Category Archives: The Political Life

The Republic for Which it Stands? It’s the Moment to Decide…

Posted on
1

This is the video of an arrest of a member of Occupy Fort Worth this past week.  The most repulsive part of the event/video is when the police officer hits our friend with the American flag and then claims that our friend hit him with the flag.  The police officer acts in a fit of anger and rage, obviously just losing his temper and acting violently. The problem is he has the license to act violently.  Near the end of the video another of our friends can be heard saying “America is not a police state. You’re (referring to the police) on the wrong side of history.”

My question is, going back to the pledge of allegiance, does the American flag stand for the republic any longer? When peaceful protesters are physically abused by police in America WITH the American flag, no less, a symbol of the freedoms that give us all a right to peacefully assemble and protest and a symbol that we live under the rule of law.  When the police use the flag to physically abuse the citizens, that rule of law does indeed seem to have disappeared and we do indeed seem to be living in a police state.

We have politicians who would like us to live under martial law and to create a police state. This is why provisions in the Defense Authorization Act do away with due process, even for American citizens and make it easy for the government to classify as terrorists just about anyone they need to, well, hit over the head with the American flag.

This is why I am heading out the door to Houston to Occupy the port today at 1 p.m.  As seems the course so often in our American history, Occupy gives us a moment for moral decision, to decide for good or evil.  Not to make the rich evil, but to decide if the cause of justice and equity and fairness is good and unfairness, injustice and inequity is evil or if the status quo is something with which we can abide.

“Once to Every Soul and Nation” – words by James Russell Lowell

Once to every soul and nation comes the moment to decide,
in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side:
then to stand with truth is noble, when we share its wretched crust;
ere that cause bring fame and profit and ’tis prosperous to be just.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ’tis truth alone is strong;
though its portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong.
Then it is the brave one chooses, while the coward stands aside,
till the multitude make virtue of the faith they have denied.

 

Tell Newt What Jesus Would Do, Bernie Sanders.

Posted on
3

There’s a photo of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) accompanied by a quote from a statement he made last week in the Senate budget hearings that is presently starting to go a bit viral around Facebook.  Here it is.

Senator Sanders basically gives a statement about balancing the federal budget, but insists that it not be balanced on the backs of the poor and the most vulnerable in our society.

Sen. Sanders’ statement is pure Gospel. It’s a world transforming message, if only others in Congress would hear it and heed it.  It is, in fact, as best as we can tell, what Jesus would do.

That’s an interesting little saying, What Would Jesus Do? It’s usually thrown around by overly pious and overly moralistic folk who want people to stop and think about matters of personal piety, especially matters related to sexuality.  Like many people, I associated the phrase with the rise of the fundamentalist religious right.  It conjures up for me those rubber wrist bracelets or string bracelets with beads stenciled with WWJD?  Mostly used to remind students and young adults to practice abstinence or not cheat on their homework assignments. The phrase has a much more progressive and world transforming history.

This week’s episode of On Being with Krista Tippet has some fascinating insight into this phrase.  Her interview is with Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, the religion editor of the Huffington Post and the grandson of Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch.

“What Would Jesus Do?” dates back to an 1893 novel by Kansas preacher Charles Monroe Sheldon.  The phrase became associated with the Social Gospel movement, a movement in American Christianity that emphasized the social welfare implications of the teachings of Jesus.

Walter Rauschenbusch, considered the most important theologian of the Social Gospel, in the early twentieth century insisted that, of course, there is no such thing as the Social Gospel, there is just the Gospel. The Gospel as it is promotes care for the powerless, the forgotten, the left-out and the despised.  It doesn’t need a modifier. That the Gospel should need a special name only means people have forgotten the world transforming message that is grace and inclusion, equity and justice.

Yet, it appears too many people have forgotten about grace, inclusion, equity and justice, especially Christians.  Many politicians pander to the religious right who have an overly pietistic view of both Jesus and Christianity.  When someone like Newt Gingrich says the left is trying to drive traditional religion out of existence and that Christianity is an oppressed religion he is both wrong and ignorant.  Traditional religion valued the Gospel, the world transforming message that lifted up the lowly, included everyone in the human family, and asked “What Would Jesus Do” to make sure people had enough to eat, a place to live, and someone to care for them when they were sick.  Yesterday, in a presidential primary forum, Gingrinch quipped that Occupy protesters should “get a job” but should “take a bath first”.  Had Gringrich been around in Palestine in the first century, make no mistake, he would have had the same opinion of wandering Jewish preacher and his followers and would have encouraged the Roman authorities to do away with him.  Now, he hides behind the religion that has grown up in this preacher’s name to oppress the people that preacher defended.

The religion that has become Christianity has little to do with this world transforming message. Rather what calls itself Christianity today is about supporting the rich and the powerful, hating those who are different, sowing fear and division and dismissing the cries of the poor as the whining of the lazy.  None of this is part of the world transforming message of Jesus.  It’s not what Jesus would do. If you want that, listen to Bernie Sanders, not Newt.

Jesus, Crucifixion, The Kingdom of God, The Good News, the Church, and Occupy

Posted on
2

It’s been a heavy week for the church.  The original Occupy Wall Street site has been closed down in New York City and other Occupy sites around the country have been closed as well, including the site in Dallas.  Our overnighters here in Fort Worth are being harassed by the police.  There has been police violence and the show of force by law enforcement seems way out of proportion for a movement that is dedicated to non-violent demonstrations.

Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt commented on the Occupy Dallas removal on her Twitter feed saying the Dallas Police were “respectful and peaceful” during their shutdown of the site. I have to argue that there is no such thing as a respectful and peaceful denial of the first amendment. All suppression of the right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances does violence to the people.  Let’s take a look at a photo from the Dallas police action:

And let’s take a look at another photo from another famous break up of another famous protest for a redress of grievances.

If Occupy shut downs were happening in other countries, for whatever reason,  the United States would be among the first to call them the actions of an anti-democratic  totalitarian police state. So what’s this have to do with the church? In a word – everything.  Let’s start with Crucifixion.

Whatever you think of Jesus, whatever your theology and whatever your theology of the cross, let’s get something out of the way and up front – the Roman Empire didn’t execute just anyone by crucifixion. It was a punishment reserved for the poor and the other.  The Romans didn’t execute Roman citizens or rich people by crucifixion because if it was perceived the rich and powerful can suffer and die just like everyone else, well then, more people might rise against the empire. Notice that no rich, white people are ever executed in America. Notice how homeless people receive obscene jail sentences for stealing things to feed their families but the criminals responsible for the current banking and financial crisis are not in jail?  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Romans also tended to reserve crucifixion for those who were considered a threat to the empire. I personally don’t believe Jesus died for my sins or yours. It’s just not my theology.  Any God that needs some guy to be tortured to death so I can be okay with that God is not any God I want any part of, but one thing is for certain – Jesus was crucified because the Empire didn’t want him causing any more trouble or rousing any more rabble.

And what about this empire? Let’s take a look at it, then and now.  The New Testament writers report that Jesus spoke often of “The Kingdom of God.”  Whether this is a phrase of Jesus or a phrase of the early Jesus movement put on Jesus’ lips matters little except to extreme Biblical fundamentalists.  The important issue is the phrase itself and what it meant to the people who heard it.  The phrase in Koine Greek is βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ or  Basileia tou Theou.  The translation, according to many contemporary New Testament scholars such as Funk and Scott -  is “God’s imperial rule.”  It’s a phrase that would have had a great impact on the hearers in its original context.  The imperial rule at that time was Rome. The imperial ruler was the Roman Emperor.  When Jesus says the Kingdom of God, this implies that the Roman Emperor is NOT the be all and end all and not in control; that there is something else, something more, something even greater and of more value that has more power than Rome.  In its original context this made people twist their heads and raise an eyebrow, “What did that guy just say?”  It is somewhat analogous to saying “We are the 99%!”  The parables and sayings of Jesus ask us to imagine a more just, more equitable world, where there’s no such thing as a lesser person.  That’s some good news.

This is the Good News.  The term good news is not about getting into heaven, or being part of some holier than everyone else group God has set aside and favored so they won’t be punished in some eternal hell.  Nope, not at all.  The Greek term in the New Testament is εὐαγγέλιον or euangelion and scholars tell us it means “world transforming message.”  It was the term used of the Roman Emperor or a Roman General when they won a military victory and conquered a new land and thus subjugated a new people.  The Emperor has brought you a euangellion – the peace of Rome.  Yes, this was the Pax Romana, the roman peace. There would be no more war, because Rome will crush you and all other opposition like a bug. You will enjoy all the benefits of Rome …and all its oppression. It is like being brought the world transforming message of America and McDonald’s and Exxon and IBM.  Life’s never been better for you has it? Then there is a different euangelion, a new world transforming message.  The writers of the Christian scriptures began telling a story of a wandering preacher who claimed everyone was okay with God, that the real empire was of God, and everyone should treat each other as brothers and sisters and forgive each other.  He hung out with outcasts, tax collectors, prostitutes and other undesirables and so should you.  This was the world transforming message.  Is it any wonder most people didn’t get it? And still don’t?  Even the religion that grew up in the name of this world transforming message just became part of  new empires over time and now, today, followers of that old preacher’s world transforming message bring that good news to those left behind and left out of the empire of today.  They operate at the margins, without institutional power or authority in many cases, and ask once again, what would the imperial rule of God look like?  Perhaps it wouldn’t look anything like an empire? Perhaps it would be very democratic and very inclusive and provide  health care and education and housing and food for the people? Perhaps.  These people look like a, well, like a church.

A church isn’t a building, it’s a group of people.  I’m going to let the Rev. Carl Gregg at the Ekklesia project take this one.  Hat tip to Tripp Hudgins.

The word for ‘church’ in the Greek New Testament is ekklesia, but this term did not originate with the early followers of Jesus. Long before the life of the historical Jesus, ekklesia was a Greco-Roman political term. Warren Carter, in his book Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, notes that in its original context, ekklesia, broadly understood, “denotes the ‘duly summoned’ civic and political assembly of citizens in the Greek cities which along with a council expressed the will of the assembled people.” (335). Therefore, just as calling Jesus “lord” was a political statement that, “Caesar is not lord,” calling a gathering of Christians a “church” or “congregation”  or “ekklesia” intentionally implied that the way of Jesus was an alternative to the way of Rome.

The most intriguing manifestation of ekklesia in our time has been the Occupy movement.  It is the most empowered, duly summoned, civic and political assembly of citizens in my adult lifetime.  It’s also proclaiming a world transforming message and that’s some good news.  Amen.

Veterans Day Lessons in Patriotism and Service from Mom and Dad, Chap Tyger, and Paula at Occupy

Posted on
Reply

Every Veterans Day brings a wonderful admixture of emotions and reminiscences involving my parents. Both of my parents are veterans. My dad is a veteran of the Korean conflict War. My mom’s service was just afterward and stateside in the Women’s Army Corps. Yes, my mom was a WAC, but not in the Philippines. Even at twelve years old, and being a huge KISS and Cheap Trick fan, that line always cracked me up.   Most of my mom’s memorabilia such as uniforms and photographs are now in the Women in Military Service to America Memorial museum at Arlington National Cemetery.

My parents were not the type of folks usually portrayed in song and story as United States military veterans.  This does a disservice both to them (and others like them) and to our military.   My dad was a football player, swimmer and boxer who became an painter, art teacher, and tennis player.  My mom was a chearleader and dancer who became a medical secretary and single mom (they divorced when I was ten).  Neither my mom or dad ever downplayed their military service. Neither ever glamorized it.  My dad dropped out of Ohio State University to enlist in the Marines because he didn’t know what to do with his life and says getting shot at by the Chinese was enough to teach him what he did not want to do with the rest of his life should he get to have a rest of his life.  My mom was trained as a dental hygenist in the WACs and relates stories of her service that make M*A*S*H seem all too plausible.  My parents learned lessons about race, poverty and justice in the service that they passed on to my brother and me. I don’t think it’s any accident that my brother and I are both passionate advocates for social and economic justice.  We may not have had a perfect upbringing (who does) but equity, justice, fairness, and peace were always part of what both our parents taught us.  I know that their views on these things were shaped by their service.  So was there commitment to voting and democracy.  My dad returned from Korea to work on John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign – in San Francisco, and later worked on the campaigns of Representative Father Robert F. Drinan in Massachusetts.  He worked on the Drinan campaigns because he was teaching at a state college and saw too many of his students being sent to Vietnam and remembers  while being shot at by Chinese thinking the Chinese guys were probably wondering why they were shooting at him too.

Today, as I wake to Veterans Day in 2011, I am struck by how often in my life I have been impacted and influenced by people who exhibit, demonstrate and live out the values taught by my veteran parents: justice, peace, equality, fairness, compassion, humanitarianism and loving your enemies.   Over the last couple of months I have been doing my best to help two people who remind me of these lessons over and over.  They humble me with their courageous service to our country and their patriotism and they remind me over and over the lessons of a lifetime my parents taught me.  They serve in vastly different contexts, but the fact that I can see their service in the same light and mutually connected is, I think, again testimony to what my veteran parents taught me, and ultimately, part of what their service taught them.

Chaplain (Captain) George Tyger is a Unitarian Universalist serving with a unit in Afghanistan.  Chap Tyger is a remarkable, humble, brave servant.  He ministers in a war zone, a place of life and death where easy answers to life’s most difficult questions confront him every day and he offers no easy answers.  This goes against the grain of not only most religious practice, but against the grain of the religious answers offered by other chaplains.  In a place and in a situation that calls for courage just for showing up, Chap Tyger goes an extra step and offers a spiritual and emotional courage. He walks and talks and journeys with men and women who travel a road most of us never have to imagine.  The most difficult days of ministry for peace-bound ministers, days of death and trauma, are his every day working conditions.  In the midst of this, he offers acceptance and grace and presence.  He also shows how it is possible to love one’s enemies even when they are trying to kill you. He has demonstrated to me how to make the difficult journey to seeing the common humanity that binds us together even across the most difficult of chasms.  Chap Tyger promotes what he calls “Cigar Ministry” and collects cigars, candy, toiletries, magazines, and most importantly, cards and letters for the men and women in his care.  He distributes these and hangs out with the troops engaging a ministry of presence that he and they find invaluable.  Chap Tyger also collects supplies to help the children in Afghanistan. Right now he is collecting shoes. The winter raining season is fast upon them there and most of the children there are in need of shoes.  Any children’s shoes of any size in wearable condition will help. (If you or your church would like to send supplies to Cigar Ministry, contact me.)

Paula Smith is one of the founding organizers (there are no leaders but someone had to get the word out first) of Occupy Fort Worth.  She’ll be the first one to tell you no one is in charge at Occupy, but she has been there since day one. She took a vacation week from her job at a local university and spent the first week of the occupation in residence. Since then she is there just about all the time she doesn’t have to be at work. Since she does have to work, she goes home at night to sleep.  She respects the City of Fort Worth, the police, and all the people of her home town.  She is proud of her two sons who are also heavily involved in the movement. She will go anywhere and talk to anyone about Occupy.  She cares for the people who come to the encampment as much as she cares about the issues involved.  Occupy is about basic American values:  fairness, justice, equality, humanitarianism, and loving your enemies.  There is no talk of violence or harming anyone at Occupy Fort Worth, it is about changing hearts.

Veterans Day is one of many opportunities we have to recognize men and women who have served our country in the military.  It is fitting and appropriate to do so. It is also fitting and appropriate to recognize those who serve in other, but related ways, such as non-violently calling our attention to the values men and women in the armed services are pledged to defend.

Both Chap Tyger and Paula Smith protect and defend the values and ideals of this country and its Constitution and the values my veteran parents taught me.  I salute them both for their service. Both gave their permission to be spotlighted in this post.

Chap and Paula, You are both patriots, each of you a profile in courage. Blessings on you both. And much Love.

A Lesson in Economic Justice for the 53% from Monopoly and Occupy

Posted on
4

There are a number of viral photos making their way around the Web that point to an almost willful misunderstanding of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. These photographs have a common theme. They all feature a person holding up a piece of paper describing what a hard-working, self-made person they are and what obstacles they have overcome to achieve not success, but mere survival in America. There is a statement about how proud they are of their accomplishments and how annoyed they are at the Occupy movement protesters who, it is implied by comparison are lazy, freeloading whiners.

There are a number of good deconstructions of these photos available as well such as this one.

This “Open Letter to the 53% posted to Daily Kos is another.

I want to offer a lesson in the huge misunderstanding about our society that these photos and the Occupy movement is calling to our attention. It’s a thought experiment, but if you’re working with a group of people having a hard time making sense of what’s going on at these protests around the country, you might invite them to try it.

Play the game Monopoly. Twice. It’s best to play with at least four people for the purposes of this demonstration. The first time, play the game straight up by the rules that come with the game. If you or the participants are familiar with the game, this gives you a baseline and if you or the participants are not familiar with the game, it teaches you the game for the purposes of giving you a base line for game two.

Play a second game of Monopoly. This time (I will assume four players, but it can be arranged for any number) players start the game differently. Player ONE begins the game already owning Boardwalk and Park Place as well as all the Green Properties – all with hotels already on them, all the Railroads, and both utilities. Player ONE goes first and begins the game with triple the usual starting money and begins the game on Boardwalk, thus ensured to pass Go on their first turn. Player TWO goes second and begins the game on Illinois Ave, already owning all the Red properties – each with three houses already on them – and double the usual starting money. Player THREE goes third and begins the game on Oriental Ave. already owning all the Light Blue Properties and the usual starting money. Player FOUR goes last and begins the game with NO money and NO property on GO.

What the 53% Marine and others wrongly assume is that our society and our world is the first game of Monopoly – that we all start on a level playing field, playing by the same rules with all the same advantages and disadvantages. The reality is that we live in the world of the second Monopoly game. It is not a rigged game so much as we are all born into the game in different circumstances and in different places. That simple fact has much to do with the lack of economic and social justice we experience (or do not experience). It is very possible for player FOUR to win this hypothetical game of Monopoly, but it is highly unlikely. People overcome great odds to succeed in life all the time, and once in a while we all hear stories of someone overcoming overwhelming odds to make it.

And yet, the world as it is goes on every day, goes on with millions of untold stories of people who fall beneath the simple weight of life. They fall not because they were weak or their character was suspect or they didn’t work hard, but simply because when and where they came into the game and the way the rules work just didn’t allow for what should have been if not their success, at least their survival.

This is why people are Occupying Wall Street and parks and commons all over the country and all over the world – because making it and survival shouldn’t be a miraculous success story. Making it and surviving should be something available to everyone everywhere. People are Occupying because it’s time to change the prevailing ethos from “everyone for themselves and pull yourself up by your boot straps” to “we’re all in this together.”

You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don’t have boots.

Occupy Wall Street as Adaptive Leadership

Posted on
Reply

A lot of people are asking what Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement wants. What are their demands? What are their goals?

You can get a very good sense of why most people participating in any Occupy site are involved by reading Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
released by Occupy Wall Street on September 30, 2011.

Critics have pointed out that nowhere in The Declaration are “They” defined, but that is one of the problems with corporate personhood. Corporations have the rights of flesh and blood people, but are really just legal fictions. I think using “They” is appropriate. Some have started an online vote to prioritize a list of demands.

The fact that a mass movement could exist purely for the purpose of getting people to question what the hell is really going on here demonstrates just how profoundly dependent our society is on relationships based on power and control. There must be something to achieve. There must be a demand. There must be a purpose for struggle. What if the entire purpose is simply to raise questions?

The Occupy Movement’s greatest achievement may have already happened. Occupy is drawing people into conversation about what kind of society they want to live in, what justice means, accountability, and whether or not it’s okay for the few to profit at the expense of the many. Occupy isn’t offering solutions – yet. Occupy is calling everyone’s attention to the fact that our current two-party, corporate controlled political system isn’t providing us with answers or justice because the political parties are more focused on damaging each other than serving the needs of the people.

Occupy is leading. Occupy is performing adaptive leadership.

Occupy is forcing our society to look at problems that continue to plague us such as health care, employment, banking, corporate control of elections, access to education, the environment and asking why can’t we get any movement? If the same issues continue to pop up over and over in a system, they don’t require a technical solution. Tweaking the tax structure or making a few rule changes on campaign donations, sending a banker to jail, or passing a jobs bill here and there is not going to solve our problems. We have more foundational issues going on here. We are facing adaptive challenges as a society. We need to make structural and systemic changes so that these recurrent problems of access to health care, jobs, education, energy and a clean environment no longer plague us or are not in a critical state. Before we can find the solutions for the problems, we need to be asking better questions. What is the underlying cause of our systemic dysfunction? Why does our system continue to be unable to address the needs of so many?

Perhaps some of the questions we need to be asking are:

What are our core values as a society?
Who or what benefits from the common good not being a common cause?
Is capitalism really working for us?
Is there another economic system that would work for us?
If we explore another economic system, can we still promote creativity and entrepreneurship?
Does re-examining capitalism mean re-examining democracy?
How could democracy work better?
Is a two-party political system serving us?
How could a multi-party system help us?
How can we get more people to participate in elections?
Are there other ways to hold elections rather than first past the post to 51%?
What about rank-choice or instant-run off elections?
What constitutional reforms might be necessary?
Are all people included in “We the people”?
Who might still be feeling disenfranchised and thus not participating in helping to find solutions?
How can we best take care of our environment?
How do we promote responsibility, self control and self care?
How do we best give everyone a voice while avoiding the tyranny of the minority and the majority?

Any time there is change, it is frightening and scary. However, many people are not scared of change so much as they are scared of loss. What will people be afraid of losing if our society seriously and honestly takes a look at assessing and restructuring itself? When a small system such as a church goes through this type of systemic change the anxiety and emotion generated can be powerful enough to cause a schism in the community. When a nation goes through it, it could be powerful enough to lead to many different types of chaotic reactions. Who will manage that reaction and the change process? How can we manage any violence that might result from those who get impatient or act out and at the same time both insist on a non-violent process and watch against the claim that clamping down on the violence isn’t just an excuse to maintain the old order and keep the old structure in power?

There are and will always be those who are resistant to asking difficult questions and there are and always will be those who are resistant to change. In church work, when changes are proposed or even in process and happening we tend to hear the excuse, clamoring for the old ways, “But, but….but….that’s the way we’ve always done it.” These are the last words of a dying church – “That’s the way we’ve always done.” I hope they don’t become the last words of a dying country as well. We have too many wonderful questions to ask, too many great opportunities ahead of us to better meet all of our needs, too many creative options to better create a government of, by and for the people.

I Occupied Fort Worth Today

Posted on
2

I Occupied Fort Worth today.

I will help to do so in the coming days. I spoke to the assembly. I gave an interview. I marched. I talked with a lot of people. I tweeted the major points of the first General Assembly. I will be at my church this evening for unrelated meetings, and I will be checking back in with my fellow citizens on the ground to see how things are going.

Occupy Fort Worth is happening at Burnett Park, at the corner of Lamar and 7th Streets in Fort Worth. If you have a way to contribute food or drinking water, please bring it down. You can sleep on the side walk, but not in the park. You can NOT use a tent. The next general assemblies have been scheduled for 5 and 7 p.m. Occupy Fort Worth is on Facebook and Twitter @OcuupyFortWorth and online at www.occupyfortworth.org.
Here are some observations from the time I was able to spend downtown today.

We didn’t really occupy anything. We hung out in a park with a bunch of new friends. We organized ourselves to maintain a presence in the financial district. We took a walk around downtown Fort Worth chanting and singing. We communicated with the police who made sure we were safe and I’m sure would have kept others safe from us had there been a need for any reason. The Fort Worth police were wonderful, at least everything I witnessed. There will be some people staying in the streets (sidewalks) at Burnett Park, but people sleep on the streets of Fort Worth every night. Is that an occupation? Perhaps Cooperation Fort Worth would be a better name. The entire experience so far has been an exemplary exercise in grassroots democracy. It makes one hopeful for the way we could govern ourselves once corporate money is removed government.

We will be heard. All day the overriding thought that kept coming back to me was the slogan “I am a Man” the poor people’s campaign in 1968. The underlying political and spiritual theme was “see me and hear me.”

We are all truly anonymous. It takes all of us to be one people. There are no leaders and we are all in charge. Occupy Fort Worth proves the adage that we are all leaders. Leaders take action. Leaders ask difficult questions for which there may not be obvious answers. True grassroots democracy was in play from the stack of speakers on the list at the beginning of the morning through to the process of the first general assembly. When volunteer sheets when out for committees, people signed up, walked around and talked to each other about how to get things done.

We are intergenerational and interracial. Occupy Fort Worth gathered together people of all ages, and although predominantly white, people of many colors were part of the we.

I was the only active clergy person in attendance. There was a retired minister there, too. What a contrast from the days of civil rights protesting or even a couple of years ago when I experienced the power of a clergy presence in the struggle for marriage equality in Massachusetts. Where are my brother and sister clergy in Fort Worth? Where are clergy in force around the country? Has poverty and class become too political or taboo an issue for too many? I am far more interested in the salvation of my brothers and sisters in the here and now than I am in the hereafter. This is a justice issue. Greed is not good. Corporations are not people.

We must continue to tell our own story. A report got back to the group shortly after the first march that Channel 5 had reported there were only 30 protesters taking part. When I heard that news we were in the process of the first general assembly and there were about 50-60 people around at that time. Twice that number had taken part in the march. A number of people had left to go to work, attend to children and parents, and other commitments. When I saw a Channel 5 reporter the numbers were at about their height of the day. I just caught a another report on TV and the report was edited in such as way as to make the people on the bullhorn look angry, the numbers look sparse and an organizer look confrontational. I was there for hours today, witnessed the footage that was shown and no bullhorn speaker was angry, the numbers were much larger than reported (if not huge) and witnessed absolutely no confrontations. Beware the media’s reports of Occupy Fort Worth or Occupy (Insert Your City Here). Continue to tell your own story.

You are somebody. I see you. You are beautiful.

This is what democracy looks like.

Three reasons the OccuParty pushed the Tea Party out of the spotlight

Posted on
2

Has anyone heard from the Tea Party lately? Since the Occupy Wall Street movement has grown exponentially in recent weeks, the Tea Party has been conspicuous in its relative absence from the news.  Not that I mind, but what I think happened to them is pretty interesting.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, what I like to call The OccuParty, has found much more support than the Tea Party ever could, and has grown just as fast, perhaps faster than the Tea Party did.  Here’s Why:

  1. The OccuParty has aimed its frustration, anger and outrage at the correct target – Corporate America.  For all its populist swagger, the Tea Party kept trying to blame the government, President Obama, Communists, Socialists, and your grandma for the ills of America.  Much of what’s wrong with America is that we are no longer a nation of, by and for the people – we are a nation of, by and for corporate interests.  The rights of corporate personhood have replaced the rights of flesh and blood personhood.  This is common sense stuff.    For a wonderful curriculum on Corporate Personhood, Constitutional law and the problems it has created for us (and how to fix this situation) see The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s Danial Pennock Democracy School online.  I’m certainly not the only one, nor the first one to notice this about the Tea Party. Doug Muder has a great essay about this here.
  2. The OccuParty isn’t overtly racist. This may be obvious, but I’m still not sure that the Tea Party understands how ugly and racist they seem to so many people.  The obsession with President Obama’s birth certificate and the image of just being a bunch of angry white people really put a damper on any chance they had of being anything but a regional or fringe movement.   The Occuparty may not be perfect, but it is far cry from the Tea Party when it comes to race and religion.  The Tea Party let race and religion limit their message.   I heard a comedian on television the other night say, “When did unemployment become a crisis? When white people became unemployed.” There’s a lot of truth in that.  Unemployment, lack of health care, poverty and a host of other ills in our corporately controlled culture have been issues in communities of color for decades.  Now that they are major issues for white people, first the Tea Party (who tried to blame people of color for these problems) and then the Occuparty (who at least seem to realize that we’re all in this together, even if it took white people being affected to get everyone in the streets).
  3. The OccuParty is trying to be nonviolent.  The Occuparty has a host of issues – the banking system, corporate greed and control, democratic reform, poverty, jobs, health care, and so on, but so far it is not making the Second Amendment one of the sound byte reasons to get into the street.  This is smart. As much as Americans in general may or may not favor the right to bear arms, guns just equal violence for many people. So do targets superimposed on congressional districts.  The Tea Party may be in actuality just as nonviolent as the OccuParty, it may not be, but the Tea Party sure seems more violent to me or at least angrier and more inclined to violence.  This is another reason its audience was always limited to the angriest white people.

 

Knowing When to Quit

Posted on
3

I’ve been thinking about quitting a lot lately.  Not because I’m giving up, or I’m mired in despair, or I’ve become a nihilist.  Quite the opposite.  I’ve realized it’s a waste of time and energy to put time and energy into things that are broken and that just don’t work.  A lot of other people make this realization and are making this realization.  Demonstrations on Wall Street and in other locations are realizing that unbridled free market capitalism is not the be-all and end-all of civilization.

One of my favorite books and now my favorite podcasts is Freakonomics (the hidden side of everything).  The latest episode of the podcast takes a look at the upside of quitting.

You know the bromide: “a winner never quits, and a quitter never wins.”

To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure? Sometimes quitting is strategic, and sometimes it can be your best possible plan.

Sticking it out at all costs is not always the best choice. Quitting may in fact, at some time and in some instances, be the best option.  Quitters not only do NOT never win. In fact they have less stress, lower stress hormone levels, less negative affect over time, lower levels of systemic inflammation, and fewer physical health problems.  “Being able to abandon unattainable goals is good for your health!”

When to persist and when to quit is the million dollar question.

The Gospel of Mark reports Jesus as telling his followers to give up when people aren’t listening to them:

Then he went about among the villages teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”  (Mark 6:6-11)

 

Jesus is telling his followers not to worry about what the Freakonomics folks call “sunk costs.”  The sunk costs being all the time, effort, energy (and money) people put into something that they feel they will lose if they give up or quit.  Past the point of diminishing returns or outright hostility or failure, people don’t want to give up on what they’ve already put into something so they persist past the point where it would actually be healthier to walk away.

I wonder if we are at that point now with our economic system? Do we insist on finding ways to fix capitalism even though it only really seems to working for the richest of the rich among us.  We need to provide everyone with health care, education, food and housing.  Our current system doesn’t seem to be doing this in a way that respects everyone’s need for these basics and care and concern for the planet at the same time.  Do we have so much invested in the system, are we so all in to our sunk costs, that we can’t imagine more creative alternatives? Or is that only in the dreams of those occupying Wall Street?

 

Does God take Sides?

Posted on
3

I re-posted this graphic to my Facebook page this past week:

It generated some interesting comments, among them a question about God taking sides being the root of fundamentalism.  I believe in the mystery and wonder of love and justice that is available to everyone, no exceptions.  God is God of the rich and the poor, the just and the unjust.  However, that spirit of God calls us, as human beings, to take sides.  We are called to take the side of the poor, the powerless and the oppressed.  We are called to orient our lives and our living to human liberation.  Justice is what love looks like in action. Liberation is what God looks like alive in the world.  In that sense, you could make the argument that God takes sides or least has a preferred option for the poor, the powerless, and the oppressed.

The Occupy Wall Street protests yesterday caused me to re-examine the original work of liberation theology – Gustavo Gutierrez’s A Theology of Liberation.  I am on the side of the unions, the Occupy Wall Street protestors, the jobs bill, universal health care coverage, GLBT rights, planned parenthood, local farmers, and a host of other people and causes that are poor, powerless and oppressed in the face of Wall Street, Corporate Interests, Agribusiness, and other powerful oppressors.   Why?  My existence is bound up in the existence of others in what Martin Luther King called a “an inescapable network of mutuality” and my salvation is bound up in the salvation of human systems. As Gutierrez says:

“Salvation is not something otherworldly, in regard to which the present life is merely a test. Salvation – the communion of human beings with God and among themselves – is something which embraces all human reality, transforms it and leads it to its fullness in Christ.”

What prevents salvation? Well, sin.  I know this is a difficult term for those of us in the fold of liberal religion, but look at how even Gutierrez, a 1960′s Roman Catholic, addresses the topic.  He makes sure to connect the individual and the systemic breaking of right relationship.

“Sin is historic reality, it is breach of the communion of persons with each other, it is a turning in of individuals on the themselves which manifests itself in a multifaceted withdrawal from others.  And because sin is a personal and social intrahistorical reality, a part of the daily events of human life, it is also, and above all, an obstacle to life’s reaching the fullness we call salvation.”

Elsewhere in A Theology of Liberation, Gutierrez echoes James Luther Adams, calling on us to accept agency and the moral responsibility to create beloved community and the good.

“An unjust situation does not happen by chance; it is not something branded by a fatal destiny; there is a human responsibility behind it.”

When Gutierrez wrote A Theology of Liberation in 1968, he saw the economic injustice in South America that led Christian communities to organize for their own support against the injustices and oppression they suffered.  It was a system that led  Dom Helder Camara, Brazil’s “bishop of the slums” to say:

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

Gutierrez called the economic and political reality of Latin America, under American imperialism and other oppression a “sinful situation.”

“This characterization, in all its breadth and depth, not only criticizes the social order, it challenges all their practices, that is to say, it is repudiation of the whole existing system – to which the Church itself belongs.”

We find ourselves in the same place today in North America.  The same system that has visited systemic injustices upon Latin America is now blatantly seeking to assert itself more forcefully upon American life.  Wall Street financiers disregard regulations, conservative state governments seek to openly weaken or remove the power of collective bargaining from workers and working people, tax breaks are consistently for the rich and not the poor, taxes for the provision of the common good are increasingly considered passe, health care is not a right but a privilege of those who can pay the exorbitant costs, and education is a burden on state budgets to the point that education may at some point be only for the children of the richest of the rich among us.  Does God take sides in this situation? Does God have something to say about this maddening and perverse social order? Yes.

Love, justice and human liberation demand that we hold accountable those who enjoy great power in this social order.  Doing this makes even people in the liberal churches uncomfortable.  Doing this means questioning even the premise of capitalism itself, as if capitalism were a given constant and the only economic system available to us.

700 protesters were arrested in New York yesterday, calling attention to the need of system for liberation and justice. To date, not one Wall Street financier has been arrested, jailed, tried or convicted for abusing  the system – actions that helped in great part to cause the current financial crisis.

Protests such as yesterdays in New York are the building blocks of Beloved Community, not threats to it.  Again, A Theology of Liberation is instructive:

“The historical political liberating event is the growth of the Kingdom and is salvific event.”

It is in and through such powerful actions we save ourselves and through such events that God is made known.  Amen.