the Sunday a few weeks ago when Elsie brought me a grocery bag filled with tomatoes out of her garden as she has for years. And the following Sunday I gave her a tin of homemade chocolate chip cookies as I have for years.
Life goes on. My life goes on. I started down a dangerous path with all this naming of names. I didn’t even mention Marvin and Claire and Ben and Linder and Jim and Rick and the choir and the Wednesday night group.
The list of the agents of my resurrection is endless. Pat at my door with her first roses. The list is endless.
So, in a few minutes, when we share symbolic bread and drink symbolic wine, I’ll celebrate the resurrected Lord, to be sure. But mostly, this morning, I’ll celebrate the resurrected me. And I’ll celebrate that, because of this powerful communal union we have, I am able to say as defiantly as Paul, “Where, O death, is your victory now? Where O death, is your sting?”
Genesis 1
John 1:1-14
For those of you who don’t know, I have been an advocate for illegal migrants for a number of years now.
And what I have come to realize is that migrants are not being pulled by America, they are being pushed by economic policies which are far bigger than they are. And that because of the militarization of the border which began in conjunction with those policies, they are being pushed far away from the safety of crossing through the urban areas and into treacherous desert areas where to date the remains of around 5,000 migrants—men, women, children, and babies—have been recovered. And that these deaths were anticipated by the Federal government which thought they would act as a “deterrent” to illegal migration. If you want to, you can go online and read about this policy of deterrence in the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s document called the Southwest Border Strategy.
I’ve talked a lot about these things.
For the past seven years, a coalition of groups which advocate for migrants has gotten people to go on a 75 mile long walk through Arizona’s Sonora Desert to call attention to migrant deaths.
In May of 2010, I decided to stop talking for a little while and join the walkers. We began by driving from Tucson to a place called Sasabe. Sasabe is at the end of a section of border wall, and there is not much there other than a few lonely Border Patrol agents.
For symbolic reasons, we walked from the station a few steps over into Mexico, turned around, came back, showed our passports and began our six days of walking, much of it through the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. The temperature was in the 90s.
And when I say we walked, that is what we did. We walked. And we walked. And we walked. We walked as many as 15 miles a day. And every day the temperature rose. By the time we walked into Tucson, 75 miles later, the temperature was a deadly 108 degrees.
We had been cautioned to wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants and hats on our heads so that we wouldn’t succumb to the treacherous Arizona sun. And to wear sturdy hiking shoes so that we wouldn’t twist an ankle stepping over rock after rock.
And we were on the constant watch-out for cactus, especially little barrel shaped cactus called cholla which has evil fish-hooks on the ends of numerous spines and which jumps on you as you pass by. And when we would see those little, evil cacti we would call out: “Cholla!”
When we reached our campsite for the day, we would put shade up over our heads and lay a plastic cloth on the ground and sit very close together and wait—for hours—for the stifling heat to subside. And I would use my bedroll to elevate my swollen legs and someone I did not know would have his feet in my face and it was at this point that I would say, “I can’t stand this.” But once it was cooler we would pitch our tents because if you pitched your tent while it was hot, your tent would become an oven.
I was well outside my ZIP code. I don’t camp. I cannot emphasize this enough. My idea of roughing it is when the bathroom is down the hall.
But mainly I was outside my ZIP code because I was with people whose backgrounds are quite unlike mine. And because we had a lot of time on our hands the words flew.
And there were really only two people who spoke my native tongue. One was a man, about my age, who grew up Baptist in Mississippi, moved to Oregon, became a Mennonite, and can sing “Jesus Is On the Main Line” like nobody’s business. But he told me that when he first moved to Mississippi as a child, he had not understood the significance of Southern mores. And he remembers being surrounded once by a gang of kids who had him on the ground and were kicking him and yelling “kill the nigger-lover!” And I could relate to what he had been through.
And there was a young singer / songwriter who, after graduating from a Presbyterian college in North Carolina, had spent a year in a Mexican shelter for migrants who have been deported and was on his way home. One of his songs is called “Birmingham” and the refrain is: “Mr. Politician, it's time to take a stand about the state of things. One thing that we don’t need here in the sand is another Birmingham, another burnin’ Birmingham.”
That was 2 people out of 56 who spoke my language. There was also a big, angry, cowboy member of a peace and justice group. There was a young Native American man who was on the walk for Native American reasons who the big, angry, peace and justice cowboy deported back to Tucson because he wouldn’t wear a shirt.
There was a leather-faced man who said the Gila monster was his totem. He said that he had been walking in the desert once when he approached a Gila monster who reminded him that he—the Gila monster—had been there first and asked the man to respect that. When I asked this man about his Native American religion he looked puzzled and said, “No. I’m not Native American. I’m Quaker.”
There was a man-of-few-words Peruvian Methodist minister from Rhode Island who was not crazy about the Native American who wouldn’t wear his shirt.
There was a Franciscan monk, formerly Lutheran, who walked with his brown robe over his jeans.
There was a gay woman who grew up Jewish in Morelos, Mexico but is now an atheist and a gay man from Washington, DC who also grew up Jewish and who also is now an atheist. The gay, born as a Jew Mexican woman told me that two years ago, her sister had crossed illegally through the same area we were in. She had had a good smuggler, a good coyote as they say, who got word of drug deals in the area. To avoid the drug smugglers, he had had to move his group through an area of the desert unknown to him and they wandered, lost, for two days and two nights.
There was a transgender Mexican-American lawyer named Mel who, after I told him about the death of my daughter Leigh Anna, got together a group of people to sing “I’ll Fly Away” because he loves the song and thought it would mean something to me.
And there was a Mexican botanist who, when he could find two scraggly trees, would string up a hammock and say, “Just relax.” And he would wash our feet and put ointment and bandages on our blisters. And the big, angry, peace and justice cowboy got mad because he said that had never been done before on the Migrant Trail Walk.
And so we ZIP code changing, form changing, tent pitching aliens in a foreign desert walked. And we walked. And we walked. 75 miles. Six days.
And our experience was nothing like that of migrants because we had two things migrants don’t have. A lot of light. And a lot of water.
We found our way by the light of day. Migrants, on the other hand, move at night in order to escape being detected. The cholla cactus—that evil little cactus with the fish hooks which jumps on you—we could see and warn one another of. But migrants can’t see the cholla or any other cactus, can’t see snakes, can’t see Gila monsters, can’t see ants, can’t see rocks or ravines. And during the daytime, they hide in the ravines and cover themselves with debris among the cholla and snakes.
We had a lot of light.
And we had a lot of water. It takes a gallon of water per person per day to survive the heat of the scorching Sonora Desert. And it takes six days of walking in a straight line to get from Sasabe to Tucson. Do the math. One person cannot possibly carry six gallons of water or more if that person is carrying water for a little girl or a grandfather.
So, in order for us to change our symbolic ZIP codes, we had to have water brought to us. We had to have a lot of water brought to us.
There is a group in Arizona called Humane Borders which places water in the desert for migrants. They came out from Tucson every day, bringing enough water so that every hour and a half we could refill our water bottles and soak our bandanas in ice water. And every three hours we got a full rest stop where we refilled our water bottles and ate fresh fruit and salted nuts and completely replenished the nutrients our bodies need so that we could keep going.
And in the evenings, after the day cooled off a bit, other groups brought us food—cold salads and ice cream. And a tile artisan troubadour who grew up in Nogales, Mexico, the city which has a twin city in Arizona—twins cities divided by a militarized border wall—would come out in the evenings from Tucson and sing his songs about deaths in foreign deserts.
But the best part was the water. One evening the people from Humane Borders came with their water truck. And they brought a hose and a bottle of shampoo. And for no reason whatsoever other than their great generosity of spirit towards us, they shampooed our hair. And the desert sand turned to mud and splashed on our legs but we didn’t care because our hair was clean and we were cool and we all laughed like little kids. And I got so carried away by this baptism in generosity and shampoo and the great river of water brought in by truck that I told them it was like the kingdom of heaven drawn near.
And so, we had a little adventure. But the 5,000 migrants whose remains have been recovered from the American Southwest were not enjoying a little adventure. They had risked it all and had lost.
In February, 2008, a man whose name is Daniel Millis and several others with a group called No More Deaths discovered the body of 14-year-old Josseline Janiletha Hernandez Quintero. Josseline and her 10 year old brother had been trying to re-unite with their mother who had migrated to Los Angeles. They were from El Salvador and already had crossed, illegally, through Guatemala and had made it safely across Mexico’s 2,000 hostile miles.
Talk about changing ZIP codes.
She and her party finally had crossed near Sasabe—the place we had begun our walk. But Josseline could no longer keep up and her coyote left her behind. It was January and the weather was as treacherous as it is in July. A winter rain had come up and the temperature had dropped to 29 degrees. And so Josseline froze to death, alone in an alien desert, wearing her pink-lined jacket, her green tennis shoes, and a pair of sweat pants which said “Hollywood” on the seat.
On February 8, 2008, Daniel Millis, one of the people who had discovered Josseline’s body, was arrested by agents of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He was arrested for littering—for leaving garbage in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. The garbage he had left was gallon jugs of water which he had set out for migrants.
There are many people in Arizona who are responding to the humanitarian crisis on our southern border. A group called Samaritan Patrol travels along the migrant trails calling out to migrants hiding in the ravines and thorns. As they walk they call out in singsong Spanish: “We have water! Food! Medicine! We are not Border Patrol! We are from a church! We have water! Food!” Sometimes migrants will come out and sometimes they won’t.
Once, a group was walking and calling out their singsong. No migrants had come out and eventually they turned around to go back to the road. And to their astonishment, there on the trail were a few migrants, a few of the expelled people, with a little water and a little food. The migrants, who were unfamiliar with the Samaritans’ accent, had misunderstood and thought they were begging for help. And so these aliens in a foreign desert risked coming out into the light to bring life to the Samaritans.
Talk about words becoming flesh.
There is a young mother in Huntsville who crossed that alien desert with her infant. Border Patrol was in the area and so, to keep the agents from hearing them, the coyote covered the baby’s mouth to silence it. When he took his hand away, he realized he had smothered the baby.
A lot of light. A lot of water. And the freedom not to be silent.
And so finally we got into Tucson. It was late morning and the temperature was 108 degrees. Well-wishers were there, applauding, and Fox TV. And the big, angry, peace and justice cowboy made a speech about how important it is to stop migrant deaths and cried. And a priest met us and had an old-fashioned foot washing ceremony. And the priest cried.
A lot of water. A lot of light. And the freedom not to be silent.
Which brings me back to where I started. To the Beginning. To that time before God began God’s six days of creativity. To that time when the earth was a formless void—a lot of nothing covered by darkness. Characterized by immobility and silence. But then something happened. During God’s six days of activity, God sent a wind to interrupt the immobility. And God broke the silence by speaking light into being. And this spoken Word which called light into being was God. And all things came into being through this Word God and without this Word God not one thing came into being. And what came into being was life and the life was light and the darkness could not overcome it. And the Word God changed shape and changed form and moved over a great distance and pitched a tent in the midst of people who had been pushed from Egypt and were wandering, aliens in a foreign desert.
And make no mistake—this was not what Pharaoh had in mind. What Pharaoh had in mind was immobility and people who adjusted to their status. And what Caesar had in mind was immobility and people who adjusted to their status. What Pharaoh had in mind was death. What Caesar had in mind was death.
But immobility and death were not what God had in mind. The God who spoke Living Waters and Light and Spatial Mobility into being had Life in mind. And the God who changed form and crossed the boundary line did so without papers and without the permission of Pharaoh and his agents, of Caesar and his agents.
And so illegal migration is a complex and complicated issue that is here to stay. But the most fundamental issue is not at all complicated. The most fundamental issue—the theological issue—is: whom do we serve? Pharaoh and Caesar and their idols of death? Or the God of life?
Would you pray with me?”
Cuadro: Lo que nuestro Señor vio en la cruz, por James Tissot, c. 1890
Génesis 1
San Juan 1:14
San Juan 19:28
El verso original de la Biblia, 1:14 (uno: catorce) de San Juan dice: “Y la Palabra se convirtió en carne y puso un tabernáculo entre nosotros. ¿Ustedes saben qué era un “tabernáculo”? Era una tienda de campaña usada por los hebreos para adorar a Dios mientras vagaban en el desierto durante el Éxodo.
En Génesis, mucha agua llena de vida. Y en San Juan un Dios del mundo que lanzó su tienda de campaña entre los extranjeros que corrían del Faraón, vagando en un desierto extraño.
Para los que no saben, he estado abogando por los migrantes indocumentados por un cierto número de años.
Y lo que me he dado cuenta, es que una de las principales razones por la que mueren tantos migrantes, es porque no tienen agua en el vasto desierto de Sonora. Mueren porque tienen sed. Al igual que Cristo que fue crucificado porque contradijo al César y sus planes, muchos mueren gritando, "¡Tengo sed!"
Una coalición de los grupos que abogan por migrantes ha conseguido que gente vaya en una caminata de 75 (setenta y cinco) millas a través del desierto de Sonora en Arizona para llamar la atención sobre las muertes de 5,000 migrantes. El pasado mayo, yo decidí unirme a estos caminantes. Empezamos conduciendo de Tucson a un lugar llamado Sasabe. Sasabe está al final de un tramo del muro fronterizo y no hay mucho más que unos pocos agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza.
Por razones simbólicas, caminamos de la estación a unos pasos dentro de México, nos dimos la vuelta, regresamos, y comenzamos los seis días de marcha. La temperatura estaba en los 90 (noventa) grados Fahrenheit.
Caminamos. Y caminamos. Y caminamos. Caminamos hasta 15 (quince) millas por día. Y cada día la temperatura se elevaba. En el momento en que llegamos a Tucson, 75 (setenta y cinco) millas más tarde, la temperatura estaba en unos mortales 108 (ciento ocho) grados Fahrenheit.
Nos habían advertido que debíamos usar camisas de manga larga, pantalones largos y sombreros en la cabeza para que no fallecíeramos ante el traidor sol de Arizona. Y que debíamos usar zapatos resistentes al senderismo para que no se nos torciera un tobillo después de pasar por encima de roca tras roca.
Cuando llegábamos a nuestro campamento por el día, nos poníamos a la sombra y colocábamos un paño de plástico en el suelo, nos sentábamos muy juntos y esperábamos durante horas para que el calor sofocante disminuyera. Y bebíamos mucha agua.
Una vez que estaba más fresco, armábamos nuestras tiendas de campaña, porque si las armábamos mientras hacia calor, las tiendas de campaña se convertirían en un horno.
Caminamos, extranjeros en tiendas de campaña en un desierto extraño. Y caminamos. Y caminamos. 75 (setenta y cinco) millas. Seis días.
Y nuestra experiencia no era nada como la de los migrantes, debido a que había una cosa que los migrantes no tienen. Una gran cantidad de agua. Y teníamos mucha sed.Se necesita un galón de agua por persona por día para sobrevivir el calor abrasador del desierto de Sonora. Y toma seis días al caminar en línea recta para llegar desde Sasabe a Tucson. Haga sus cálculos. Una persona no puede llevar seis galones de agua o más si esa persona está llevando agua para una niña o un abuelo.
Así que, teníamos que tener agua llevada hacia nosotros. Teníamos que tener una gran cantidad de agua llevada hacia nosotros.
Hay un grupo en Arizona llamado Fronteras Humanas, que coloca agua en el desierto para los migrantes. Salieron de Tucson todos los días, llevando agua suficiente para nosotros para que cada hora y media pudiéramos llenar nuestras botellas de agua y ahogar nuestros pañuelos de la cabeza en agua con hielo. Y cada tres horas teníamos una parada de receso completo donde rellenar nuestras botellas de agua y comer frutas frescas y almendras saladas y restaurar nuestros cuerpos para que pudiéramos seguir adelante.
Una tarde la gente de Fronteras Humanas llegó con su camión de agua. Y trajeron una mangera y una botella de champú. Y por ningún motivo distinto a su gran generosidad de espíritu hacia nosotros, lavaron nuestro pelo con champú. Y la arena del desierto se volvió barro y nos salpicaba las piernas, pero no nos importaba porque nuestro pelo estaba limpio y nos enfriábamos y todos nos reímos como niños pequeños. Y yo me deje llevar por este bautismo de generosidad y el champú y el gran río de agua traída por un camión que les dije que era, como si el reino de los cielos se hubiera acercado (acerkado) a nosotros.
Y así, tuvimos un poco de aventura. Pero los 5.000 (cinco mil) migrantes cuyos restos han sido recuperados del suroeste de los Estados Unidos no estaban disfrutando de un poco de aventura. Lo habían arriesgado todo y habían perdido. Se podría decir que se encuentran entre las personas que fueron crucificadas.
Y finalmente llegamos a Tucson. Era mediodía y la temperatura era de 108 (ciento ocho) grados Fahrenheit. Una multitud estaba allí, aplaudiendo, y Fox TV. Y el pastor se reunió con nosotros y tenía preparada la antigua ceremonia de lavado de pies.
Esto me trae de vuelta a donde empecé al leer en Génesis 1 (uno). Al comienzo. Al momento antes de que Dios comenzara sus seis días de creatividad. A ese momento cuando la tierra era un vacío sin forma, un montón de nada cubierta por la oscuridad. Pero entonces, algo sucedió. Durante los seis días de actividad de Dios, Dios rompió los mares a la existencia y los llenó de vida. Y esta Palabra que se llama Aguas Vivas era Dios. Y todas las cosas fueron hechas a través de esta Palabra / Dios y sin esta Palabra / Dios ni una sola cosa podría existir. Y lo que llegó a ser fue la vida y las Aguas Vivas. Y la Palabra / Dios se trasladó largas distancias y lanzó una tienda de campaña en medio de personas que habían sido expulsadas de Egipto y fueron vagando, los extranjeros en un desierto extraño, en busca de Aguas Vivas.
Y no se equivoquen, esto no era lo que el Faraón tenía en mente. Qué Faraón tenía en mente era que el pueblo se desanimára y perdiera la esperanza. Y lo que César tenía en mente era que el pueblo se desanimára y perdiera la esperanza. Qué Faraón tenía en mente era la deshidratación y la muerte. Lo que César tenía en mente era la crucifixión, la deshidratación y la muerte. Y lo que parecía, por unos días, era que el César había tenido la última palabra. Parecía que la crucifixión, el quebrantamiento, la humillación, la sed y la muerte habían tenido la última palabra.
Pero el quebrantamiento, la humillación, la sed y la muerte no eran lo que Dios tenía en mente. La crucifixión no era lo que Dios tenía en mente. El Dios que convirtió en Aguas Vivas el ser, tenía la vida en mente. Y así, cuando Cristo grita: "Tengo sed", Dios escuchó su grito. Y el Dios que cruzó la frontera lo hizo sin papeles y sin el permiso del Faraón y de sus agentes, del César y sus agentes.
Y mañana por la mañana vamos a celebrar. Vamos a celebrar la decisión de Dios de desafiar al César. Vamos a celebrar que desafió al César al cruzar la línea fronteriza, al lanzar su tienda de campaña en medio de los crucificados, por la resurrección de Cristo crucificado.
Pero la pregunta para nosotros esta noche es la siguiente: Cuando mañana por la mañana haya pasado y hayamos terminado de celebrar, ¿a quién le serviremos? ¿Al Faraón y al César y sus ídolos de la muerte? O al Dios de la resurrección que trae Aguas Vivas a los crucificados?
Amén.
by George C. Needham, 1884
Text: Isaiah 59
Look! Listen! God's arm is not amputated—he can still save. God's ears are not stopped up—he can still hear. There's nothing wrong with God; the wrong is in you. Your wrongheaded lives caused the split between you and God. Your sins got between you so that he doesn't hear. Your hands are drenched in blood, your fingers dripping with guilt, Your lips smeared with lies, your tongue swollen from muttering obscenities. No one speaks up for the right, no one deals fairly. They trust in illusion, they tell lies, they get pregnant with mischief and have sin-babies. They hatch snake eggs and weave spider webs. Eat an egg and die; break an egg and get a snake! The spider webs are no good for shirts or shawls. No one can wear these weavings! They weave wickedness, they hatch violence. They compete in the race to do evil and run to be the first to murder. They plan and plot evil, think and breathe evil, and leave a trail of wrecked lives behind them. They know nothing about peace and less than nothing about justice. They make tortuously twisted roads. No peace for the wretch who walks down those roads!
Which means that we're a far cry from fair dealing, and we're not even close to right living. We long for light but sink into darkness, long for brightness but stumble through the night. Like the blind, we inch along a wall, groping eyeless in the dark. We shuffle our way in broad daylight, like the dead, but somehow walking. We're no better off than bears, groaning, and no worse off than doves, moaning. We look for justice—not a sign of it; for salvation—not so much as a hint.
Our wrongdoings pile up before you, God, our sins stand up and accuse us. Our wrongdoings stare us down; we know in detail what we've done: Mocking and denying God, not following our God, Spreading false rumors, inciting sedition, pregnant with lies, muttering malice. Justice is beaten back, Righteousness is banished to the sidelines, Truth staggers down the street, Honesty is nowhere to be found, Good is missing in action. Anyone renouncing evil is beaten and robbed.
God looked and saw evil looming on the horizon— so much evil and no sign of Justice. He couldn't believe what he saw: not a soul around to correct this awful situation. So he did it himself, took on the work of Salvation, fueled by his own Righteousness. He dressed in Righteousness, put it on like a suit of armor, with Salvation on his head like a helmet, Put on Judgment like an overcoat, and threw a cloak of Passion across his shoulders. He'll make everyone pay for what they've done: fury for his foes, just deserts for his enemies. Even the far-off islands will get paid off in full. In the west they'll fear the name of God, in the east they'll fear the glory of God, For he'll arrive like a river in flood stage, whipped to a torrent by the wind of God.
"I'll arrive in Zion as Redeemer, to those in Jacob who leave their sins." God's Decree.
"As for me," God says, "this is my covenant with them: My Spirit that I've placed upon you and the words that I've given you to speak, they're not going to leave your mouths nor the mouths of your children nor the mouths of your grandchildren. You will keep repeating these words and won't ever stop." God's orders.
On my first trip to the US / Mexico border, I was challenged to come to grips with the distinction between charity and justice.
I was in a town called Agua Prieta which is just across the border wall from Douglas, Arizona. I was visiting a shelter for migrants who were about to cross the border illegally or who had just been deported to Agua Prieta. The shelter was run by Catholics. When I walked in the dining hall, I could smell chickens simmering and freshly cut cilantro and corn tortillas. What a blessing that good food must have been to the man who came in as we were beginning to eat. I remember that he had been in the desert for days and had been bothered by coyotes. I remember asking him whether he meant the human kind or the animal kind and noticing that he had on the cowboy boots of the experienced illegal migrant who anticipates thorns and snakes.
The volunteers offered charity. Much-needed charity that came right on time.
After our meal, we began to talk with the nun who had accompanied us to the Center for Attention to Migrants in Exodus as the shelter was called. And as we talked, other Mexican volunteers began to gather. And I remember asking the nun, whose name was Noemí, what she thought about the North American Free Trade Agreement. Had it had any impact on the lives of the migrants they encountered? And she began to get visibly angry. So passionate she had to compose herself. Then she and the other volunteers began to talk. And what they talked about was tariffs, and subsidies, and aquifers, and patents, and the Mexican Constitution. And I, who had never heard clergy or church volunteers speak about such things, stopped them at one point and said, "I'm confused. Are you economists?" And they laughed and said, "we're volunteers but our priest insisted that we could not minister to migrants though charity alone. We had to understand what caused them to be here in the first place." Their priest had charged them to do charity but also to do justice. And I began to ponder this new-to-me kind of church.
A few months ago my friend, Kate, who is married to Stephanie, told me a fairy tale. It seems there was a small community located on a flowing river. And one day someone saw a baby floating down the river. And she jumped up and scooped the baby out of the river and handed the baby off to someone who dried the baby and found clothes for it and baby food. And then another baby floated down the river and another and another. So the community got organized; they formed committees which gathered all the things a baby needs and, later on, they raised money for orphanages. And the babies grew up healthy and as happy as anyone ever has been who grew up in orphanages. And they put pictures of those smiling, happy babies on the cover of the slick magazine they started to raise money to build more happy orphanages.
And this is a story—a trick story—all about the difference between charity and justice. And the trick has to do with whether you caught what did not happen. Because nowhere in this story did anyone ask the justice question: "Who's putting all these babies in the river and what do we need to do to make them stop?"
And so I've been thinking about charity and justice and the difference between the two. And I want to nail this down right here and now: I think charity is a good thing. You wouldn't want a situation in which dozens of babies are floating down the river, hitting their heads on rocks or drowning, while everyone sits on the bank of the river pondering where they all were coming from. And if I saw a church focused on justice with no interest in charity, I'd spin this sermon differently. But what I see is a church--and I'm not talking about Weatherly Heights Baptist Church per se, I'm talking about the Church generally--which has put most of its eggs in the charity basket and very few in the justice basket.
At the most basic level, charity involves meeting an immediate need. Justice involves changing the system that creates the need. Charity is about the person in distress at the "now" point in time. Justice is about the persons who will come after the one at the "now" point in time.
Our Church and our culture value charity. There is no question about that. But we're terribly afraid of justice. Because somehow we understand that charity works from within the system, accepting the system as it is, while justice challenges the system.
Here is an example of two heroes of the Christian faith. One is Mother Teresa, one of the Catholic Churches' Missionaries of Charity, who tended the desperately poor people of Calcutta as well as those with HIV/AIDS. I think its significant for our purpose to know that in 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize and later died of old age.
Another hero of the Christian faith is Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of El Salvador in the 1970s. Like Mother Teresa, he lived and worked among the abjectly poor people of El Salvador. But unlike her, he spoke out against poverty, social injustice, and El Salvador's military dictatorship which was responsible for widespread human rights abuses. He criticized the United States for giving military aid to the government and pleaded with President Jimmy Carter to stop the aid, saying that it would "undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the repression on people whose struggle has often been for their most basic human rights." Carter ignored his pleas. Romero, who had a devotion to the Mother of Peace, was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Nor did he die of old age. Romero was assassinated on March 24, 1980, one day after he preached a sermon in which he called on Salvadoran soldiers, Christians, to obey God's higher order and, in words over the radio that rang throughout El Salvador, "Stop the repression!"
It's about recognizing that the stands we take and the God or idols that we worship have everything to do with whether we'll ever experience salvation. They have everything to do with whether we'll ever experience the full-blown arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven, of the Realm of Peace, in real-time, on earth.
Isaiah reminds us that its our massive stock-pile of sin that stands between us and God. And he associates this stock-piling of sin with the decision to do injustice. And Isaiah associates injustice more than anything else with the spoken word: "lips smeared with lies, tongues swollen from muttering obscenities, failing to speak up for right, telling lies, planning and plotting evil, mocking, spreading false rumors, muttering malice." And what are the consequences of injustice? "A trail of wrecked lives" and "not so much as a hint of salvation. Justice: beaten back, righteousness: banished, truth: staggering down the street, honesty: nowhere to be found, good: missing in action."
God hears so many lies. And not even a whisper of Justice.
And what does God want? Isaiah says God wants Justice / Salvation so much that He takes it on himself. He suits up to fight for Justice / Salvation as though He were going into war. Not with baby food. Not with orphanages. Instead, God covers God's self in Righteousness, Analysis, Passion, and Verdict in order to realize Justice / Salvation that will blow through the Kingdom of Injustice like a hurricane through New Orleans. That will dismantle the Kingdom of Injustice like an earthquake in Haiti. That will wash over the Kingdom of Injustice like a tsunami in Japan. So that we can realize the Kingdom of Peace right now. Right today. And what are our orders from this God on a Justice mission? "To repeat Justice words over and over and over without stopping."
A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you that a Mexican friend had lost 14 immediate family members and 8 more distant relatives in an horrendous bus crash in Mexico that took over 30 lives. Many of them were young children. The details, as they began to unfold, were horrifying. Days going by not knowing who had died and who had lived. A scarcity of coffins.
I wondered: how will this family survive? How will they bear the burden of funeral expenses for multiple members of one family who died all at one time? How will they bear the burden of the loss of multiple wage earners in one family? How will they survive the publicity? The strains that such a calamity necessarily causes a family?
And so let me be emphatic about this: if you feel called upon to pick up some of their expenses, please do it. I'll facilitate it. That would be a wonderful charity thing.
But would that be a justice thing? Not at all, because it would do nothing to keep such an event from happening in the future. How could we do justice in this situation? First of all, we would have to do some investigation, some analysis, spend some serious money, and we'd have to take a stand. And I suspect that once we began investigating it would not be too long before we would have to think about the bus driver who had been driving for 20 hours and fell asleep at the wheel. Are there no unions in Mexico which oversee the conditions under which bus drivers work?
Does the idea of getting involved in protections for Mexican bus drivers seem far fetched? Well, that is often the problem with doing justice. The problems are complicated, the fixes not at all clear, the research time-consuming and expensive, the passion can be hard to sustain over the long-haul, and often, as many assassinated Mexican labor organizers know, justice can be very dangerous.
So maybe we could tackle an issue closer to home. When I was in Nashville last weekend, I got to talking with Stephanie, my friend who is married to Kate, about food and farmers' markets. And Stephanie, who grew up on a farm in Kentucky, is as passionate as I am about heirloom tomatoes, locally produced non-homogenized milk, and cage-free eggs. And our discussion wandered into the issue of the precariousness of local farmers' economic positions. And we talked about those sign-up programs where you buy produce or meat in advance to help stabilize farmers' incomes. And high-end restaurants which specialize in local food sources. And the difficulty of getting good, fresh food into poor neighborhoods.
Not a Thursday goes by, during the season, which I'm not at the Greene Street Market buying up Cherokee Purples, eggs from a chicken named Rosie, and October beans.
But is this Justice? Not at all, because it doesn't help change the system which causes real farmers, and real food, to be so scarce. Because the usefulness of sign up programs and farmers' markets for farmers, at the end of the day, is dependent on the whims of the consumer. I say I go every Thursday to the Greene Street Market, but not if its raining, or if I have a nail appointment, or I'm just not in the mood. As with Mexican bus drivers, to do Justice we would have to do some investigation, some analysis, we'd have to spend some serious money, we'd have to sustain our passion over a long period of time, and we'd have to take a stand. And I suspect that once we began investigating it would not be too long before we were looking at a system which involves subsidized factory farms, powerful corporations like Monsanto which has made it illegal for so many farmers to save their own seeds, putting many of them out of business, causing an epidemic of suicides among farmers in India, and those pesky free trade agreements.
So maybe there is an easier Justice project we could take on. What about putting on our Justice suit of armor--Righteousness, Judgment, and Passion and joining the troops fighting the Chik-Fil-A War? And I'm not kidding when I say that the war is crucial to Salvation--mine, yours, everybody's.
If you don't know, the Chik-Fil-A War began when owner Dan Cathy said he was "guilty as charged" when it came out in the press that he had donated a great deal of money to organizations which oppose homosexuality and homosexuals. And when homosexuals and their friends complained, members of the predominantly Christian right staged a buy-in at Chik-Fil-A restaurants all over the country on this past Wednesday.
When the first shots were fired in the Chik-Fil-A War, I admit I wasn't sure what I thought. I am in favor of gay rights and always have been. But, some said, this is a free-speech issue and didn't Mr. Cathy have the right to say that he is opposed to gay rights?
But then I began to investigate and I began to remember and I began to analyze.
I discovered that one of the organizations that Mr. Cathy gives his money to is Exodus International, an organization of Christian counselors who advise their homosexual clients that homosexual behavior is sinful and label "same sex attraction" (SSA) in capital letters within parentheses, as though homosexuality were a disease to be cured. Another of the organizations is the Family Research Council which opposes any legislative, executive, or judicial action that seeks to protect homosexuals and their relationships. In particular, it opposes legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, the kind of recognition, for example, that would allow a gay man to visit his partner in the hospital. Peter Sprigg, its Senior Researcher for Policy Studies, officially stated that gay behavior should be outlawed and that "criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior" should be enforced. And I discovered that the Southern Poverty Law Center has called the Family Research Council a "hate group" because of its insistence, its lie really, that homosexuals have a tendency to sexually abuse children. No protections? Outlawed? Criminalized? Paedophiles? No wonder Stephanie was so upset.
Stephanie and Kate who so long for a baby that I wish one would float down a river and they could scoop it up and take it into one of the warmest, sweetest homes I've ever been invited into.
I began to remember one of the reasons why gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered and all the queer people, some of whom are straight, have always been so dear to my heart. And that is because I can relate to what it means to be closeted because of who you are, because of things about yourself that you cannot change, and to live in constant fear of exposure.
I remembered the afternoon of November 22, 1963. I was in the 7th grade in Albany, Georgia, a hotbed of the most vicious racism when we got word that President Kennedy had been shot. And we children, who had been taking a math test, remained very silent. A few minutes later we were told the President was dead. My classroom and the one next to us, erupted in applause, foot-stomping, and cheers: "The nigger-lover is dead!" And I sat mute, stunned by the President's death and the applause and I wondered whether, if they knew my integrationist mind and my integrationist heart and I were shot dead, would they cheer?
I remembered, too, that among the victims of the Holocaust were thousands of homosexuals, put in the ovens because Hitler deemed them unfit to live. And I remembered the Lavender Scare of the 1950s when 91 homosexual members of the US State Department lost their jobs because they were seen as risks to national security. And I remembered the Mariel boat lifts from Cuba in the 1980s when Cuban homosexuals were exiled to the US because Castro believed that homosexuality was a threat to national security. And I remembered Matthew Shepherd, tortured, murdered, and strung up on a Montana fence in such a way that he resembled the crucified Christ. And the signs at his funeral which said "Fag Matt in Hell" and "No Tears for Queers." To paraphrase Isaiah, "No peace for the wretch that walks down the twisted road of homophobia," a road built on lies, obscenities, and crucifying plots.
I began to analyze. Now, you might say that those kids in Albany, Georgia on the afternoon of the murder of the President had a constitutional right to express their opinion, and about that you might be correct. But I felt then and I feel now that God thought they were wrong and was on my side. And you might say that Dan Cathy has a constitutional right to give his money to any organization he wants. And you might be correct. But I feel that God thinks he's wrong and is on the side of homosexuals. And, following the free speech logic, you might say that Caesar had a right to ridicule the already humiliated, already suffering, already dying Christ by pressing a mocking crown of thorns onto his brow and posting "King of Jews" over his head in three languages. And undoubtedly you would be correct. Caesar had that imperial right. But God was not on Caesar's side. God was on the side of the humiliated One, the spat-upon One, the mocked One, the crucified One. God reached a conclusion and took a stand by resurrecting the One who Caesar so feared and so mocked.
Here is what I think is Isaiah's point: until we pursue Justice as though it were a war on which everything were riding, until we believe that our very Salvation is dependent upon the systemic safety of Mexican bus drivers and farmers in India and lesbian couples with babies, we will never realize the real-time Realm of Peace. And my prayer is that today be the day when we begin to speak Justice words over and over and over and we never stop. Because we worship the Lord of Life and not the idols of death.
PRAYER
Gracious God,
We love you. Help calm our fears. Help us to speak words of Justice.
Amen.
Weatherly Heights Baptist Church
Image: "The Garden of Eden," by Von Adi Holzer, 2012
Today as I recall him, I can't help but wonder why the County hadn't at least bought him a pair of shoes. How exposed he must have felt. How humiliated. Did his humiliation over a single incident—or more likely many, many incidents—turn into shame? Did humiliation turn into a sense there was something fundamentally wrong with him? Did he go through the rest of his life fearful of exposure?
The Bible says that before the event with the Serpent, the Trickster, the Garden of Eden had been a Paradise. Then something happened. The Serpent entered the Garden, approached the Woman, and deliberately tricked her. The Trick involved three things. First, it involved persuading the Woman that something good would come of her acting in a way contrary to the laws established by God. Two, it involved tricking her into believing that the forbidden tree held access to knowledge. Instead, the Tree was was not the Tree of Knowledge. The tree was the Tree of Shame. The Woman fell for the Trickster's wiles. Third, the trick involved establishing the Serpent, Satan, as a contender for the cosmic authority that rightly belongs only to God.
By the same token, there were three simultaneous outcomes. One, the Woman sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, offered some to the Man, and he sinned by eating, too. The Woman and the Man sinned. The second outcome was that shame was introduced on a global and comprehensive scale into what once had been but no longer was Paradise. Shame signaled the end of Paradise and the Woman and the Man covered themselves and fled. The third outcome was that Satan achieved Satan's goal of successfully challenging God as the only source of power and authority over humankind. The text goes on to say that from then on the Serpent and the Woman would be locked in a cosmic struggle. The Woman, in what becomes a motif throughout the Bible and ends in a grand battle between them in the book of Revelation, groans in the agony of giving birth to a New Heaven and a New Earth--a New Paradise.
But let's go back to the Woman's and the Man's sin. Sin is the word we give to an act. It is the word we give to doing something--doing something that is contrary to the boundaries established by God. The word "sin" covers a lot of territory. It can mean anything from a kid swiping an apple which doesn't belong to him to a corporation using its power legally to control farmers' seeds (seeds given to farmers by God) in order to control the genetics of major commodity crops and thereby their bottom line and in doing so destroying the lives of thousands upon thousands of family farmers in the process.
God has established the appropriate human response to sin. The appropriate human response to sin is regret or remorse. The appropriate response is guilt and the desire to make things right. Had the appropriate thing, the God ordained thing happened, the Woman and the Man would have experienced guilt. But that is not what happened.
Because The Trickster, Satan had entered the picture, in the guise of a Serpent, so the story goes, instead of feeling guilt, the appropriate response, the Woman and the Man were overwhelmed by shame, by a sense of exposure so global and so intense that they covered themselves and hid from God. Through the Trickster, shame had entered the garden.
Eden had been Paradise not only because it was filled with land to be tilled and trees bearing fruit to be eaten and beasts of the fields and birds of the air and seeds which allow for perpetual rebirth. Eden was Paradise because shame and fear of exposure did not exist there. The text clearly says that prior to the event with the Crafty One, the Man and the Woman were naked but they felt no sense of exposure. They felt no shame. They did not experience that global sense that something was fundamentally wrong with them. What we need to grasp, in my reading of this text, is that shame was not part of God's plan for the Man and the Woman--shame was part of the Trickster's plan. Guilt comes from God. Shame comes from the Crafty One, the Trickster, Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, the Accuser.
We need to understand this. Shame and the sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with us is not God's plan for our lives and we need to rebuke that sense at every turn.
I want to pause here and elaborate again on the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is limited and local. It comes from inside us. Guilt is an appropriate response to a wrong action. Guilt can lead to a decision to make right the wrong. Take the apple back to the store, apologize to the owner and move on. Stop genetically modifying plants and offer full restitution to the farmers you've put out of business. Try to make right the wrong.
But how do you re-wind on shame? Shame, unlike guilt, is expansive and global. Shame is that profound sense that who we are is fundamentally wrong. Shame is that terrible sense that we were knit together in our mother's womb to be someone inherently inferior. Shame always comes from the outside. Shame is always an intrusion, a transgressor, a usurper of that sense to which each of us is entitled--that sense that we were made in the image of God. Shame is the result of being told over and over, not that we have been created in the very image of God, which we ought to hear every day of our lives, but that who we are is fundamentally contrary to the image of God.
When I was a child in Georgia, I very occasionally was told with real contempt by someone who was not especially important to me that I was a "nigger lover." Suppose I had heard that over and over and over by someone who was supposed to love me? How could I have helped but internalize his contempt for me?
Later on, because of circumstances surrounding Leigh Anna's death, I heard that I should be given a "Worst Mother of the Year" Award and that I was a "complete ass of a human." Suppose I had heard that over and over and over from someone who had authority over me? How could I have helped but internalize her opinion of me?
I have been lucky. I've never repeatedly heard derogatory remarks about me. But other people do all the time.
I have been lucky. I've never repeatedly heard derogatory remarks about me. But other people do all the time.
Like foul, demonic spirits they come forth from the mouths of the False Prophets--Yid, Kike, Raghead, Bible Thumper, Fundie, Sand Nigger, Camel Jockey, Chink, Jap, Gook, Spik, Beaner, Fag, Dyke, Gal-Boy, Sissy, Twinkle-Toes, Butch, Curry Muncher, Honky, Redskin, Squaw, Buck, Kraut, Mick, Dago, Wop, Flag Waver, Douchebag, Whore, Predator. Demonic words meant to shame people and make them believe there is something fundamentally wrong with them. Its not enough for the Accusers to crucify our bodies, they want to crucify our souls, too.
Sometimes Satan's lust for our souls makes its way into our own families. Suppose you heard your father refer to you throughout your childhood as a "worthless piece of filth." How could you not internalize that? How could you not feel that something was fundamentally wrong with you? Or suppose your mother repeatedly called you a "little slut." How could you not internalize that? How could you not wonder whether something were fundamentally wrong with you?
Sometimes, however, its not even about what others say, its about what we say to ourselves. Suppose you had an abortion and for years and years you were haunted by, "what kind of a mother kills her own child?" Or you had an abortion and you didn't experience regret and because of that you say to yourself, "what is the matter with me?" What God wants you to know, I think, is that right or wrong an abortion was something you did and not who you are.
Sometimes, of course, we do things that are just plain wrong by any standard. We know it and we do it anyway. We go to a party and we intend to drink too much and we do drink too much and we get behind the wheel of our car and we cause a wreck that takes someone's life. We need to feel guilty. Its appropriate. Guilt is the God-ordained appropriate response for doing what we know to be wrong. Feel guilt over what you did, but don't allow guilt to become transformed into a global feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong with you because that is not true. There is not a single person here this morning who is fundamentally wrong or inherently flawed.
We hear a lot about the Israelite and Jewish societies being shame based. I think we post-Modern Westerners can make that claim, too. U. S. Army Reserves Specialist Lynndie England at Iraq's infamous Abu-Ghraib prison pulling an Iraqi prisoner in his underwear along the floor by a leash around his neck in one of numerous horrifying shaming acts there. Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio forcing his male prisoners to wear pink underwear and swelter in tents. How does one recover from being treated that way?
More to the point, isn't there something fundamentally wrong with Lynndie England and Joe Arpaio? I think that if we take seriously the idea that each of us is the image of God, we have to conclude that the actions of Lynndie England and Joe Arpaio reach the level of being demonic. But, I think we have to conclude that these were things England did, things for which she ought to feel a great deal of guilt and for which she probably deserved her dishonorable discharge and prison sentence. But even these actions were what she did and not who she was. These miserable things Sheriff Arpaio does to people in Arizona are things for which he should feel a great deal of guilt and for which, I believe, he should at least lose his job. But these miserable actions are what he does and not who he is. Even US. Army Reserves Specialist Lynndie England and Sheriff Joe Arpaio were knit together in their mother's wombs in the image of God. Even the venom-spitting False Prophets, even the Englands and Arpaios were knit together in their mother's wombs in the image of God. We have to ask ourselves, "What went wrong in their lives? What words did they hear? What accusations? Were shaming acts perpetrated upon them?"
This is important. The Bible tells us that God and Satan are at war over this. Satan, the Trickster, the Accuser, wants Lynndie England and Joe Arpaio to believe something is fundamentally wrong with them. The Trickster wants them, as he wants each one of us, to feel eternally exposed and forever ashamed. God wants us to know that each of us is God's very image. The very image of God to which terrible things have been done. The image of God which does terrible things.
Shame was a big part of what Caesar was up to at Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus was executed. Crucifixion, after all, was reserved for non-Romans--the ethnicities, the Jews, the permanent outsiders who were believed to be a fundamental threat to Caesar and his national security state. Crucifixion was about more than torturing the body--it was about torturing the soul.
We know God was of a different mind-set which is why God effected the Resurrection. We know that Jesus was resurrected in body and in spirit and that God was triumphant over Caesar. Yet, we also know that the battle between God and Satan persists and will persist until the day of Armageddon. "See, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and is clothed, not going about naked and exposed to shame." Shame and the fear of exposure. Together they have been one of the persistent motifs of humankind since the intrusion of Satan into the Garden of Eden.
The County may not care whether it humiliates a child. Caesar makes it a point to humiliate. But one of the promises made in the book of Revelation is that one day the brutal realities of this world will cease away and there will be a new Paradise in which no one is ever shamed. Write this down. What I'm about to say is trustworthy and true. God will wipe away every tear. Shame and the fear of exposure will be no more. That sounds like Good News to me.
Amen.
Faith Presbyterian Church
Jn 3:1-21
Jn 7:50-51
Jn 19:39-42
Nicodemus Visits Jesus
“Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.
He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.
What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You[d] must be born from above.’
The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”
Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.
If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.
But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
John 7:50-51
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus before, and who was one of them, asked,
“Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”
Jn 19:39-41
Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.
They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.
Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.
The story of Nicodemus is part of the fabric of John’s Gospel. Three things in particular strike me about this Gospel.
One is the degree to which much of it revolves around discourses in which people are challenged to examine that which they know.
The second is that John’s Gospel is filled with details of the politics of oppression and rebellion—Jesus moves in secret, Nicodemus moves in secret, there are repeated attempts to arrest Jesus and Jesus’ repeated escapes, there are trials, testimonies, judges, betrayals, persecutions, and detachments of soldiers with their lanterns and torches and weapons.
Third, much of the action takes place in Jerusalem during major Jewish festivals.
Off-season, Jerusalem was a major metropolitan area set within a wall measuring about 4 miles in circumference. Within the walls lived a permanent population of perhaps 80,000 people including thousands of temple priests, their attendants, and temple police.
During the festivals, however, the population would swell to include as many as 250,000 pilgrims, along with thousands of terrified animals necessary for the festivals. Jerusalem during festival times was extremely crowded and noisy, people were overly excited and every corner bar did a land office business. Roman security was added at every gate and at the Temple, Jewish police officers were on the lookout for trouble makers. Every festival had the potential for trouble.
On top of this, Temple and Jewish leadership, including the Pharisees, existed at the pleasure of the Roman Empire. The job of the leadership was two-fold.
First, it was to maintain Jewish law and ritual, and thereby maintain the ability of Jews to exist as a people of faith within an empire that was hostile to them. This in part was what made them exemplary Jews—exemplary men of faith.
Second, their job was to keep the lid on Jewish rebellions so that the Jews could continue to exist as a political entity. So, in essence, the Pharisees had struck a bargain with Rome—allow us to exist as a people and a faith, they seem to have concluded with much justification, and we will keep Jerusalem rebellion-free. At best, the Pharisees had a difficult, unenviable job.
The difficulty of their job could only have increased during the times of the major festivals—Passover, the feast of Tabernacles, and the feast of Dedication because what were these festivals commemorating?
Political liberation.
Passover celebrated the liberation from Egypt, the fundamental event in Israel’s history.
The feast of Tabernacles celebrated God’s protection of Israel in the wilderness.
The feast of Dedication celebrated God’s deliverance of Israel from the oppression of Antiochus Epiphanes and the cleansing of the Temple by the Maccabees.
And this is the volatile situation into which John’s Jesus Christ inserts himself. As Passover is drawing near, he goes up to Jerusalem, enters the temple, which has tightened its security, makes a whip out of cords and uses it to cleanse the temple.
Adding insult to injury, he pours out the coins of the money changers and overturns their heavy tables shouting, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
It is after this that Nicodemus comes secretly, by night, to Jesus. One of the Pharisees whose job it is to maintain Jewish law and the Jews’ right to exist within a hostile empire, Nicodemus is a man of serious faith. He asks Jesus to clarify his theology of being born again, in other words, of what it means to be born anew into fullness of life.
And it seems to me that Nicodemus is beginning to conclude that the bargain the Jewish leadership has made with the Romans is a devil’s bargain. I think he has begun to conclude that oppression by definition cannot possibly be the solution for oppression.
Months later, during the festival of Tabernacles during which the faithful read Liberation Song 118 (sometimes known as Psalm 118), Jesus cries out, “let anyone who is thirsty come over to me.” And in what is a real shock to the chief priests and Pharisees, even the temple police begin to believe that Jesus is a prophet or even the long-expected messiah.
Even one of their own, Nicodemus, says that Jesus needs to be given a hearing.
The people are going over to Jesus. The temple police appear to be going over to Jesus. And now, Nicodemus, a Pharisee, is going over to Jesus. And the Pharisees’ anxiety begins to skyrocket. “Search the scriptures,” they say. No prophet will ever come out of Galilee.”
So the chief priests and Pharisees call a meeting and say “What are we to do? If we let this man go on like this everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”
And Passover comes around again, and many ordinary Jews are deserting to Jesus and believing in him. And when Jesus enters Jerusalem on the colt of a king and the crowd greets him with shouts of “The King of Israel!” the Pharisees say to one another, “Look, the whole world has gone over to him!”
And in a desperate effort to hold onto their authority, the Pharisees begin to excommunicate those who go over to Jesus. And they assist the Roman soldiers in their arrest of Jesus who is tried and crucified.
I think that it is a testament to the degree to which Nicodemus has changed his orientation that, along with Joseph of Arimathea, it is he who takes care of Jesus’ body, bringing about 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes to place inside the burial linens, according to Jewish custom.
And this is on the day of Preparation, the day when Jews remember that freedom day when Israel prepared to leave Egypt.
This is one way to recall Nicodemus this Easter. As one who examined that good thing which he as a good Pharisee knew, that good thing he gave up in order to claim the freedom, the liberation which had been promised by God.
I am struck by how much Nicodemus’ pursuit of holistic liberation reminds me of Nicaragua’s Ernesto Cardenal. For those of you who don’t know about him, Cardenal is one of the most widely-read poets in the Spanish language and a Roman Catholic priest.
To understand Cardenal, you need to know that throughout most of the twentieth-century, Nicaragua was the U. S.’s primary Latin American client state. The US installed and militarily backed the brutal Somoza regime, one of the most brutal of all the military dictatorships in Latin America.
I don’t think its hyperbolic to say that Nicaragua existed at the pleasure of the U. S. Nor is it hyperbolic to say that the Catholic Church in Nicaragua existed at the pleasure of President Somoza and the Nicaraguan National Guard.
So, in my mind, there is something of a parallel between the relationship of the Nicaraguan Church to the U. S. and the relationship of the Jewish Temple leadership to the Roman Empire.
As a young adult, Cardenal participated in a plot to overthrow the Somoza / National Guard dictatorship. However, because of the excessive violence of the reprisals against the rebellion, like Nicodemus, Cardenal had a “born again” experience in which he disavowed violence and decided to enter the priesthood.
He went to Kentucky to study philosophical non-violence with Thomas Merton. At Merton’s urging, Cardenal later returned to Nicaragua where he founded a commune devoted to contemplation, the arts, and strict non-violence.
Along with Daniel and Phillip Berrigan as well as Thomas Merton, Cardenal became one of the key figures of the philosophical non-violence movement. Philosophical non-violence was indeed that which made them such exemplary Christians. It was a principle they knew was right.
But by 1972, Cardenal reluctantly concluded that priestly calls for non-violence would not end violence. Indeed, he began to conclude, it would only prolong the intense suffering of the Nicaraguan people.
And so Cardenal scandalized his international admirers with a decision to publicly support the guerrillas who were gathering strength in their effort to overthrow the Somoza / National Guard dictatorship. He longed for fullness of life for Nicaragua and concluded that hope for Nicaraguan life was inconsistent with philosophical non-violence and its bargain with the dictatorship.
His decision was most welcome among the young guerrillas with whom he read and discussed the Bible at the front and among many other Christians in Latin America.
Yet, it was most unwelcome among good Christians outside Latin America including Daniel Berrigan and Pope John Paul II whose criticism was especially hurtful. When I see video footage of the Pope wagging his finger at a kneeling Ernesto Cardenal on a public runway in Managua, I hear an anxious caution from the Pope:
“Surely, no prophet will ever come out of Nicaragua!”
As with Nicodemus’s turn from that principle on which he had staked a calling and a career, Cardenal’s turn from non-violence coincided with preparations for a major Christian festival. On the morning of December 23, 1972, a violent earthquake struck Managua as the city’s elite were preparing for a lavish Christmas. Later, Nicaraguan poet Tomás Borge wrote that Managua shattered “like a castle of cards constructed by a Peruvian sorceress.”
Approximately 10,000 people were killed. Hundreds of thousands more were injured or left homeless. The devastation to property was nearly incalculable.
National Guard soldiers, often led by their officers, engaged in extensive looting. They enjoyed tormenting desperately hungry people chasing them by showing them tin cans of food which they would not give up.
Massive amounts of foreign aid poured into Nicaragua. Most of it ended up in the already deep pockets of Somoza, his family, and his business and Guard cronies.
Cardenal concluded that the Nicaraguan Church’s bargain with the National Guard and Somoza would never lead to fullness of life for Nicaragua. Cardenal, like Nicodemus, responded to a political temple-cleansing Jesus who was the full-blown, apocalyptic, Word Become Flesh, Son of Man. He recalled Liberation Psalm 118 and Mary’s Christmas Magnificat and became reborn once again.
We are entering into the final days leading up to the major festival of the Christian calendar, the Easter festival, the festival during which we Christians celebrate more than any other the promise that fullness of life can overcome even the politics of death. It seems appropriate that we remember Nicodemus and Ernesto Cardenal. It seems appropriate that we recall that the political Jesus who cleansed the temple and died on the cross is the apocalyptic Son of Man sent to bring the whole world liberation.
Most importantly, it seems appropriate during what remains of this Lenten season that we, too, examine that which makes us a good Christian.
If being a good Christian is inconsistent with the full liberation of the whole world, are we prepared to give it up?
The purpose of the church is to bring Good News to people who have been suffering for a long and seemingly interminable season.
Image: "Malachi," by Duccio di Buoninsegma, c. 1310
Luke 1:68-79 (Richard Barham)
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Sermon
Good morning! I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have been invited to preach for you on this most exciting day – your 30th Anniversary! Thank you, Richard.
The purpose of the church is to bring Good News to people who have been suffering for a long and seemingly interminable season. So I would maintain that Spirit of the Cross, a church founded on the need of lgbt people to have a safe space in which to be Christians, having been an outpost of love and acceptance in Alabama, of all places, for 30 years is Good News indeed. And to that I say, Amen! And again, a rousing Amen!
We are here this morning to celebrate the life and history of Spirit of the Cross over these past 30 years, but what of the next 30 years? Will Spirit of the Cross rest on its laurels? Or will it build on its success in creating a safe space for lgbt Christians? Will it, perhaps, raise up a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender prophet who will proclaim safety and justice for all?
I found it intriguing that the lessons today from Jeremiah and Luke are about prophets and their voices. In the context of the Exile, God raised up Jeremiah to bring Good News. Later, in the context of the Roman Empire, God raised up John the Baptist to bring Good News.
By Good News, I don't mean news that causes us to do the Snoopy Dance. I don't mean the news that causes us to laugh and shout such as when we learn we have won a round trip for two to Morocco. Or even when the the Supreme Court hands down its decision affirming same sex marriage. By Good News, which is what the word “gospel” means, I mean news that has about it certain qualities – the quality of being reliable. Of being authentic. Of being unimpeachable. The kind of news delivered with a lot of edginess by Jeremiah and John the Baptist. The news that the desperate circumstances in which the people found themselves were not the end. That constitutively time cannot run in reverse. It always moves forward. That the future, by definition, is both not yet in existence and already in existence.
The Good News, the news which is reliable and unimpeachable, is that there is a radical distinction between God and Pharaoh, between God and Caesar. Being mindful of this distinction implies having the resolve to keep a certain critical distance between ourselves and Pharaoh, between ourselves and Caesar, between ourselves and the President of the United States, and others who have control over people's lives, their safety, and their dignity.
If Jeremiah's words are to have any meaning for us, we have to find the contemporary reality – the contemporary Good News – implicit in them. So here is my take on the lectionary's verses for this morning which were written in the context of exile: “Watch out you politicians and presidents and prime ministers who harm and displace the peoples on the planet I created! says the Lord. Because of your ways, says the Lord, the God of the United States, about all the politicians and presidents and prime ministers who were supposed to take care of the peoples of the planet I created: It is you who displaced the peoples of my planet, driving them from their ancestral lands, perpetrating injustice and economic oppression, refusing to take care of them, looking the other way while they suffered needlessly. So! I will take care of you for your evil doings, says the Lord. I myself will gather them back together, bring them home to the people who love them, and there will become many of them. I will raise up politicians and presidents and prime ministers who will take care of them, both their dignity and their economic welfare, and they will not be afraid any more or worry about whether they have a future nor will any be disappeared by government agents, nor will they be threatened in any way, says the Lord. You can take this to heart and rest assured that the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up a president who will be characterized by righteousness, by a hunger and thirst for justice, by an intention to bring into being an encompassing realm of wholistic safety and the peace that passes all our understanding.”
I'm fairly certain that no one hearing Jeremiah's words ever did the Snoopy Dance. This is the prophet from whom we get the word “jeremiad” meaning a long and threatening list of woes and charges against a society because of its injustices and its economic oppression and in which that society's downfall is predicted. A jeremiad is angry. Cautionary. Unsettling.
Yet, Jeremiah, the prophetic voice, delivered Good News – authentic, reliable news. The Good News was that the safety and security of people is directly tied to the rule of justice for all the people, not just some.
A decade later, there arose up a prophet in San Francisco's Harvey Milk. As many of you know, Milk was the first openly gay politician to be elected to public office in California. He addressed homophobia and the deaths to the soul it caused lgbt young people. But, as the so-called Mayor of Castro Street, he tried to make government responsive to people's immediate needs – all people's needs – and to that end he tried to build coalitions between gay people and the unions, among other things. He was known for being theatrical, charismatic, and a rousing orator. In one of his last speeches, he had this to say:
“The only thing [the young gays] have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up.”
What I want to leave you with is this thought. Next Sunday, we officially enter Advent, the season of waiting expectantly for the prophetic voice which, once and for all, will bring into being the radical overturning of current realities. I want to suggest as forcefully as I can that from this congregation, Spirit of the Cross, there can, and perhaps must, come a prophet. A prophet who will keep his, her, or their eyes on the politicians, presidents, and prime ministers. A prophet who will maintain a good measure of critical distance between himself and whomever is the president of the United States or any other elected official. A prophet so distanced from the politicians, presidents, and prime ministers that they are able to care less about winning and more about the welfare of all the displaced, exiled, and disadvantaged peoples.
Let me paraphrase the words of Zechariah about the coming of John the Baptist in order to give Spirit of the Cross both a blessing and a charge:
“God has already looked favorably on lgbt people
He already has raised up a mighty prophet in this house of his servants, Spirit of the Cross,
as he spoke through the mouths of his prophets Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Martin Luther King, and Harvey Milk
that we would all be saved from our enemies
and from the hands of those who hate us
Thus God has shown us the mercy promised to our ancestors Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan
and has remembered his holy covenant
the oath that he swore to the ancestor of all of us – Abraham,
to grant that we, having been rescued from the hands of our enemies
might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days,
and you, Child, sitting here in a covenantal relationship with all those who call Spirit of the Cross home,
you, Child, will be called to be a prophet of the Most High
to prepare the way
to give knowledge of complete salvation from all injustices and all economic predatoriness
to all the peoples of the planet so they will know they are being redeemed, just as you are being redeemed, that they are being rescued.
By the tender mercy of the Lord our God
the dawn from on high will break upon you, Child of Spirit of the Cross,
so that you may give light to all those who sit in the darkness and the shadows of death
to all those lgbt and all those straight people abandoned in prisons and detention centers, losing their lives to greed and corruption, crossing militarized borders, being bombed as we speak, losing their families as we speak, prostituting their bodies and their souls as we speak, losing all hope, believing with good reason that they have no future
let the dawn from on high break upon you, Child of Spirit of the Cross,
to guide all our feet into the way of peace.”
Amen!
The story of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness is predicated on the fact that Jesus has already been established in Luke’s Gospel as the Son of God. That has been established.
Photo: Christ in the Wilderness, Ivan Kramskoi, 1872
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Luke 4:1-13
The story of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness is predicated on the fact that Jesus has already been established in Luke’s Gospel as the Son of God.
That has been established.
To understand what that claim about Jesus means, though, we have to understand what the claim meant in the context of the Roman Empire. Jesus was making not only a spiritual claim, he was making a political claim. By the time of Jesus’s birth, the position, if not the person, of Caesar had been deified. By the time Augustus was Caesar, the person of Caesar had been deified. Augustus began to be worshiped as a deity, somewhere between a “Divine Son” and a “Son of God”. Augustus used this title to advance his political position finally overcoming all rivals for power within the Roman state.
The point is, the title “Son of God” was not exclusive to Jesus. By the time of Jesus’s ministry, the other Son of God was Caesar Tiberius whose power extended over many political realms.
Having a better understanding of what the claim Son of God meant in its contemporary context, we can begin to get at what Luke was up to with his story.
One of Luke’s storytelling techniques is the use of allusion. He mentions a word or a phrase and it recalls to mind entire episodes that the hearers of his story will immediately understand. And they’ll make connections. Luke begins the story of the temptations Jesus faced this way:“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan (where he had just been baptized) and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” Luke is reminding the hearer of his Gospel that Jesus is the Son of God as signified by the story of his baptism in the Jordan River. He is also setting us up with interpretive tools for the story of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness. One of those interpretive tools is Luke’s use of the number “40”.
For those of you who have been exposed to Bible stories for a while, the number 40 may conjure the rains which flooded the earth for 40 days and 40 nights in what we now call the Flood Story of Noah and the Ark way back at the beginning of Jewish time. It may conjure the story of Moses being told by God to come up on a high mount way up into the clouds where he would receive the terms of the covenant offered by God, and he stayed there for 40 days and 40 nights. And, it may conjure the broader Mosaic story of the Israelites wandering in a wilderness for 40 years.
All of which to say that the number 40 and the stories to which it alludes and the connections it evokes, connect Jesus backwards to his ancestors in the people, the politics, and the faith of Israel and forward to the story which is about to unfold. The number 40 also reaffirms the claim that Jesus is the authentic Son of God. 3. Keep your eyes on this: that Jesus was led by the Spirit in the desert. Listen out for “Jesus was led” in the rest of the story. The phrase becomes a motif and motifs are developed for a reason.
So, for 40 days Jesus was tempted by the devil. Now, look at what is going on here. In the first part of the sentence, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan . . . . “. Who is the protagonist here? Jesus. He returns. He’s his own man in charge of his destiny in the active voice. But no sooner has he returned than there is a plot twist: the protagonist suddenly becomes the Spirit. Active voice. Jesus becomes the antagonist operating in the passive voice. And this is where he stays for a good part of the story—he is no longer the protagonist of the story. Why? Because he is being tempted.
Now, we need to hit the pause button for a minute and reflect on what it means to be tempted. Temptation has to do with desire. Desire is the strong want to do something or have something, especially something that is unwise or wrong. What this means is that Jesus desires in a strong way the things the devil is holding out to Him, if only momentarily. Without the aspect of Jesus’s desire for these things, there is no temptation, and the story falls apart. The devil tempts Jesus; Jesus is tempted.
The framework for the first thing which tempts Jesus is the wilderness where for 40 days, Jesus fasted. He ate nothing at all and when his fast was over, he was famished. He wanted something to eat. He needed something to eat. The devil begins to tempt him by challenging Jesus’s claim that he is the Son of God. He is challenging both Jesus’s religious claim and his political claim. Because the one true Son of God in the context of the Roman Empire was Caesar Tiberius. And the devil challenges him by toying with a sensitive spot—Jesus’s identity.
The word translated as “if”: “If you are the Son of God” can also be translated more sarcastically as “since.” “Since you are the Son of God” . . . with the implied “prove it.” Command this stone to become a loaf of bread. And wouldn’t Jesus love a loaf of bread right about now. Jesus is tempted to take the devil up on his challenge because he is hungry to the point of starvation and because he wants to settle the challenge to his identity. If Jesus is not actually tempted to turn the stone into bread, the story and its meaning fall apart.
Which is to say that we emphatically need bread to live—why else would God provide manna to the Israelites? But that there are other things we need, too, in order to thrive. Things like dignity, self-respect, and autonomy. Man does not live by bread alone.
But the devil is restless. The devil is always restless. Look at what happens next. The devil displaces the Spirit. The Spirit has exited the scene and is not coming back. The devil is fully protagonist now which is signaled by the phrase “the devil led him”. Just a second ago, it was the Spirit which led Jesus. Now, it is the devil. Does Jesus rebuke the devil? Does he say, “get thee behind me?” Absolutely not. Jesus literally follows the Devil up a mountain. Did we just hear about a mountain? Oh, yeah: Moses, God, the clouds, the Covenant. . . .
Up on that mountaintop, the devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. In the context of the dueling claims as to who is the Son of God, Jesus or Caesar, what does “the world” mean? It means the Roman Empire. Rome had once been a kingdom, then it was a republic. But by the time Jesus was on the scene, Rome was an empire. How do you become an empire? By subsuming other peoples’ lands’, their peoples, and their cultures and by controlling their religions. The devil promises Jesus all the kingdoms of the Roman world. The devil promises Jesus all the glory and and all the authority, and he makes the claim that all the glory and all the authority over the Roman world is his and he can give to anyone he pleases. It is a bold claim which raises the question: just who is this devil? He’s beginning to look an awful lot like Caesar.
Jesus is tempted. He is tempted by glory and authority over all the world. Because if he is not actually tempted, if he does not actually want the glory and the authority and all the kingdoms, the story and its meaning fall apart.
But then the devil discloses what will clinch the deal: all Jesus has to do is worship him. The devil is beginning to look an awful lot like a stand-in for Caesar. The deal clincher brings Jesus to his senses. He cannot worship the devil. As part of his own claim to being the Son of God, he cannot worship the devil. Jesus recalls an injunction from Deuteronomy: “ You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear.”
But the devil is restless in his search for power and glory. The devil is always restless. He tries the third time. The devil leads Jesus to Jerusalem and literally places him on the pinnacle of the Temple, the Temple being the place where Jewish authorities were collaborating with Rome. Again the Devil challenges Jesus’s claim to being the Son of God: “if you are the Son of God” or “Since you are the Son of God”, throw yourself off the pinnacle. Then the Roman devil quotes Jesus’s own Jewish Scriptures with this passage from Psalm 91:
“For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”
And Jesus is tempted. Because if Jesus is not tempted, the story and its meaning fall apart. But Jesus remembered this caution from Deuteronomy: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massuh.”
What’s this about Massuh? Massuh is a place mentioned in Exodus at the beginning of the time of the 40 years wandering. Because of the lack of water, the Israelites begin to complain about Moses, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, just to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst? Is the Lord not with us?” So God tells him to go to a certain rock and strike it with his rod whereupon water gushes forth and the people drink. Moses called the place Massuh because they tempted the Lord to prove Himself even though, as he said in a retort, “you’ve already seen my work.” And the Lord said, “For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.” Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.” Even God is tempted by glory and authority!
So Jesus quotes Scripture right back at the devil, “Do not put temptation out in front of the Lord your God.” And Jesus reminds the devil, unlike me God has been known to actually act on temptation which is something you really don’t want.” Fair warning. So the devil goes away. But he’s coming back. When an opportune time presents itself, he’ll be back. Later on Jesus will turn his temptations in the wilderness into a prayer of deliverance, “God, don’t lead us into temptations of glory and authority and kingdoms, but when we are tempted, deliver us from it. Because all the kingdoms and all the glory and all the power belong to you and you alone forever and forever.
Amen.
Psalm 82: A Psalm of Asaph.
God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?Selah
Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk around in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I say, “You are gods,
children of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, you shall die like mortals,
and fall like any prince.”[a]
Rise up, O God, judge the earth;
for all the nations belong to you!
Luke 12:49-56
"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!
Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:
father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens.
You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"
SERMON
All Christians, as all people of faith, I suppose, should be in the business of interpreting the present time. For the most part, though, I don’t think we are doing that in ways that are effective. In ways that change our world in redemptive ways. Part of the reason is because long ago we Christian ministers stopped preaching the central Bible messages which are basically only two:
1. That Pharaoh is not the equivalent of God, that Caesar is not the equivalent of God. We have not been preaching that God and Caesar will never intersect. Instead, we preach our hope for God’s Man in the White House.
2. That the National Security State is not the equivalent of the Realm of Heaven. We have not been preaching that the National Security State will never intersect the Realm of Heaven. Instead, we preach our vain belief that the United States is a beacon to the world, the City on a Hill.
If I were to list the key words and key ideas of these two passages from the Psalms and the gospel of Luke, here is what they would be:
From Psalms:
Judgment
Judicial bodies
Injustice
Lack of Knowledge
Lack of Understanding
Walking in darkness
All the nations belonging to God
From Luke’s gospel:
Jesus brings division not peace
Fire
Clouds
Rain
Winds
Scorching heat
Settle the case up front for you’ll never get out of prison if you don’t
I suppose everyone here this morning is shocked at the rate of mass shootings in this country that we love. We are incredulous that other countries are now issuing travel warnings cautioning their people not to come to the US or, if they do come, to be very careful about where they go. Avoid public spaces, they warn. Avoid malls and shopping centers. We are shocked by the news of ICE raids and deportations and Federal officials snatching babies from their mothers. Horrified by the reports of children in cages.
We see on our televisions poor, Black people stranded on their housetops as Hurricane Katrina rages over New Orleans. We are disbelieving when the National Guard obstructs their movements.
We watch in horror as fires rage through California costing people just like us everything they have.
We in Alabama know that the summers don’t feel right, neither do the winters, and the warming of the waters of the Gulf has caused it to become dangerous with flesh-eating bacteria.
Phoenix is getting to be so hot it may soon be uninhabitable.
And, just this morning I heard that a glacier in Iceland has been declared dead.
All these are signs of the present time. Climate change and mass shootings: both signs of the present time. Blatant, overt racism and hidden, systemic racism: both signs of the present time.
As some of you know, I was ordained to a prophetic ministry which means a ministry of telling truth to power, of pulling back the curtain on reality so that we can see the inner workings of the National Security State and reveal the personality of the pharaohs and the caesars.
My primary focus is immigration issues. I’ve spent the past 13 years researching and writing and making documentaries about immigration and have become a pretty good generalist on the subject. When I read Psalm 82 and the verses from Luke 12, my mind goes immediately to immigration issues. It seems that these two passages unintentionally point thousands of years forward to today in the National Security State of today, the US. My perspective is that immigration in the context of the US is the lens through which we can begin to understand that there can never be any such thing as God’s Man in the White House, that the US is the modern day equivalent of the Roman Empire, the National Security State.
We talk a lot about white privilege and class privilege but we seldom talk about the privilege of citizenship. Did you know that the reason Jesus could be crucified was because he was a non-citizen in Rome. No Roman citizen could be crucified. That was reserved for Jews and other deplorables, dangerous by their very existence.
We wander in the darkness of our lack of knowledge of what our National Security State is up to. We cannot interpret what we do not know. We cannot interpret in ways that are consistent with the Realm of Heaven if we choose not to know. Not to understand.
Did you know that in 1992, the US crafted the inherently white supremacist border policy called “prevention through deterrence”? That was a policy formulated in conjunction with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement which, as the presidents of its three signatory countries well knew, would displace millions of Mexican peasant farmers and that they would try to come to the US in order to stay alive.
All those heads of state were, for all intents and purposes white even though one of them was Mexican and another the USA’s “first Black president” as people in those years quipped. All those displaced, for all intents and purposes, brown no matter the color of their eyes or the tone of their skin. The policy was to funnel displaced Mexican peasants into the Sonoran Desert and its scorching heat where it was anticipated they would die. That was the plan: murder was the plan. State sponsored murder and terrorism was the plan. Funnel them into the waterless Sonoran Desert and let the scorching heat take things from there. The plan was that only a limited number would die, word would get back to Mexico, and displaced farmers would stop trying to come.
To date a minimum of 7,000 migrants have died. Compare that to the 1,180 people who have died at the hands of mass shooters in the same time period in the US. Why do we pay attention to one figure while ignoring the other? My answer is because we are wandering in the darkness of a lack of knowledge. A lack of understanding. If “prevention through deterrence” is not white nationalism, nothing is white nationalism. If the casualness with which 7,000 mostly Latino but also African and Asian migrants were sent to their deaths without charge, judge, jury or trial is not white supremacy, nothing is white supremacy.
Did you know that the US has two separate legal entry systems? That is has one for Canadians and Western Europeans and another for Latinos, Asians, and Africans? If that is not white nationalism, nothing is white nationalism. Did you know that there are quotas for deportation, quotas of 400,000 per year and that these quotas were in place and being met well before the present [Trump][administration? Or that there were agreements to keep 34,000 immigrant detention prison beds filled each and every day since well before the current administration? If this isn’t white supremacy and white nationalism, nothing is.
Did you know, too, that Madison County and the City of Huntsville cooperate with more ICE detainer requests than any other county in Alabama except Talladega? An ICE detainer request is a request for a county to voluntarily hold an immigrant detainee for 48 hours past their time served for deportation purposes. If this isn’t systemic white supremacy, then nothing is white supremacy.
I could go on and on, but I will let it suffice to say that ICE raids and children in cages and 3 year olds representing themselves in immigration court, and being deported for shoplifting a bottle of aspirin and spraying migrants with pesticides are not novelties which sprang up after 2016. These things, these white supremacist things, have been around for decades no matter the skin tone of the officers in charge. We wander in the darkness of our lack of knowledge and understanding. It is difficult if not impossible to interpret the signs of the times if we don’t know.
What can we do? What we can do is keep a critical distance between ourselves and our national leaders. We can keep in the forefront of our interpretive tools the blessed assurance that the President is more like Caesar than God. Always. We can keep in the forefront of our interpretive tools the blessed assurance that the US is not the City on a Hill but the National Security State, thriving on lies, half-truths, obscurantism, and paranoia. These blessed assurances are Good News. They are Good News not because hard truths are soothing or pleasant to hear. They are Good News because they show us the way out. Out of the National Security State and into the Realm of Heaven. Here on earth.
Amen?
An Anti-Imperial Take
Exodus 14:10-12, 26-30
Mark 5:1-18
Exodus
As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord.
They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt?
Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”
. . .
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers.”
So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea.
The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained.
But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.
Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.
Mark
They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes.
And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him.
He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain;
for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him.
Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.
When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him;
and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.”
For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”
Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.”
He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.
Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding;
and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.”
So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened.
They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.
Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it.
Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood.
As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him.
But Jesus refused, and said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you. And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed."
I think we can see some parallels in these two readings which is why I put them into contact with each other. First and foremost, each shows a people suffering in a certain context—that of Empire. For Moses and the Israelites, the specific context was the theocratic monarchy of the pharaohs in Egypt. For Jesus and the man possessed by demons, the specific context was Caesar in the Roman Empire. In both instances, whether Pharaoh or Caesar, the belief was that the rulers were beings closer to God in type than to ordinary human beings. They ruled because God wanted them to rule. Or so went the messaging.
So, it is not incidental that in both stories there are graves, chains of one kind or another, terrible suffering, the military, seas, drownings, chaotic weather, wildernesses, and people who have been brought to stations so low their existence as objects cannot be reconciled with any theology that maintains that human beings are made in the very image of God. The emphasis today is on Jesus’ healing of the man from Gerasa who was possessed by demons. It is helpful, I think, to bring a little background into focus.
First, the sea in the Jesus healing story is the Sea of Galilee which is bisected by the River Jordan. This was the area of the 10 cities of the Decapolis, a league of Greco-Roman cities established as places for Greek settler soldiers to live in after the time of Alexander the Great. In other words, the cities of the Decapolis were places for military occupation.
All but one of the cities, Scythopolis, were located to the east of the Jordan River. Hippo was on the Sea; Gadara and Pella were to the south of the sea; and Gerasa was well southeast of the sea by some 30-40 miles. It was in hilly country.
The entire area, the area of the Decapolis, was solidly Gentile territory. Pigs are a motif in the story. To us Westerners in the 21st century, we think of pigs as being the animal the Jews considered to be unclean. But I think Jesus’ audience may have heard a bit more than that just as when we say “9/11” we mean much more than a date on a calendar. I think it may have been the same with Jesus’s audience
For one thing, the Hellenistic king, Antiochus IV, lit a match when he captured Jerusalem in 167 BCE, then desecrated the Temple by sacrificing a pig on an altar to the Greek god Zeus. This act, called the Abomination of Desolation, culminated in the Maccabean Revolt of the Jews, the victory of which is celebrated in the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. The pig was not only a religious or dietary abomination, it was a political abomination brought on by the arrogance of Empire.
A Legion, as some of you may know, was the basic military unit in the Roman Empire. From the perspective of non-citizens, like the Jews, it was the basic occupying unit of the Roman Empire. It consisted of as many as 6,000 soldiers. But, Pheme Perkins, a specialist in Mark’s gospel and in the early Roman Empire, notes that there were also Legions of about 2,000 soldiers. That is the number that appeals to me, as he does to her, in this reading because we also are given details about the pigs—there was a unit, a herd, and their number was about 2,000.
An often noted motif of Mark’s gospel is the word “immediately”. It appears dozens of times in his gospel. This may not be evident in your translation as some translators are reluctant to use the same translation over and over. The word in Mark’s gospel is “euthys”. The word is so characteristic of Mark that some have called his gospel the “Gospel of Euthys”. What’s the point? The point is that things move. Things happen in Mark’s gospel.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus has extraordinary powers which are manifested in his ability to perform exorcisms and work miracles. His power was also manifested in natural phenomena—his ability to control the winds and the waters of the sea and his association with clouds. His power was cosmological in scope. What was shocking, especially to Gentiles, was his claim that he was the Son of God—a claim allowable by Caesar alone. His claim was a challenge. It was subversive.
Now, let’s look at the story, as much as we are able, from the perspective of 1st century hearers of the story. Jesus has crossed the Sea of Galilee and is entering militarily occupied Gentile territory. Immediately, the man with demons, the man who lives among the dead, meets him. The Gerasene man, too, is a man of considerable power and is considerably threatening—Mark is emphatic: “no one could restrain him, not even with a chain. He had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart and the shackles he broke into pieces and no one had the strength to subdue him.”
Yet, the extraordinarily powerful man who resists chains and shackles lives like an animal. He has become a less than human, a pariah socially isolated. Again, Mark is emphatic: he doesn’t moan or cry out or scream, like a human being would. He eternally—night and day—among the tombs and on the mountains, “howls like an animal and bruises himself on the rocks”. Jesus sees him, realizes his is possessed of a demon, and commands the demon, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” We then learn that the man seems not to want Jesus to exorcise the demon even though he has prostrated himself before Jesus. He taunts Jesus in language similar to that of other exorcism stories, “What have you to do with me, Son of the Most High God? I beg you by God, do not torment me!”
Jesus persists, asking the man what his name is. “Legion” replies the man, “because we are many.” This is a nonsense name; it is no man’s name at all; it is a reference to the basic unit of occupation. We might hear it as Jesus’ listeners surely did: “my name is Occupation.” And the man begs Jesus again, do not send them out of the country.”
Listeners in the 1st century may well have made the connection between this man, this chained, bruised, howling, occupied man and the Israelite slaves who, when encountering the possibility of liberation, object: were there not graves enough in Egypt? We would rather be slaves in Egypt than die out here in this miserable wilderness.”And, the hearers of Jesus’ story and Mark’s gospel would remember that Pharaoh was no match for God. They may even be anticipating a twist.
Mark suddenly switches the narrative to the desire not of the Gerasene man but of the unclean spirits themselves. The Legion, the occupiers, astonishingly beg Jesus to defy the man and to send them into the herd of swine. Jesus obliges their request, sends the Legion of 2,000 soldiers into the herd of 2,000 swine. The pigs, unclean in themselves, are now occupied by the unclean demons, the occupying forces, who immediately rush down the steep bank and into the Sea whereupon they all drown. Drown in the sea, covered up by the waters just like Pharaoh’s soldiers and chariots. I wonder whether that bit got a laugh.
But, there is more! The swineherds, the people who tended the swine, Gentiles surely, also stampede, running, to tell what happened in the City and surrounding countryside, the occupied city and occupied countryside. And people began to come out from the City and the countryside to see Jesus for themselves. And they saw the man who had been occupied, delivered of occupation by the Legion, wearing new, clean clothes and, “in his right mind”. Jesus, as the gospel song motif goes, has been a “mind regulator”.
And the people who have come out of the Gentile city and Gentile countryside are afraid. They are afraid of liberation, just as the Israelites in Egypt had been. And they beg Jesus to go away and leave them alone. Just as Jesus in getting back into the boat, the liberated man with clean clothes and a right mind, the man who “had been”, in the past tense, occupied by demons, begs Jesus to let him into the boat.
But Jesus tells him, no, saying that the Gentiles, your own people, need you more than I do. Tell them about what has happened to you and about the mercies, the good things, you have been shown. Which the man does, preaching throughout the Decapolis to amazed audiences. There is no point,
I believe, in reading these stories and trying to make sense of them if we cannot bring them into contact with our own lives. What parallels do we find between ourselves and the Gerasene demoniac, between ourselves and the occupying legions. Are we, too, afraid of liberation? Are we fearful of both the destabilizing threat and the destabilizing promise of the Realm of Heaven on Earth?
That’s it. Grace & peace, y’all. Grace & peace.
2 Kings 2:1-12
Now when the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.
Elijah said to Elisha, "Stay here; for the LORD has sent me as far as Bethel." But Elisha said, "As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you." So they went down to Bethel.
The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?" And he said, "Yes, I know; keep silent."
Elijah said to him, "Elisha, stay here; for the LORD has sent me to Jericho." But he said, "As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you." So they came to Jericho.
The company of prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?" And he answered, "Yes, I know; be silent."
Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here; for the LORD has sent me to the Jordan." But he said, "As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you." So the two of them went on.
Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan.
Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you." Elisha said, "Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit."
He responded, "You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not."
As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.
Elisha kept watching and crying out, "Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.
Mark 9:2-9
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.
And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.
Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"
Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.
In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake.
For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Sermon
What I mean is that the church has a theological and a biblical obligation, an obligation which more often than not is ignored, which is to analyze our world through the lens of the Bible. If we don’t engage in that analysis, then in my opinion, we become the latest version of idol worshippers. So, when I read biblical passages, I am conscious of what words and images stick in in mind and where my mind goes outside the passages per se, and I embrace the connections I make. I don’t know about y’all, but I am one of those who wants to know the context of biblical stories. Yet, I am not one of those who believes we must only READ OUT the Bible, pouring the Bible into our eyes and ears and memory as a repository, always being careful not to read our own experiences or understandings INTO the Bible.
I also am not one of those who thinks that politics has no place in church. Of course, I do not want to be met at the church door by a political pin wearing usher, nor do I want to be told how to vote. That is not what I mean. What I mean is that the church has a theological and a biblical obligation, an obligation which more often than not is ignored, which is to analyze our world through the lens of the Bible. If we don’t engage in that analysis, then in my opinion, we become the latest version of idol worshippers.
So, when I read biblical passages, I am conscious of what words and images stick in in mind and where my mind goes outside the passages per se, and I embrace the connections I make
This is the biblical context for Elijah. According to the Bible, the greater context for the emergence of Elijah is this: Israel had made religious compromises in order to secure national security and economic prosperity for the elites. But national security and economic prosperity for the elites did not produce peace.
Along comes King Ahab, who stood in a long line of kings of Israel, and princess Jezebel who was a priestess of what Elijah considered to be a false god: Ba’al. She built a temple for Ba’al and brought in its priests and prophets. Ba’al was the Canaanite god responsible for rain, thunder, lightning, and dew.
When the brook dries up, God sends him to a widow outside Israel in Phoenicia. The widow has no food but Elijah and God work out a miracle whereby God sends manna to her at the very hour God is withholding food from his faithless people. Later on, the widow’s son dies and she accuses Elijah. So Elijah raises her son from the dead and the widow testifies: “the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.”
After 3 years, God sends Elijah back to Canaan where Ahab confronts him, calling him a “trouble maker.” Elijah tears into Ahab and the people of Israel saying, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Ba’al, then follow him.”
Ultimately, toward the end of his days, Elijah is taken to God in chariots of fire and by horses of fire, born by a whirlwind. Elijah throws down his mantle, which is picked up by Elisha, who succeeds him in prophecy.
Fast forward a few thousand years: Jesus is nearing the end of his 3 years challenging Caesar’s claim that Caesar was the Son of God. So much of his work, in essence, has been about saying to the Jews, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Caesar, then follow him.”
Jesus takes Peter, James, and John and goes up a high and remote mountain. And, astonishingly, he is transfigured. Even his clothes are transfigured, becoming so dazzlingly white such that no bleach could have achieved it. And there, the 3 encounter Elijah, the trouble maker. The first among prophets. The threat to the leadership. Peter, James, and John are overwhelmed, not knowing what to make of all this. But a great bright, cloud appears covering them and they hear a voice from the cloud, saying, “Listen to him! This is my Beloved Son!”
As I said earlier, I make connections between the words and images and characters of the Bible and what is going on in the world today. I embrace these connections because, I think, it is the connections, in other words, what is outside the Bible that keeps the Bible alive and powerful. So much jumps out at me about these verses: the most obvious is that Elijah had his immediate successor, Elisha, and Elisha had his long-time coming successor, Jesus. Jesus is at the center of our faith, but like Him, we have historical and theological ancestors, in this case, Elijah.
As does each of you, I have historical, biological, and theological kin who have shaped me and how I read the Bible. There were my parents, civil rights activists in Georgia and Alabama in the 1960s and 1970s, who, like Elijah, were trouble makers at odds with their church because of the church’s hostility to racial integration and to such people as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and were at odds with their country because of its seemingly endless support for oppression. As followers of Jesus, their essential trouble-making question for both their church and their government was, “How long will we go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if George Wallace, Alabama’s notoriously segregationist governor, then follow him.” Make up your mind.
Others of my theological kin are Leonardo Boff, Óscar Romero, Ernesto Cardenal, and so many others, part of that great challenge to both the institutional Church and the military dictatorships known as liberation theologians who emerged from Latin America in the 1960s. Their essential question was and remains, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if it is Nicaragua’s murderous Somoza or Guatemala’s genocidal Ríos Móntt, then follow him.” Make up your mind.
Maybe its because the events of January 6 are still fresh in my mind—the disturbing video and horrifying audio of that day in the US Capitol building and the subsequent trial—that they, too, have factored into my reading of Elijah and the Transfiguration of Jesus. Like so many, including many of you in Canada from what I understand, we watched not only with horror, we watched with confusion, with a sense of helplessness, and a sense that nothing having to do with either faith or patriotism was making sense any more. And we longed for clarity. If only a chariot and a horse of fire would descend and lift us up with a whirlwind of clarity. If only we could meet Elijah and Jesus on a mountain. If only a voice would speak directly to us out of a bright cloud and say, “Listen! This is what it means.”
And, at that moment, I think perhaps what Elija and Jesus would have said was, “United States, Canada, how long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if the Lord is former president Trump or president Biden or Prime Minister Trudeau, follow him. You’re going to have to make up your mind.” Yet, Paul in his second letter to the church at Corinth said, “even our gospel is veiled.” For unbelievers, he wrote, the gospel is veiled. But, as the father of a sick child says in Mark’s gospel, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” I’m limping between two opinions.
We believers, too, are of a divided opinion. We cannot seem to decide whom it is we worship. Do we worship political leaders? Do we worship money? Do we worship cultural trends? Or do we worship God?
And we have trouble distinguishing between lies and truth. Do our political leaders and our economists speak lies? Do they tell us, like King Ahab, that the only things that will save us are national security and economic prosperity for the elites. Can we be confident that we know the difference between their lies and God’s truth? I will confess that often I feel as though I’m stumbling in the dark. I get tired of stumbling. Of limping between opposing opinions lacking both contextual facts and clarity of meaning.
The only litmus test I have is this: if it shines a light, it is truth. If it glorifies God it is truth. If it results in a transfigured United States, a transfigured Canada, and a transfigured world, a world made so bright that no bleach would account for it, then I would say that it is the truth and that it is the truth which glorifies God.
Amen.
Photo: The Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, by Gustave Doré, 1866
Ezekiel 37:1-14, Romans 8:22-27
1. Ezekiel 37:1-14 “The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath:Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”
2. Romans 8:22-27 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
3. In 1948, some 80% of the Arab inhabitants of what became the state of Israel either fled, were evacuated, or were deported. The real number is around 250,000-300,000 people. Between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Palestinians call this “al-Akbar” which translates as “the disaster” or “the catastrophe”. Some have called it “ethnic cleansing”. Al-Akbar is commemorated by Arabs around the world each May 15. The first Israeli government prevented Arabs from returning to their homes or claiming their property. The lack of a right to return or to be compensated remains an open sore among Palestinians; deportations continue.
4. Among the justifications for the creation of the state of Israel is the biblical and theological premise that Jews are God’s chosen people and has promised His people a homeland.
5. It seems to me that if the Bible is to be a living thing, if God lives then we have to be inventive, prophetic, and adaptable. What I want to try to do this morning is interpret these biblical passages from Ezekiel and Romans in order to apply them to what is happening today in what is sometimes called, “The Holy Lands”.
6. I want to begin by looking at who and what Ezekiel and his context were. First, his biography: Ezekiel was the son of a priest in Judah and thus was part of the Judean elite which lived mostly in Jerusalem. He was reared on orthodox Yahwistic theology, in other words Yahweh’s promises to the Israelites including the blessings emanating from the covenant forged at Sinai, God’s unwavering commitment to the house of David, and the inviolability of Jerusalem which was the location of Yahweh’s Temple which could not be overwhelmed. He was forced to rethink his orthodox beliefs, however, when Babylonia defeated Judah and Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE.
Following Babylonia’s victory, it’s king carried out a massive deportation of Jerusalem’s elite including the king, the king’s mother and wives, other officials, warriors, the artisans, and the smiths, in addition to thousands of other captives. Ezekiel was among them. The commander of the Babylonian forces systematically destroyed Jerusalem including the royal palace and the looting and burning of the Temple. Apparently, however, some of the elite stayed behind; the nobleman, Gedaliah, was given a position of leadership. He called out to those deportees who had been hiding in caves and the desert to return to their homes where they would exist under the overlordship of Babylonia. There they could enjoy wine, summer fruits, and oil and live in their old towns and in the homes previously inhabited by the exiles.
God’s people or not, Ezekiel had nothing but contempt for those who remained behind, collaborating with Babylonia, and, perhaps, shifting their allegiance to Babylonian deities.
More to the point, I think, Ezekiel had to re-invent Yahwistic theology especially in light of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Orthodoxy had insisted that this could not happen. Yet, it had and Ezekiel had to deal with it. He had to subject his own theology and his God to a radical critique. The ability to critique his own religion and his own people in light of what was actually happening on the ground is what makes his pronouncements so important. He was also exceptionally inventive as his prophecies showed. He was what we might call “punchy”—antagonizing his audience and inviting their disapproval and their debate. And, he had a purpose; he was laying out a strategy for God’s people to once again be worthy of the name.
Paul was a Hellenistic Jew, in other words a Jew religiously, but culturally he was Greek rather than an Hebraic Jew. It is interesting to me that he speaks of “adoption” in Romans 8 at the same time he speaks of the “birth pangs” a woman experiences groaning and waiting for new life to be born. Typically, experiencing birth pangs is not part of adoption. A woman experiences birth pangs, but if she adopts she had no birth pangs with that particular new life.
This is a plot twist on a theme common in the Bible. I’ve often noticed that whenever a pregnant woman shows up, the authorities get anxious. There is an inventiveness here, this plot twist. Someone else has birth pangs with an adoption, not the family into which someone has been adopted. Unless, of course, you are willing to expand on the meaning of “birth pangs” as meaning something other, something more than literal birth pangs. Despite DNA and genetics, does the adopted one become an authentic member of the family? Plot twist!
By the same token, Ezekiel is offering a plot twist on a theme: that Yahweh, Jerusalem, and the Temple are unconquerable—unconditionally unconquerable. He has to make theological adjustments in light of contemporary developments. He is inventive. In his vision, the Spirit plops him down in the midst of a valley filled with bones. The Spirit leads him all around the bones, showing the bones from every angle to Ezekiel. Clearly, something terrible has transpired. There has been some sort of catastrophe endured by mortals and so much time has passed since the catastrophe that not only has the breath or spirit left the bodies but also their skin, their flesh, and their sinews are gone. They are good and dead.
The Spirit then asks a nonsensical question, “can these bones live?” to which Ezekiel responds ambiguously, “you know.” Astonishingly, God then commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones! God tells him what to say to the bones: “I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
More astonishing still, step by step the bones began to come back to life rattling noisily as bone re-attached to bone! Sinews form as did flesh, and skin covered the whole. But the bones were not alive. God spoke another order to Ezekiel: prophesy to the breath! Prophesy, Mortal!! Prophesy! Say, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” As soon as Ezekiel obeyed, the slain came to life, stood up, and were a great multitude. If the dead, the good and dead, being re-membered and brought back to life is not a plot twist, then I do not know what is.
Another thing to think about is Ezekiel’s audience—he was a Jew dealing with a catastrophe and basically yelling about it to other Jews dealing with the same catastrophe in a public setting. They were a live audience, standing in front of him or perhaps surrounding him, probably yelling back at him, debating him all the way. It is unlikely that his condemnation of them, which is what this vision is about in its broader context, made him likable. He may not have been likable, but he was obedient and maintained Jerusalem had been destroyed because of the Jews disobedience to God. It turned out that God wasn’t the same today as yesterday, He wasn’t the Jews’ pet rock, He wasn’t an idol to be manipulated. His protection was real but it was contingent. It was contingent on Jews’ own decisions. This seems to have been Ezekiel’s point of view, a point of view born of a catastrophe both spatial in terms of land and deportation and theological in terms of having to adjust his view of Jerusalem, the Jews, and Yahweh if he were to remain faithful. Being faithful to God insisted that Ezekiel be theologically inventive.
What does all of this—Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones living brought into contact with Paul’s idea of adoption—have to do with the horrible situation in Palestine today?
I want to propose that context is everything. I want to propose that it is now the Palestinians who are the people about whom Ezekiel prophesied, i.e. it is they, not the Israelis, who have experienced deportation and forced exile by a power militarily greater than they; it is they, not the Israelis, who are the ones whose Jerusalem has become politically contested and which they seem to be losing; it is they who are surrounded, cut off, and in danger of losing not only their lands, their homes, and their families, but of losing any context for hope. The Palestinians are now those looking to be adopted, to be made a bona fide part of God’s family. I do not in any way mean to suggest they should become Christians, although many are. I mean it is they whom God is looking out for like a mother hen caring for her children. The Israelis have become Babylonia and Rome. They are those with whom the largest military power on earth, the United States, has formed an unholy alliance for reasons having nothing to do obedience to God.
As Christians, we should not deceive ourselves. God really and truly cannot be mocked. We sow the seeds of our own destruction when we do.There needs to be among us a serious plot twist. God is calling us now to be visionaries, to re-imagine our God, to re-invigorate our faith, to create a context for hope for those civilians in both Palestine and Israel where little seems to exist, to look out for those who, like orphans, few seem to be looking out for, caring for them as much as we do for our own blood kin. Can we do that? Can we imagine a plot twist? Time will tell.
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-19
Sermon
The context of Psalm 85 is that part, but only part, of the Jewish nation had returned from the Babylonian captivity. They returned to a ruined city, a fallen Temple, and a mourning land, where they were surrounded by jealous and powerful enemies. This psalm is a looking ahead and a contemplation on what it would take to be fully restored.
One of the intriguing ideas about what it would take is found, perhaps, in the phrase in v. 10: “righteousness and peace will kiss each other”. The Hebrew root of the word translated as “kiss” has several translations including “kiss" but it also has the meaning of “fight" and "fought against each other”. In other words, the word describes a contact which is dynamic, not necessarily either positive or negative.
The Midrash (itself a dynamic contact with the text) understands this interaction in a turbulent context. It relates v. 11 to God taking counsel with His ministering angels about whether to create the first man. The Midrash says:
"When the Holy One, blessed be He, came to create Adam, the ministering angels formed themselves into groups and parties, some of them saying, 'Let him be created,' whilst others urged, 'let him not be created.' Thus it is written, "Kindness and Truth fought together, Righteousness and Peace combated each other" (Psalm 85:11). Kindness said, 'Let him be created, because he will dispense acts of love'; Truth said, 'Let him not be created, because he is compounded of falsehood'; Righteousness said, 'Let him be created, because he will perform righteous deeds'; Peace said, 'Let him not be created, because he is full of strife.'
"What did the Holy One do? He took Truth and cast it to the ground. As it says, 'And truth was thrown to the ground. . . . "(Daniel 8:12). The ministering angels said before the Almighty: 'Master of the worlds! Why do You put to shame Your chief of court?' The Almighty replied: 'Let Truth rise from the ground!' This is what is meant when it is written, 'Truth [faithfulness] shall grow from the ground’.”To extrapolate a summary of Psalm 85, it could be that salvation is not static but dynamic and therefore God’s people are in perpetual need of salvation.
Now, to put this into contact with the passage from the letter to the Colossians: what we have here is also about a dynamic faith. It might be well to pause and reflect on the word “dynamic” since I have used it several times. What it means has to do with force and continuous activity or change. Dynamic is the opposite of inert.
The context of the writer, thought to be Paul with Timothy as co-author, has to do with the reported fascination among the people at Colossae, a small city in Asia Minor, with a competing “philosophy”. In other words, a set of values outside their faith in Jesus as Christ. As the writer frames it, there is a tradition to be followed emanating from the traditions of the apostles and there are other traditions that are dangerous human traditions. The traditions of the apostles are sources of a new way of life.
The traditions of the apostles, however, are not static; they cannot be received only because the powers of the present age are still at work. That the powers of the present age are still at work is a central theme of Colossians. They present an alternative lordship, a deceitful one to be sure. The philosophy being addressed is of these other human traditions belonging not to Jesus Christ but to the powers of this age. The powers still have the ability to take believers captive.
Therefore, salvation is on-going. It is not enough to express a belief. We might say this means that the talk must be matched by the walk, but the writer goes far beyond this aphorism. He goes so far as to say that not only has God forgiven our legalistic transgressions, He nailed them to the cross. He unequivocally “disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them”.
The philosophy shifts through the ages; thus our faith must reflect a dynamic interaction with it, however “it” is presented. Most of us in the West do not, as the Colossians seemed to have done, believe in a host of cosmic powers and dominions. To reject them would be meaningless.
The present philosophies are those which threaten to hold us captive. We profess a “faith” in Christ but that faith is static. Whom we profess to follow and whom we admire are two vastly different things. The question for us today is: what philosophy is dazzling us? What has our true allegiance? What shapes how we actually think, how we actually act, what we actually believe represents our salvation? And what does it mean to have a dynamic faith?
As I read these passages and reflected on them, I could not help but put them into contact with our fascination with the billionaire space travelers. To call into question the very existence of billionaires is to invite opprobrium. To clarify, by “existence” I do not mean that their lives should be taken from them. I mean that to question the ways in which they acquired fortunes so vast that we ordinary mortals cannot imagine them is to invite tremendous anxiety.
Have the billionaire space travelers become today’s version of the “cosmic powers” of Colossians which have the ability to hold us captive? Are these cosmic powers so dazzling that they tend to block our very salvation? Do we think that by taxing them out of existence, for example, we would prompt a cosmic cataclysm so profound that we would be cast into the economic, existential, and spiritual fires of Gehenna?
My questions make no sense if they are not specific about who these billionaire space travelers are. As of July 17, 2018, Jeff Bezos of the most recent space jaunt was, the "wealthiest person in modern history” by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Fortune, MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes wealth, and that it then equaled the wealth of 2.7 million Americans. That was when he was but a lowly centi-billionaire, worth over $100 billion.
Bezos’s net worth increased by $33.6 billion from January 2017 to January 2018. This increase outstripped the economic development (in GDP terms) of more than 96 countries around the world. During March 9, Bezos earned $230,000 every 60 seconds. The Motley Fool estimated that if Bezos had not sold any of his shares from its original public offering in 1997, his net worth would sit at $181 billion in 2018. According to Quartz, his net worth of $150 billion in July 2018 was enough to purchase the entire stock markets of Nigeria, Hungary, Egypt, Luxembourg, and Iran.
Following the report by Quartz, Amazon workers in Poland, (Germany), and Spain participated in demonstrations and labor strikes to draw attention to his growing wealth and the lack of compensation, labor rights, and satisfactory working conditions of Amazon workers.
Jeff Bezos is now a double centi-billionaire with a net worth of over 200 billion dollars. As a Christian and a minister, I can make the claim that Bezos and the others may have gotten there legally via a system rigged in their favor, but they did not get there in ways that are compatible with the worldview of Jesus Christ.
What does it mean to have a dynamic faith in Christ in the context of dazzling billionaire space travelers like Jeff Bezos? Into what system do we put our real faith—the system of Christ or the system of the billionaire space travelers? Whom do we trust? In whom do we find our salvation?
Amen.
Illegal Immigration
Photo: Installation at US/MX border by No More Deaths/No Más Muertes, Tucson, AZ
But is the legal problem the same thing as the moral problem of illegal immigration?
To address that question, we have to give some thought to what a moral problem is. According to my Webster’s dictionary, the word “moral” has to do with “conforming to a standard of right behavior.” Morality is about conformity, says Webster. It’s about behavior. I understand this. In my world one standard of behavior to which I expect my children to conform is to say “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir” to their elders. That is a standard of behavior to which I expect them to conform.
But, I also recall quite vividly that when I was a child, a standard of right behavior meant not saying “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir” if those elders were black. And if, like my mother, you taught your children not to conform to that standard of behavior, and if, like her, you refused to conform to your culture’s standards of racial behavior you could expect sooner or later, as she did, to receive a threat against the life of your child.
Now that I am a mother, I have a better understanding of the moral problem my mother faced: to teach her children not to conform to accepted standards of right behavior and thereby put them in physical danger or to teach her children to conform to accepted standards of right behavior and remove them from one source of potential danger. She had a moral problem.
Was my mother an immoral person because she taught her children not to conform to the South’s standard of right behavior? Was she an immoral person because she encouraged her children to cross that invisible but very real moral line in the sand? Was she an immoral person because she chose to challenge her culture’s standard of right behavior even when it meant accepting the reality that by doing so she put her children in some amount of danger?
Webster’s dictionary again provides direction. Morality, it says, it also about standards of behavior that are right and good. And it is about operating on “one’s conscience or ethical judgment.” So morality is about conformity. But it also is about conscience. And sometimes conscience cancels out conformity especially if we are being asked to conform to standards of behavior that are not right and good.
But, some of you may want to object, it was never illegal for a white child to say “Yes, ma’am” or “No, sir” to a black elder. And you would be right. That was never illegal. We all know, however, that segregation was completely legal. We know that segregation was an intricate system of legal and near legal prohibitions. And I think we all have conceded that it was immoral through and through. And we all know that slavery was legal, but it was immoral through and through. And the World War II deportation of Japanese-Americans to internment camps was legal, but it was immoral through and through. And the dispossessing of Native Americans from their lands was legal, but it was immoral through and through.
So my conclusion is that what is legal is not the equivalent of what is moral. And, by the same token, what is illegal is not the equivalent of what is immoral.
When Rosa Parks made the decision not to give up her seat on that bus in Montgomery, she acted illegally. And she acted morally. And when Harriet Tubman guided slaves into freedom in the North through the Underground Railroad, she acted illegally and she acted morally. And the family who protected Anne Franks in Holland acted illegally and they acted morally.
I respect people’s concern about migrants coming illegally. But part of the reason I advocate for illegal immigrants is that I have a deep conviction that what is illegal is not the equivalent of what is immoral.
Back in November, 2006, I went to the U. S. / Mexico border. I went there to get a better sense of whether there are issues besides the legal issue that we need to be aware of. In other words, I went to the border to try to discover whether there are other moral issues we need to grapple with.
And wouldn’t you know it? In Nogales, when I went to a portion of the wall that has been constructed to keep Mexicans and other Latin Americans from crossing into the U. S. illegally, the wall that younger Latin Americans without papers scramble over to get into the U. S. illegally, I saw on the Mexican side a large piece of graffiti that said in Spanish, “If it is a sin to cross, I hope God forgives me.” Now, I can’t pretend to know what the young man who scrawled that message on the wall meant. But my guess is that in the hours before he crossed, he experienced a moral crisis surrounding his decision to cross illegally.
But what must it be like for illegal immigrants when circumstance has to override conscience? When circumstance compels them to override their sense that what is illegal is the equivalent of what is immoral?
What about the moral problem of a peasant farmer in Chiapas who has to choose between being a hands-on grandfather or facing the moral urgency of leaving to find work so that he can put food on his grandchildren’s table? I suspect that we here at Latham tonight are having our roofs repaired and our tables waited on by people who could lend us some real insights into the moral problem of illegal immigration.
And, from the perspective of migrants in Huntsville and the rest of Alabama, the moral problem of illegal immigration could, if our state legislators have their way, get worse. There are now before the Alabama legislature at least five bills that would make it a crime to transport an illegal immigrant.
I have not had the opportunity to talk with many illegal immigrants in Huntsville. But I have talked with some. And I know that right here in Huntsville are nice people, good families in which the father is here legally but his wife and children are here illegally. There are good families, nice families where a mother and son are here legally but the daughter and grandchildren are here illegally. If even one of these bills passes, it would make it a crime for a daughter to drive her mother to the emergency room. If even one of these bills passes, it would make it a crime for a man to drive his wife to their children’s school function. What moral dilemmas these families will face. And for them, the moral problem of illegal immigration comes right back to the legal problems of illegal immigration.
What about the moral problem these bills pose for us? Do we have a moral problem when our speech and our attitudes create a climate in which politicians know they can advance their political careers by proposing bills that would criminalize one of us if we take an injured child to the hospital? Is this a standard of conduct to which we are willing to conform? Do we have a moral problem when people not two generations removed from segregation encourage their politicians to erect another legal system which would serve primarily to harass and humiliate the most vulnerable people among us? Where is our moral conscience? Where is our moral judgment?
But the biggest moral problem those of us who are citizens of the United States may face is this. It may be the willingness to examine our history and recognize that we are not innocent by-standers to the problem of migrants crossing or overstaying visa limits illegally. It may be the willingness to bring to the forefront of our thinking and our discussions the hard reality that we have been instrumental in creating the limited access to power and the poverty of the people in Latin America. But then moral dilemmas by their nature are not easy to face or to resolve.
We cannot undo the Monroe Doctrine. We cannot undo the role our fruit companies have had in dispossessing Central American peasants of their lands and livelihoods. But we can try to reverse the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Mexico. We can be willing to understand that NAFTA has created one billionaire in Mexico but it also has bankrupted 1 ½ million peasant farmers in the corn and bean sectors of the Mexican agricultural economy forcing them off their lands and into migration. We can begin to question the moral judgment of exchanging 1 ½ million peasants for one billionaire. We can be willing to conclude that NAFTA has made it perfectly legal to push farmers off their land but it cannot make it moral.
We cannot undo having installed and supported numerous Latin American military dictators and their national guards. We can try to reverse the current militarization of our border with Mexico, a border we began to militarize in conjunction with the passage of NAFTA.
I am the daughter of one lawyer and the wife of another one. I have a deep regard for the law. I can concede, at least in principle, that we have a legal right to militarize our own border. I can concede, at least in principle, that we have a right to expect others to conform to the standards of behavior we establish concerning our border.
But that militarized border has already caused a minimum of 5,000 migrants to lose their lives. Among them have been babies, twelve year old girls, young mothers and grandfathers. About 1/3 of their bodies are impossible to identify which means that their families will never know what happened to them. It means that there are children looking every day for mothers who are never coming home. It means that there are grandparents looking every day for grandchildren who are never coming home. So we can pass laws that militarize our border and legalize pushing more migrants to their deaths in the desert. But we cannot make it right and good. We can legally exchange 5,000 migrant lives for a legal principle. But we cannot make that exchange a moral one.
The issue of illegal immigration is filled with moral problems. It is filled with moral problems for us. It is filled with moral problems for illegal immigrants. As I said earlier, it is in the nature of moral problems that they are not easy to face or to resolve. I think that one thing we can do is to balance the moral imperative to conform to legal standards of behavior with the moral imperative to insist that those standards be right and good.
Thank you.
It would appear we have much in common. In fact, we are miles apart when it comes to both a starting point for and an analysis of immigration reform. Sr. Simone promotes S. 744, the so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill which passed in the Senate but failed in the House last year. I vehemently oppose it.
Her vocational starting point appears to be that clergy people must negotiate with power and accept the parameters established by military contractors, corporate employers, the for-profit prison industry, big, well-funded activist groups, and confused politicians. My starting point is that clergy must tell truth to power. We must say “No!” to Caesar and the national security state, not become apologists for them.
More importantly, Sr. Simone does not appear to understand the content of the bill. It is in no way a good bill stymied by Republicans on the wrong side of history. It is far from being a bill which would offer immigrants a reasonable “path to citizenship” or stop deportations. This is, however, precisely the message she conveys. As the subtitle of her article which appeared in faithstreet.com on May 9 puts it, “Because Congress has failed to pass immigration reform, mothers will be separated from their children throughout America this Mother’s Day.”
Reality is that the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act would, if passed, make a bad situation much worse. It calls for further militarization of the US / MEX border which inevitably will put more pressure on border communities, environmental systems, and migrants. Deaths will increase. It will expand the consignment of poor foreign workers to indentured servitude by expanding the inherently abusive and highly exploitive Guest Worker program, a program which has been condemned by the Southern Poverty Law Center as being “Close to Slavery.” The program inevitably will work to the advantage of employers and to the disadvantage of domestic and foreign laborers.
Militarization and guest worker visas are not incidentals hovering around the edges of a “pathway to citizenship” bill. They are the keystones of the bill.
Deportation? Not even addressed in the bill which should surprise no one since the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, the two powerful for-profit prison corporations which have contracts with the Federal government to fill their beds with immigration detainees are helping pay for the bill.
And that “path to citizenship?” To the degree that it exists at all, it is a punitive, 13 year long path which cannot be begun until after the border is fully militarized, and it is so filled with fees and exceptions that many who live long enough to start out on the path will never make it to the end.
Surely, even those inured to the rough and tumble of politics should agree that it is a poor exchange for other people’s lives and other people’s servitude.When I wrote Sr. Simone a letter last July encouraging her to re-consider her position on S. 744 she replied, “if you have a magic wand, please use it.” I have no magic wand.
What I do have is an ability to speak truth to power and propose justice alternatives. Instead of expanding militarization and increasing migrant deaths, we should de-militarize the border. We should create a visa allowing poor people without significant amounts of money and title to land to come to the US legally. We should abolish the Guest Worker visa. We should immediately confer a legal status on those without it. We should halt deportations altogether until they can be detached from the Department of Homeland Security and the for-profit prison system. We can support a good alternative to S. 744 which already exists, the American Families United Act, HR 3431.
In other words, we clergywomen can insist on justice—not deals.
Photo: Barack Obama
By the same token, there are theological certainties revealed throughout the Bible. One is the unique identity of God. King Nebudchanezzar, it insists, is not to be confused with God. Pharaoh and Caesar are not to be confused with God.
A related theological certainty is that the Kingdom of God and the National Security State constitutively can never intersect. Pharaoh's, Nebudchanezzar's, and Caesar's National Security States are the antitheses of the Kingdom of God. At the Resurrection, God clarified that God and Caesar were not to be confused. God clarified that God was on the side of the Crucified Ones. The God Who Choses Sides clarified that God was aligned with the ethnicities, such as the Jews, who were offered limited protections in exchange for compliance with the Roman Empire. Those limited protections, however, did not extend to the thousands of crucifixions which were reserved for such "protected" ones but which no citizen could suffer.
It was no incidental detail of reporting, but rather a whopping theological claim when the Centurion boldly and subversively proclaimed, "Surely, this man was the Son of God!"
I recall a conversation I had with a Border Patrol agent on a flight out of Tucson a few years ago. Steve told me he had joined the agency because he wanted to help stop drug traffickers. However, after only one year, he was resigning. He told me the job was not really about stopping drug traffickers, it was about turning desperate people over to the government for removal. People who begged him for their lives. People whose background was too similar to his. An abandoned child in Honduras, he eventually had been adopted by American Mennonites. His family took seriously a belief that Caesar should not be confused with God, that the US military apparatus should be not confused with the Kingdom of God. Having turned in his papers, Steve said, "when we militarize our border against desperate people, we act like we don't believe in God at all."
On November 20, President Obama outlined his proposals for Executive Actions to further militarize the United States / Mexico border while funneling illegal immigrants into the deportation machine. Here are some of the facts of his speech, facts overlooked by applauding religious leaders. Despite the blowzy, sentimental opening, it took him 40 seconds to get to the heart of his Actions: "Families who enter our country the right way and play by the rules watch others flout the rules. . . . All of us take offense at anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America." He went on to review his past immigration achievements. "When I took office," he said, "I began by doing what I could do secure our borders. Today, we have more agents and more technology to secure our southern border than at any time in our history." He lamented the failure of the House of Representatives last year to pass S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization bill saying that it would have "doubled the number of border patrol agents, while offering undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship if they paid a fine, started paying their taxes, and went to the back of the line."
Not only were his words defamatory, they were factually inaccurate. As President Obama, a Harvard educated lawyer and former professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School surely knows full well, there is no back of the line, indeed no line at all, for those from Latin America, Africa, and most parts of Asia who do not hold title to land or have significant amounts of money.
Then, he outlined his Actions. The first item: "We'll build on our progress at the border with additional resources for our law enforcement personnel so they can stem the flow of illegal crossings and speed the return of those who do pass over." Speed the return. Nation of laws. Must be held accountable. Play by the rules. Crack down.
"Here's the deal." A deal. Not liberation. Not the lifting of oppression. Not the recognition of humanity. A deal. "Here's the deal". (Now I'm going to paraphrase.) Turn yourself into the Department of Homeland Security, apply, pay heavy fines, and maybe we'll grant you a temporary postponement on deportation. After which, we may indeed deport you. Or maybe we won't grant you the deferment, but you'll still be in the deportation system. "Nothing in this memorandum should be construed to prohibit or discourage the apprehension, detention, or removal of aliens in the United States who are not identified as priorities [for deportation] herein," clarified the Department of Homeland Security on November 20. The National Security State wins. Every time.
But the Crucified One loses. The God Who Takes Sides loses. The Kingdom of God loses.
I am offended that the cruelty of this anti-Exodus was given duplicitous religious cover through the quoting of Scripture: "We were all strangers once," Obama said, referencing God's rescue of Pharaoh's slaves.
The sad thing, the baffling thing from the perspective of those of us who are both close to the people affected and have religious or spiritual reasons for lamenting the Actions is that so many religious leaders and organizations ostensibly devoted to immigrant rights applauded so vigorously and so uncritically.
Kim Ziyavo, a deacon of the United American Catholic Church at Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in Chicago's inner city, works very closely with undocumented immigrants and homeless people. "I'm saddened to see so many religious leaders and advocates hailing Obama as a hero tonight for his Actions," she said. "Are we Lazarus, the Poor Beggar, longing for a few scraps from the feast on the Rich Man's table? Have we longed for those scraps for so many years that now a few moldy bits thrown under the table satisfy us? Are we supposed to be satisfied and declare the Rich Man to be a saint? Dammit! I'm angry to see anyone falling into that trap! Can't we see? This is the very essence of oppression! Scraps are unacceptable and it is high time Lazarus barge into that banquet hall, his dignity intact, and help himself to the elaborate food that is on the table."
Militarization and the control of indigenous peoples and their lands are fundamental to President Obama's Actions. But wasn't Jesus an indigenous leader by any serious reckoning of him? Can a full understanding of the Kingdom of God be achieved without hearing the cries of dispossessed indigenous peoples? Alex Soto, a tribal member of the Tohono O'odham Nation which straddles Arizona and Mexico, believes that "once again our him'dag [way of life] will be attacked." Soto strongly objects to the President's Executive Actions. "Basically," he says, "the 2014 Immigration plan = border militarization = 21st century colonization." Where, he asks, "is the solidarity with indigenous peoples facing militarization? The plan is anti-indigenous and anti-migrant. What does this so-called collective liberation look like in O'odham Lands? Lipan Apache Lands? Yoeme Lands? Kickapoo Lands? Indigenous lands which are now in the so-called border regions? The task now is to weather the migrant rights industrial complex funded by the Creator knows who while empowering our community."
Militarization cannot reasonably be understood as being somehow separate from deportation. The border was militarized in the first place to keep peoples displaced by the North American Free Trade Agreement in their place, disproportionate numbers of which were indigenous. And militarization cannot reasonably be understood apart from the roughly 5,000 migrant deaths which have been an acknowledged part of the US Customs and Border Protection's Southwestern Border Strategy.
Only recently has Texas's Rio Grande area topped the lands of the Tohono O'odham, through which migrants have been funneled as part of the Strategy, as ground zero for migrant deaths. So consumed by paranoia is the National Security State that militarization already extends into the Pacific Ocean which could become ground zero if militarization is completed.
Militarization, death, encroachments on indigenous lands and culture, and deportation are the realities of President Obama's Executive Actions. Bishop Dermot Rodgers is with the Evangelical Catholic Diocese of the Southwest. Bishop Rodgers, grew up in Belfast, Ireland, a city at war with itself. He often offers communion to people at the western end of the wall near San Diego who come to communicate for a few minutes through the wire mesh with loved ones they can only touch with the tip of their little finger. He has serious reservations about Obama's Actions and believes some people may be put at greater risk of deportation. "I have doubts," he says, "that the 5 million people said to be included in the plan will in fact benefit from these administrative actions. My heart aches for those families where one member will be spared from deportation while a parent, or grandparent, or sibling now faces an even greater threat of deportation."
Practicing Catholic and immigration attorney, Carlos A. Batara, in Riverside, California also believes millions may face greater risk of deportation. Therein lies an ethical dilemma. "Let's cut to the chase," he says. "What's my role as a lawyer? Do I decide to be cautious with folks' futures and refuse to help them apply for the short-term benefits of deferment but which may expose them to potential long-term disaster through deportation? Or do I help my clients get temporary benefits despite the long-term risks?"
Chasity Alvarez, whose husband is in removal proceedings, is not celebrating either. The founder of Fair Unity, a support group for American families whose loved ones are in exile because of deportation or American citizens who themselves are in exile because of deportation, opposes the President's Actions. "The word of Jesus contradicts them," she says. "I would rather lose my political standing with those who are cheering than lose my soul. As Matthew tells us, one day the sheep will be separated from the goats."
Rev. Todd Jenkins, pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville, Tennessee thinks along the same salvationist lines. Whether through the avenues of politics or religion, "we are in a struggle for one prize," he says, "the soul of humanity. You can no more baptize politics with a light sprinkling of Scripture than you can sweeten the ocean with a few teaspoons of sugar. We need fewer people patching together scattered verses of Scripture and more people operating out of an anchor sunk deep in our sacred texts' overarching theme. God's historical predilection is for all those devoid of power, voice, influence, and control. Until that imperative is given a legitimate seat at the policy table, human and family need will continue to go unaddressed and unmet."
What will we decide? Will we hear the cries of the oppressed? Will we confess that God and not Caesar is Lord? Will we long for the Kingdom of God or continue to applaud the aggressions of the National Security State? And will we claim any role at all in articulating the differences?
A public announcement by which a paranoiac national security state tries to immobilize with fear those watching and waiting. A refinement of torture by which a threat to the national security state is exposed, humiliated, mocked, broken, hung up, stretched out, suffocated. An excruciating slow violence.
Photo: Crucifixion of the Cherokee Bird Man, by Gary Allen.
Used with permission.
The season of staying awake, watching for encroachments of the national security state. Waiting for the time to move.
CRUCIFIXION
A public announcement by which a paranoiac national security state tries to immobilize with fear those watching and waiting. A refinement of torture by which a threat to the national security state is exposed, humiliated, mocked, broken, hung up, stretched out, suffocated. An excruciating slow violence. I Can’t Breathe said Christ glimpsing the violet of the soldiers’ robes. The crowd cheered!
ERIC GARNER
A threat to the national security state. Immobilized, humiliated, stretched out, suffocated by navy uniformed agents, crucified on a beam of New York City pavement.
I Can’t Breathe! AN INFANT IN THE SONORAN DESERT
Her young mother, their coyote and other members of a terrified party of threats to the national security state. They had watched and waited before daring to cross. The anxious coyote thought he detected an agent of the national security state nearby. He covered the baby’s mouth so she wouldn’t cry. I Can’t Breathe. A silent crucifixion beneath the blue Arizona sky.
In words carefully crafted to obscure more than they revealed, the President announced further expansions of the national security state. Many had been watching and waiting for a sign of deliverance for the Unauthorized Ones. Breathing a sigh of relief, they cheered. But they cheered from a deep sleep of misunderstanding, confusing expansion with deliverance.
JESUS IN THE GARDEN
Couldn’t you have stayed awake? #StayWoke! Read the fine print! The national security state willingly concedes nothing!
TWO WEEKS LATER
Two weeks later, a grand jury failed to indict those who crucified Eric Garner. Those who had applauded the expansions of the national security state on November 20, were outraged on December 3.
#STAY WOKE!
Father, they don’t understand what they are doing.
Painting:Bernardino Mei, Christ Cleansing the Temple, c. 1655
1. What is structural sin?
We Christians long have interpreted sin as a personal break with God. Instead of focusing on personal transgressions, however, Christians need to talk about an idea well represented in the Bible – that sin is a structural break with God. The declarations of the Prophets, the Exodus and Resurrection events, Jesus’s disruption in the Temple all point to the idea that structures of sin make complete union with God difficult if not fundamentally impossible. There are at least five structural sins that Christians must address if we are to proclaim Good News in America. They are sins because they deal in death – spiritual, emotional, and bodily – and need to be reckoned as such.
Fear of gays, lesbians, bi-sexual, transgendered, intersex, and other people who are not “cisgendered”
By cisgendered, I mean people who conform to standard ideas of gender physiology and identity. These fears lead to bullying, isolating, Christian parents condemning their own children, fringe Baptist pastors proclaiming God Hates Fags, attempts to equate homosexuality with pedophilia, suicide, and murder. Homophobia and its variations are sins.
Factory produced food
Corporately produced chickens, lemons, tomatoes, and many other food items are products of cruelty and exploitation. A typical bowl of ostensibly nourishing homemade chicken soup is made from a chicken which was caged its entire miserable life, processed by vulnerable undocumented workers in an appallingly dangerous industry, and garnished with tomatoes picked by “guest workers” toiling in conditions of servitude, sometimes so doused with pesticides that their babies are born without limbs. Factory food is a sin.
Free Trade Agreements
FTAs, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, remove tariffs designed to protect small farmers and other small producers. They are designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few corporate owners by forcing small producers into competition with them. Millions around the globe are suffering from an epidemic of globalized worker exploitation associated with FTAs. Looking for decent work, many cross borders illegally and often are robbed of their money, dignity, and lives while in transit. FTAs are sins.
The militarization of the US / Mexico border began in conjunction with NAFTA. It has caused the deaths of thousands of migrants. The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, S. 744, which passed in the US Senate in 2013, the so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill, was to a significant extent a border militarization package. President Obama’s 2014 Executive Actions on Immigration were designed to “crack down on illegal immigration” via further militarization. We glimpsed the militarization of interior cities in the aftermath of the shooting death of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO. Militarization is a sin.
The for-profit prison industry
Six million people are under correctional supervision in America. The industry preys on poor people, especially poor black men more than ½ of whom go to prison at some point in their lives. For-profit prisons, which exist through contracts with governments, target illegal immigrants. The largest American prison groups, the GEO Group, Inc. and the Corrections Corporation of America, have contracts with the Federal government to house 34,000 immigrant detainees a day. The prison industry is a sin.
2. What is the purpose of the church amidst structural sin?
Tell truth to power
There is no point in having conversations about structural sin if we do not tell truth about it to our congregations, other faith leaders, community organizers, and politicians. They all wield power. Moreover, we need to tell truth to power in ways that will make systemic change inevitable.
Create crisis-packed situations
Martin Luther King, Jr. reflected in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail” that resistance to structural sin involves creating “a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” Jesus cleansed the Temple because it had become a “hideout for thieves” – part of the Roman Empire’s package of structural sin. Jesus created a situation so crisis packed, it led to his execution.
Not all crisis-packed situations lead to executions. The 1963 Children’s Crusaders in Birmingham, organized by Rev. James Bevel, were met with Sheriff Bull Connor’s police dogs and fire hoses. The crisis-packed situation, broadcast on TV, resulted in the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 1968, Catholic priests Philip and Daniel Berrigan broke into the offices of the Selective Service in Catonsville, MD and publicly burned draft board records. These and other crisis-packed situations eventually ended the war in Vietnam.
It has been a long time since church leaders created situations so crisis packed they led to ending structural sins. If the church is to proclaim Good News in America, it may be that the time for creating crisis-packed situations is upon us.
by invitation from David Henson, Patheos.com.
Photo: Yashinari Effinger and Adrian Thomas by Denise Demonia. Used with permission.
The day after the wedding, the Alabama Baptist Convention issued a statement that any minister officiating at a same sex wedding risked his church being disfellowshipped. This means that although the church remains Baptist, it is kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention [SBC].
However, since I am an unpaid minister with an honorific title, Minister to the Community, the representatives of the two state organizations wanted a stronger case. They discovered that in 2013 the Senior Minister, David B. Freeman, had preached a sermon in which he said the Bible does not condemn homosexuality.
The Madison Baptist Association [MBA] then notified my church, Weatherly Heights Baptist, that it was considering breaking ties with us. The MBA is the association through which my church belongs to the SBC. David Freeman and I met with Jeff Pike and other representatives of the MBA.
In the amicable meeting, there was talk of “one man one woman” and “biblical marriage” but the pivotal issue was Freeman’s stance. They had one question: will you change your position? Freeman said he could not. The representatives’ conclusion was that his endorsement of homosexuality and gay marriage was contrary to the Association’s Constitution and By-Laws. The upshot is that on March 5, the SBC will disfellowship Weatherly Heights Baptist Church.
The Constitutional issue was the “presenting” issue. The real issues were the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, “biblical marriage”, and a cultural phobia of LGBT persons. There was a time when being a Baptist meant this: the only source of authority is Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible, the individual believer’s soul competency, the priesthood of all believers, and the autonomy of the local church. This meant that no Baptist could tell another Baptist what to believe nor tell any Baptist church how to conduct itself.
All that disappeared with the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC. Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler in their now infamous 1967 meeting in New Orleans’ Cafe Du Monde developed a strategy for it. The strategy included such things as requiring seminary professors to take oaths that they believed certain things, coercing missionaries to focus on winning converts, and the subordination of women.
It culminated in the 2002 Baptist Faith and Message. In it, the Bible and the SBC were elevated above Jesus Christ. The SBC was the ultimate authority. No longer were Baptists to work out our beliefs based on our relationship with Jesus Christ, we were to work out our beliefs based on the dictates of the SBC. Gone were the sole authority of Jesus Christ, soul competency, the priesthood of believers, and local church autonomy.
Qualified Bible scholars such as Dr. Jennifer Bird have pointed out that the notion of one man and one woman united by bonds of love simply does not exist in the Bible. Let me emphasize the “united by love” part which is the basis for modern Western marriages. It is true that we see the unions of one man and one woman in Genesis, but those marriages were arranged and virginity was compulsory upon penalty of stoning.
It would be my guess that Lance, Coleman, and the representatives of the MBA are not intentionally endorsing stoning for pre-marital loss of virginity. Nor, I suspect, are they intentionally endorsing the other types of marriages that appear in the Bible: a man, his wife, and his concubines or a man, his wife, and his wife’s slaves or a man and multiple wives or a woman forced to marry her dead husband’s brother or a virgin forced to marry her rapist or a prisoner of war forced to marry her captor or a slave owner assigning a woman slave to a male slave. Yet these are what biblical marriages actually look like. Not one man and one woman united by love.
Then there is Matthew’s ideal of a man castrating himself to advance the Kingdom of Heaven. Or being born a eunuch. To my knowledge, I’ve never met a man who has castrated himself for the Kingdom. Nor is there any way that one could choose to be born a eunuch, not even if the SBC were to demand it. By the same token no one chooses to be born straight, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or transgendered. Its that simple.
The real issues are denominational power politics and American cultural uneasiness with gender and sexual realities. “Biblical marriage” is a cover up and a smoke screen.
I cannot tell anyone else what to believe. But I can say that I will never knowingly follow the dictates of the SBC or my culture. Instead, I will do my best to follow Jesus Christ.
Whether merchandise was cause or effect, Lifeway undertook a focused plan to promote the idea that control over sexuality is fundamental to Christianity. Through a series of campaigns, the focus was expanded demographically and ideologically.
In 1992, Lifeway launched “True Love Waits.” The campaign promoted pre-marital sexual abstinence. “Believing that true love waits,” teenagers pledged on a commitment card “to be sexually abstinent until I enter a biblical marriage relationship.”
In 1993, True Love Waits entered into a partnership with Youth for Christ, a Protestant evangelical organization. With the partnership, the idea of a biblical marriage relationship went well beyond personal sexual matters. It became associated with the outward purposes of evangelism and missions.
In 1997, True Love Waits developed its "Crossing Bridges with Purity" program. There was a broadening of the message from simple pre-marital sexual abstinence to pre-marital sexual purity which meant such things as not using pornography. “Biblical marriage,” while not invoked per se, was being defined. What strikes me about these abstinence programs, however, is that they do not appear to have been associated with anxiety over intimate same sex relationships.
However, American anxiety over same-sex marriage had also become a thing. In a separate but related development, the United States Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA]. Signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, the landmark act defined marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman” and banned Federal recognition of same-sex marriages. DOMA was the culmination of two decades of state bans on same-sex marriages.
In 1973, Maryland had become the first state to enact such a ban. Through 1994, nearly every other state in the Union followed suit. As if that were not enough, two years after DOMA, Hawaii and Alaska passed state constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage as did twenty-nine other states.
Now it was attempting to control the sexual activities of full grown presumably straight men and women inside marriage. Parents committed to abstain from “pornography, impure touching and conversations, and sex outside a biblical marriage relationship from this day forward.”
In 2006, there was an interesting turn of events. The Washington, DC based think tank, The Heritage Foundation, took up the cause of marital purity. The Foundation promoted free enterprise, individual liberty, limited government, traditional American values, and a strong national security apparatus. It launched a campaign similar to the True Love Waits campaign through its website familyfacts.org. The language of the website indicates the Foundation’s belief that purity in marriage is related to family “safety” and by extension to national security.
The kind of anxiety which could connect sexuality to national security issues in the US is not unprecedented. The Lavender Scare of the 1950s, by which gays in the State Department were considered a threat to national security, was a parallel development of the McCarthy era’s “Red Scare” fear of Communists there.
With the scope of both Lifeway’s and The Heritage Foundation’s programs focusing on adults in the context of marriage, my guess is that it was right about here that “biblical marriage” began to take on the meaning of opposition to same-sex marriage.
The tide began to turn in June, 2013. The US Supreme Court recognized the same-sex marriage of Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer, invalidating a key part of DOMA. Like dominoes, state bans on same-sex marriage began falling.
Clearly, for those in the Southern Baptist Convention who disfellowshipped my church, “biblical marriage” is a thing. If this inquiry into the origins of “biblical marriage” are borne out in other investigations, the Convention may have to face the fact that those origins do not necessarily trace to the Bible.
Illustration: Shutterstock
The term also may apply to those who have questions about their gender. Western societies break down gender into two categories: male and female. Some wonder whether they fit into either of these categories. Some feel these gender definitions don’t reflect who they are. Hence, the “T” for transgendered in LGBTQ. Others, for example, may feel they are “third gendered”—both male and female at once but not in an intersex way. Others may indeed be intersex, having gender characteristics of both male and female.
Identity has to do with which group a person identifies. It is possible, for example, to present as female, but identify as male. Those who both present unambiguously to others as either male or female and also identify unambiguously the same way they present are sometimes referred to as being “cisgender”.
Questioning can address the need many people have for an answer. Typically, someone who is questioning wants, often desperately, to find an answer.
The word “queer” carries the opposite meaning. It addresses that which is indeterminate. Annamarie Jagose has written a helpful little book called simply, Queer Theory. In it she says that one of the purposes of “queer” is to establish the elasticity of gender. Queer is, she says, “less an identity than a critique of identity.”
What I think she means by this is that she sees gender as a construct in much the same way that race is a construct. In other words, “queer” suggests a couple of things. One is that the categories we use to identify ourselves and others is something of a trap. Gender categories can be confining. They can tend to hedge in personality rather than release it.
Another way to think of the “queer” approach to gender and sexual identity is to raise these questions: Where does straight stop and bi-sexual begin? Where does bi-sexual stop and lesbian begin? Where does male stop and female begin?
“Queer” suggests the same kind of concern. Gender and sexual categories, some believe, are constructions which are artificial and don’t reflect reality. Like the concept of race, it can set up winners and losers.
Ostensibly, “Q” in biblical studies has nothing to do with sexual orientation, gender, or identity. Ostensibly.
“Q” is short for the German word “Quelle” meaning “source”. It is the label given to the hypothetical source, the Q source, for Jesus’s sayings found in both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. There is the presumption, widely held by current biblical scholars, that there was a written source which contained the sayings of Jesus. And prior to the written source, that there was an oral tradition of his sayings. The idea is that both Matthew and Luke had access to the Q source and used it in formulating their gospels.
The Q source calls into question the determinacy, the ability to know once and for all, the origins of Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. Yet, the Bible as a whole, as well as our readings and deconstructions of it, necessarily have an aspect of indeterminacy about them. We can speculate about the Bible’s authors’ and redactors’ intentions, for example, but we will seldom be able to reach uncontested answers. By the same token, there is an enormous gulf between ancient cultures and 21st century cultures, between biblical writers’s intentions and our post-modern responses to what they wrote, and between God and our ability to comprehend God.
My purpose in throwing the Q source into this essay on “questioning” and “queer,” the Q in LGBTQ, is this: the Bible is being invoked in efforts to silence, marginalize, bully, and discriminate against LGBTQ persons. In my opinion, we would do well to show a little humility when using the Bible to satisfy our fears and prejudices. We would do well to respect our own inability to know once and for all whom God would have us love.
for Huffington Post
Photo: Jim Wallis
This sounds admirable. I would love to see all deportations blocked through a massive act of civil disobedience.
The trouble with Wallis’s promise is in what he says next. He says Ryan and other Republican leaders were guilty of “morally caving in to pressure from the strong anti-immigrant white rightwing base of their party ... [thereby] closing the door on immigration reform in Congress.”
With this move, Wallis brands anyone who disagrees with comprehensive immigration reform as anti-immigrant, racist, white, and a right winger. Not only is this factually inaccurate, it is harmful to the cause of migrant justice. I am a Baptist minister and one of many on the left who oppose comprehensive immigration reform precisely because it is inherently racist and would move the system to the far political right. I wrote about our concerns in this article for the Huffington Post.
Wallis apparently believes that comprehensive immigration reform, explicitly as outlined in S. 744, the bipartisan bill which passed in the U. S. Senate in 2013, was a bill to protect unauthorized immigrants from deportation. It clearly was not. It was, in fact, a bill oriented towards deportation.
The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Bill was first and foremost a border militarization package. The sealing of the border with walls, dogs, guns, agents, infrared cameras, and stadium lights, among other things, was at the heart of this bill. Border security was the trigger which would have allowed progression to “immigration modernization.”
The militarization of the border was designed to stop poor people from Mexico and beyond who had been displaced by the North American Free Trade Agreement. To date militarization has claimed the lives of between 5,000 and 21,000 unauthorized migrants. There can be no reason to believe that further militarizing the border would do anything other than cause more suffering and more deaths. You can find out more about militarization and migrant deaths as aspects of comprehensive immigration reform in my documentary, The Second Cooler, narrated by Martin Sheen.
The immigration modernization part of the package was promoted as a path to citizenship. Many of us on the left, however, believe this thirteen-year-long process, riddled with fees and exceptions would actually shift unauthorized migrants into the deportation machine, not protect them from it. It requires that people report themselves to the Department of Homeland Security in order to get on this path. You can find out more about the trouble with the immigration modernization aspect of S. 744 in this excellent video produced by the Moratorium on Deportations Campaign called “Unmasking S. 744“.
Wallis says that President Obama “courageously” issued “executive orders designed . . . to relieve the threat of deportation.” Presumably, he is referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans [DAPA]. These were not executive orders, they were executive actions.
Executive Orders have the force of law and must be obeyed. They were issued, for example, by President Lincoln when he freed the slaves, President Roosevelt when he ordered the relocation of Japanese Americans during World World II, and President Truman when he desegregated the U. S. armed forces. All of these things actually happened because Presidents ordered them to happen. Obama’s actions, by contrast, are simply wishes without the force of law.
More troubling, however, is that Obama’s actions may have put people at greater risk of deportation. This is a fear of Latino immigration attorney, Carlos A. Batara. He worries that those who register with the Department of Homeland Security for these postponements on deportation are exchanging short term benefits for the possibility of long term disaster, i.e. deportation.
Wallis invokes a “Pledge of Resistance” which he says Sojourners helped organize in response to the threat of a U. S. invasion of Nicaragua in the 1980s. He says that this pledge, signed by 80,000 people, promised they would “enter the offices of their members of Congress and [refuse] to leave until they were arrested if the United States invaded Nicaragua.” He says this pledge “helped prevent a U. S. invasion of Nicaragua.” The trouble with this extraordinary assertion is that it is inaccurate.
Under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan and the Central Intelligence Agency, the U. S. helped organize and fund the ultra right wing Contras in their effort to overthrow the popularly supported Sandinista revolution which displaced the Somoza regime in 1979. Nicaragua sued the U. S. in the World Court for mining its harbors and buzzing its cities in an illegal campaign which eventually resulted in the deaths of approximately 30,000 Nicaraguans. The World Court found in Nicaragua’s favor. I have published several essays about this, one of which can be found in Subverting Scriptures: Critical Reflections on the Use of the Bible, edited by Beth Benedix.
Jim Wallis’s heart may be in the right place. But he is woefully, dangerously ill-informed on what comprehensive immigration reform actually is. As articulated in S. 744, it is a full on threat to people and families in the U. S. without status. We evangelicals on the left must, if we are truly to proclaim Good News, be careful of what we support. Other people’s lives depend on it.
I am not among those who have been inspired.
My theological concern is that we progressive Christians have forgotten one of the central tenets of the Bible – that there is a clear distinction between Caesar and God. We have forgotten that God is the good guy and Caesar is the bad guy. We should be the Anti-Caesars – the Christ People who deliberately put critical distance between ourselves and the Caesars of the day. We should be the ones who analyze their policies and their words from the perspective of the crucified peoples of the world.
Instead of putting critical distance between ourselves and Caesar, we seem to have fallen in love with him – in this case with President Obama. No matter what he does, we stay with him when we should walk away. We say he did not mean it (he had to compromise), he could not help it (Republican obstructionism).
When I review Obama's past seven years in office, particularly in light of his record on immigration, trade agreements, and jobs, I find that he did anything but stand up for the weak and vulnerable. He did not stand up for asylum seeking Central Americans, many of them children, whom he deported to their deaths last year, the Central American women and children being held in detention centers which some say resemble concentration camps, the more than 2 million families he tore apart through deportation, nor the thousands of migrants who died crossing America's heavily militarized southern border on his watch. He did not stand up for the veterans who have been deported to countries that for all intents and purposes are not their own. He has not stood up for the thousands of spouses, mostly wives, and children who have followed their loved ones into exile. He has not stood up for the many of them who now are the unauthorized immigrants, stranded by family ties, lack of funds, and lack of papers in countries not their own.
Obama talks about a “new economy”. Yet, in his policies he has not stood up for the millions of people whose jobs will go overseas because he signed Free Trade Agreements with Colombia, South Korea, and Peru. He has not stood up for the millions of people whose jobs and businesses will disappear should the looming TransPacific Partnership, for which he has negotiated vigorously, come into being. He has not stood up for the millions of people who will be displaced in countries affected by those agreements. He talks of a new economy, yet he has not spoken out for the many low-income Americans who have been in the streets crying out for “$15 A Day and A Union!” He has not stood up to the deep pocket employers who want to import cheap, vulnerable workers via major expansions of the guest worker program.
Nor do most of us progressive Christians stand up to President Obama. We cannot. We are in love with him. And that is a problem, especially for the weak and vulnerable.
Photo: Barack Obama
Among other claims, Pavlovitz said that Obama
"has vigorously defended the civil rights of all human beings, has challenged us to be hospitable to refugees and immigrants, and has called out corporate lobbyists and big business special interests that have crippled the middle class and widened the income gap between the richest and poorest."
These claims are demonstrably inaccurate. Despite his campaign promise, for example, Obama did not close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base where some prisoners have been held for decades without being charged. Among the detainees’ basic rights, which Obama has failed to champion in any meaningful way, are the rights of habeus corpus, a US and international principle providing the right to challenge the legality of one’s arrest, and the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution which provides the right to a “speedy and public trial“.
Then there is the matter of Obama’s foreign policy. Jeremy Scahill, a national security correspondent for The Nation and for Democracy Now!, traces the expansion of covert wars. He says that "particularly in the Obama administration . . . . we’ve returned to the kind of 1980s way of waging war, where the US was involved in all these dirty wars in Central and Latin America, in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and beyond."
For example, he says, the US and Obama are “using proxies, that effectively are death squads, in Somalia to hunt down people the US has determined are enemies . . . . [and] mercenary forces in various wars, declared and undeclared, around the world.”
Similarly, Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of the Washington Post, wrote “Obama’s Troubling Counterterrorism Allies: Dictators“. Hiatt detailed Obama’s alarming embrace of Syria’s Bashar-Al-Assad, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Kahlifa, and Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov. Hiatt calls Al-Assad the “bloodiest butcher of this young century”.
He goes on to say that Al-Sisi has “killed and imprisoned opponents with a brazenness Hosni Mubarak never dreamed of,” that when Al Kahlifa “cracks down on peaceful dissidents, the United States barely notices”, and that Karimov “presides over a closed society of prison camps and forced labor.”
As for being “hospitable to refugees and immigrants”, as Pavlovitz asserts, that has been anything but true of Obama with the exception of his recent welcome of Syrian refugees. Obama supports further militarizing the United States / Mexico border which was militarized to prohibit Mexicans and others displaced by the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] from coming to the US. Militarization has taken a minimum of 6,000 migrants’ lives.
Obama has earned the derogatory nickname “Deporter in Chief” among Latinos because under him deportations sky-rocketed, ripping some 2.5 million people from their families. Deportations have left over 5,000 children stranded in foster care and forced other US citizens into exile to be with their deported husband or father. He has deported asylum-seeking Central Americans which has cost 83 their lives, according to London’s newspaper, The Guardian. And, according to the Washington Post, his administration failed to protect thousands of other Central American children, placing them in the hands of human traffickers or abusive caretakers in the U. S.
Economic researchers with Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute have projected that the TPP would likely lead to the loss of 448,000 US jobs and cause labor’s share of income to decline by 1.3%. This necessarily would increase the gap between rich and poor and widen inequality. The researchers found that while the US job market will suffer the most, the TPP would lead to 771,000 job losses over the next 10 years in the member nations.
FTAs, however, are about more than opening up markets, displacement of peoples, and the offshoring of good paying jobs. Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, has called trade deals “backdoor financial deregulation,” a “power tool to demolish financial stability policies,” and part of the establishment of an “investor-state” system. She concludes that the TPP and other FTAs are mainly about “new rights for corporations and new constraints on governments’ non-trade regulatory policy space”.
You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in economics to surmise that it is the middle class that suffers the most from these deals.
Christian pastors and bloggers have the right to endorse or support any candidate and any president they wish. However, when Christian leaders compare the president or a presidential hopeful to Christ, they must backup their claims with facts. We may disagree on which facts are or are not critical, but they must be backed up. Other people’s lives are hanging in the balance.
Thumbs up? Thumbs down? What say you?
Josseline Janiletha Hernandez Quinteros (frozen, aged 14, El Salvador)—a “deterrent” said the Southwestern Border Strategy.
Painting:Salvador Dalí, Corpus Hypercubus, 1954
Transgender Asian prostitute — “where is It now?” said the Alabama grand juror as the amused attorney laughed (I swore I would not reveal her name)
Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, captured by Al-Qaeda — it was a mistake said Obama, we thought they were terrorists . . . . “collateral damage”
The Cracker (he flies a Confederate flag!) — “Don’t you get it? You ‘set the system’ “, said Jon Stewart after sipping coffee in the Oval Office
Gaddafi — “we came, we saw, he died” said Clinton (Hillary), laughing
Ricky Ray Rector — “will you save my pecan pie for later?” he asked the executioner, arranging his dessert on the side of his plate while Clinton (Bill) mentioned “I want to make sure he’s good and dead” (paraphrase) in Arkansas
Frank Kameny, one of Dirksen’s “lavender lads”, ipso facto a threat to the National Security State ; he had to be fired
James Byrd, Jr. dragged to his death by white supremacists — “I don’t believe in capital punishment,” said his only son, “please spare the men who killed my father . . . . ”
Whom will we crucify tomorrow? What say you?
The Scopes Trial
Photo: William Jennings Bryan
This article will call into question that conclusion. It also will suggest that the Scopes trial has been passed along through American cultural memory in such a way that it is affecting how we are reacting to current issues and populations. It will do so by placing the trial in the contexts both of William Jennings Bryan's earlier career and the social theory he was opposed to—social Darwinism.
THE TRIAL
The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, argued outdoors in the heat of July, 1925, was hyped by the press as the “trial of the century”. During the 10 days of the trial, the press dubbed it the “Monkey Trial” in reference to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Ostensibly, the trial was to decide whether John Scopes had the right to teach the theory of evolution in a high school funded by the state of Tennessee.
Some historians believe the trial was a straightforward contest between biblical creationism and Darwin's theory that human beings and apes have a common ancestor, in other words between faith and science. Others believe it really was about clashes between modernism and traditionalism, secularism and fundamentalism, urbanism and an eroding rural way of life. Others conclude there were bona fide constitutional issues surrounding separation of church and state, state's rights, intellectual freedom, or free speech.
All of these approaches have merit. However, the attorneys involved in the trial, the state of Tennessee's William Jennings Bryan and Scopes' Clarence Darrow offer insight into something more basic that was going on at Dayton. The trial was, at least in part, a contest between the ridiculed people of America and the self-defined smart people. Here is a revealing excerpt from Darrow's cross examination of Bryan, who agreed to testify for the state of Tennessee:
Darrow: Does the statement, "The morning and the evening were the first day," and "The morning and the evening were the second day," mean anything to you?
Bryan: I do not think it necessarily means a twenty-four-hour day.
Darrow: You do not?
Bryan: No.
Darrow: What do you consider it to be?
Bryan: I have not attempted to explain it. If you will take the second chapter . . . . 'These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,' the word 'day' there in the very next chapter is used to describe a period. I do not see that there is any necessity for construing the words, 'the evening and the morning,' as meaning necessarily a twenty-four-hour day, 'in the day when the Lord made the heaven and the earth.'
Darrow: Then, when the Bible said, for instance, 'and God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day,' that does not necessarily mean twenty-four hours? Bryan: I do not think it necessarily does. . . .
Darrow: You think those were not literal days?
Bryan: I do not think they were twenty-four-hour days.
Darrow: What do you think about it?
Bryan: That is my opinion—I do not know that my opinion is better on that subject than those who think it does. Darrow: You do not think that?
Bryan: . . . . I do not think it important whether we believe one or the other.
Darrow: Do you think those were literal days?
Bryan: My impression is they were periods, but I would not attempt to argue as against anybody who wanted to believe in literal days. . . .”
At this point, Gen. A. T. Stewart, who was part of the prosecution's team, interrupted to ask, “What is the purpose of this examination?”
Bryan responded: “These gentlemen have no other purpose than ridiculing every Christian who believes in the Bible, . . . .”
Darrow: “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States . . . .” He went on to say condescendingly of Bryan, “he may be very popular down here in the hills.”
There is it. Those who took the Bible literally—in whatever way they took it literally—were “bigots and ignoramuses”. Those who believed in evolution were the smart people who needed to be in charge of the bigots and ignoramuses.
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
Who were these bigots and ignoramuses? And why did three-time presidential candidate on Democrat tickets, William Jennings Bryan, want to represent them? He was not a theologian or preacher. He was a lawyer and politician who had aimed to serve the interests of laborers for four decades by the time the Monkey Trial had become an international cause célèbre.
As the above excerpt from the trial indicates, Bryan was deeply religious but had never been a biblical literalist. Indeed, the trial excerpt shows that he not only was familiar with the idea of geological ages, he believed they had existed. What many today as then may find perplexing is that he found no contradiction in believing in both geological ages and in the Bible's creation accounts. Yet, that was not an unheard of point of view, even among intellectuals of his day. Harvard lecturer, John Fiske, for example, tried to demonstrate that "in reality there has never been any conflict between religion and science, nor is any reconciliation called for where harmony has always existed." Bryan long had been one of America's most significant champions of the interests of the people Darrow was ridiculing.
In 1896, 1900, and 1908, he had run for president of the United States on Democrat tickets. He also was America's most exciting orator. He had the ability to electrify audiences when supporting such issues as the silver standard. Today, the issue of whether gold or silver should be the standard seems mundane. But it was it's era's version of today's debate over “free market” and “trickle down” economics. Many people believed their lives were hanging in the balance.
The most overtly religious lines of Bryan's long speech are its famous closing lines:
“If they dare to come out into the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!”
The “Great Commoner” as Bryan was known, was a career-long opponent of the banks and the gold standard, an inflexible standard which advanced the interests of bankers, industrialists, railroads, and others of the monied classes. He was a formidable supporter of the flexible silver standard because he believed it undermined the “Money Power” and helped the economic interests of laborers, farmers, and other common people.
He was indeed profoundly Christian. His reading of the Bible, however, persuaded him that politics could not escape having a moral content. He believed that politics encompassed questions of right and wrong. One can hear that here as well as an emphasis on reason rather than force: "The nation is of age and it can do what it pleases; . . . it can employ force instead of reason; it can substitute might for right; it can conquer weaker people; it can exploit their lands, appropriate their property and kill their people; but it cannot repeal the moral law or escape the punishment decreed for the violation of human rights."
SOCIAL DARWINISM
Bryan's opposition to big money and imperialism is intimately connected to the philosophy which he opposed—social Darwinism. In 1925, when he sought to represent the common people of Tennessee, it was not the theory of evolution per se which troubled him. What he was opposed to was the social purposes to which evolution and its corollary—natural selection—already had been applied.
The age in which he was most politically active and most powerful – the Gilded Age and beyond – was an age much like today. Extravagant wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few and ostentatiously displayed while more and more Americans slipped into desperate poverty. It was an age of imperialism, economic expansionism, militarism, laissez-faire capitalism, political conservatism, and severe class stratification.
The philosophical basis for these was a social theory which relied heavily, if often erroneously, on Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection. It was popular, as you might expect, among wealthy American businessmen, politicians who represented big business, and those who aspired to be among the wealthiest of the wealthy. But, as importantly for purposes of re-examining the meaning of the Scopes trial, the philosophy was articulated and popularized by intellectuals. Among the prophets of social Darwinism were the British philosopher Herbert Spencer and American sociologist William Graham Sumner. Coining the term “survival of the fittest”, Spencer believed that biologically superior people would triumph in the competition for wealth. He once wrote that wealth was a sign of natural superiority and its absence an indicator of unfitness. Sumner used it to justify Adam Smith's “laissez faire” economics, the equivalent of today's “free market” neoliberalism. Spencer presaged the idea that later surfaced in Dayton that those who were weak were “bigots and ignoramuses”. He wrote, “the ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”
IMPLICATIONS
Our's is an age so similar to William Jennings Bryan's Gilded Age. Corporations pay for the politicians of their choice, trade policies displace peoples and cultures, academics promote trickle-down economics and ministers the notion that God delights in extravagant wealth, poor people are ridiculed and blamed for their own misfortune, and America believes that might makes right. People who believe in creationism are dismissed as “bigots and ignoramuses” while the wealthiest 1% off-shore their jobs and hide their money in tax havens. We would do well to reconsider Bryan, listen closely to his Cross of Gold speech, reflect again on the Scopes trial and ask whether science v. faith was really the issue. We on the left need to ask certain questions of ourselves: Despite any objections we might offer, do we not in some way subscribe to social Darwinism? Do we not harbor the conclusion that wealth accrues to the fittest and poverty to the less fit? Can we really not live with people who don't believe in evolution? Do we really need to insist on a split between science and faith? And, most importantly, what are the consequences of such a split for the people for whom Bryan witnessed so faithfully and for so long?
Additional Sources:
Paxton Hibben, The Peerless Leader: William Jennings Bryan (New York: Farrar and Rhinehart, 1929), p. 220.
Ray Ginger, ed., William Jennings Bryan: Selections (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), pp. 234-246. Trial transcript.
Carla Blank, ed., Rediscovering America: The Making of Multicultural America, 1900-2000. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003, p. 116.
A Meditation on John 1:14 and God’s Trans Nature
Collage: Victims of the Pulse Nightclub massacre, Orlando, Florida
A Meditation on John 1:14 and God's Trans Nature
God is so fundamentally about change that, according to the writer of John’s gospel, God is trans. In verse 1:14 of his gospel, John wrote in the most beautiful way that before the present age began, God already was trans. Before the present age, God was abstraction then transitioned to Good News. Before the present age, God was Word then transitioned to Flesh. Before the present age, God was Poem then transitioned to Prose.
What was right for one context and in one age was not right for another context in another age. In the abstract Beginning, the world had been a place of liveliness and peace. It had been a garden. But by about 30 CE, or thereabouts, the world had become a place of paranoia on the part of pharaohs and caesars obsessed with national security and of religious leaders obsessed with their arrangements with pharaohs and caesars.
Living on a brink which was crumbling, as they presumed, because of a seismic shift in the order of things, they were in a profound and continual existential crisis. Because they were in a profound, existential crisis, they caused to suffer anyone who threatened their existential well-being. Whether the threat was real was not the issue. The issue was the existential crisis and the on-going dreadful sense of being under attack.
They were terrified. By the same token, they resorted to acts of terrorism.
That Caesar was God was a lie. God knew it was a lie. Thus, God decided that God could no longer be the authentic Lord of Life so long as God stayed Word. God had to transition to Flesh in order to maintain God’s integrity as Lord of Life.
And so the God who since The Beginning had been trans made God’s transition from Word to Flesh as a sort of counter announcement.
If we are familiar with the Bible, we know what happened next: after about 3 years or so, God, too, was crucified.
What happened in Orlando was a re-run of sorts. It seems to me that if the crucifixions are to end, we might do well to reflect on who God is. We might consider that God had no fixed nature. We might consider that God was trans.
My mind often wanders to an encounter I had with a deeply reflective Border Patrol agent on an airplane between Tucson, Arizona and Guanajuato, Mexico in 2011. I had gone to the area on the US/Mexico border to shoot footage for my migrant justice documentary, The Second Cooler, narrated by Martin Sheen.
Untitled painting, Guadalupe Serrano, Taller Jonke, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. Used with permission.
My cinematographer, Adam Valencia, and I had been in the Sonoran Desert with Mike Wilson, a tribal member of the Tohono O’odham Nation. Mike, a former Special Operations military officer in El Salvador and a Presbyterian lay minister in Sells, Arizona, had long defied tribal elders’ prohibition on putting water in the desert for migrants attempting to cross through it into the United States. This despite the fact that the brutal desert had already taken the lives of at least 5,000 migrants.
Mike has four stations among the rattlesnakes and cacti where he sets out water: St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John. He arranges them in the shape of a cross so any passing migrant will feel confident the water has not been poisoned.
As we were heading back to Tucson after shooting, while still on the reservation, we encountered a young, indigenous migrant from Oaxaca in southern Mexico. He name, oddly enough in this deathtrap, was Eulogio—eulogy. He was eighteen years old and had been wandering with his party in the desert for ten days. The previous three days he had neither food nor water. He was weak and asked us to call Border Patrol so he could turn himself in. Eulogio did not want to die in a foreign desert. He wanted to return home to his wife and seven month old son.
After Adam and I boarded the plane to journey on to Guanajuato, I called my husband to tell him about our encounter with Eulogio. When the call was finished, the young man sitting next to me on the plane asked me, “What kind of work do you do?” “I’m a filmmaker,” I said. “What kind of film?” “Immigration.” “What kind of work do you do?” “Border Patrol.” We were delighted at the coincidence and laughed.
The agent told me his name was Steve. We chatted a long time.
Originally from the Dominican Republic, Steve and his three brothers had been abandoned as young children by their parents in an orphanage where they languished for years. They had become so mentally disturbed that they used to urinate and defecate on one another. Eventually they were rescued by an American Mennonite couple. Over time, all recovered from the traumas of abandonment and abuse.
When we met on the plane, Steve had been with Border Patrol for only about a year, but had turned in his resignation. He said he had decided to become a BP agent because he wanted to work outdoors and because he wanted to help stop drug trafficking. Steve learned, though, as he said, that being a Border Patrol agent really was about destroying people’s dreams. The dreams of people who were just like he had been earlier in his life. When he would find migrants wandering in the desert, they would beg him for their lives. He said they were as dependent on his mercy as he and his brothers had been on the mercy of strangers in that miserable orphanage in the Dominican Republic.
I asked Steve, “What is the youngest migrant you have ever captured in the desert?” He pointed to the baby daughter in his lap, dressed in pink frills and just beginning to stand. “About her age,” he said.
“I can’t do this any more”, Steve said. He reflected on the long, heavily militarized border wall called El Muro by many Latinos. “When we build border walls,” he said, “we act like we don’t believe in God at all. Our security is not in walls and Border Patrol agents. Our security is in God. We say we believe in God, but we act like we don’t believe in Him at all.”
Steve would not let me interview him on camera, although I asked him several times. I have no idea where he is now or what he is doing. His reflection on what it means to believe in God, however, will remain with me forever.
i. John of Patmos understood. In his apocalyptic vision he saw a great sign in heaven—a Woman clothed with the sun, her womb struggling to bring forth new life, who so antagonizes the Powers (Powers, represented by a Dragon, which deceive) that they sweep to earth a third of the stars. The Woman flees to a plot of land which is prepared to nourish her for a time and times and half a time —1,260 days!
With Susan Diane Mitchell
Painting: "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed With the Sun", by William Blake, 1805-1810
by William Blake
iii. An apocalypse is the full revelation of the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge so well articulated and widespread that it necessarily brings with it the destruction of the present age.
iv. Dynamite Hill was the nickname given to Center Street, the site of multiple drive by bombings in Birmingham, Alabama which itself was known by the sobriquet “Bombingham”. Between the 1940s and 1960s, there were some forty bombings in a city known for the viciousness of its segregationist sentiments and practices.
Center Street marked the residential color line running through the area of Birmingham known as Smithfield. Whites claimed the land to the west. Blacks were consigned to the land to the east. At the top of the hill, prosperous middle class Blacks steadily chipped away at the boundary as zoning laws were successfully challenged. As it chipped away, occupying White land, the Ku Klux Klan pushed back with fires, gun shots in the night, and dynamite.
Theodora Shores, the wife of NAACP attorney Arthur Shores, once found a case of dynamite in her garden. Her home was a frequent target of mob violence which led to a Shores family ritual: hit the floor and crawl to safety.
The frequency of fires and bombs prompted a neighborhood group called the Dynamite Hill Defenders, a rifle patrol, to defend their properties from attack.
v. Mary, her son, Jesus, growing in her womb, sang a resistance song about bringing down the powerful from their thrones and filling the hungry with good things. So dangerous was she that she had to flee to the hill country of Judea. When her kinswoman, Elizabeth, who also was pregnant, heard Mary’s approach, she cried out loudly, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” Elizabeth’s own child leaped within her womb.
vi. Susan Diane Mitchell has borne nine children all of whom survive. She lives now on Center Street and 11th Court North. Inspired by Dynamite Hill’s legacy of resistance, courage, and self-determination, its community spirit, and the sight of revolutionary Angela Davis’s former home across the way, in 2015 Mitchell initiated the Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust with support from the Magic City Agriculture Project. The Project emphasizes democratic decision making in the development of sustainable, cooperative agriculture. Mitchell and her beloved partner, Rev. Majadi Baruti, find spiritual nourishment in remembering the Black Goddess.
vii. The Black Goddess bears a resemblance to the Virgin of Guadalupe who is a representation of the Woman who fought the Dragon. Clothed with the sun and with stars on her cloak, she stands on the moon, pregnant. Known in Mexico now as the Queen of the Americas, the madonna first appeared to an indigenous man near Tepeyac sometime after the Conquest. The Spanish had destroyed a temple to the Aztec’s mother goddess, replacing it with a chapel dedicated to their European goddess, Mary. But resistant indigenous people knew she was, in fact, Tonantzin.
viii. In 2014, Birmingham had been chosen as the site of the 2021 World Games. With tax incentives, the choice accelerated the development of Downtown Birmingham. For residents of the Smithfield Community, the first community west of Interstate 65 and Downtown Birmingham, “development” is a euphemism for “gentrification” or the displacement of the low and moderate income residents who already lived there.
The Land Trust Susan established is part of a plan to provide access to affordable housing and sustainable agriculture in the five predominantly African American Smithfield neighborhoods through a process of land adoption. A cooperative, the idea is that the Trust will own the land but individual families will have access to their own plot. There, they will give back to Mother Earth more than they receive.
For Susan, the Trust is an act of resistance and remembrance.* Her resistance is not only to gentrification, but it is resistance to the toxicity of living on earth in the present age. She dreams of creating small villages where people live communally, share what they have, acknowledge the indigeneity of land, and where they can have a home to care for.
The Trust is also an act of remembrance of a time before patriarchy, before large scale agriculture, and before capitalism when land was not owned but was worked by women. Susan remembers the time before the Garden spoken of in Genesis.
x. The Black Goddess whom Susan and Majadi remember is the crystallization of this long ago time when the black or brown or red earth was our Mother whose womb provided home and hearth, living waters, clean food, and safety.
xi. In an act of resistance, members of indigenous communities all across Colombia marched to demand the country’s leaders adhere to the terms of a peace agreement. They said, each and every one with the red and green flag held high, with pain and anger for their fallen comrades at the hands of the government for the sole reason of defending their territories, the platform of struggle and the principles of unity, land, culture, and autonomy called them to defend life, Mother Earth, and every being that inhabits it. They called each and every indigenous in one voice to sing a single song of dignity.
xii. So angry was the Dragon with the Woman that it tried to drown her but the earth came to her rescue, opened up its mouth, and swallowed the river pouring from the mouth of the Dragon.
*Many thanks to Susan Diane Mitchell for explaining what the Black Goddess, Ua Mer farm, and the Land Trust mean to her, in a phone conversation, October 31, 2017.
This is the Greek way of presenting what is translated into English as “Good News”. The word embodies the idea that there is a messenger bringing news. Good News is news is news that is reliable, accurate, and tells the listener something he/she needs to know. It embodies the idea of something which has just happened—that which is news in the newspaper or nightly news sense.
Good news is a contrast to the fake news spouted by Empire. My thinking is that good news, reliable news whether cheery or disturbing, gospel news, the news one needs to hear and understand is losing out to fake news. I’m talking about the fake news of news media whether of Fox News or the New York Times. I’m talking about conspiracy theory news and magical thinking news.
I think we Americans are in pretty deep. I think that despite our veneer of Christianity, we can no longer distinguish between gospel, i.e. reliable, truth telling news and conspiracy theories or magical thinking.
At the dawn of new ways of thinking about about God . . . and perhaps most often not thinking about God at all . . . leading Southern intellectuals Ellin Jimmerson and Jeff Hood come together to discuss what it means to be Baptist in their particular context and beyond.
ICE, a Federal agency, has a quota for deportations. That quota is 400,000 a year. I am a registered Democrat. I voted for Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. But I have to acknowledge that by honoring these quotas, President Obama earned the derogatory nickname “Deporter in Chief” by deporting some 2.8 million people. That was 2.8 million family separations, separations which left thousands and thousands of US citizen children of deported parents in foster care, and forced thousands more American children and women into living in exile with their deported fathers and husbands.
We have to ask ourselves who is benefitting from 400,000 deportations per year. One of the major beneficiaries is ICE. ICE has contracts with prisons, many of which are for-profit prisons, to keep 34,000 beds filled with immigrant detainees on any given day.
One of the prisons with which ICE has a contract is the Etowah County Immigrant Detention Center in Gadsden. One immigrant, a Zimbabwean who was in the US legally but erroneously arrested in Atlanta on an immigration charge and taken to Etowah, told me that Etowah is the “closest place to hell” he could imagine.
ICE also operates through what are called “detainer requests” which it sends to local jurisdictions all over the US. During his administration, President George Bush established the Secure Communities program, a deportation program, and enlisted 14 local jurisdictions. With the Secure Communities program, ICE automatically receives the fingerprints of those taken into local custody. ICE then uses that information to determine prisoners’ immigration status. By March, 2011, under Obama, the number of jurisdictions expanded to 1,210 jurisdictions with the goal of expanding to all local jurisdictions in the US. ICE then sends what is called a detainer request to the local jails and asks local sheriffs and chiefs of police to hold prisoners beyond the time they ordinarily would have been released, in other words, when the charges against them was disposed of through a finding of guilt or innocence, or when charges are dropped, or when bail has been secured, or when convicted prisoners have served their sentences. Responding to these ICE detainer requests is completely voluntary.
There were 12,739 ICE detainer requests sent to Alabama between 2005 and 2018. Of them, 733 were sent to the Huntsville/Madison County Jail. Madison County receives more ICE detainer requests than any other county in Alabama with the exception of Talladega County. Huntsville/Madison County voluntarily cooperates with ICE detainer requests which puts people into the deportation system.
Children are crying right here in Huntsville and all the municipalities in Madison County. They are calling out for their fathers and mothers right here. Spouses are being left to care for their children alone right here. They cry and they mourn because our sheriff, our chief of police, our mayor, our city council, and our county commission are voluntarily cooperating with ICE’s detainer requests.
I have emphasized that I am a registered Democrat and that deportation and the deportation machine exploded under President Obama for one reason: I want to emphasize that a “blue wave” of electing Democrats to office will not fix this human rights crisis. And I want to emphasize that families which belong together cannot wait for elections.
We have real but limited influence on whether and when the parents and children separated by Trump will be ever be reunited. We must do everything in our power to see that that happens.
But we have absolute power over whether we stop separation of families in Huntville/Madison County. Our elected officials respond to political pressure. All of them. Those in the positions I’ve just mentioned; those who are running for office. We must ask all those running for office whether they support disconnecting Huntsville/Madison County from ICE, and we must insist on an answer. We all—Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Libertarians—can stop these family separations if we can band together and insist on it.
In the name of God, we must persist, we must resist, and we must insist. Because families belong together.
Thank you.
In 2002, President George W. Bush, in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, consolidated some 22 Federal agencies into what became the Department of Homeland Security and within it a new agency called Immigration and Customs Enforcement, otherwise known as ICE.
In his terms as president, Barack Obama became known throughout undocumented peoples as the “Deporter in Chief” because under him deportations skyrocketed to previously unheard of numbers. He oversaw Federal quotas of 400,000 deportations per year. He oversaw Federal contracts with private prisons to keep 34,000 immigrant detainees in beds each and every day. He oversaw the breaking up of 2.8 million families, including families of US citizens, and the stranding of 5,000 children in foster homes. In 2009, he and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, militarily supported the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manual Zelaya. Since 2014, we have seen the effects of the US supported, illegal coup d’etat in the outpouring of Central Americans to the US, including thousands of unaccompanied minors.
Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union released a report based on 30,000 pages of documents showing horrendous abuses of children in the Obama administration’s concentration camps between 2009 and 2014.
Each president since 1992 has exceeded his predecessor in the terrorizing, maiming, imprisonment, and deaths of innocent people.
President Donald Trump found new ways to turn the screw on already desperate people including the policy of “Zero Tolerance” by which he decided to separate all children, not just some children as Obama had done, from their families, forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico in a “metering” policy.
The mistreatment, humiliation, terrorizing, and imprisoning of children in concentration camps is the result of a demonic bi-partisanship. It will take honest examination of both our major parties to end this for good.
Republicans: take a look at yourselves!
Democrats: take a look at yourselves!br />
Preachers: start preaching!
In the names of Almighty God and Jesus Christ the Liberator!
Illegal Immigration to the
Alabama State Legislature
Image: Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission Seal
Alabama State Legislature
The State of Alabama, during the Civil Rights era, was forced into self-examination. We can, if we choose, use hard-won insights to our moral advantage. There are no people in the country who are in a better position to comprehend that what is illegal is not necessarily wrong—we remember the Underground Railroad and Rosa Parks, for example.
There are no people in the country who are in a better position to comprehend that what is legal is not necessarily right—we remember slavery, segregation, debt peonage, and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments for example. We can, if we choose, model for the rest of the country how Americans can respond to the complicated problem of illegal migration knowledgeably and compassionately.
Recommendations
The Alabama Legislature should pressure the federal government to reverse the effects of NAFTA and the other free trade agreements. The Alabama Legislature should begin to understand the interrelatedness of NAFTA-driven illegal migration from Latin America and economic losses in Alabama.
Understanding and reversing the effects of NAFTA would address the root cause of illegal migration.
This would benefit Mexican workers, allowing them to remain in their home countries, with their families, where most want to be.
This would benefit Alabama farmers and factory workers who are losing lands and livelihoods to cheap imports and foreign business buy-outs.
The Alabama Legislature should pressure the federal government to reverse the militarization of the U. S. / Mexico border.
The number of migrant deaths in the U. S. desert is larger than the combined official numbers of deaths in the September 11, 2001 attacks and because of Hurricane Katrina. Many were and continue to be children.
The Alabama Legislature should endeavor to stop this national disgrace.
The Alabama Legislature should pressure the federal government to create a workable system by which blue-collar workers and small farmers from Latin Americans can enter and exit the U. S. legally and safely.
The Alabama Legislature should pressure the federal government to create a quick path to citizenship for Latin American migrants. An 18-20 year wait is equivalent to no path at all for people desperate for work and income.
The Alabama Legislature should pressure the federal government to create a means by which families can be re-united. The need for children to be with their mothers and fathers should not be thwarted by bureaucratic red tape.
The Alabama Legislature should aggressively pressure Alabama politicians to stop the alarming return to the politics of fear and demagoguery. This includes unwarranted claims such as that Alabamians are “fed up” with illegal migration or that Latin Americans bring leprosy into the U. S., calling illegal migrants a “public nuisance” in city ordinances and advocating such proposals as the Save America Through Verification and Enforcement Act which presumes without reason that illegal migration endangers America’s national security.
The Alabama Legislature should use its power to preempt prejudicial city and county ordinances. It should preempt ordinances against landlords who rent to illegal migrants and employers who hire them. It should preempt vehicle impoundment and other ordinances designed to harass migrants.
The Alabama Legislature should create a system by which migrants can obtain driver’s licenses, insurance, medical care and other necessities.
The Alabama Legislature should use its access to public media to interpret realities about migrants—including why they migrate, who they are and who they are not—to Alabamians.
The Alabama Legislature should interpret the current problem of illegal migration—the problem of the borderline—as a new aspect of the problem of the colorline. It should interpret migrants’ struggles for income, security and dignity as an extension of the Civil Rights struggle. The words chanted in recent May Day parades—“Sí, Se Puede!” in essence means “We Shall Overcome.” This is a concept Alabamians will understand and relate to. Other Americans will, too. A media campaign called “Sí, Se Puede Means We Shall Overcome”, or something similar, could be effective in relating the two struggles.”
Image: Rosa Parks being booked in at Montgomery Jail,
Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1956
The struggle to reverse our well-deserved reputation as a safe haven for demagogues should have made us leery of the politics of race, fear, and confusion.
The borderline has come to the colorline in Alabama and we are off to a bad start.
There is not a dime’s worth of difference between George Wallace vowing he would never be “out-niggraed” and Gardendale Rep. Scott Beason’s aggressive decision not to be “out-illegalled.” There is not a dime’s worth of difference between Wallace’s “segregation yesterday! segregation today! segregation tomorrow!” and local city councils proposing ordinances referring to a group of human beings as a “public nuisance.” There is not a dime’s worth of difference between the arrogance of “whites only” and “English only” nor between the current crop of vehicle impoundment ordinances and the old voter literacy laws designed to harass and humiliate.
The borderline has come to the colorline in Alabama and we are off to a bad start. The racial cast of characters has changed but the old, ugly vilifications have made a comeback. At a public meeting a black man rants he cannot rent his property because of Hispanics “running around half-naked.” A white, professional Hispanic with papers lords his supposedly Spanish descent over the poor, indigenous, undocumented Latinos in his church. A white woman with refined speech mannerisms dresses up her racist anti-Catholicism as concern for women. At the Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission’s (JIPIC) lynch mob-like Huntsville meeting, black and white police officers step into the crowd to protect a Latina attempting to speak up for illegal immigrants. At the JIPIC’s Hoover meeting, in words chillingly reminiscent of “Crucify him!” the mostly white crowd chants “deport them!” when a white minister attempts a “what would Jesus do?” mini-sermon.
We are at it again. We need to remember our history. We need to develop a working knowledge that U. S. history includes installing, supporting or colluding with Latin American dictators and their Mafia-like national guards and promoting economic “developmentalism” plans both of which, many historians conclude, have concentrated more and more wealth, land and power in the hands of fewer and fewer. We have been instrumental in creating the poverty pushing Latin Americans across our borders.
We need to develop a working knowledge of current “trickle down” developmentalist subsidies, tariffs and U. S. free trade agreements with Latin America. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a phased-in agreement signed by Canada, the U. S. and Mexico in 1992, was designed to make the countries safe for investors. That it may have done. Experts who look at economic policy from the perspective of workers and peasant farmers, however, conclude NAFTA has brought catastrophic suffering to already impoverished Mexico. For example, NAFTA’s lifting of export tariffs the big, subsidized U. S. producers of corn and beans had to pay allowed them to dump their products in Mexico well below the cost of production. The result has been, according to conservative estimates, the bankrupting of 1 ½ million small corn and bean farmers pushing them off their lands and into migration. Many of them are Native Americans pushed onto the latest leg of a hemispheric “Trail of Tears.”
Experts who look at economic policy from the perspective of small and medium Alabama farmers and ranchers conclude free trade agreements are also bringing economic suffering to Alabamians. Our once strong peanut producers are being hard-hit. Small and medium-sized Alabama beef ranchers, flower growers, tomato farmers and lumber mills are struggling to compete with cheap corporate-produced Argentine beef, Ecuadorian flowers, Mexican tomatoes and Canadian softwood.
At the Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission’s “fact-finding” meeting in Mobile, shipyard, oyster company, and seafood company owners politely testify they simply cannot operate without that most vulnerable of all worker—the guest worker far from home, legally bound to the employer who imports them, who speaks little English and who has incurred thousands of dollars in debts to get here. Meanwhile, predominantly black Perry County languishes in eternal underemployment, poverty and neglect.
The borderline has come to the colorline has come to the picket line in Alabama and those of us who advocate for legal and illegal migrants are also off to a shaky start. We have been quick to assume that if migrants are right, farm and trade unionists concerned about the adverse affect of “guestworkers” on U. S. workers’ wages and working conditions must be wrong. We are quick to assume that because blatantly racist Minutemen are wrong, polite corporate owners insisting they need more “guests” must be right.
This despite the fact Montgomery’s Southern Poverty Law Center has called the H-2 guestworker program an “inherently abusive modern day system of indentured servitude.” We have been quick to lament the failure of the U. S. Congress’s proposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill oblivious to its effort to extend this cruel system of “disposable workers” and to its proposed extension of the militarized border which since 2000 has sent 1,000 migrants to their deaths in Pima Co., AZ alone, including at least four little girls. We have been slow to be horrified by this new federal experiment which exchanges real peoples’ lives for hypothetical safety from hypothetical terrorists. The new noose.
The borderline has come to the colorline has come to the picket line in Alabama. This phase of our on-going civil rights struggle, as before, is about race, class, fear, small jobs and big money. It will be won when we insist on human dignity.
We are in a struggle for our soul. It is going to be a long haul. It is not too late to get it right. Somewhere encoded deep in our DNA is the intuitive conviction that the politics of division is feeding a sinful socio-economic structure that is benefiting the few at the expense of the many. Somewhere deep in our DNA is the intuitive conviction that cruel, oppressive systems are bigger than the people, like slaves, segregated blacks, poor whites, and illegal immigrants, caught up in them. We need to bring that deeply buried but nonetheless real intuition to the surface and allow it to work for us.
Sí, se puede, Alabama.
Eyes on the prize!
Photo: Anastasio Somoza García, 1936
My overall conclusion is that illegal migrants are not the principle beneficiaries of the system, they are among its principle victims. Their decisions to migrate and their consequential deaths are not because they are 12 million people who don’t care to play by the rules. Instead their decisions to migrate and their deaths are the logical outcomes of North American policies, programs, and points of view.
First, as we reflect on illegal migration, we need to remember our history. We need to understand that we Americans are not innocent by-standers to the outpouring of illegal Latin American migrants. The cumulative effect of nearly two centuries of U. S. economic and foreign policies have contributed to the massive poverty and limited access to power of the people of Latin America.
For example, we would do well to remember that throughout most of the 20th century, our primary Latin American client state, Nicaragua, was under the brutal rule of the U. S.-trained and installed Nicaraguan National Guard and President Anastasio Somoza García who was one Latin America’s greediest and most brutal military dictators. And that the Sandinista overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 was heralded throughout Latin America all the way to the tip of Chile as a long-overdue victory against U. S. imperialism. And that, when we talk about the line between what is legal and what is illegal, we need to recall that when president Ronald Reagan funded the Contra counter-revolution, Nicaragua sued us in the World Court claiming that we were violating international law. The Court found in favor of Nicaragua and ordered us to stop mining Nicaragua’s harbors and in other ways acting to depose the Nicaraguan Government of Reconstruction, a government with which we had formal relations. We continued in our illegal and deadly practices anyway.
Who benefited?
Second, we need to look at our current legal entry system. We have a racially and socially encoded legal entry system. We have one system for Canadians and western Europeans. We have another system for Latin Americans, Africans, and most Asians.
Canadians and western Europeans can enter with only a passport. That means that all they have to do is show up. Latin Americans, Africans, and most Asians have to have a visa to enter. That means they have to qualify. They have to fit into narrowly defined categories. They have to demonstrate that they have strong ties to their home countries.
What we mean by strong ties is first of all, title to property, and second, a certain amount of money. This means that people who live on communally-held lands, for example, the indigenous, peasant farmers of Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, by our definition, don’t have strong ties to their home countries. Lack of legal title to property is an easy way to disqualify a Latin American or African or Asian from coming. The number 1 reason most are disqualified, however, is money. In other words, illegal migrants come here illegally because they cannot come legally.
Who benefits?
Third, there is an exception to America’s legal barrier to poor people. It is the guest worker visa. But foreign workers can’t request those visas. Only U. S. employers can. In other words, the guest worker visa does not change the fact that there is no line that a poor person can make an independent decision to get in. And, the guest worker program allows poor people to come legally to the U. S., but according to attorney Mary Bauer, an expert on the program with the Southern Poverty Law Center, they come with a legal status that is “close to slavery,” as she titled her report.
Primarily this is because the program binds the worker to the employer who brings him or her into the country. If the employer turns out not to have the work that was promised, or forces the worker to clear land for free prior to the promised tree planting work, or insists on sexual favors, to name a few examples, there is very little the worker can do because he or she is legally bound to that one employer. Contrary to what one south Alabama nurseryman who argued for an extension of the guest worker program before the Alabama Legislature told me, they cannot “leave anytime they want to.”
Who benefits?
Fourth, we need to look at the impact of the North American Free Trade and other free trade agreements on illegal migration. Sometimes, I think we confuse the term “free trade” with the term “fair trade.” The two terms have nothing to do with each other and are indeed antithetical. Free trade is about the lifting of protections for small farmers and factory owners and their products to the advantage of factory farms and other large corporations. Free trade is about freely allowing U. S. factory produced corn and beans to cross the border into Mexico, for example, and undersell small peasant farmers. It is also about allowing Canadian-owned factories to produce cheap t-shirts in Honduras and put 150 textile factories in Fort Payne, Alabama out of business.
According to people who analyze NAFTA from the perspective of small, traditional Mexican farmers, for example, NAFTA has caused catastrophic suffering. Figures vary, but the consensus is that NAFTA has pushed at least one and a half million peasants, many of whom were in the corn and bean sectors of the Mexican agricultural economy, off their lands and into migration. And that millions more low and middle-income people in the combined sectors of the Mexican economy also were dislocated.
Who benefits?
Who benefits?
Sixth, we really need to understand that the beginning of the militarization of the U. S. / Mexico border preceded the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by almost 10 years. The militarization of the border had nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with NAFTA. In 1993, the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service concluded that throughout the following decade illegal migration would increase as a result of the implementation of NAFTA. And so it developed its Southwest Border Strategy to militarize the border in order to deter illegal migration.
The strategy included, in its words, making the crossing “so difficult and costly” that “fewer individuals would try.” In other words, migrants would be pushed away from the relative safety of crossing through urban areas and into more and more remote desert areas. Limited numbers would die, word would get back to Mexican communities, and migrants would stop trying to cross. The deaths of poor Mexicans and Central Americans was part the INS’s official policy of “deterrence.” The policy of deterrence has been a dismal failure. It did not stop people from trying to cross. Instead, at a minimum, 5,000 men, women, children, and babies have lost their lives mostly in Arizona’s treacherous Sonoran desert.
Who benefits?
Seventh, big money is involved in the trafficking of migrants. If it is correct that 2,000 people a day find their way across the border, and if each one pays an average of $2,000 to a coyote or smuggler, the total for a single day’s trafficking is $4 million. If a more accurate cost per person is an average of $3,000, then the total for a single day’s trafficking is $6 million.
Who benefits?
Eighth, many people, including migrant activists, don’t fully understand that all the federal comprehensive immigration reform packages that have been presented thus far have included significant extensions of the guest worker program as well as increased militarization of the U. S. / Mexico border. It is true that they also offer family reunification plans and paths to citizenship. However, in particular those of us who say we are on the migrants’ side need to ask ourselves very seriously whether indentured servitude and deaths in the Sonora desert are a good exchange for family reunification.
And, we need to ask, who would be the primary beneficiaries?
Ninth, I think we need to consider this. Is the U. S.’s increasingly rigid demarcation line fundamentally about promoting national security and the rule of law? Or is it fundamentally about cosmopolitan class privilege, no-holds-barred capitalism, transnational suppression of wages and working conditions, and global apartheid?
When I was Arizona shooting the documentary someone remarked to me that migrant activists there say that “Arizona is the new Alabama.” By that I think he meant that Arizona is the epicenter of an intense struggle in which every day 2,000 people illegally try to cross a rigid demarcation line and thousands of other people try to stop them.
His remark caused me to reflect that here in Alabama, especially in Birmingham, we continue to invoke the memory of the four little girls who died in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963. And it caused me to reflect that at least four little girls have died trying to cross this new colorline. Lorna Celeste Robles Enríquez was 5 years old when she died trying to cross Arizona. Carmen Alejandra Robles Enríquez was 11, Teresa Vela Velásquez was 16, as were Keila Velásquez-González and Michelle Acosta González, Lourdes Cruz Morales was 12, and Milka Lopez-Herrera was only 1 year old when she died in Arizona. And the list of little girls who are dying trying to realize their families’ dreams or reunite with parents grows every year.
We in Birmingham in particular need to reflect on the fact that the remains of 11 girls under the age of 16 and 29 boys under the age of 16 have been recovered from Pima, Yuma, and Cochise Counties, Arizona.
It occurs to me that we in Alabama could well honor Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair by remembering Lorna and Carmen and Teresa and Keila and Michelle and Lourdes and Milka and all those who have lost their lives to an inherently violent system which gives their interests no priority. And like those who struggled so long and so well to bring down the segregation line, I think we would well remember the four little girls who were killed in 1963 by insisting on economic, legal, and labor legislation which would bring down this line of demarcation.
Thank you.
amended August 5, 2016
Aluminum cutouts by artist Alfred Quíroz. Used with permission.
The US Declaration of Independence also says that governments derive their authority only from the consent of the ones being governed.
The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides for “equal protection under the law.” In interpreting this principle, the US Supreme Court has said that “the amendment disable[s] a State from depriving not merely a citizen of the United States, but any person, whoever he may be, of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or from denying to him the equal protection of the laws of the State. . . . [This pertains to] all persons who may happen to be within their jurisdiction.”
In 1948, the United Nations’ General Assembly, in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, clarified what it means to speak of freedom and inalienable rights in the modern world. In particular, the UN addressed what may not happen if we are to live together “in a spirit of brotherhood.” No one, it says, “shall be held in slavery or servitude.” No one shall be “subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” No one shall be “subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” No one shall be “arbitrarily deprived of his property.”
The UN Declaration of Human Rights also articulated of what freedom consists. It consists of the right of a person to “leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country,” the “right to a nationality,” the right not to be “arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality,” the right “to own property alone as well as in association with others,” the “right to take part in the government of his country,” the right to “the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.”
Everyone, the UN goes on to say, has the right to “work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment,” the right to “equal pay for equal work” and to “just and favorable remuneration for himself and his family.” Everyone has “the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”
In 2006, recognizing “the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous peoples which derive from . . . their lands, territories and resources,” the United Nations adopted a special Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It stipulated that indigenous peoples have “collective” as well as individual rights to the full enjoyment of “international human rights law” including the “right to self-determination,” the individual “right to a nationality,” and the right to “live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples.”
To that end, the member States “shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for “any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples” or “dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources.” Further, it says that “no relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option of return.” It also says that “indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights” and that when they have been “deprived of their means of subsistence and development [they] are entitled to just and fair redress.”
They have the “right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard.” Finally, this Declaration states that all these specifications are but “minimum standards.”
When I consider unauthorized migration through the lenses of these prescriptions for “living in brotherhood,” I see that basic human rights are willfully being denied at every turn. The denials of these rights also are contrary to agreed-upon tenets of international law.
There is consensus among historians who analyze economic policies from the perspective of poor people that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been the primary “push” factor behind the unauthorized migration of poor and indigenous peoples from Latin America to the United States. The Agreement itself acknowledged that small, traditional farmers in Mexico, for example, were to be subjected to competition from heavily subsidized corporate farms in the United States. It acknowledged that by lifting the tariffs that US corporations previously had paid in order to export their products to Mexico, for example, and by removing the supports the Mexican government long had offered traditional farmers when it repealed Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, that large numbers of those farmers would be forced off their lands and into migration.
Displacements caused by Free Trade Agreements on a smaller scale have take place within the United States. The devastation of Alabama’s textile industry is a case in point.
A corollary to the signing of NAFTA in 1992 was the militarization of the United States / Mexico border. To date, approximately 6,000 men, women, children, and babies have died as a result of attempting to cross this border. Militarization placed a priority on the sealing off of the urban areas along the border which were the safest paths by which migrants traditionally had entered the US from Latin America.
The theory, articulated in the US Southwest Border Strategy, was that migrants would avoid the militarized urban areas, be pushed into crossing through isolated and dangerous stretches of the border, especially through the Sonora Desert, some would die, word would get back to Latin American communities, and migrants would stop trying to cross. This was articulated as part of its policy of “prevention through deterrence.”
In addition, many migrants routinely report being subjected to cruel and humiliating treatment at the hands of border enforcement officials.
Further militarization of the US / MX border has been part of every plan for “comprehensive immigration reform” that has come before the United States Congress in recent years.
The reason migrants cross illegally, risking their dignity, their property, and their lives is because the United States does not allow them to cross legally.
The United States has two legal entry systems. One is for Canadians and Western Europeans who may cross US borders with only a passport. Another is for Latin Americans, Africans, and most Asians who must have a visa affixed to their passport. These people must qualify by demonstrating that they have both money and title to property in order to cross our borders legally.
The exception to the United States’ ban on poor and indigenous is the H2A or H2B Guest Worker Visa. However, as the Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] has made clear, the Guest Worker Program is “Close to Slavery” as its report on the visa was titled. The visa legally binds the worker to the employer who imports the worker. The worker may not legally leave a employer even when the worker is abused. The SPLC accurately describes the program as “indentured servitude” and “human trafficking.”
Major extensions of the Guest Worker Visa have been part of every plan for “comprehensive immigration reform” that has come before the United States Congress in recent years.
Disproportionate numbers of those forced off their lands by Free Trade Agreements and corollary policies and decisions have been indigenous peoples. Many observers note that entire towns in indigenous areas are now ghost towns or towns populated only by young women, children, and elderly people. Studies indicate that a disproportionate number of migrant bodies recovered from the Sonora Desert can be traced back to indigenous areas in southern Mexico and Guatemala, for example.
The requirement that people hold title to land automatically bars indigenous people who live on communally-held lands from coming to the United States legally. Millions of peoples have been displaced in Latin America in particular because of the United States’ own economic policies, especially NAFTA. That the United States and the other signatories, Canada and Mexico, knew this when they signed the Agreement is clear.
This prior knowledge is evident in both the Agreement and in the Southwest Border Strategy.
Now millions of these displaced people are in the United States. They live under the constant threat of deportation. Approximately 2.8 million people have been deported during President Obama’s administration.
The United States Congress has authorized funding to deport 400,000 people a year and to carry this out, has increased funding to the Department of Homeland Security.
The US also has a burgeoning for-profit prison system which is making enormous sums of money from deportations. The heavily-funded deportation system causes great hardship to the ones being deported. In addition, it is tearing apart US citizen families as deported spouses and children are taken from their US citizen family members.
Deportation also has created thousands of citizens in exile–spouses and children who follow their deported or otherwise repatriated loved ones to wait out the bars to returning. Many of these US citizens in exile then become the ones living without lawful status in their loved one’s home country. Bars on the lawful entry of their deported spouses and children, leave many without any hope of being able to live anywhere lawfully as families.
Laborers in the United States, Mexico and elsewhere increasingly are being subjected to a range of pressure ranging from “right to work” laws to murder which make it hard for them to bargain collectively and in other ways act in concert for good wages, working conditions, and benefits.Unauthorized laborers in the US also are victimized by abusive practices including workplace raids and electronic legal employment verification systems [e-verify].
An important threat to life for immigrants and migrants, including immigrant and migrant children, in the US was passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996. Stating that there was “a compelling government interest to remove the incentive for illegal immigration provided by the availability of public benefits,” for the first time, the 1996 law tied legal immigrants’ eligibility for Medicaid to their length of residency in the US. These restrictions also applied to State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP), which was established in 1997. PRWORA and SCHIP subject most immigrants, including legal permanent residents, and migrants to five year bars on eligibility.
What I see in essence is the burgeoning of people who essentially are stateless.
They have no meaningful citizenship anywhere. Their every effort to protect themselves, their families, and their ways of life are being systematically taken from them. Fundamental human rights including the general rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are being systematically taken away. Fundamental human rights including the more specific right to a meaningful nationality, to change nationality, the right to maintain nationality, to maintain ethnic identity, to cross borders legally, not to be held in slavery, not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile, not to be deprived of property, to hold property collectively as well as individually, to free choice of employment and favorable conditions of work, the right to equal pay for equal work, the right to form and join trade unions, and the right to due process are being systematically denied.
I believe that when these rights are denied, according to international agreement, people whose rights have been denied are entitled to redress.
I propose the following plan for Comprehensive Migrant Justice. In particular, I ask that the deaths of migrants along the United States / Mexico border be stopped immediately.
1. Create an inexpensive, quickly obtained visa that allows people, including poor people and indigenous people who live on communally-held lands, and without respect to their skill or wage earning prospects, to come to the United States from Latin America, Africa, and Asia
2. De-militarize the US / Mexico border
3. Halt deportations until they can be detached from the Department of Homeland Security, the for-profit prison industry, and quotas
4. Abolish the H2A / H2B Guest Worker Program
5. Stop the signing and implementation of Free Trade Agreements and roll back on those parts which now are in effect
6. Restore due process in removal proceedings
7. Create a lawful status for people without lawful status currently in the United States including, but not limited to, a path to citizenship
8. Aid indigenous people’s recovery of what traditionally have been communally-held lands in Latin America and the repatriation to those lands of those who wish it
9. Strengthen the right to organize and bargain collectively (unionize) by domestic, foreign, and transnational labor
10. Lift the legal bars that have been imposed on deportees’ and otherwise repatriated people’s ability to return to the US, bars which often act as practical bars to their US citizen spouses’ and children’s ability to return
11. Provide redress to the US citizen families of deportees by providing for expenses involved in leaving the countries to which they have entered into exile
12. Lift Medicaid and SCHIP bars to eligibility for immigrants and migrants
Photo by Adam Valencia for Huntsville Immigration Initiative, LLC
So what should comprehensive migrant reform look like? At a minimum it should include 12 things: creating an inexpensive, quickly obtained visa for poor Latinos, Asians, and Africans, creating a lawful status for those already in the US which includes but is not limited to citizenship, restoring due process in legal proceedings, halting deportations, lifting the bars on re-entry for deportees, assisting the return of spouses and children living in exile with their deported loved ones, abolishing the guest worker visa, strengthening the rights of workers to bargain collectively, stopping and rolling back on free trade agreements (FTAs), providing redress for indigenous peoples pushed from their lands by FTAs, demilitarizing the border, and lifting bars on eligibility for Medicaid and SCHIP assistance.
In other words, we don’t want deals.
We want justice.
Why don't they come legally? You'd be surprised how many people, including migrant advocates, cannot answer this question. I think part of the reason is that so many of us have shied away from the whole concept of illegal. However we think about the word "illegal," we need to be able to answer this question.
Photo: The Mothers: No More Tears, by Valarie James and colleagues,
Installation, Pima County Community College, Arizona
As immigration attorney, Klari Tedrow, says in The Second Cooler, "For purposes of immigration, people from Latin America are treated quite differently from Canadians."
The United States has two separate legal entry systems. And those systems are racially, socially, and ethnically encoded. By that I mean the US has an institutional preference for people from Canada and Western Europe—people who are perceived to be white, middle class, and Western in their religion and world-view.
They can come to the US legally with only a passport. Sometimes, they don't even have to have a passport. They just fill out paperwork on the plane. There is an assumption that Canadians and Western Europeans, for the most part, come to the US temporarily. The assumption is that they will come as tourists, for example, or to attend a family wedding, and will return to their home countries after a brief stay
So they have to fit into one of about 85 rigidly constructed boxes. They have to demonstrate that they have strong ties to their home countries. In other words, they have to assure the US government that they will go home.
There are two qualifications that apply to all 85 categories. They have to have title to land and they have to have significant amounts of money. This discriminates at the outset against indigenous people, for example those who have come unlawfully by the hundreds of thousands from southern Mexico and central America. Many of them are traditional or "peasant" farmers who live on communally-held lands. Not having a title to any land, they are disqualified before they have an opportunity to apply for a visa. By the same token, many indigenous people and many small business people cannot accumulate the necessary quantities of money.
Why don't they get in line? The answer is so simple. They don't get in line because for them there is no line to get into in order to come legally.
People of the Corn, and the Big Gulp Act
Logo: 7-Eleven
Now, those farmers no longer have their land. And they don't have corn to eat. Displaced, they migrate. It has been a gut-wrenching struggle for those farmers to be heard when they articulate what has happened to them to try to change the system.
Meanwhile, globalized, industrialized, subsidized corn manufacture thrived. Corn manufacturers were producing so much corn they needed some way to turn that corn into consumables other than food for human beings. So they turned it into corn oil and corn feed for for chickens, beef, and fish, among other things.
So now, when we eat an egg or a hamburger or a piece of fish or drink a glass of milk we are actually eating and drinking corn. We become people of the corn. And we were not meant to be people of the corn.
What happens to people, including kids, of the corn? Many become obese and suffer from type 2 diabetes and other serious diseases.
Now, to connect to tort reform. Just as Mexican traditional farmers have sought to push back against displacement including seeking redress in court, people adversely affected by those same corporate giants on the US side of the Rio Grande are struggling to push back by seeking redress in court for subsidy-backed, corporate manufactured food which is carefully constructed to be addictive, in other words knowing what they are doing, without any regard for the people they are hurting. The claims include personal injury, product liability, and false advertising.
For example, three weeks ago, on October 1, 2013, North Carolina enacted a law to limit the potential liability of the food and beverage industry for food-related claims. The "Big Gulp Act" as its detractors call the formally, more disingenuously named Commonsense Consumption Act (HB 683), forbids North Carolina cities and counties from prohibiting the sale of super-sized soft drinks. More importantly, as lawyer Christian Staples says, the "tort reform" "shields manufacturers, distributors, sellers, and advertisers from civil liability for claims arising from weight gain, obesity, and other health problems associated with the long-term consumption of food and beverages."
There are two significant competitors in this struggle. One is the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association which wants to prohibit "obesity litigation" claims by arguing that obesity reflects "life-style choices." The other is the American Medical Association which officially has recognized obesity as a disease.
Are there factors besides NAFTA-sponsored displacements that account for the surge in unlawful migration from south of the Rio Grande to the north? Of course. Are there factors besides the globalization and corporatizing of corn that account for the epidemic of obesity in Mexico and the US? Of course.
What displacement followed by illegal immigration, is not, however, by any stretch of the imagination, is a "lifestyle choice." Nor is obesity a "lifestyle choice." And what connects the fearful, skinny child fording the Rio Grande right this minute to the obese child afraid to go to into his own school lunchroom because of the teasing he is sure to receive there? Corporate greed, corn, and the difficulty of redress.
Source on tort reform: "NC Says No Obesity-Based Lawsuits Against Junk Food Makers," by Michele Bowman, Medical Malpractice Products Liability, October 17, 2013.
http://blogs.lawyers.com/2013/10/no-obesity-based-suits-in-nc/
Photo: Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
And so she became deeply suspicious of the “single story.” By that she means that not all people who show up in literature eat apples and play in the snow and not all Nigerians get around by walking and do so in rural areas.
The single story is dangerous because it does not allow for any of the complexity that makes human beings human. And it does not allow realities to be accessed and understood. And if that reality, at least in part, is oppression, by extension the single story does not allow for acknowledgement that the audience sometimes is an off-stage actor in that story.
As a film maker, I have encountered this kind of thinking over and over again. Public TV station managers, film school graduates, and festival organizers have said, “No one wants to hear about economic policy. Here’s what you do. Find one migrant or a group of migrants about to cross the desert and follow them through that crossing. Audiences want to see people in a struggle with a clear beginning and a clear end. They want to be moved to tears.”
Or, they say, “You have too many stories going on here. What you need is focus. Find a migrant or a group of migrants . . . .”
Don’t open the movie with the word “atavistic.” No one knows what “atavistic” means. Don’t say “illegal.” That’s rude. Don’t compare the numbers of migrants who have died crossing the Sonora Desert with the numbers of people killed by the September 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina. That’s insensitive. Don’t compare immigration to the Civil Rights Movement. That’s asking for trouble.
“Find a migrant or a group of migrants.” Follow the formula. Its freeze-dried and lasts forever. Add water and it will puff up nicely.
Don’t say NAFTA. Too complicated. Don’t say prison industrial complex. Too hard to fix. Don’t say militarization of the border. Too far away. Where is Arizona anyway?
Use the formula. Add water.
But the formula–the single story formula–as Adichie said is dangerous. It keeps the storyteller rather than the person whose story is being told in the driver’s seat. It’s frustratingly condescending to and de-humanizing of both audiences and migrants. It's manipulative rather than collaborative. It keeps reality in all its messy complicatedness from getting to the political table. It prohibits rather than advances justice.
I think the people whose stories we tell, the people we say we are advocating for, deserve better.
Photo: NAFTA Flag
NAFTA was signed by US President Bill Clinton, Mexico's President Carlos Salinas, and Canada's Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1992. The broad economic areas affected were automobiles, telecommunications, and agriculture. Let's take agriculture—more specifically corn—as an example of what happened. By lifting the tariffs the big factory producers of corn had been required to pay to export their product to Mexico, for example, they were able to undersell already poor small, traditional Mexican corn farmers. In other words, corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland were put in direct competition with peasant farmers. These corporations sold their corn at prices much lower than that which small farmers could offer and made substantial profits doing it.
There also is the issue of subsidies. Subsides are payments which governments pay to producers. Small traditional Mexican farmers traditionally had received subsidies from the Mexican government in order to help them survive and stay on their lands. These subsidies were provided by the Mexican Constitution. As a condition of joining NAFTA, Mexico was required to repeal Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, thereby ending subsidies to the most vulnerable of Mexico's farmers.
However, subsidies paid to US factory producers of corn were not removed. Instead, subsidies to them increased. According to the Environmental Working Group Farm Subsidies Database, between 2005 and 2012 US factory corn producers received $84.4 billion in subsidies.
The combination of the lifting of tariffs and removal of subsidies pushed somewhere around 1 1/2 to 2 million small Mexican producers of corn and other products such as beans off their lands and into migration.
This is not a case of "unintended consequences" or a plan for fairness gone wrong. I have read the North American Free Trade Agreement. It says in plain black and white that the Agreement would displace peoples. That is why the United States / Mexico border was militarized—to control displaced laborers and farmers and keep them from going north to find a livelihood.
What happened to Mexico's small agricultural producers in Mexico on a catastrophic scale happened to US producers on a smaller scale. That is the reason I wanted to include the sequence on the devastation of the textile industry in Fort Payne, Alabama because of CAFTA—the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The town once billed itself as the "Sock Capital of the World." Its home-grown sock factories were a source of great pride to Fort Payne, having something of the stature of its home-grown Southern rock band, Alabama. Now, having been bought up by Canadian manufacturer, Gildan, its sock factories are in the Dominican Republic where the profits are higher and the working conditions poorer and the people who built the industry have had to move on.
By the same token, the advantage in tomatoes was given to Mexican corporate producers. Small tomato producers in Alabama and elsewhere have been put into competition with cheap factory tomatoes from Mexico and they, too, are having a hard time surviving.
In October, 2011 US President Barack Obama signed three more Free Trade Agreements into being with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. Terms for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement among the 12 Pacific Rim Nations, are being negotiated.
In my opinion, it would be folly to believe that future FTAs will operate any differently or have any different outcomes than have previous ones.
We all—Mexicans, Americans, and Canadians—need to understand that we have a common problem in Free Trade Agreements. Once we understand we have a common problem, we can understand there must be a common solution. Any effort to "reform" immigration, at least in large part, must include addressing FTAs.
Photograph, Adam Valencia for Huntsville Immigration Initiative, LLC
We have to ask ourselves what happens to cause these men, women, children, and babies to die? Is it primarily their human smugglers, the so-called coyotes or polleros? Is it because of drug smugglers?
Typically, overwhelmingly, they die because of the hazards of nature—drowning in the Pacific Ocean or Rio Grande or succumbing to the treacherous heat or cold in the Sonora Desert. Dying because of the heat or cold in the Arizona's Sonora Desert, Ground Zero for migrant deaths, is a protracted and extremely painful experience. As Dr. Eric Peters of the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office says in The Second Cooler, "You're not just here one minute and gone the next. There is a great deal of suffering involved."
Take the case, for example, of 10-year old Olivia Luna Noguera who was crossing the desert with her sister. They were trying to re-unite with their parents who were living in Atlanta, Georgia. When authorities found Olivia, she was wearing pink sneakers. Her body temperature was 106 º F.
Or the case of twelve year old Josselina Hernández from El Salvador. Josseline was trying to reunite with her mother who lived in Los Angeles. She had bought a pair of sweat pants that said "Hollywood" on the rear. With her brother, she had crossed from El Salvador into Guatemala, through Guatemala into Mexico and had survived crossing Mexico's 3,000 or so hostile miles. It was January and it had begun to rain. Josseline was exhausted and could no longer continue. Her coyote left her behind and she and died, alone and terrified, of the brutal cold.
How do private decisions made by Salvadorans or Hondurans or Mexicans become a US public health issue? They are a US public health issue in my opinion because there is a direct connection between these deaths and US trade and border security policies. It is imperative that we understand why millions of Latin Americans have left their homes and families to make such a humiliating, expensive, illegal, treacherous, and sometimes deadly journey. Much of phenomenon has to do with the North American and Central American Free Trade Agreements, otherwise known as NAFTA and CAFTA. When President Bill Clinton, Mexico's President Carlos Salinas, and Canada's Prime Minister Brian Mulroney signed NAFTA in particular, they understood as they signed it that they were "signing away life rights for a large percentage of Mexico's rural population," as political scientist Scott Whiteford puts it in The Second Cooler. "It wasn't a surprise to the government leaders and it wasn't a surprise to the peasantry." That is why on the day NAFTA took effect on January 1, 1994, peasant farmers and indigenous people in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas participated in the largely symbolic Zapatista uprising.
This is how it worked. What made the trade "free" was that the protections to small farmers in the forms of tariffs which deep pocket US and Canadian corporations had to pay to export their products to Mexico were lifted. So heavily subsidized US factory producers of corn, for example, the staple product of both the Mexican agricultural economy and the Mexican diet, were put into direct competition with small, traditional farmers. Meanwhile, in order to be admitted into the NAFTA agreement, Mexico was required to repeal Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution which had provided subsidies to these small farmers to allow them to stay on their traditional, often communally-held lands. They simply could not compete.
Border militarization was outlined in the Southwest Border Strategy. The theory was that by sealing off the urban areas, at Nogales, Arizona for example, the traditional corridors for migrant crossing, migrants would be pushed into more hostile crossing areas, especially the vast Sonora Desert. Part of the strategy included sending migrants to their deaths. The theory was that limited numbers of migrants would die, word would get back to Mexican and Guatemalan communities and migrants would stopped trying to cross. The policy was a failure as desperate people looking for jobs or to re-unite with their families continued to come and continued to risk their self-respect, their property, and even their lives to journey north.
"Why don't they just come legally?," you may be asking. That would take the risk out of the picture. That is a fair question. The answer is that the US has two legal entry systems. One is for Canadians and Western Europeans. They do not need to prove anything to come, they just need to purchase a passport. The other system is for Africans, Latin Americans, and most Asians. They have to qualify in order to come. Someone has to want them in order for them to come. They have to stay for a specified period and then go home. To come they have to demonstrate two things at the outset. One is that they have title to land. This disqualifies the millions of indigenous people who live on communally-held lands, the very ones pushed into migrating by NAFTA, the very ones who are dying in disproportionate numbers in the Sonora Desert, from coming legally. They also have to prove that they have substantial quantities of money in order to come. In other words, they have to demonstrate what the US government calls a "strong attachment" to their home countries in order to come.
The deaths of thousands of migrants along our southwestern border is a bona-fide public health issue, in my opinion. If we are to stop these deaths, we must begin to look at free trade agreements, our militarized border, and our two socially and ethnically encoded legal entry systems as public health issues. Thank you."
Photo by Joel Smith. Used with permission.
First, crossing US borders without permission is a crime—a legal wrong doing. There are two classes of crimes—misdemeanors and felonies. Crossing “without inspection”, to use the legal term, is a misdemeanor the first time. But it is, in essence, a felony when one returns, voluntarily or involuntarily, to his home country and re-enters illegally. Whether a misdemeanor or felony, because of Federal agreements with the for-profit prison industry, the crime of crossing illegally is costing 400,000 people a year their property and their families. The punishment is far out of proportion to the crime. Christians must bear witness to this.
Second, under current law, crossing our southern border illegally, whether as a misdemeanor or a felony, is a crime sometimes leading to loss of life without due process–without arrest, charge, representation, judge, or jury. Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] in 1992, in an effort to control the movements of laborers it knew it was displacing, the Federal government began knowingly sending illegal immigrants to their deaths via border militarization.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Southwestern Border Strategy, devised after the passing of NAFTA, included closing off the relatively safe, urban crossing areas, such as that at Nogales, Arizona, to force migrants into the vast Sonora Desert. A limited number of migrants would die, according to the Strategy, and word would to get back to Mexican communities where those deaths would become “a deterrent” to others contemplating coming. To date, at least 5,000 migrants have been sent to their deaths in the Pacific Ocean and the Rio Grande, as well as the Sonora Desert. Using death as a deterrent to crime rather than as a punishment for crime is a significant moral problem and a significant international law problem. Christians need to bear witness to this.
In addition, following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a particular class of human beings–in this case unauthorized laborers–became branded as a threat to national security. They themselves, not simply their actions in crossing our border without inspection, have been identified as a threat to national security. Despite the famous saying that “no human being is illegal,” identifying any class of persons, whether Jews in Germany or homosexuals in Uganda or illegal immigrants in the US, as a threat to national security so severe that it warrants taking their life from them is the essence of making human beings illegal. Christians need to bear witness to this.
Third, the word “undocumented” falsely implies there are documents to be had. It indicates that for some reason migrants chose not to come “the right way”. In fact, there is no way for people without title to land or large amounts of money to cross our borders legally if they are from Latin America, Africa, or most parts of Asia. The word “undocumented” functions to obscure the fact that the US has two racially, socially, and ethnically encoded legal entry systems. The system for these areas blocks, before the process begins, all indigenous people and all poor people from entering legally. Christians need to bear witness to this.
By the same token, I have been in situations where I was afraid for my safety because volatile militiamen were present. I have heard them spewing venom against the “undocumented immigrants” they wanted to drive out of Alabama. As a shibboleth separating good guys from bad guys, “undocumented” simply doesn’t work.
Fifth, as renewed calls for “comprehensive immigration reform” gin up in light of the child refugee crisis, advocate generated suspicion of the term has helped grant moral high ground, and undeserved reliability, to those same advocacy groups which are relentlessly promoting a particular piece of legislation–S. 744. The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is a sinister bill moving the entire system to the far political right. Instead of focusing on the defeat of a term, Christians must begin, and quickly, to rally defeat of this bill which would send proportionately thousands more to their deaths by completing the militarization of our southern border, ear mark Hispanics in particular for servitude by drastically expanding the guest worker program, and funnel everyone in the US illegally into the deportation machine. Christians need to bear witness to this.
Surely, in our desire to do right by those in the US illegally, we can do better than focusing on these two words while obscuring real life and death issues. Christian witness insists on it. Justice depends on it.
Carlos A. Batara, Esq., Immigration Attorney
Is there hope for lasting, compassionate reform? Yes, without question. But undocumented immigrants and their advocates have to be committed to understanding the “reforms” that are put before them. And immigrants have to decide when it is prudent to seek professional guidance.
Part of the confusion is that many do not understood what the original, still active DACA initiative of 2012 is and is not. Although some DACA recipients have been able to attend college, it is simply a temporary, two year postponement on deportation with an opportunity to work legally.
To apply for DACA, an undocumented person must, in essence, come out from the shadows, and turn him or herself in to the very institution oriented to deportation—the Department of Homeland Security [DHS]. Not the Department of Justice. Not the Department of Labor. The Department of Homeland Security. Receipt of the postponement of deportation is not guaranteed.
According the the Department of Homeland Security's web page on DACA, it does not confer a lawful status on the recipient, has no bearing on any claim to citizenship or permanent resident status, and does not allow the recipient access to the Affordable Care Act.
Instead, recipients continue to “remain subject to all legal restrictions and prohibitions on individuals in unlawful status.”
DACA is not a true “protection” from deportation as many believe. A protection would indicate that with a DACA status, one could not, under any circumstances, be deported. The DHS language is ambiguous but alarming: the information received may be turned over to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] if the applicant “meets the criteria for the issuance of a Notice To Appear or a referral to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the criteria set forth in USCIS’s Notice to Appear guidance (www.uscis.gov/NTA).”
Notices to Appear are used to initiate deportation.
The DHS website indicates that the information gathered will not be used for deportation. However, it also states that the “information may be shared with national security and law enforcement agencies, including ICE and CBP [Border Patrol], . . . for national security purposes, or for the investigation or prosecution of a criminal offense.”
It also indicates that a requestor is providing information about family members: “the above information sharing policy covers family members and guardians, in addition to the requestor.” This should not be minimized. Most DACA applicants will come from families with multiple undocumented relatives.
DACA is, in short, a high stakes gamble. If all goes well, there is no problem. But it carries with it the risk of long term disaster.
Even assuming the best of DACA, with a new president to be elected next year, the short term future is sketchy at best. Imagine a Trump victory in the fall.
Immigrants and their family members should not tie their hopes and dreams to such uncertain outcomes.
In the long term, we have no doubt that immigration reform will happen. When is a big unknown – and so is what type of reform. Hopefully, immigration reform advocates will not limit their future efforts to just piecemeal, temporary, and risky solutions, but turn their attention back to the larger task of seeking comprehensive and compassionate immigration reform. By comprehensive, compassionate immigration reform [CIR], we do not mean a version of S. 744, the CIR package which passed in the Senate in 2012. That package was first and foremost a border militarization package and thus was not written to address the needs of unauthorized immigrants. We mean a package which gives persons in the US unlawfully a path to lawful status and truly protects them from deportation.
Despite our concerns, this is not the time for panic, anger, or despair – sentiments emanating from many immigrants and their supporters in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. It is a time for immigrants to tighten their belt buckles, assess the current situation and consider all options.
Even without DACA and DAPA, there are real avenues for immigrants to legalize their status and become lawful permanent residents.
According to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, 14.3% of the DACA-eligible population may qualify for other forms of more permanent relief. Most likely, a similar or higher percentage of would-be DAPA-eligible applicants might also qualify for other forms of relief.
For the others, there may exist deportation deferment and prosecutorial discretion possibilities worth exploring.
In other words, buying a new home, having enough food to eat, paying for nice clothes to wear and a reliable car to drive—the American Dream for hard-working immigrants is still alive.
We have no doubt that the dark ages of U.S. immigration law will pass.
However, to get there from here requires professional guidance. In our view, every undocumented immigrant in search of a better tomorrow should schedule a consultation with a qualified immigration lawyer to review their past immigration history, assess their present circumstances, and explore their future options sooner than later.
After all, it's better to be safe than sorry.
Even in this day and age, there are lines decent people do not cross. On Tuesday, he crossed the line. There is no way, I believe, that Mr. Brooks was unaware of my position. The accident that night was a major story in Huntsville in the days following. It had involved an undocumented man who was driving under the influence. The accident not only made for a significant human interest story, it provided compelling visuals because the car exploded on impact leaving a burned and blackened vehicle out of which Tad’s and Leigh Anna’s bodies had to be extricated. What was not played up in print or television coverage was that their deaths involved a high-speed police chase. The “illegal immigrants kill people” narrative is disrupted if one emphasizes the point that it was the intensity of the impact which killed them, not Felix Ortega’s lack of legal status or his intoxication.
High-speed police chases are not nearly as exploitable as the narrative of illegal immigrants who are involved in the deaths of U.S. citizens. As I mentioned above, the accident was front page news for days in the Huntsville Times. The scene of the accident television footage was played and replayed. Pictures of the photogenic teenaged couple were showed repeatedly. The “stunning twist” irony angle of my having been a fairly high-profile immigrant advocate was played up.
I reside in Mo Brooks’ district. Some 600 people attended the visitation for Leigh Anna, including complete strangers. He was not among them. A thousand people attended her funeral. He was not among them. Hundreds of people came to the house or brought food or sent cards or flowers or plants or books in order to express their sympathy or to encourage us. Mo Brooks was not among them. Mo Brooks’ performance in the House last Tuesday was, for my husband and me, yet another punch to the gut in our 10-year battle to recover from the worst thing that ever happened to us.
Does It Matter?
Photo: My father's grave stone
My father, a lawyer who moonlighted as an adjunct history professor, was outspoken in social and family situations and in his classrooms. Albany’s Chief of Police Laurie Pritchett, Mayor Asa Kelley, Georgia’s Governor Lester Maddox, Alabama’s Governor George Wallace — all were routine objects of my father’s contempt which he expressed heatedly and daily. Far too many smoke-filled family gatherings ended in shouting, followed by silences. I began to dread them, much as we all loved one another.
My mother, a trained social worker, brought the Head Start program to Albany. An integrated Federal program, she was soundly criticized by other white women. But she persisted. One of the things she wanted to impart to her colored students was that they were beautiful. She constantly told them how beautiful black skin was, how pretty black girls were.
Once, I recall our housekeeper, Belle, came to the front door selling green beans she had grown. My mother, coming down the interior stairs with a visitor, met her in the front hall. The visitor, a white woman, cautioned my mother not to buy the green beans. “You know how niggers are,” she said in front of Belle, “they cut their hair over the beans. You’ll get nigger hair in them if you buy them.” My mother was struck dumb not knowing how to respond. Later, she called Belle on the phone, crying, and tried to apologize.
I tell this to try to convey that by any reasonable human standard, my parents could not be counted as racists.
Yet, to be completely honest about them, I have to fast-forward several decades.
Even though he had quit 20 years earlier, my father’s smoking finally caught up with him. In 2006, about five days before he died, he went home from the hospital with Hospice personnel. A black woman with Hospice came into room where we had installed his bed. He looked at her and said, “Have you come to cook for us?”
Well into her eighties, with dementia getting its hooks into her, my mother, too, continues to be absorbed by race. She does not understand that some battles have been won or that, if not won, ground has been gained in post-Black Is Beautiful America. She continues to tell every black woman she meets how beautiful her skin is, often touching them.
I cringe when she does this. I cringe because it feels inappropriate. I cringe because if I were in their shoes, I would not like it. I also cringe because the women who are the objects of her attention often pull away or visibly show that they are offended. Invariably, because my mother has been in various nursing homes where they are employees, they cannot challenge her directly, although I can see that some would, given the chance. On more than one occasion, I have tried in a subtle way to plead with them before I leave my mother in their care to understand that she means well, she just doesn’t understand what she is doing.
Were my parents racists? Is my mother? What is your take on this? And, does it matter?
Below is Sander’s reply (edited by me for brevity), but you can read the entire transcript in the link above if you wish. You also could [once] watch a video of the exchange which will indicate very well that the emphasis in Sander’s remarks was on Trump’s incomprehensible stupidity as well as on too much of American media’s “flavor of the day” approach to reporting.
SANDERS: But to punish a woman for having an abortion is beyond comprehension. . . . I don’t know what world this person [Trump] lives in. So obviously, from my perspective, and if elected president, I will do everything that I can to allow women to make that choice and have access to clinics all over this country so that if they choose to have an abortion, they will be able to do so.
The idea of punishing a woman, that is just, you know, beyond comprehension. . . .
You know, you mentioned a moment ago, Rachel, that the media is paying attention to Donald Trump.
Duh? No kidding. Once again, every stupid remark will be broadcast, you know, for the next five days.
But because media is what media is today, any stupid, absurd remark made by Donald Trump becomes the story of the week. Maybe, just maybe, we might want to have a serious discussion about the serious issues facing America. Donald Trump will not look quite so interesting in that context.
MADDOW: Are you suggesting, though, that the media shouldn’t be focusing on his call to potentially jail women who have abortions? Because that’s another stupid . . .
SANDERS: I am saying that every day he comes up with another stupid remark, absurd remark, of course it should be mentioned. But so should Trump’s overall positions. . . . All that I’m saying is that Trump is nobody’s fool. He knows how to manipulate the media and you say an absurd thing and the media is all over it.”
Maddow later asked the other Democratic presidential hopeful, former Sen. Hillary Clinton, whether Sanders’ remark was “just another Donald Trump stupid comment”.
Clinton replied, “No, absolutely not. I’ve been on the front lines of the fight to preserve a woman’s choice and ability to make these difficult decision, that is why I was endorsed by the Planned Parenthood action fund, that is why I was endorsed by NARAL, I am a leader in trying to make sure that our rights as women are in no way eroded.”
Clinton continued, “And to think this is an issue that is not deserving of reaction demonstrates a lack of understanding of how serious this is. It goes to the heart.”
In my opinion, Clinton either misunderstood the nature of Sanders’ remark and Maddow’s question or did not want to address it. If you look at the video and look at the transcript, it seems clear to me that Sander’s was not reacting to a woman’s right to choose as an issue, he was reacting to the absurdity of Trump’s remark about “punishing” women and to the absurdity of media’s absorption with his every idiotic utterance. Instead, she changed the subject (as I truly might have if I were running for office) to her record, her endorsement by NARAL, and the Republican party’s record. The gist of Clinton’s remarks was that Sanders did not fully appreciate the issue.
In sorting through this, it might be helpful to look at Sanders’ voting and support record on a woman’s right to choose and related issues.
Source: OnTheIssues.com.
(1997) said women should have the right to choose regardless of income
(1999) voted NO on barring transporting minors to get an abotion
(2000) voted NO on banning partial-birth abortions
(2001) voted NO on banning Family Planning funding in US aid abroad
(2002) voted NO on funding for health providers who don’t provide abortion info
(2003) voted NO on banning partial-birth abortion except to save mother’s life
(2003) rated 100% by NARAL [Pro Choice America], ostensibly for his pro-choice record
(2005) voted NO on restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions
(2006) supported emergency contraception for rape victims at all hospitals
(2006) rated 0% by the National Right to Life Committee, ostensibly for his pro-choice stance
(2007) he voted NO on barring Health and Human Services grants to organizations that perform abortions
(2007) supported access to and funding for contraception
(2007) supported providing emergency contraception at military facilities
(2008) voted NO on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP [State Children’s Health Insurance Program]
(2009) voted NO on restricting UN funding for population control
(2009) focused on preventing unwanted pregnancy, plus emergency contraception
(2011) supported requiring pharmacies to fulfill contraceptive prescriptions
(2013) supported banning anti-abortion limitations on abortion services
(2015) supported access to safe, legal abortions without restrictions
Here is Clinton’s voting and support record using the same source:
(2001) Recommended by Emily’s List, a group which endorses Democrat women candidates who support right to choose
(2003) Voted NO on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life
(2003) rated 100% by NARAL, ostensibly for her pro-choice voting record
(2005) voted YES on $100 million to reduce teen pregnancy via education & contraceptives
(2006) voted NO on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions
(2006) sponsored bill providing contraceptives for low-income women
(2006) sponsored bill for emergency contraception for rape victims
(2007) supported providing emergency contraception at military facilities
(2007) supported ensuring access to and funding for contraception
(2008) voted NO on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP
(2009) supported focusing on preventing pregnancy, plus emergency contraception
Here is a graphic provided by the Bing Political Index which shows that, on the issue of abortion, Sanders is to the left of Clinton and Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, is to the left of them both.
Of course, that clearly is debatable depending on how you read the evidence as to who is the stronger candidate. If you look at length of years supporting a woman’s right to choose, Sanders might look better. If you look at an emphasis on education, Clinton might look better. On this particular issue, they both look good to me. Sanders has what seems to me to be an impeccable record on a woman’s right to choose. This should not be overlooked or obscured because during a moment’s completely comprehensible frustration, he decided to tell it like it is.
It is just not that simple.
Free trade is about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It is about the displacement of peoples and about the offshoring of both jobs and national sovereignty. It is about creating “investor state treaties” with extra-national legally binding means to protect corporations and their investors from such things as local environmental protections.
As the Panama Papers seem destined to prove, they also are about offshoring the profits via tax havens which should have been turned into taxes to benefit the rest of us.
As we learned with the North American Free Trade Agreement, what was really going on was what was called the “opening of markets”. How does the US’s Archer Daniels Midland [ADM], for example, a heavily subsidized, gargantuan producer of factory farmed corn, open up a market in Mexico? By taking the market away from Mexico’s often indigenous “people of the corn”.
As you can see in this video, corn is a staple of the Mexican diet, Mexican culture, and the peasant Mexican economy. There was no shortage of people wanting to produce corn in Mexico. So, to open up that market, the tariffs that ADM had to pay to export its corn to Mexico, were removed. That means that by removing the tariffs, protections for the indigenous Mexican farmer, ADM was put into direct competition with peasant farmers in Mexico’s heavily indigenous, southern state of Chiapas, for example. This is what made the trade “free”. It was unobstructed by tariffs.
But, there was more to it than that. As a prerequisite for Mexico being able to enter into the NAFTA, it had to remove the subsidies it had long provided it’s peasant corn farmers, subsidies which had helped them stay on their lands and maintain their economy and their culture. However, subsidies paid to US factory producers of corn were not removed. Instead, subsidies to them increased. According to the Environmental Working Group Farm Subsidies Database, between 2005 and 2012 US factory corn producers received $84.4 billion in subsidies.
In a simplified nutshell, NAFTA created about 10 Mexican billionaires while it pushed 1 1/2 to 2 million peasant farmers off their lands and into migration including illegal immigration into the US.
NAFTA also was about the offshoring of good paying jobs in the United States. It, along with previous agreements, created a “maquiladora” zone in Mexico which took advantage of displaced farmers and others. Maquiladoras, or “maquilas” as they are often known, are factories. They are owned by US companies, for example, which export their parts and equipment for assembly, processing, or manufacturing in Mexico. The parts and equipment are exported without the paying of tariffs. The product is made by Mexican workers often making no more than $5.00 a day and with very little in the way of safety regulations or recompense for injuries sustained on the job. The products then are exported back to the US, tariff free, and sold to consumers at artificially low prices.
Of course, there had been Americans making those products before and often had received good pay and benefits. Those jobs were taken from them; they did not walk away from them.
It does not take a Ph.D. in economics to understand what was going on. The rich were made richer and the poor were made poorer. My film, The Second Cooler, helps explain the relationship between NAFTA, the displacement of indigenous peasant farmers in Mexico, and the offshoring of US jobs.
NAFTA and other free trade agreements, or FTAs, were also about the offshoring of national sovereignty. The offshoring of national sovereignty is not unprecedented. The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, was established in 1945 in The Hague, to settle legal disputes submitted to it by member states. It was in the World Court, for example, that Nicaragua successfully sued the United States over the bombing of its harbors and buzzing of its cities during the Reagan sponsored Contra counter-revolution.
The International Criminal Court, established in 2002, created an international jurisdiction and a means by which individuals could be prosecuted for such crimes as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
Both these agencies were formed to protect nations and peoples. But NAFTA and other FTAs, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership offshored national sovereignty in a new way and with a new purpose: the protection of investors and corporations. It is for this reason that NAFTA is often said to be an “investor state treaty”. It is not just about tariffs, subsidies, and the movement of traded materials and products. It is about the creation of an international court system which transfers sovereignty from local, state, and national governments to a NAFTA panel of decision makers when legal disputes arise.
Chapter 11 of NAFTA describes a means for “investor state dispute settlement”. It allows corporations to sue the United States, Mexico, or Canada, the NAFTA member states, for compensation when actions by their governments damage their sales or profits. Several Canadian groups have challenged the constitutionality of Chapter 11, but lost at the trial level.
For example, Methanex, a Canadian corporation, filed a US $ 970 million suit against the US. It claimed that a California ban on Methyl tert-butyl ether [MTBE], which had gotten into California’s wells, had hurt Methanex’s sales of methanol. In this case, the NAFTA panel found in favor of the US and Canada had to pay court costs.
But in another case, Mexico had to pay Metaclad, a California based US corporation, $15.6 million after a Mexican municipality refused a construction permit for a hazardous waste landfill Metaclad wanted to construct in San Luis Potosí. In Metaclad Corp. v. United States, the NAFTA panel ruled that the municipality of San Luis Potosí did not have the authority to ban construction on the basis of environmental concerns.
Lone Pine Resources, Inc., which is incorporated in Delaware but headquartered in Calgary, Canada, is an oil and gas exploration, development, and production company. It has filed a US $250 million claim against Canada because Canada wants to prevent fracking exploration under the St. Lawrence Seaway. The lawyer for Lone Pine Resources accurately refers to NAFTA as an “investor protection treaty”.
The World Trade Organization [WTO] was organized in 1995 — 3 years after the signing of NAFTA and months after NAFTA began to be implemented in 1994. There are 162 member states. It provides a framework for negotiating further trade agreements and a means by which disputes can be resolved.
The aim of the WTO is to enforce participants’ adherence to WTO agreements.
The Panama Free Trade Agreement, which President Obama signed in 2011, not only was about eliminating tariffs and about consolidating access to goods and services. It was about favoring private investment in and between the United States and Panama.
I won’t pretend to have looked at the Panama Agreement as closely as I have the NAFTA and CAFTA agreements. But my research has yielded this: in addition to trade and other economic issues, it had to do with intellectual property, labor, and environmental policies, among others. Among the primary criticisms of the agreement, for example, has been its effect on copyright laws which have served to infringe upon free speech. Again, what we are seeing is about much more than trade.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP] is now creating a new “investor state system”. The signatory nations are the United States, Peru, Chile, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. This is the agreement which President Obama has promoted and for which he received “fast track” authorization. That means the ability to negotiate in secret.
Lori Wallach of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, has described the TPP as “NAFTA on steroids” and a “corporate Trojan Horse”. You can listen to an interview by Amy Goodman with her for Democracy Now! here. Wallach, Gretchen Morgenson, and other trade policy analysts emphasize that these trade deals have less to do with trade than with the offshoring of national sovereignty to international corporations.
One of the primary concerns has to do with the erosion of the right of the US Congress and state legislatures to enact public interest policies prohibited in these pacts.
If the TPP goes into effect, existing agreements like NAFTA will be reduced, they say, to those provisions which do not conflict with the TPP. As with NAFTA and other trade agreements, the TPP would create an extra-national judicial system designed to protect corporations and their investors. It would give them the right to attack US financial regulations in front of tribunals composed of three private sector attorneys. Those attorneys would operate under World Bank and United Nations rules of arbitration.
In other words, the “investor state system” with its own judicial apparatus allows corporations to bypass US courts and laws and to sue American governments for money damages over any regulatory efforts the corporations say undermine not only their current profits but their “expected future profits”. Among the TPP nations, there already are cross-registered 11,933 corporations.
Here are a two examples of what already is happening. Chevron is using an “investor state” tribunal to try to avoid paying $18 billion — that’s billion — to clean up contamination is caused to the Amazon River. This fine was ordered after 18 years of litigation and rulings in courts in Ecuador and the US. Philip Morris is using it to attack Australian and Uruguayan plain packaging laws for cigarettes.
Already governments have paid more than $675 million to corporations under these “investor state” provisions. Seventy percent of them have been for non-trade policies including environmental and health policies.
You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in economics to understand who the primary beneficiaries of this system are. You don’t have to have a JD [Juris Doctorate] to figure out how difficult it could become for state and nations to have the legal ability to enforce environmental, financial, and other public interest regulations. I, for one, am waiting to see exactly what all the Panama Papers will reveal. It seems apparent they will reveal an insatiable appetite among the wealthiest of the wealthy for ever more wealth at the expense of the 99%. They also will reveal a clear connection, if my prediction is correct, to free trade agreements and the the offshoring of national sovereignty to a global “investor state” which protects the interests of the globalized 1% class and which makes it legally difficult to do anything about it.
You Do Not Represent Me
At the Republican National Convention last week, you invoked the names of parents whose children had been killed by undocumented immigrants. You indicated your impression that you represent them and their interests. I want to let you know that my child, too, was killed by an undocumented immigrant. But you do not in any way represent me or my interests.
Photo: Tad Mattle and Leigh Anna Jimmerson, April 17, 2009
On the night of April 17, 2009, an undocumented drunk driver slammed into them as they were stopped at a red light at a busy intersection in Huntsville, Alabama. The driver was being pursued, at a high speed, by a police officer. They died immediately. Tad’s car exploded on impact and Leigh Anna’s body burned up.
I am fortunate in that I was able to forgive the undocumented drunk driver. I never felt any anger toward him. I felt no hatred toward him. It just seemed to me that it had been a terribly bad night for everyone involved. I have often been grateful that in addition to the sadness that I carry with me every day of my life, I am not also burdened with bitterness.
For what it might be worth to you, this picture is one of my favorites of Leigh Anna. It was taken two years before she died. She had elected to go with me to a rally the Ku Klux Klan was having in Athens, Alabama. They were protesting illegal immigrants. We went to a counter protest. She was a little nervous, as you can imagine, but she wanted to go anyway. Once there, she held this sign which, as you can see, was as big as she.
As we were leaving the rally, a Klansman or Klan supporter said something rude to her (she never would tell me what he had said). I heard her say to him, laughing: “Love you back!”
At the trial the driver was convicted on two counts of murder. After the sentencing, he asked to speak to the families. He acknowledged what he had done. He asked for our forgiveness. Later, in a private conversation with him when he was on his way to prison, he told my husband and me that, if he could, he would change places with Tad and Leigh Anna.
The morning after the crash, the police officer who chased him said that he was perplexed that the faster he drove pursuing the driver, the faster the driver went.
The police never came to our house that evening. They never acknowledged their role in the death of my child. In the death of my dreams. The police officer who pursued the undocumented man never asked for my forgiveness. To my knowledge, he never faced any official consequences.
The police never came to our house that evening. They never acknowledged their role in the death of my child. In the death of my dreams. The police officer who pursued the undocumented man never asked for my forgiveness. To my knowledge, he never faced any official consequences.
You, however, are neither in a position to forgive or not to forgive. Instead, what you are doing, in my opinion, is encouraging people like you, people who neither are in a position to forgive or not to forgive, to get some sort of mean-spirited pleasure out of condemning people they have never met and who have never harmed them.
I have a favor to ask of you, Mr. Trump. I want to ask you not to encourage mean-spiritedness towards undocumented immigrants. I want to ask you to speak about them in ways that would honor Leigh Anna and her gentleness of spirit. I would ask you to speak about them in ways that reflect the love she exhibited every day of her life. I would ask you to show the kind of courage she showed in attending a protest of the Ku Klux Klan when she was scared and when they, too, were acting out of mean-spiritedness.
Until you do, Mr. Trump, please know that you do not represent me or my interests.
Photo: Donald Trump
Whether this is right or wrong on my part, I am not in a position to say.
To draw a parallel, I was never the parent who continually pointed out or obsessed over the wrong-doings of other people’s kids. I was always more interested in whether my own kids were doing right. I felt that was my duty and where I could have the most impact. It was also out of love for them. I wanted the best for them.
However, if anyone needs me to say it (and I’m always surprised anybody really cares what I think or say): I dislike Trump and his rhetoric immensely. And I am distressed that America produced him and has allowed him to get this close to the Presidency.
Which is to say, she has inflicted terrible damage on human beings around the globe because, as she declared in Beijing in 1995, “human rights are women’s rights and women’s right are human rights, once and for all”.
It is contrary to the principles of better strains of feminism than Clinton has promoted to proclaim that breaking the glass ceiling is somehow a dazzling victory.
A strong strain of feminism in the 1960s, for example, included opposing war. In 1965, following the example of Vietnamese Buddhist monks, after the United States began its B52 bombing mission in Vietnam, Holocaust survivor and founding member of Women’s Strike for Peace, Alice Herz, set herself on fire on a street corner in Detroit. She left behind a letter in which she challenged Americans to “decide if this world shall be a good place to live for all human beings or if it should blow itself up into oblivion”. While the words of the two feminists, Herz and Clinton, may appear to reveal similar world views, they are miles apart.
In Haiti, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, the United States and elsewhere, Clinton has undermined human rights which, as she said, necessarily are women’s rights.
Among the issues for which she needs to be held accountable in the United States are promoting the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act and the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act while she was First Lady.
Abroad, as Secretary of State, Clinton needs to be held accountable, to one degree or another, for promoting the sweatshop model of production in Haiti, working surreptitiously to ensure the 2009 coup of Honduras’s duly elected president, Manuel Zelaya, which threw the country into a downward spiral of poverty and violence including femicide, relentlessly supporting Saudi Arabia and Israel despite their well-documented human rights (which we remember are coterminous with women’s rights), and thereby the bloodbaths in Syria and Yemen, arguably becoming the “top salesperson for the military-industrial complex in US history”, practicing brinksmanship in foreign policy and regime changes which necessarily mean bloodbaths, proxy wars, and neoliberal economic policies.
PROBLEMS
During Bill Clinton’s bid for the presidency, Hillary Clinton famously claimed she would not stay home and bake cookies and host teas.
And she did not. She supported and lobbied for the very policies that damaged Black people and poor people with the purpose of delivering political gain to Bill Clinton and the Democrat party.
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, 1994
Even the title is a dog whistle, i.e. coded language designed to appeal to white racial fears. But Hillary Clinton issued her own dog whistle when she depicted black children as vicious animals.
“They are not just gangs of kids anymore,” she said. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”
The package was the largest crime bill in the history of the United States. Among other things, it greatly expanded the federal death penalty, creating 60 new death penalty offenses. It created new crimes in statutes related to immigration, gang related crime, and others. It eliminated higher education Pell Grants for inmates, instituted community oriented policing, and created “boot camps” for delinquent children. Prison overcrowding and plea bargaining became systemic.
It provided for 100,000 new police officers and $9.7 billion in funding for prisons in a $30 billion crime package. And we know who filled those prisons – primarily Black men and poor people.
How was it paid for? In part by slashing billions of dollars from public housing and child welfare budgets and transferring that money to the mass incarceration behemoth. According to the University of California, Berkley’s sociologist Loïc Wacquant, the bill succeeding in “effectively making the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the urban poor.” As a result, he has written, African-Americans now live “in the first prison society in history”. It is difficult to argue that mass incarceration was an unintended consequence of the crime package.
Michelle Alexander, African American lawyer, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and new member of the faculty at Union Theological Seminary wrote “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote” for The Nation. Bill Clinton, she wrote, “supported the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack versus powder cocaine, which produced staggering racial injustice in sentencing and boosted funding for drug-law enforcement”. The crime bill created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for 3-time offenders, the so-called “3 strikes and you’re out” provision, mandatory minimums, and “truth in sentencing” i.e. severe restrictions on parole.
Among the consequences: the jobless rate among Black men in their 20s without a college degree rose to the highest level ever, at 42% when Clinton left office, according to Alexander, and was accompanied by a skyrocketing incarceration rate. Meaning, among the obvious consequences, that they were no longer counted among the poverty and unemployment statistics. You can watch a video suggesting what the consequences of her point of view in terms of police brutality have been here.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act [PRWORA], 1996
This “reform” package savaged poor America by dismantling Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Liza Featherstone is a Nation contributor and editor of False Choices: The Faux Feminism Of Hillary Rodham Clinton. She concludes that Hillary Clinton was “no mere bystander” to welfare reform. She advocated “harsher policies like ending traditional welfare” even while others in the Bill Clinton administration including Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, were proposing alternatives. In 1997, according to Featherstone, she “took credit” for pushing a welfare bill that would “monitor and punish women’s ‘poor parenting behavior’.”
Look, for example, at the dog whistle scene above taken as President Bill Clinton signed the “Welfare to Work” package as the banner proclaims. Note the two African American women “deadbeats” who are being disciplined into becoming workers. The racism and hostility to poor women of the visual message is palpable.
And, so seemed the package to three Clinton administration officials at the Department of Health and Human Services who resigned in protest – Mary Jo Bane, Wendell Primus, and Peter Edelman, who had been a longtime friend of the Clintons.
The PRWORA decimated Aid to Families With Dependent Children and instituted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF]. Most states required those who received assistance to accept the first job they were offered, regardless of the pay or working conditions. Most were low-paying, dirty, and short-term jobs which, in essence, were being assigned to women and poor people of color. TANF, again according to Featherstone, also nullified the counting of pursuing a four year college degree as a work-related activity which could aid in making women and poor people of color eligible for benefits. Thus, while in 1995, 649,000 student parents were receiving cash assistance while enrolled full-time in education programs, only 35,000 full-time students received TANF aid in 2004.
If this is not both institutional racism and institutional sexism, I don’t know what is.
Moreover, as late as 2002, when Hillary Clinton was Senator, she continued to champion PRWORA, according to Alexander Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis in “Why It Matters That Hillary Clinton Championed Welfare Reform”.
In yet another dog whistle statement, she referred to people who had been on welfare as “deadbeats” and exclaimed that because of PRWORA “they’re actually out there being productive.”
Yet, in 2011, sociologists Kathryn Edin of Johns Hopkins University and H. Luke Shaefer of the University of Michigan concluded that data on Americans showed a “sharp spike in families living in extreme poverty” between 1996 and 2011. They reported that approximately 20% of poor households with children, or about 1.46 million, were having to survive on $2.00 or less per person. They concluded that the growth in poverty was concentrated among those most affected by the 1996 welfare reform, especially black families but also among Latino and white families. Black families experienced a 183 percent increase during this period while Latinos experienced a 132 percent increase and whites a 100 percent increase.
That is structural racism by almost any definition, in my opinion.
As Marchevsky and Theoharis put it, Clinton “betrayed” poor people and women many of whom are poorer than they were prior to PRWORA. The reformed welfare system “provides little safety net and no hand-up. Instead, it traps poor mothers into exploitative, poverty-wage jobs and dangerous personal situations, deters them from college, and contributes to the growing trend of poor mothers who can neither find a job nor access public assistance.”
Or, as Michelle Alexander concluded, “From the crime bill to welfare reform”, Bill and Hillary Clinton “decimated black America.” It is difficult, she writes,
"to overstate the damage that’s been done. Generations have been lost to the prison system; countless families have been torn apart or rendered homeless; and a school-to-prison pipeline has been born that shuttles young people from their decrepit, underfunded schools to brand-new high-tech prisons."
I am not especially interested in whether Hillary Clinton was or is “racist in her heart.” What I am interested in is whether in their dog whistling, purposes, and consequences, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Acts are violent structural racism and that she actively supported it.
Dismantling welfare, criminalizing poverty, and creating a mass incarceration state for African Americans in particular and others generally is not something I can simply overlook nor feel is somehow equalized by Hillary Clinton’s shattering of political glass ceilings for middle class women.
Photo: Berta Cáceres
If you consider Honduras, it becomes difficult to argue that Clinton is in any meaningful way a protector of women and children specifically or of human rights generally.
Manuel Zelaya took office as president of Honduras on January 27, 2006. A leftist, Zelaya put in place free education and meals for children, subsidies to small farmers, lower interest rates, and free electricity. Owners of American, Honduran, and multinational corporations disliked him immensely. He supported a 60% raise in the minimum wage – to $213 per month for rural workers and $290 for urban workers. He pledged rural, indigenous farmers he would help them recover land rights.
This “infuriated two U.S. companies, Chiquita Brands International (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Company,” said John Perkins in an interview with Truthout. Chiquita Brands is a California based producer and distributor of bananas. Dole Food Company is a multinational agricultural company also headquartered in California. Above all, they did not want a raise in Honduras’ minimum wage.
Writing two weeks after the coup, Nikolas Kozloff wrote that Colsiba, the Coordinating Body of Banana Plantation Workers in Latin America, compared the horrendous labor conditions on Chiquita plantations to “concentration camps”. While the comparison is inflated, it contains agonizing truth. Women and girls as young as 14 worked from 6:30 AM to 7:00 PM. Covered in rubber gloves, their hands burned. They had sued for damages against Chiquita for exposing them in the fields to DBCP, a pesticide which causes sterility, cancer, and birth defects in children.
The straw that broke the camel’s back for business interests was when Zelaya steered to an upcoming election ballot a non-binding resolution asking voters whether they wished to reform the constitution. The gist of this question was to ask those in rural communities whether they wanted to continue being subjected to foreign corporate mining practices.
The opinion poll was scheduled for June 28, 2009. In the early hours of that day, armed military forces carried out the coup. Still in his pajamas, they kidnapped Zelaya at gunpoint and took him to Costa Rica.
Fifteen US House Democrats, according to Adam Johnson for Foreign Policy in Focus, condemned the coup. Led by Rep. Raúl Grijalva, they sent a letter to President Obama insisting that Secretary of State Clinton and her State Department “fully acknowledge that a military coup has taken place” and “follow through with the total suspension of non-humanitarian aid, as required by law.” Clinton declined. This means that she made possible the condition that allowed aid to continue to flow to military forces.
In a cable to Clinton and other top US officials, US Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, wrote that the coup was an “open and shut” case without any doubt whatsoever that the kidnapping “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.”
It seemed obvious to countries and organizations around the world that the overthrow of Zelaya was illegal, i.e. a violation of international law, and dangerous to the concepts of national sovereignty, democracy, and constitutional order.
The list includes Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Belarus, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada (equivocally), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Guyana, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, whose president, Fernando Lugo, demanded those behind the coup be given prison sentences, Peru, Russia, Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Many announced they would not recognize a replacement government.
Israel supported the coup; the United States backed it.
Organizations which condemned the coup included the Association of Caribbean States, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Caribbean Community, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, the European Union, the Inter-American Bank Development Bank, Mercosur, the Organization of American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the United Nations.
An organization which financially supported the coup, on the other hand, was the Millennium Challenge Corporation [MCC], a US foreign aid agency established by the US Congress under the George W. Bush administration. One of its strongest supporters is the conservative Heritage Foundation. Among the criticisms MCC received about this period was that it disbursed some $17 million to support the coup. Hillary Clinton was chair of the board of directors.
An election was set to choose a new president. According to Lee Fang for The Intercept, “major international observers, including the United Nations and the Carter Center, as well as most major opposition candidates, boycotted the [2009] election.” Nonetheless, Porfirio Lobo became the country’s new president.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Clinton worked to avoid returning Zelaya to office. Clinton admitted she used the power of the State Department to support the coup: “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere” Clinton wrote in her book, Hard Choices. “We strategized on a plan to . . . render the question of Zelaya moot.” In other words, she actively connived to prohibit the return of Zelaya even though he was the democratically elected president of Honduras by delaying any action that might help force the illegally elected Lobo government to step down. If you look in the paperback version of Hard Choices, you won’t find these lines. They have been edited out.
The military coup which displaced Manuel Zelaya catapulted already impoverished and violent Honduras into a downward spiral into greater poverty and more violence.
Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and president of Just Foreign Policy, summarized the effects for Al Jazeera America. “The homicide rate in Honduras, already the highest in the world, increased by 50 percent from 2008 to 2011; political repression, the murder of opposition political candidates, peasant organizers and LGBT activists increased and continue to this day. Femicides skyrocketed. The violence and insecurity were exacerbated by a generalized institutional collapse. Drug-related violence has worsened amid allegations of rampant corruption in Honduras’ police and government. While the gangs are responsible for much of the violence, Honduran security forces have engaged in a wave of killings and other human rights crimes with impunity.”
According to Annie Kelly, writing from Tegucigalpa, women began to be murdered at the rate of one a day following the coup while the police “turned a blind eye”. In the month following the coup, according to a report by Oxfam Honduras and the Honduran Tribunal of Women against Femicide, there was a 60% rise in the number of femicides. In that month, the bodies of more than 50 women, in assassinations related to their gender, were found in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s largest cities. The report accused the Clinton backed Lobo government of complicity in the femicides. By 2011, there were reports of 1,110 femicides with only 4.2% resulting in convictions.
Some of the women’s lives were taken by the deadly Mara gangs in order to send a message to the women’s families. Others were raped and threatened with the deaths of their families if they resisted.
Many of these women, some with their children, fled to the US. Others fleeing were children without their mothers. American University professor, Adrienne Pine, concluded that “if it weren’t for Hillary Clinton,” there would not have been the refugee crisis from Honduras at the level that it is today. “Hondurans would be living a very different reality from the tragic one they are living right now.” Pine was quoted in an article by Marjorie Cone, professor emerita at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, in “Hillary Clinton’s Link to a Nasty Piece of Work in Honduras”.
Clinton was unsympathetic. In 2014, at the height of the surge of Central American women and children crossing the United States’ southern border, after having survived Mexico’s treacherous 2,000 miles, Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that, “it may be safer for the children to remain in the US”, but they “should be sent back”. Dozens were returned to their deaths.
The most well-known of the women who were murdered in Honduras was Berta Cáceres. Her murder as well as anything else, according to Adam Johnson, an associate editor at AlterNet, exposes Clinton’s “grim legacy in Honduras”.
On June 28, 2009, the day of the coup, the Washington, DC based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights [IACHR], placed Berta Cáceres’s name on a list of people whose lives were in danger because of the coup. The following day, it acknowledged that military forces had surrounded her home. Cáceres had a long history of activism including protesting illegal logging, plantation owners, and the presence of US military bases on indigenous Lenca land.
In 2014, Cáceres specifically singled out Sec. Hillary Clinton for her role in the Honduran coup. Here is an excerpt from a Democracy Now! interview and transcript.
We’re coming out of a coup that we can’t put behind us. We can’t reverse it. It just kept going. And after, there was the issue of the elections. The same Hillary Clinton, in her book, Hard Choices, practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the meddling of North Americans in our country. The return of the president, Mel Zelaya, became a secondary issue. There were going to be elections in Honduras. And here, she, Clinton, recognized that they didn’t permit Mel Zelaya’s return to the presidency. There were going to be elections. And the international community—officials, the government, the grand majority—accepted this, even though we warned this was going to be very dangerous and that it would permit a barbarity, not only in Honduras but in the rest of the continent. And we’ve been witnesses to this.
On the morning of March 3, 2016, Cáceres was shot dead in her home by armed intruders. Under “precautionary measures” recommended by the IACHR, the Honduran government was supposed to have protected her. However, on that morning, they were nowhere to be found.
In the days following the murder, Amnesty International criticized President Hernández for his refusal to meet with Cáceres’ relatives, human rights defenders, and AI. It condemned “the Honduran government’s absolute lack of willingness to protect human rights defenders in the country” and noted that the Honduran authorities had failed “to follow the most basic lines of investigation, including the fact that Berta had been receiving serious death threats related to her human rights work for a very long time.”
A former soldier with the US-trained special forces units of the Honduran military reported that Cáceres’ name was included on a hit list distributed to them months before her assassination.
Did Hillary Clinton pull the trigger on Berta Cáceres? Did she single-handedly carry out the military coup which overthrew Manuel Zelaya? Did she herself rape any young girl or woman in Honduras or threaten the lives of their families? Did she make vulgar statements about the genitals of women and girls? The answer to all these questions is, of course, “no”.
Yet, it is beyond doubt that Hillary Clinton, while she was Secretary of State, actively supported and made possible the conditions which led to femicide, rape, and other human rights violations in Honduras. I contend that one may vote for her but commit to exposing and condemning her record. In particular, those who vote for her have a moral obligation to women and children, especially those in Honduras, to tell the truth about her. Moral outrage compels us to break the silence.
Photo: Majadi Baruti
the same information every year. It became
people who refuse to read, . . .
people who disrespect Black Women as if their part of our struggle is somehow
irrelevant.
It became I-phone sickness and lack of engagement, it became
alleged Black Panther presentation at Super Bowl events
it became presidents and mumble rap,
it is firmly locked in the erroneous belief that we need to and can rebuild
Kemet
to its greatness.
It is a dance by some girl named
nae nae
it is black beauty supply products being black owned and then sold to koreans,
black liberation revolution is a marxist black family who never read marx and has completely ignored
Angela Y Davis, Claudia Jones.
it went the way of quiet talks in black barbershops that suddenly turns to
it went the way of facebook activism, and is tucked and hidden colors hidden by
ankhs and allegations
that the sisters should follow black men that
have no,
want no
and ask no direction,
it is soft when she needed an erection not an election,
when we gave her an infection when she asked for
an insurrection. It is whips and ripped souls, no aims and no goals
BLACK liberation revolution is a pair of kneepads
asking Mr. Jones to save us from whitey
at the Border
I grew angrier and angrier and then felt I could do nothing but cry.
But because the event was an opportunity wasted.
Poems read about Europe in the 1930s.
But no mention of ICE.
Talk of the need for a Democrat blue wave with no apparent knowledge that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Jeh Johnson, Cecilia Muñoz, were among the architects of the horror we are witnessing.
But no mention of separating Madison County, Alabama from ICE.
No mention of the notorious Etowah Immigrant Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama at the very moment when there are demonstrations against ICE going on around the country at ICE facilities.
Talk of the moral high ground we think we occupy.
Vapid, pointless signs. (I pulled the one above from the internet.)
No mention of the 400,000 per year quota on deportations.
Which Obama carried out.
Which Obama carried out.
No mention of the separation of 1,000 families by ICE that very day.
And every other day in America.
The bad guys are bad guys out of malice.
The good guys are bad guys out of arrogance.
Warren Harding once said, “Its not my enemies that keeping me walking the floor at night. Its my friends. Its my goddam friends.”
#AbolishICE
#Not1More
It has various meanings and it takes a true Southerner to know what is being said. (I feel the need to straighten out a few misconceptions floating around because of a Yankee generated "test" which has not a few Southerners doubting who they are.) One thing it never is is just plain mean.
1. It can mean "you don't know much, do you?" (as when Ray Charles said it to Terry Gross in an interview once)
3. It can mean "that's too bad what happened to you" (as in "You didn't get the promotion? Bless your heart. Next time!")
4. It can mean you think someone needs to get a grip ("You weren't voted Sexiest Man Alive? Bless your heart.")
5. It can mean big congratulations!!! (You were voted Sexiest Man Alive??? Well, bless your heart!!!!)
So, Southern friends and all who have been living under a cloud since the aforesaid test circulated, please know that your aunt was being very sweet to you . 💜💛💙
Photo: "Selma" poster
In an interview with Tavis Smiley, DuVernay revealed she does not like historical dramas. That comes through. Her portrayal of President Lyndon B. Johnson is careless, as Bill Moyers and others have said, presenting LBJ as both condescending to MLK and wanting to “go slow” on voting rights. DuVernay dismisses complaints in “Rolling Stone” saying she “wasn't interested in making a white-savior movie”.
The year prior to Selma, LBJ had capitalized quickly on President John F. Kennedy's assassination to push through a stalled Civil Rights Act. When challenged to go slow, he shot back, “Well, what the hell's the Presidency for?” After Selma, he announced before television cameras that he intended to enact a Voting Rights bill. Invoking the Movement's anthem, he leaned in emphatically and said, “we SHALL overcome!” It was electrifying. With that well-understood reference, Johnson had announced not only that he intended to achieve voting rights, but that he intended to dismantle the South's entire caste system. That scene in Selma, which should have been riveting, is flat. Watching it, I was baffled as to DuVernay's intention.
Accurately conveying who LBJ was does not imply making him into a white savior. Had she wanted to create a story centering on LBJ and MLK about failed v. successful moral authority, DuVernay could have shifted the focus of the movie to Vietnam. It was in Southeast Asia that LBJ constructed his moral downfall. It was there where MLK emerged as America's full-blown prophetic voice. But DuVernay chose Selma and it was not in Selma that LBJ faltered. DuVernay opened wide the door to LBJ. She had an obligation to tell truth to the Power that is her audience about him.
I grew up in Albany, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama, two places which in the movie provide back drops to Selma. My parents were civil rights activists there. In the movie, Mrs. King is shown listening to an anonymous phone caller threatening the lives of her children. My mother, too, received those calls. I can imagine that Johnson, the most famous “race traitor” of the day, was well aware that hidden racist crackpots might have them in the crosshairs of their well-oiled rifles. Yet, he and his family, as did my and other families, persisted in plain view of those hidden crackpots. Does she tell truth about Southern whites who were allies in the struggle, often at palpable social and personal risk, to the Power that is her audience? In my opinion she does not.
When JFK was assassinated, his brains blown out over his wife's exquisite pink suit, the children in my 7th grade classroom erupted in foot-stomping cheers: “the nigger-lover is dead!!” The day after MLK was assassinated, a neighbor in “Bombingham”, where we lived then, joked to my father: “Did you hear they got the man who killed King? Got him for shootin' coon out of season!!”.
DuVernay told Jon Stewart that she had wanted to “deconstruct' and humanize King. She took the easiest route – exposing his infidelities. Infidelities which are none of our business. Using characters and issues she introduced, there were other ways to go.
Emphasizing King's failure in Albany would have been one. King bailed out of Albany's jail after two days. Having entered Albany bearing the derogatory sobriquet “De Lawd” for never having participated in a Freedom Ride, he lost stature among Movement people there. More intriguing is the reason why King and the Movement failed there: Albany's Sheriff Laurie Pritchett out-Gandhied King. The story of King being schooled in the tactics of non-violence by a small town racist Southern sheriff could have humanized him indeed.
DuVernay could have edited out Coretta King who serves primarily to convey King's infidelities. In the remaining female-less space DuVernay could have emphasized Diane Nash, Viola Liuzzo, or Nina Simone, all of whom received a nod in the movie.
Simone, for example, in “Mississippi Goddam” caustically sang about being told over and over to “go slow.” DuVernay could have humanized King by depicting him as the Movement's Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth saw him: as a “go slow” man. DuVernay may have succeeded in humanizing King by exposing his infidelities, but she failed in telling truth to the Power that is her audience about King's sometimes uneasy place within the Movement itself.
I want to emphasize that I liked Selma very much. I hope everyone will go to see it. I also hope that those who think it has achieved greatness in terms of telling truth to Power will reflect upon the issues I and others have raised.
Poster: "To Kill a Mockingbird"
Released on Christmas Day, 1962, I recall vividly how, when the film came to our segregated theater,my parents and I got dressed up to go see it. I cannot recall another movie we ever went to see as a family. But, they made sure that I got to see this one. On the screen, in the film subtly directed by Robert Mulligan, I discovered there were other people like us—white people who hated segregation and racism. The story centered on a white lawyer, much like my father, who publicly stood up to segregationists and their vicious habits.
It was not that the film gave me hope that segregation would one day end—in that day and time for me that seemed beyond reach. It was less than a year later when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I recall being in my 7th grade math class when we got word over the loudspeaker that he had been shot. Only a few moments later, we were told the president had died. The children in my classroom erupted in cheers—“the nigger lover is dead!”—foot stomping, and laughter. Horrified not only by the death of the president, I was horrified by my classmates’ response. I was overwhelmed with the sense that if they knew who I was—a “nigger lover”—they would wish me dead, too.
The hope the film gave me was the knowledge that there were other people in the world like me and my family. I might go through the rest of my school years hiding, but one day I could find people like the Finches who would like me the way I was. People who would see the cruelty and ugliness of our culture’s “peculiar institution” the way my family did and wish it dead and gone the way we did.
I will always keep a tender place in my heart for Harper Lee, Atticus Finch, Boo Radley, and Maycomb, Alabama. Godspeed, Miss Lee, and thank you.
A grand jury is a legal body that is empowered to conduct official proceedings to investigate potential criminal conduct and to determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may compel the production of documents and may compel the sworn testimony of witnesses to appear before it. A grand jury is separate from the courts, which do not preside over its functioning.
The experience was deeply disturbing to me. Using the Wikipedia article as a reference point, I can say without reservation that investigation had little to do with my grand jury experience. Nor was I ever under the impression I could compel the production of documents or appearances of witnesses.
During the two weeks, we jurors actually deliberated over the course of only about seven days. During that time, we made decisions about whether to indict on somewhere between 500 and 600 cases. Those cases included something like 1,000 charges because many cases involved more than one charge. We were not allowed to keep our charges list nor our notes which is why I cannot be more specific about those numbers. That information was destined for the shredder.
The first afternoon included an introduction to illegal drugs, illegal drug production, illegal drug paraphernalia, and what are called "precursors" which refers to such things as Sudafed, glass tubes, spoons, and others things used in the production of meth. The officer passed around baggies of white power, rocks, and marijuana of various types.
The reason for this became clear as the days progressed: the majority, although not the preponderance, of the cases had to do with the production, trafficking, or possession of illegal drugs.
I had the impression, too, whether correctly or incorrectly that there was a subtext: illegal drugs are ubiquitous and dangerous and so are the people associated with them. There were no other show and tells: no introduction to knives or guns, for example, although weapons charges were among those we considered.
The officers who often appeared as witnesses relayed that many of the drug charges began with officers pulling drivers over for traffic violations—failing to use their turn signal, driving with their bright lights on, changing lanes improperly. This often would lead to the officer's claim that he or she then smelled marijuana. That led to inspections. When no drugs could be detected, the canine units were brought in.
There was one instance in which the officer said he could not find any drugs on one particular defendant nor could he find drugs in her car. However, he said, he saw her take a pill as she was standing outside the car and throw it into the car. He said he never was able to locate the pill, but her car was a mess which, he felt, explained why he could not find it.
We were indicting, in many cases, people who were found to be in possession of a single pill without having a prescription for it. We indicted for possession of a single tablet of Xanax, Adderall, or Hydrocodone, for example—all of which at one time or another I have had in my medicine cabinet. I have used these medications, to be sure, with a prescription, but I did have them and used them.
Disproportionately, it seemed to me, these traffic stops, according to the testimonies of the officers, were on Huntsville's poorer and predominantly African American north side. One of my fellow grand jurors was black and a detective. I asked him, during the second week, "is what we're seeing here cases of 'driving while black'?" He laughed and gave a noncommittal answer -- saying neither "yes" nor "no". "Driving while poor?" I asked. He shrugged.
There was only one other African American juror. All appeared to be middle class. There were no tell-tale signs of chronic poverty such as bad teeth. This was of interest to me because it seemed to me that the grand jury did not constitute a jury of the peers of most of the people who had been arrested and whom we were indicting.
The few arrests in the southeast, where I live, were arrests at a certain notorious motel where drugs are often trafficked and at big-box stores where shoplifting was a problem as it was at Parkway Place mall and at other big-box stores around town.
It also seemed to me that the grand jurors were more lenient or more understanding of those with whom they could identify. For example, the jury did not want to indict a man who had shot a neighbor in the stomach after provoking him then shooting around him in the air when the man came onto his property. When I protested that this met the test of "probable cause" in the intention to commit bodily harm, I was met with protests of "how would you feel if you were in his position"?
It also became abundantly clear that we would never understand what was going on in far too many cases. I began to listen out for these words: "confession" and "video". If I heard those 2 words, I raised my hand to indict. One reason is that it all went extremely fast as you can imagine with 550 cases or so in seven days. There were times I did not vote because I had not been able to locate the case on my case sheet to track the charges and the testimony was over by the time I found it. Another reason is that the testimony often was jumbled. In many cases, the officer or other witness had not reviewed the details in the months or years that had transpired between the arrest and his or her appearance before the grand jury.
There was one case where the witness, who was well-dressed and articulate, gave a long, detailed, well-organized testimony with names. After looking at the names of three people being charged on our case sheet, one alert juror asked her to tell us how they fit into the case. After naming each one, she said she did not know them. We were taken aback as was the DA. These were the only people named in the case. We never understood what happened there. Right witness, wrong case? We obviously voted not to indict.
In other instance, this same alert juror asked the officer to explain to us again what tied the defendant to the case? The officer seemed embarrassed and admitted he had not been the arresting officer and was picking up a random case. As there seemed to be nothing in the case to tie the charge to the defendant, we voted not to indict.
Out of the 550 or so cases, we "true billed" or voted to indict in about 500 cases. There were only one or two instances where we did not deliver what the DA expected. Once, the DA came back to us and told us we had made the wrong decision. The DA outlined for us why we should have true billed the charge. We re-considered and eventually true billed it. The other "no bills" or votes not to indict for the most part came at the instruction of the DA. These were for lesser charges in a case with multiple charges. The DA did not want the defendant to have lesser charges to which he or she could plead guilty.
The DA or testifying officer told us on many occasions that the defendant had "priors" or prior arrests or convictions. Although I think that might useful information in some situations, I did not think that should be taken into consideration when voting whether to indict on a new case. We supposedly were looking for "probable cause" in these particular cases not deciding whether the defendant was of good moral character.
Often, I and others had to ask the officers to slow down or speak up. Once when I asked an officer to slow down, he gave me an arresting officer's intimidating glare which he held for a good five seconds. I suppose he had forgotten that I was not a good candidate for intimidation.
The lawyer who presented the details of the case said that the family wanted the person charged to pay some price—meaning a jail term. I felt that conveying that information was inappropriate since it is not the family's day in court, not the family facing indictment. I believe this is a good legal principle. I said as much to the DA six years ago when the man who killed my daughter and her boyfriend was coming to trial for murder. While suggesting to the other members of the grand jury that I did not think the family's wishes should be taken into consideration, I also pointed out that the person had been in jail already for seven months and with other prisoners who did not conform to the alleged assailant's gender identity. I could not imagine that the assault, in this particular case, could ever result in more than seven months.
But the family wanted to see us "do something". So the jury voted to indict. After voting, one of the members of the grand jury asked the attorney, "Where is it (the transgender person) now?"
The visit was carefully planned. We ate lunch with several wardens and Sheriff Dorning. I asked one of the jailors whether this was the same lunch the inmates were having. The answer was "no". After asking, I was told that the budget for each prisoner's food is $4.00 a day. I asked whether the inmates ever got to go outside. The answer was "yes" and was told the routine.
On a tour of the facility, they took us to the outside area. It was a small concrete room, with walls about 20' high (I'm not good with estimations of this nature) and a concrete floor. At the very top of the walls, there were a number of windows through which you could glimpse the sky. There was an open roof covered with a mesh wire top. I was not under the impression I was outside despite the fact that I could feel a breeze just as I am not under the impression that I am outside as I write this although there are three windows in my office. This is the area, we were told, where the inmates could jog if they wanted. Again, not being good with these estimates, I cannot suggest how big the room was, but I can say that jogging in there would have been next to impossible.
We never interacted with the prisoners. We were shown empty cells which housed eight to a cell with one open toilet. We were shown where the prisoners ate. The only prisoners we saw were those few who were being checked in or out and were in a waiting room.
One of the wardens was a tiny woman. When asked if she was afraid of the prisoners, she said "no". She said that she helped raise some of the prisoners. When I asked what she meant, she said some of the prisoners had never had anyone tell them what was appropriate or inappropriate behavior. She said some of the prisoners kept in touch with her after leaving the jail.
I asked Sheriff Dorning a version of a question I had asked many times of people I have interviewed. "If you could change one thing to make it such that there was no need to lock up 700 people a day in Madison County, what would you change?" His answer was, "Bring back prayer in schools."
The detention home for juveniles gave me a somewhat better feeling. I had the impression that the wardens cared about the kids. To be sure, it was a jail. Each child was locked in his or her room at night behind a metal door. There was a small window in each room.
Yet, there was a school room with no more than twenty desks. There was plenty of food and safety. There was a much bigger gym than the "outdoor" space at the County jail where the kids were encouraged to play and work off steam. There were encouraging posters around with ideas on how to get along socially. We were treated to cookies and Kool-Aid.
There was a school nurse who had an office. The warden said that every possible ailment and disease had been diagnosed and, as far as possible, treated. Almost all the kids needed dental work. But, the nurse also had diagnosed or been part of diagnosing several types of cancer, lupus, and HIV / AIDS. Once they left, their treatments often stopped.
Most of the kids were from about 12 to about 16 years old. There had been a few as young as seven.
The children were only allowed visits from their parents and grandparents. When asked why they could not have siblings, the answer was that too often siblings would bring them marijuana. A few parents had been known to bring it to them.
I asked the warden whether any of the kids ever expressed a desire not to leave. He said occasionally that had happened, but not often. He said that if they allowed marijuana in the detention facility, there would be many who would rather stay indefinitely than leave.
I am glad I had the opportunity to serve on the grand jury. It made me feel good to do my civic duty. At the same time, however, I felt I had been complicit in America's unjust mass incarceration system. I wondered who the primary beneficiaries of our indictments were. As an ordained Baptist minister, I believe I have some obligation to change the system if only by helping others understand what little I have learned of it through this experience.
Photo: Hillary Clinton, Gage Skidmore, Photographer
The truth is that there are those who will not vote for Clinton precisely because of their lack of privilege or because of their work among those who lack the kind of extraordinary privilege Quartz readers have or aspire to have.
One is Luis Efrain Serrano, an illegal (the term he prefers) Latino and an activist with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Out Of LA in Los Angeles. The organization exists to end deportations and the criminalization of illegal immigrants. He believes the privilege argument is backwards.
People are voting for Clinton, Serrano believes, “because of their privilege. Wealthy or middle class white folks would not be as negatively affected by her as those of us who are less privileged.” The Democrats “give us weird little reforms like DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] which help us out a bit. We are ok with them only because things are so bad.”
Ultimately, Serrano wants systemic change. Although he does not support Donald Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner, Serrano believes a Trump election could aid in forcing the collapse of the establishment. He believes Trump has shaken “the neoliberal establishment which Clinton represents because he exposes an economic system that they have kept hidden.” Reality is that the Clinton establishment, in Serrano’s opinion, has “perfected keeping people oppressed and distracted.” Trump has brought that into the open.
Serrano concludes, “for those without privilege, there is no strategy in electing Clinton.”
Zac Henson is a self-proclaimed “mad redneck” with a Ph. D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management but who makes his living delivering papers for Weld and driving for Uber in East Lake, Alabama.
Henson, too, is concerned about the political system. He also wants to challenge individualized ideas of what constitutes oppression or privilege. No one is all oppressor or all oppressed,” he thinks. Instead, he believes, we need to talk more about “multiple overarching systems of power.” For instance, he says, “I’m white and male, so there are certainly advantages that I have in certain situations. But, I’m also mentally ill, working class, and Southern, so there are disadvantages that I have to deal with too.”
As for the election, Henson’s identities and philosophies slide between Clinton and Trump. Like Clinton, he believes in multiculturalism and diversity. But like Trump, he opposes economic globalization. He believes each has been engaged in an all-out war on the working class from both the left and the right. Partly because of Clinton’s neoliberalism, and the neoliberalism of the Democratic establishment, the white working class “literally has no place else to go but to Trump, which is both worrisome and sad.” Trump, however,
“is a monster arising in a cauldron of white working class rage and a generation of abandonment of the white working class by the left.” Because of the war on the working class, “people are frustrated, mad, and confused. It seems as if the American Dream is a distant memory.”
Even someone like me, he says, “who is a community organizer, an antiracist, a feminist, and a communist can see Trump’s appeal to people who are just desperate. So, I’ll probably just vote for Jill Stein, even though I know that it’s a throw away vote. Not much of a choice, if you ask me.”
Jorge Mújica Murias is the Strategic Campaigns Organizer at Arise Chicago, an organization devoted to combatting worker injustice. A Latino, he ran for Congress as a candidate for Illinois’s 3rd Congressional District in 2009 and for Alderman for the City of Chicago in 2015. A socialist, he supports Jill Stein of the Green Party.
“My reason for not supporting Clinton is simple,” Mújica says. “I want to do away with the two-party system.”
He wants to see the Democratic Party split. “I want to help give a solid third party status to the Green Party. I don’t want people re-electing Hillary in 2020 because Ted Cruz runs against her nor do I want to see Chelsea Clinton running against Trump. Giving a solid third party status to the Green Party might open up the system.” Just as he would like to see the Democratic Party split, Mújica continues, “I would have hoped to see the Republicans splitting and founding a third party, the Tea Party. That is not going to happen apparently. But we can make it happen in the Democratic party if people will not cave in and vote for Clinton.”
Pippa Abston is a pediatrician in Huntsville, Alabama. She counts herself among the privileged in no small measure because she has health insurance. She tends daily to people, however, who do not - and she cares about them.
Based in large part on what she has seen in her practice, she believes that those who already lack political and socioeconomic privilege would be placed at higher risk in a Clinton presidency.
An ethical person, Abston says, “would not find it acceptable to leave anyone out.” Clinton, on the other hand, is “a utilitarian who is able to abstract human beings into numbers and treat them interchangeably, trading out some lives for others. This is not ethically acceptable to me.” Because she sees children and their parents every day in her office, she says, “I can’t possibly forget what they need and I can’t possibly vote for Clinton who could put them at risk.”
As are Serrano, Henson, and Mújica, Abston is concerned about the entire political system. Clinton, she says, represents a political philosophy, neoliberalism, which she finds “abhorrent.”
It is an “imposter on the left” but it is not truly leftist, because it “transfers power and representation even further away from the public sphere into the oligarchy, and then tells the powerless that they can lift themselves up if they try harder.”
By occupying the left as an imposter, Abston says, the neoliberal wing prevents the development of a true left, a true democratic movement “by convincing supporters it is the left they are seeking, that it cares about them, but it does not. I find this even more repugnant than the right wing, which is at least moderately honest about its nefarious intentions.”
Like Abston, I, too am a person of multiple privileges. I am white, upper middle class, and enjoy a high social status. I am a Ph. D. historian, liberation theologian, ordained Baptist minister, and film maker. Much of my professional life consists of advocacy for illegal immigrants, domestic labor, and guest workers in the US legally with an H2 visa.
Free trade agreements are closely associated with the displacement of the millions of Latinos who are in the US illegally as well as with the creation of a billionaire class in Mexico and elsewhere. Free trade agreements and neoliberal economic policies generally are a priority issue for me.
Although Clinton has recently distanced herself from the looming Trans Pacific Partnership, in the past she has applauded it as the “gold standard” of trade agreements.
Trade agreements favor the well being of corporations over that of human beings. They are in large part about the creation of “investor states” which legally transfer local, state, and national sovereignty to corporations which may sue governments which act to adversely affect, or threaten to adversely affect, corporations’ profits. This includes such things as labor regulations, environmental efforts, and regulations over pharmaceutical businesses.
Clinton has waffled on free trade agreements. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Dr. Jill Stein, on the other hand, consistently have opposed them.
Each seems to understand that the agreements are not really about trade — they certainly are not about the creation of a multicultural “global village” — they are about the offshoring of national sovereignty and the creation of a new legal framework to create and protect new, sinister investor states. They are about displacing more and more vulnerable peoples around the world and making it next to impossible for the rest of us to do anything about it. I have written more on the sovereignty problems with free trade agreements here.
This article is based on anecdotal evidence, of course, as was Melissa Hillman’s. But it should go some distance in demonstrating that she is wrong about privilege being the reason for people on the left opposing Clinton. Instead, the reasons for many of us include deep concerns about America’s working class, the current failure of the two-party system to address systemic economic problems, and neoliberal economic policies. Many of us have concluded that Clinton is not only a poor choice to lead America, she is downright dangerous for all of us.
Photo: Mike Wilson by Michael Hyatt. Used with permission.
Photo by Michael Hyatt, used with permission.
While there, he had what in Christian circles is sometimes referred to as a Road to Damascus moment during which he encountered who he was and what he was doing. He concluded he was a “North American imperialist” in El Salvador.
He says that he was “called” out of the Army and into seminary, then called back out of seminary “by faith”. He was prompted by his conclusion that the Church had become an instrument of imperialism. He spent a year as a lay pastor, however, at the Presbyterian church in Sells, the capital of the Tohono O’odham Nation. For those who do not understand the idea of being “called”, it refers to a belief that God has placed a special task on a believer’s shoulders. Today, Mike says, everything he does is because of his faith in God.
One of the issues which Mike, Susan, and I discussed at length under the cool arbor on my deck was Mike’s frustration with white people who will not confront tribal leadership on life and death issues. In The Second Cooler, Mike talks about the running conflict he has had for years with tribal leaders of the nation. The context in the interview was the criticism he was receiving from his Presbyterian Session in Sells.
The conflict has to do with the fact that Mike puts water on tribal lands for migrants crossing there illegally. The migrants, who come from Mexico, Central America and elsewhere disproportionately are indigenous. Tribal leadership forbids him putting out water because they believe it encourages migrants to cross through their lands.
Part of the problem is that the militarization of the US / Mexico border, especially at the Arizona border, has been deliberately designed to push illegal immigrants into the vast, treacherous Sonora Desert which makes up much of the Nation’s land. Figures are difficult to come by, but estimates range from a very conservative 7,000 to approximately 21,000 since 1997 when records began to be kept.
Mike also has had a running conflict with immigrant advocates in Tucson.
Advocates there, who are white or Latino, work day in and day out to rescue migrants, call attention to their deaths nationally, and keep records of deaths. Yet, they will not tell tribal leadership that they are wrong to contribute to migrant deaths by refusing to give them water.
White and Latino advocates will not. They argue that to do so is a form of racism: “White people have told Native Americans what to do for too long.” And so, Mike not only is persona non grata among tribal leadership, he is persona non grata among the non-Native advocates in Tucson.
While we talked, I remembered a remark he made at the screening of The Second Cooler in Tucson at the Arizona International Film Festival in 2013 during the Q&A. A number of those whom he had tried to persuade to support him by standing up to tribal leadership were in the audience that evening. I recalled him having said to no one in particular, “What do you think we Tohono are? Your pets?”
Mike believes, and I agree, that preferring to let migrants die rather than stand up to the people who could help save their lives is, in and of itself, a particularly toxic form of racism. As Mike pointed out while we talked, refusing to stand up to people who hold other people’s lives in their hands because of their racial or ethnic identity is applying a different standard to their actions or lack thereof. I believe that a separate standard is necessarily a lower standard reflecting a lingering belief that Native Americans are too emotionally delicate, too childlike, to take criticism. And, because they are Natives and made fundamentally different from Whites, according to the logic, they are inherently incapable of racism.
Or, as Mike asks in The Second Cooler, rather than stand up to tribal leadership or wrestle with the nuances of racism, is it just “easier to let the migrants die”?
This is the racism which we can deny by taking the moral high ground of ultra sensitivity to Native Americans’ feelings. We can deny our and Native racism while colluding in the brutal deaths of thousands of Mexican indigenous. Applying any moral yardstick, how can we justify this? Do migrant deaths really matter? Are Tohono O’odham tribal leaders full grown men and women?
Or are Native Americans our pets?
Photo: James Michal Nicol via Twitter
Others, however, were not laughing. They said the statue was an example of body shaming.
Mark Sandlin, a Presbyterian minister and highly regarded progressive Christian blogger, acknowledges the important role that art plays in society. He believes we need to be careful about “limiting and controlling the artist’s expression”. Yet, he feels INDECLINE crossed the line into body shaming for its own sake. He told me, "We also need to guard against people who want to hide behind the claim of 'art' when all they are really doing is belittling, bullying, or embarrassing someone. While I appreciate the 'emperor’s new clothes' angle of the Trump statues, I’m finding it very difficult to see them as much more than a case of body shaming, and that’s never OK with me. If they had been statues of a naked Hillary [Clinton], I feel certain we would have been incensed by them."
Similarly, Meghna Sridhar writing for Feministing, raised a fair point about the “smug liberalism” of American leftist culture in “PSA: Your Transphobia and Body Shaming Isn’t Radical”.
Nothing is being said by the piece that is difficult for one in the current political climate to say —that Trump is a joke, or that fat people must be shamed, or that male bodies that don’t conform to masculine notions of genitalia deserve scorn. Indeed, the real naked emperors seem to be the installation’s smug audience instead, parading around in seeming robes of progressive politics, which actually, upon closer inspection, are their own naked delusions of open minded, non-oppressive grandeur.
I, too, can see how the statues may reinforce Americans’ regrettable habits of body shaming and transphobia or anxieties around anyone who is not cisgender or any man who does not have testicles or or who does have a very small penis. These are problems in American culture and work to harm more people than many of us realize. It is a problem when we associate genitalia with maturity or bravery or intelligence. I agree with Sandlin and Sridhar as far as that goes.
In fact, INDECLINE told Priscilla Frank for The Huffington Post that is what they were doing—appropriating the association of testicles with being a man in American culture and using that against Trump. But they were doing something more. “We decided to depict Trump without his balls because we refuse to acknowledge that he is a man,” they said. “He is a small arrogant child and thus, has nothing in the way of testicles.”
Los Angeles area filmmaker and artist Robin Rosenthal places the statue “in a long tradition among artists, notably Spain’s Francisco de Goya, of political cartoons.” INDECLINE’s statue is “pure political commentary,” insists Rosenthal. “It’s a political cartoon in the form of a sculpture. If it is body shaming, artists and cartoonists have license to body shame.”
By the same token, in a painting called Make America Great Again, genderfluid feminist artist, Illma Gore, painted a nude portrait of Trump which also featured a small penis. Gore readily admits her intention was to shame Trump and his politics by invoking American men’s anxiety over small penises. “if anyone is going to be threatened by a small penis, it’s Trump.”
Her painting was modeled after a real life, middle aged friend. As far as I can tell, no one seemed to take exception to the slight pot belly and sagging skin of her painting. Other than commentary of the small penis, the painting is a fairly straightforward depiction of a naked man.
Yet, Make America Great Again has provoked hysterical responses. Gore has been anonymously threatened with lawsuits if she sells the painting, has been punched in the face by a Trump supporter in her own Los Angeles neighborhood, and has received thousands of death threats.
She notes that her painting has been understood and well received “everywhere apart from America”. This has to raise the question, “What about this painting has triggered the anxieties of Americans in particular?”
The brouhaha over the INDECLINE statues is reminiscent of the controversy over Maurice Sendak’s children’s book, In The Night Kitchen, published in 1970.
The brouhaha over the INDECLINE statues is reminiscent of the controversy over Maurice Sendak’s children’s book, In The Night Kitchen, published in 1970.
Americans have legitimate concerns about body shaming and transphobia. But Americans also are anxious about seeing penises in library books, on paintings, and on statues.
This aspect of body exaggeration is what other commentators about the INDECLINE statues were interested in. They were not worried about body shaming or transphobia. They saw the exaggeratedly small penises as essential to legitimate commentary about this particular politician.
Journalist David Person is on the board of contributors for USA Today. INDECLINE is suggesting, he says, “that despite Trump’s bravado and bluster, he essentially is the emperor who has no clothes. Worse, he lacks the strength to provide true leadership. That is what the emasculated statue is about. They also seem to be suggesting that Trump’s allegiance is not to this nation but that he has a secret agenda—hence the Masonic ring on his finger.”
Los Angeles area filmmaker and artist Robin Rosenthal places the statue “in a long tradition among artists, notably Spain’s Francisco de Goya, of political cartoons.” INDECLINE’s statue is “pure political commentary,” insists Rosenthal. “It’s a political cartoon in the form of a sculpture. If it is body shaming, artists and cartoonists have license to body shame.”
from Los Caprichos, by Goya, 1799
If I were Trump and someone painted me with an exaggeratedly small penis for political reasons, I’d be offended. No doubt about that.
Yet, as Rosenthal suggests, there is a long history of exaggerating human bodies in order to make a political point. In fact, the exaggeration of political figures’ bodies is essential to American political commentary. If you google “political cartoon + Abraham Lincoln” or the name of any American politician, you will find exaggerations of their bodies.
Body shaming? Sure it is. Is it intentional? Without doubt.
I’m under no illusion, however, that with these political cartoons of American presidents, I am looking at anywhere near accurate representations of their bodies. Obama is an extraordinarily good looking man whose ears do not proceed from his shoulders. Of that I am certain.
And with INDECLINE’s Trump statue, it does not occur to me that I am looking at an actual representation of Trump’s body. He is not, after all, salmon pink, nor is he fat. I assume he is not old enough to have the varicose veins given to him (although I could be wrong). I assume he has testicles. I have no way of knowing the size of his penis. Nor do I care to.
What I do care about is Trump’s relationship to every petty demagogue who ever lived with their swagger and self importance and their erecting of expensive, grotesque statues of themselves in public squares. I care about Trump’s misogyny. I care about how he reflects and has tapped into a disturbing aspect of American culture — that horrid delight in making fun of anybody who is vulnerable, different from us, or presents any sort of real or imagined existential threat. And, yes, I get that is what the INDECLINE artists were doing — delighting in giving Trump a taste of his own medicine. That, too, disturbs me. But only a little bit.
Mostly, I think, “Well done, INDECLINE!” With your guerrilla tactics and guerrilla art, you provoked a conversation among us about politics, art, and about our own culture. And for that, I thank you.
Photo: Leigh Anna Jimmerson and Tad Mattle. RIP.
I don’t know much about the law in Alabama, but I do know this is a death penalty state. We have the highest per capital death penalty rate in the US, outranking even Texas. And, until this year, a judge could impose a death penalty when a jury suggested life imprisonment in its verdict.
As it happened, in a plea bargain Ortega exchanged a jury trial for a bench decision. He received 15 years which I thought was sufficient.
What I would have liked to see was less emphasis on inflating the language, the charges, and the responses and more emphasis on the high-speed police chase which contributed in no small way to Tad’s and Leigh Anna’s deaths and the interruption of Ortega’s life.
But few were interested in that. An in-house investigation, during which the officer said the magic words, “I backed off”, culminated in his receiving not so much as a reprimand if what I’ve been told is accurate.
It doesn’t matter to me that at the last second he “backed off” when he had spent many minutes pursuing Ortega who had been headed out of town. Being pursued, Ortega made the fateful decision to try to elude the officer and, instead of heading out of town, made a left turn onto one of the busiest arteries in Huntsville and toward the highly congested intersection where the light had just turned red.
After sentencing Ortega apologized to the families. Privately, he apologized to Leigh Anna’s father and me. He expressed profound remorse.
We never heard a word from the police officer or the police department. Not the night of the accident, not any time since.
Inflated language, inflated charges, inflated responses. There seems to be a sense that inflation somehow says what happened was horrific. Or somehow that we care.
But they seem to carry with them their inverse—no language, no charge, no response at all.
When he was in the 7th grade, he and a large group of other 7th graders had gone to a spend-the-night party. There were girls and boys there. The parents left. After the parents left, there was a decision made to play Truth or Dare, a game involving telling the truth in answer to a question or accepting a dare. There are consequences if you don't accept the dare. It is a game about "embarrassment tolerance".
The man posting the question said that he was dared to kiss a certain girl. He said he "had to kiss her." In his post, he said that he had understood that she did not want him to kiss her. He kissed her anyway.
I entered the conversation because I thought he was genuinely trying to understand whether he had done the wrong thing. I said that kissing her against her will did not make him a sexual predator, but it was sexual assault. That did not mean, I said, that made him a terrible person, but that, yes, in the 7th grade he had committed sexual assault.
He and a few of his friends (men) began to challenge me as was their right. All their comments were designed to skirt around the fact, which he himself had disclosed, that she had indicated she did not want him to kiss her. And he did it anyway.
He said, well you have to understand social mores were different 30 years ago. I responded that 30 years ago when a girl indicated she did not want you to kiss her that meant you were not to kiss her.
I kept emphasizing that she indicated she did not want him to kiss her, and he did it anyway. That is sexual assault. It is not the degree to which Christine Blasey Ford was sexually assaulted, I said, but it was a sexual assault.
I gave them Black's Law Dictionary definition of an actionable assault (an assault for which one can wind up in court): the "threat or use of [the threat of] force on another that causes that person to have a reasonable apprehension of . . . offensive contact". But it was actually more than “assault"; it was "assault and battery." Because the moment he touched her, he had committed "battery"—i.e. he made actual physical contact.
To ward off any would be challengers on the finer legal aspects: I'm not a lawyer with a potential client. I'm a woman who has a pretty good grasp of what rape culture is, and I'm trying to push that conversation along.
My point was to emphasize that "assault" and “battery” have agreed upon definitions. Assault involves “the threat of force" on the part of one or more parties, "apprehension" on the part of another or others, and "offensive contact.” The crime of “battery” is making actual physical contact.
It was sexual assault and battery, I said, because in our culture a kiss on the mouth has sexual implications. Which is why I don't go around kissing random men on the mouth. I kiss my husband on the mouth. Period. Full stop. End of story.
That was the point of the "dare". The dare wasn't to shake her hand or enter into a staring contest. I'm guessing she would not have been apprehensive about a hand shake or a staring game. The dare was to kiss her on the mouth. Which she indicated she did not want, and he did it anyway. The point, which each of them well understood, was that the dare involved a sexual or sexualized act.
Truth or Dare became "spin the bottle": come on, Ellin, it was just a game of "spin the bottle." (An innocent game.) Language games. Spin the Bottle does sound more innocent, I'll grant you that. Which is the purpose of repeatedly calling it "spin the bottle." A diversionary tactic. A language move. No, it was not "spin the bottle" it was Truth or Dare.
Next diversionary tactic?
"She knew what she was getting into." Really? When she was dropped off at the party, this 12 year old girl, she knew the parents would leave? She knew the night would turn into "Truth or Dare"? She knew some boy would force a kiss onto her mouth? She knew that? Right. This 12 year old girl.
Next?
"But he is gay. He could not have wanted to." Its actually not about what he wanted. That's pretty much the central theme here. Its about what she wanted and that she didn't want it, and he knew it, and he did it anyway.
Next?
"I had to." No, you didn't have to. Someone put a gun to your head?
Next?
"If everything is sexual assault, nothing is sexual assault." No. Only sexual assault is sexual assault. (We’re getting into "boys will be boys territory. Is that not clear? In my head.)
Next?
This is what rape culture is. It begins early in our children's cultural education. It has culturally agreed upon "normalizing" rituals. It involves all sorts of tactics by which men, and sometimes women, encourage one another not to see what they did for what they did. Thereby blocking any ability they might have to confess, to repent, to apologize, to attempt to make things right, to change their point of view. And their actions. Thereby blocking our collective ability to move into deeper discussions about rape culture.
If we cannot even understand and admit that kissing a 12 year old girl who indicated she did not want your mouth on her mouth and you put your mouth on her mouth anyway is sexual assault, how in the name of all that's holy do we expect Justice Kavanaugh to admit that the horrendous thing he did to Christine Blasey Ford was a sexual assault? Why do we expect that of him?
If I cannot admit I stole a nickel, why would I expect someone else to admit they stole a dollar?
We have got to have serious conversations about rape culture—what it is, who participates in it, when it starts, and how the game is rigged. I think we can do that if we will.
"You'd be so much prettier if you smiled."
"Give us a smile."
These expressions and the gendered politics behind them are motifs that factor into rape culture.
That is part of it, too. One population experiences and understands; another one does not even know of the existence of the phenomenon much less have any personal experience with it.
Women and men say to girls, "You'd be so much prettier if you smiled." An observation with broader social implications.
Men say, "Give us a smile." An order. With intimate relationship implications.
I don't like it when I hear someone say "You'd be so much prettier if you smiled." I become livid when I hear, "Give us a smile," especially when a man says it to a young girl.
Because what is behind the smile expectation is that we girls and women make people anxious or even angry when we don't smile. Our faces are continually being watched. So there is that aspect to "You'd be so much prettier" that comes from a place of "Life would be so much easier for you if you smiled more. Put people at ease. Because they are watching your face. Because they see reflected in your face their own insecurities, their own self-doubts.
And the expectation is that you are here for a particular purpose: them.
The gaze.
Because women have only three emotional speeds, as we hear over and over and over—mad, sad, glad. If you look (per the gaze) like you're sad or if you look like you're mad, you must be sad because of me (its about me) or mad at me (its about me) or glad because of me. You're supposed to be glad because of me. Give us a smile. Give us a damn smile! Bitch.
The unsmiling female face has even been anointed with this name:
Resting Bitch Face.
And God forbid we should ever be seen driving around town squinting because of the sun. Bitch. Or seen lost in our thoughts not even noticing you. Bitch.
There are various ways to express "you'd be so much prettier." I hear this a lot. I mean a lot. Mostly from women: "You'd be so much more effective if you were not so forceful." You bitch. "You intimidate me." Bitch. "Why don't you lighten up?” Bitch. You make me uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable and its your fault.
Its not my fault that when I appeal to your conscience, to your obligations as an American, as a human being, that your instinct is to appeal to my vanity. To my neediness. Which I do have, but not to anywhere near the degree you'd like me to have.
And hear this well. There is no part of me that is capable of smiling when I'm trying to get you to care about migrant deaths or pregnant women working on the 4th of July in 105 degree heat while trying to avoid ICE's gaze or persuade you that your boy Obama put concentration camps on the southern border well before Trump or I keep trying and keep trying to make you care about the fact that your girl Hillary is a fake feminist who set up the conditions in which rape became an epidemic in Honduras and you say you care but you don't care because what you really care about is your social club activism and when I don't smile when I can't smile you realize full well that you're about the connection the mutual masturbatory party and not them. You don't care about the women and boys raped in Honduras or on the border. Why don't you just say it? Just come out and say it? Instead you say,
"You'd be so much prettier if you'd smile. Give us a smile dammit!" Bitch.
Listen and listen well. If you want to have some part in ripping apart rape culture, you need to stop demanding any little girl give you a smile. Think about the totality of what you are saying to her. Think about all the ways you convey to her, "You'd be so much prettier if you'd smile" and stop. Stop. She did not fight her way out of the womb in order to spend a lifetime adjusting to rape culture. Don't teach her to adjust.
Smiles are good. See my picture attached to this post? I'm a big smiler. I smile and laugh a lot. I make an effort to smile at the people behind the counter. I smile when I want to.
But don't you ever TELL me to smile.
Photo: Angela Davis
The cancellation of the award and gala raises fundamental problems with the monetization and commodification of Birminghan’s troubled past. Or of any area’s past.
Birmingham was once so heinous, so notorious it was dubbed “Bombingham.” Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth’s home in what came to be known as Dynamite Hill was one of those infamously bombed by foaming at the mouth segregationists. Shuttlesworth was a firebrand blue collar preacher, completely unlike Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He made the elites of the Civil Rights Movement nervous.
Dynamite Hill is the neighborhood in which Dr. Angela Davis grew up.
Then came the Children’s March, Sheriff Bull Connor, his police dogs, the fire department’s water hoses, the cameras, and the assassination of JFK. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Birmingham began to rebuild its image. The Civil Rights Movement was monetized. It became an attraction, a must-see for any visitor. The City built the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute [BCRI], strategically situating it between the 16th Street Baptist Church, site of the bombing where the Four Little Girls were killed, and Kelly Ingram Park, site of the Children’s March.
Birmingham became a required site to see on any and all “Civil Rights Tours” with the BCRI becoming its premier stop. For a mere $55, Red Clay Tours provides hotel pickup, the luxury of a small group experience, and air conditioned comfort.
It’s a good museum, especially for those who didn’t grow up in Birmingham or any part of the segregated South as I did.
The problems with these kinds of museums is that they stop the present. They suspend the past like a fly in amber. They are symbols of what once was, not signs pointing to the future.
Unless, of course, there is some intention at forward movement for which the BCRI has announced with clarity it has not with its recision of the award to and gala for Angela Davis.
The inability of the BCRI to act as a sign vis-à-vis Israel, its lie of omission which at the moment it was crafted became an act of commission in genocide is precisely the same problem I observed at the National Holocaust Museum.
It is a problem fundamentally related to a problem with Bryan Stevenson’s National Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, formally known as the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. I have not yet been to it but sooner or later I will. I expect it to be as moving and powerful as everyone says it is. But we have to acknowledge that lynching is, for the most part, part of our past.
In one of my earliest published pieces on immigration, I referred to the deaths of migrants in the southwest as “the new noose”, a phrase which was eliminated from the published article, whether by me or the editor I don’t recall.
Why not a museum to the ongoing, horrific problem of an official policy of the US government to push migrants to their deaths as part of its policy of “deterrence” of illegal immigration? Will there develop at the NLM a wing dedicated to that?
How do we memorialize the past without monetizing it, without suspending it in amber, and without it becoming complicit in future efforts to guarantee civil and human rights?
Is that even possible?