Opinion
"If you have people straining to live under the weight of a system that seeks to constantly dehumanize, then it doesn't matter how much training the police will get."
Photo by Ben Neale on Unsplash
Before I learned my town’s true history, I cared about racial justice.
How did wearing a mask become a partisan act rather than a public health imperative? Tragically, even wearing a mask has fallen prey to our culture wars and political polarization.
Men wearing protective face masks hold a photograph of Rayshard Brooks, the Black man shot dead by an Atlanta police officer, following his funeral, at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga. June 23, 2020. REUTERS/Lynsey Weatherspoon
Whether their blood cries out from Valdosta Ga., or the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, their cries cannot go unanswered.
John Lewis with fellow protestors at Edmund Pettus Bridge, in JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE, a Magnolia Pictures release. © Alabama Department of Archies and History. Donated by Alabama Media Group. Photo by Tom Lankford, Birmingham News. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Good Trouble is a timely and deeply moving film, particularly in this moment of national awakening and reckoning around police violence and systemic racism, and as we approach what feels like the most consequential election in my lifetime.
"If the Bible says anything, it says that God and neighbor both are irreducible."
DACA recipient Luz Chavez celebrates outside the U.S. Supreme Court after the court ruled in a 5-4 vote that President Donald Trump's 2017 move to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was unlawful. Washington, D.C., June 18, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Even as we allow ourselves to savor this victory and be lifted by the hope of this moment, we also need to prepare and strategize for what’s next, because the fight for immigration justice is far from over. The justices of the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of whether Trump is allowed to end DACA — but rather on the way in which he attempted to do so.
Justice is not something we form or fashion. It is woven by God into the very fabric of creation. It has been from the very dawn of time. Justice just is. Our responsibility is to let justice roll, and that means removing those barriers — individual, structural, systemic — that stand in its way, blocking justice from reaching its appointed destination.
Civil rights advocate Cecilia Muñoz was an eyewitness to history as she helped shape the Obama administration's immigration reform policies, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for the people many now refer to as "Dreamers."
The Reverend Eboni Marshall Turman preaches at High Point University in North Carolina. Photo courtesy of www.marshallturman.com.
On the 155th observance of Juneteenth, a collective of Black church pastors and theologians released a theological statement to “emphatically repudiate the evil beast of white racism, white supremacy, white superiority and its concomitant and abiding anti-Black violence.”
'We Serve White's Only No Spanish or Mexicans' sign outside a Texas restaurant. 1949. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
This history runs through, into, and over my interracial children.
Poor People's March in Washington, D.C., in Washington, D.C. on May 14, 2018. Photo by Rebekah Fulton for Sojourners.
We have said from the very beginning of our work together that our goal is to shift the moral narrative in this country. And we know that means changing who holds power.
Jimmy Carter signs extension of Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Ratification on October 20,1978.
Because of evangelical political behavior over the last several decades, it’s tempting to believe that evangelicals have always supported right-wing causes and politicians. That is not the case, and there’s some reason to believe that in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, we may be witnessing an awakening of conscience among some evangelicals. If so, progressive evangelicals could do far worse than look to the 1970s for inspiration.
Image via REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Immigrants have been willing to carry these oppressive burdens because there are no other options to make a way for our status in the system. The mantras playing in our head are the horrific echoes of a system that values immigrant people because of their economic contribution and slowly takes away their breath in favor of building an empire.
Photo by Andy Mai on Unsplash
Karen decided to leave monastic life. She found a rent-free cabin a few hours away in Colt Run Holler, W.Va. She moved in with just $100 and an old Ford Bronco. Alone in the woods, she became a hermit.
Flag announcing another lynching is flown from the window of the NAACP headquarters on 69 Fifth Ave., New York City in 1936. Credit: Shutterstock
I’ve never been more scared for my Black son, but I knew this is what we had to do.
Third-generation historian John Whittington Franklin discusses with Rev. Jim Wallis how Black history is integral to a larger American historical narrative.
Protesters in masks activists march with signs against police shootings and racism, Honolulu, Hawaii, June 6,2020. Photo by Oscar Sweep / Shutterstock.com
The phrase "Black Lives Matter," like Joseph’s request to take his bones wherever his people go, is to keep memory alive. To keep it alive is to fight for us when we can't fight for ourselves. It is to remind us that though our world may forget us, there is One who does not. So even as people shout loud “look how much progress this country has made; be grateful,” we understand that, as Angela Davis writes, “freedom is a constant struggle.”
Local residents and alumni of Yates high school take part in a candlelight vigil honoring George Floyd in Houston, June 8, 2020. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Eight minutes and forty-six seconds is a long time. It is enough time to stop, take some deep breaths, feel your body, to pray if you choose, think, reflect, and ask what you’ve been missing. That’s what many are learning as we take a knee for nearly 9 minutes at protests and vigils around the country in response to the killing of George Floyd.