Commentary
IN BACKLASH TO historic voter turnout, as of late May state legislators had introduced 389 bills to restrict voting in 48 states in the 2021 legislative sessions. The barrage of suppressive bills has been different from previous years in various ways. The sheer number of bills, the sweeping nature of the proposals, the procedural shenanigans, and the brazenness of lawmakers’ intent makes this like few legislative attempts in memory.
“Restrict” means the legislation would make it harder for Americans to register, stay on the rolls, and/or vote, as compared to existing state law. Most of these bills take aim at absentee voting and expanding voter ID requirements. Some would make voter registration harder, expand voter roll purges, and reduce early voting. Others seek to undermine the power of local officials and, in some cases, establish new criminal penalties to target those who run our elections.
Several of the concerning bills are bundled—a big number of anti-voter bills rolled into one. Take Georgia for example. Lots of people have heard about Georgia outlawing the provision of a bottle of water or a snack to people waiting in line to vote. But there’s more. Polling sites on wheels (mobile voting) are now effectively illegal in the state. Many voters who plan to vote by mail will be required to provide a driver’s license, social security number, state identification number, or a copy of identifying documentation. Ballot drop boxes will have to be located inside elections offices or early voting sites, likely resulting in the loss of convenient voting locations. Some provisions may exacerbate existing cyber-vulnerabilities or introduce new ones. These laws will clearly have a detrimental effect on the political voice of voters of color, especially those in the Black community. Mobile voting in Georgia, for example, was only used in Fulton County. That’s the home of Atlanta, which has the largest Black population of any city in the state.
TERRITORY. COLONY. COMMONWEALTH. “An island surrounded by water, big water.” Boriquén.
In 2017, when Hurricane María hit and Puerto Ricans were left without power for months, people around the world Googled: “What is Puerto Rico?”
A strip of land 100 miles long and 35 miles wide in the Caribbean Sea. Home to nearly 3.2 million people, “proud people,” as my abuela says. It is an island of people in la brega, an expression without a translation that encapsulates “a state of mind,” Alana Casanova-Burgess explains in La Brega, a WYNC podcast series. It’s the feeling of always being in the struggle, the hustle. “It shows us something about our ‘Puerto Ricanness,’ our history, our present,” she says. “And maybe where we’re headed.”
This year, Steven Spielberg will release his screen revival of the hit musical West Side Story. It’s been 60 years since Rita Moreno as Anita sang, “I like to be in America” from a staged New York City rooftop (muddying the waters as to whether Puerto Rico was “America”). As a new Anita emerges, Congress will debate the Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Act, introduced in March. If the act is approved, then a vote will be held in Puerto Rico on whether to become a state.
IF JESUS HAD been in Bessemer, Ala., he would have stood with the workers who tried and failed to organize the Amazon distribution center there.
That was the firm conviction of Joshua Brewer, a lead organizer for the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU). “It’s everything we’re told to do—to look out for our brothers and sisters in need, that a [person] should be paid for an honest day’s work an honest day’s wage, that we need to look out for the immigrant, that we need to look out for the widows and the children and the orphans, and we need to look out for each other,” Brewer told the Alabama Political Reporter in the heat of the campaign.
Brewer was hardly alone in his belief that the Bible offered clear sanction for RWDSU’s fight. On-the-ground reporting underscored that organizing meetings began with prayer, and that an instinctively pro-labor faith steeled many of those who participated in the campaign. In longer historical perspective, none of this is surprising. From the beginning, many workers who powered the labor movement did so with the confidence that Jesus, a lowly carpenter, had their backs.
ONE OF THE most most frustrating times as a parent was when one of my toddlers would begin to cry and I was in the next room. Of course, I would rush right over. But once I got there, I wasn’t sure whether they were sick or had bumped into the couch. Between the pain, early language development, and their weeping, it was hard to diagnose the situation. I relied on a question my toddler could answer by pointing: “Where does it hurt?”
As we—adults, parents, faith leaders, and communities—rush to enter a post-pandemic reality, we would do well to pause and ask young people how the last year and a half has impacted them. Patient listening may lead to prophetic grief. As the prophet Jeremiah reminds, “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me” (8:21).
For 30 years, the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) has plumbed the best available research to answer this question for young people: Where does it hurt? CDF’s “State of America’s Children” report, released this spring, analyzes this data and paints a picture of child well-being and our challenges ahead. The information makes clear that our children have not been immune to the crises of public health and racial injustice we have faced. As of February of this year, 13 percent of the COVID-19 cases in the U.S. were children. They are hurting physically, socially, emotionally, and economically.
DEADLY SHOOTINGS IN Atlanta this spring left eight dead, including six women of Asian ancestry. In the aftermath, Rev. Byeong Cheol Han, lead pastor of Atlanta’s Korean Central Presbyterian Church, exhorted his congregation to “not just pray, not just worry,” because “it’s time for us to act.” Han continued, “I’m going to urge people with love and peace that we need to step up and address this issue, so that ... our next generation should not be involved in tragic ... violence. ... That’s what Christians need to do.”
Han wasn’t alone. Similar calls to action have been amplified throughout Asian American churches. This heightened awareness of faith and culture’s entanglement with sociopolitical realities signals a call to redefine the essential meaning of Asian American Christianity.
For many first-generation Asian immigrants, ethnic-specific churches foster communities of care and cultural preservation essential for survival. For second- and third-generation Asian Americans, our faith provides spiritual resources for negotiating a cultural identity between a majority culture that never fully accepted us and a similarly foreign minority culture from distant shores. Some Asian American theologies focus on this liminality and how God’s presence is with those stuck between worlds.
AMAZON FOUNDER JEFF BEZOS has never been seen in a top hat like the guy on the Monopoly board game, but, in every other way, he is a classic monopolist—the very model of a 21st century robber baron.
There’s at least one difference, however, between Bezos and robber barons of the past. While steel baron Andrew Carnegie became famous for building nearly 1,700 public libraries in small towns across the United States, Bezos has turned his wealth and power to strangling them.
One mark of the monopolist has always been predatory pricing—selling an item at a loss to force a competitor out of business. As the first company to perfect an online ordering and delivery system, Amazon used that advantage to destroy its independent, brick-and-mortar retail competition. As rival online merchants emerged, Amazon systematically underpriced them until they shuttered or fled to the “shelter” of the Amazon Marketplace.
Another classic monopolizing strategy is vertical integration—controlling the supply chain from production to point of sale. When streaming video became the next big thing, Amazon didn’t simply start a streaming rental service, it went into the movie production business.
THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC has claimed more than 3 million lives around the world and left tens of millions more with insidious aftereffects. It is reversing decades of progress in reducing child mortality, health inequity, poverty, gender inequality, illiteracy, and hunger. Immunization against COVID-19 is the single most powerful weapon we have to end the pandemic and reclaim lost ground.
More than a dozen safe, effective vaccines are now in use worldwide. The Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University estimates global production capacity to be 12 billion doses for 2021. This is sufficient to immunize 70 percent of the world’s population and achieve “herd immunity”—the level of protection sufficient to stop community spread and eliminate surges. Through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) program, more than 190 countries made a joint commitment to secure enough vaccines by the end of 2021 to immunize 20 percent of the population in lower-income countries.
Despite these remarkable successes, the world is headed toward two parallel realities: By late 2021 or early 2022 most high-income countries will have achieved herd immunity and made significant progress toward a new normal. In contrast, lower-income countries are not yet on track to even reach the 20 percent vaccination target. Despite $400 million in public and private pledges in April, COVAX is short more than $22 billion for this year’s budget. Rich countries have made purchase agreements with vaccine manufacturers that far outweigh the needs of their own populations. Based on the current trajectory, it will take several years to immunize enough people in lower-income countries to stop the pandemic.
ON NOV. 3, 1979, five young labor organizers were murdered by Nazis and Klansmen in Greensboro, N.C. Ten were wounded. And a low-income, African American community was terrorized. The police knew the ambush plans and chose to be visibly absent. This tragic event eerily foreshadows what happened in our nation’s capital on Jan. 6. Our country is at a boiling point. We are closer than many want to admit to losing this developing republic.
To address together growing national divisions, we must struggle with three evils: white supremacy, massive economic disparity, and a significant decline in the moral fabric of this nation. These issues must be addressed concurrently if they are to be effectively addressed at all. To do this, we need to design a process in which people can walk toward each other and, ultimately, with each other out of this moment and into a more just and equitable future.
Truth must be foundational in the process we design. Attempting to advance policies to address the legacy of racism and segregation without first establishing the truth of the impact of that lived history at the community level risks exacerbating our divisions.
IN 2019, I met with leaders from the Nahla Valley in Iraqi Kurdistan whose eight villages are both Muslim and Christian. Entire villages had been forced to evacuate when they were caught in the crossfire between rocket attacks launched from Turkey against Kurdish militias in northern Iraq. Children and community members were traumatized.
This February, border communities in northern Iraq were attacked again, this time by militants using Iranian-supplied weapons. Several rockets exploded in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. One rocket hit the U.S.-led coalition military base, killing a civilian contractor from the Philippines and injuring at least six others. Many interpret the Irbil attack as a test of the Biden administration’s Iran policy, which seeks to revive the nuclear deal scrapped under the previous U.S. administration. President Joe Biden retaliated with airstrikes targeting Iranian-backed militias on the border in Syria—killing 22 people. The minority communities, including Christians, living in the Kurdish regions of neighboring Turkey, Syria, and Iraq continue to be caught in the middle as geopolitical conflicts escalate.
THE FIRST STAGES of parenting are sometimes called “the longest shortest time,” as an award-winning podcast on parenting attests. For a newborn and a new parent, the days are dense. Everything matters.
In the United States, many families’ caregiving-rich days of new parenthood are curtailed by work. A fifth of new mothers return to work within days or weeks of having a child, often driven by financial precarity. More than half of parents surveyed who were able to take some parental leave from work said they took less time off than they needed or wanted, the majority citing fear of lost income or jobs. As one mother, a call center employee with a newborn, said in an interview for a 2018 Center for Public Justice report, “My work doesn’t pay for maternity leave ... If I don’t go back to work in two weeks, we will not have enough money to pay our electric bill.”
From the biblical account of creation through the prophets’ visions of shalom, Christian tradition presents family life as fundamental to human life and society. Essayist Wendell Berry reasoned that a good human economy is one that “proposes to endure.” The nurture of children and care for loved ones, of course, is one way our society endures.
THE TREATY ON the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the first global ban on nuclear weapons, entered into force on Jan. 22. It is a bright spot in a bleak international landscape.
Negotiated by about two-thirds of the world’s nations, the treaty represents a remarkable step toward the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Civil society, including faith communities, played a significant role in establishing the treaty and now can work to advance its reach—including persuading the United States to join. The Holy See, one of the first states to ratify the treaty, described it as “one more blow on the anvil toward the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah: ‘They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’”
The treaty bans all countries from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, threatening to use, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory. It also prohibits countries from assisting, encouraging, or inducing anyone to engage in any of these activities and requires signers to take certain proactive measures to implement the accord.
FOR MORE THAN a century, evangelical Christians in the United States have frequently and variously imagined an apocalyptic upheaval that would usher in a new world. Evangelicals have had no shortage of appetite for cataclysmic stories, though they have differing interpretations of the biblical texts that describe the “end times,” as demonstrated by the popular appeal of the Left Behind series in the early 2000s. This craving is evident in the way that Christian visions of a final battle between the forces of darkness and light have been woven together with the conspiratorial narratives of QAnon.
In the U.S., Australia, and elsewhere, the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon is growing rapidly among New Age adherents and anti-vaccination communities. However, as religion reporter Katelyn Beaty has noted, there is explicitly Christian-sounding language in QAnon messaging. Explicit examples of the blending of Christian apocalyptic language and the QAnon conspiracies can be found in web posts and books published in the wake of the alleged “revelations” of the anonymous web poster “Q.” In these texts, Donald Trump is often presented as God’s anointed, an equivalent to King Cyrus, battling the diabolical forces of the “Deep State” (a conspiracy theory that posits a hidden government working within the legitimately elected government). The Deep State—supposedly composed of individuals such as Hillary Clinton, Pope Francis, and well-known celebrities who are often described as demonically controlled—is said to be guilty of the most savage crimes, including child sex trafficking and using their victims’ blood to extend their own lives.
IN SEPTEMBER 2020, reports emerged from the Irwin County Detention Center, an immigration facility in Georgia, detailing forced hysterectomies performed on migrant women held in custody. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Ocilla, Ga., owned and managed by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company, oversaw these surgeries in what have been described as appalling conditions and an “utter lack of care of detainees’ health” during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Tragically, as too many people fail to realize, forced sterilizations are not a recent development. Rather, as a form of state violence they date back more than 100 years, when states across the country (beginning in 1907 with Indiana and followed in 1909 by Washington, California, and Connecticut, as well as many others over time) approved “eugenic sterilization.” These early laws passed by state legislatures allowed state officials to sterilize males and females—some as young as 12 or 13 years old—believed to have inheritable and incurable diseases or afflictions, including insanity, mania, or dementia.
ACCORDING TO PSYCHOLOGISTS, fairness is one of our most innate moral intuitions. As a parent, I can vouch for this because I routinely navigate the extra-sensitive fairness meters of bickering siblings. Young or old, we protest perceived slights in the same terms: “That is so unfair!”
This snap judgment, however, is not always accurate. Consequently, when circumstances trigger a reflexive accusation of unfairness, we should pause to verify that we are not off base. As Christians, especially, we must test our gut reactions against the insights of our faith to ensure that our intuitions match our convictions.
The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine is a paradigmatic illustration of this responsibility.
With a limited supply likely deep into 2021, many who want the vaccine will be unable to get it for quite some time. Recognizing this reality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has created guidelines for who should have priority at each stage of the rollout. According to ACIP, health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities have priority, and after that essential workers and those over 75 should have access before anyone else.
MARCH 25 marks the sixth anniversary of the start of the brutal and tragic war in Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition’s offensive operations, code-named Operation Decisive Storm, began with airstrikes and a naval blockade against Houthi rebels with the goal of restoring Yemen’s ousted government. With early and extensive U.S. military support, this war has created what many consider the most severe humanitarian crisis on the planet.
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised a policy reset on Yemen. “I would end U.S. support for the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen and order a reassessment of our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” Biden said. “It is past time to restore a sense of balance, perspective, and fidelity to our values in our relationships in the Middle East. President Trump has issued Saudi Arabia a dangerous blank check. Saudi Arabia has used it to extend a war in Yemen that has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, pursue reckless foreign policy fights, and repress its own people.”
Biden’s promise offers hope to those committed to peace, but his administration must do much more than help pick up the pieces. Yemen needs humanitarian aid, an end to the blockade, and good faith diplomacy.
THE PASSION CENTER is a Christian community in Pembroke Pines, Fla., about 20 miles north of Miami. The organization is affiliated with the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination, but it neither emphasizes its denominational ties nor resembles a traditional church. This self-described “holistic ministry training center” has no building, but it has a mission to keep Jesus and social justice intertwined.
The faith community was founded and is led by Elizabeth Rios, who earlier started the Center for Emerging Female Leadership in New York. Members of the Passion Center used to meet regularly for community service projects, local demonstrations advocating for the priorities of marginalized communities, dinners in local restaurants, and a monthly comedy night for their neighborhood. The pandemic shut down the in-person gatherings. Unlike many other Pentecostal and charismatic churches, the Passion Center leadership had no qualms about following the science. They had no building to close; they just transitioned their ministries online. The Passion Center is one example of Pentecostals who don’t mind getting politically engaged in justice work to further the reign of God here on earth.
Pentecostalism is one of the fastest growing Christian movements in the world. In 1980, about 6 percent of Christians globally were Pentecostal—now it’s 25 percent. As of 2014, there were 10 million Pentecostals in the U.S. In many places around the world, Pentecostalism is the predominant face of Christianity. These rising numbers are shifting Christianity’s demographic center from the prosperous North to the global South.
THE OTHER DAY, during a Zoom call with my younger sister, I said something that sounded harsh—maybe even inappropriate. “You know, there’s a part of me that is honestly glad Mom isn’t alive during this pandemic.” She was quiet for a moment, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
With untreated COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and her radical hospitality, my mom would not have listened to public health officials’ guidance on the coronavirus. She would have visited her friends to check on them, taken meals to elderly neighbors, and watched over her grandchildren, all while smoking half a pack a day.
Mama, strong and resilient for more than 60 years, would have thought herself impervious. So, Mama would have caught the virus. And, because she and Daddy were tied at the hip, she would have passed it on to him. Daddy, with his emphysema, high blood pressure, a heart that endured two strokes, and a penchant for salty, fatty foods, is definitely vulnerable to COVID-19.
But Mama died from a sudden heart attack in February 2019. Daddy is at home during this global pandemic. Our brother cares for him and a nurse checks in. Daddy is safer and Mama is no longer suffering. We, their children, don’t have to navigate the heartbreak of losing parents during a global pandemic, of not being able to say goodbye properly.
WE'D ALL LIKE to think that empathy is a primary motivator in our lives. The ability to understand and share the emotions of another feels like an intrinsically human characteristic. But what happens when society erodes our collective empathy in service of a very individualistic worldview; when the world asks us time and time again to gloss over our mistakes instead of learning from them? Who are we to each other when we stop asking questions about the impacts and consequences of our actions?
Recently the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany released the first-ever 50-state survey conducted on Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Generation Z in the U.S. The data is alarming.
More than 60 percent of survey respondents did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust; nearly 50 percent could not name a single concentration or work camp, though there were more than 40,000 in operation during World War II; and more than 10 percent believed that Jews themselves caused the Holocaust.
AS THE BIDEN administration enters the White House, it must focus not only on repairing the damage caused by four years of the Trump administration but also push forward a bold agenda using all available channels: unilateral executive actions, the rule-making process, and collaboration with Congress. Here’s a wish list for the first 100 days.
While we await mass distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine, Americans are living through some of the highest infection and death numbers we’ve seen at any point in the pandemic. A coordinated national response to the coronavirus must be a top priority for the administration. This includes a national mask mandate, a robust and coordinated federal strategy, a national vaccine distribution strategy, and additional support and stimulus to individuals, health systems, and states to address the health and economic impacts of the disease.
While the wealthy and those with stocks and investments have only seen their wealth increase over the past year, the gap between the richest and poorest Americans has expanded dramatically. A progressive economic agenda is needed to bolster and support those with low and middle incomes (roughly 80 percent of Americans). The priorities should include rolling back tax cuts for the wealthiest; forgiving federal student debt; increasing the federal minimum wage; ensuring access to paid sick and family leave and affordable child care; modernizing unemployment insurance; and introducing a budget that supports safety net programs and invests in the people and communities struggling the most.
THE TRUMP administration was an utter catastrophe for those who care about justice and peace in Israel/Palestine. U.S. policy was entrusted to right-wing settlement supporters such as Ambassador David Friedman and Jared Kushner and Christian Zionists such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The administration applauded—and legalized—settlement expansion, showing utter disdain for international law. They displayed blatant antagonism to Palestinians by moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, cutting off financial aid to Palestinian hospitals and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and closing the Palestinian Liberation Organization office in Washington. They capped it all by promoting fake “peace” alternatives, such as Trump’s disastrous “Peace to Prosperity” plan and the normalization agreements with Gulf countries. These policies aimed to appease the most hard-right policies of Israel and the eschatological fantasies of evangelical Christian Zionists, rather than seeking genuine peace or justice.
The Biden administration is likely to reverse some of these extreme steps. Biden has already signaled, however, that he would not reverse the embassy move, nor support any measures for conditioning aid to Israel based on its behavior. Biden’s policy will likely be marked by a return to the traditional policies of the Obama era, which included anemic objections to renewed settlement expansion, verbal support for a two-state solution, and vague references to international law, while resisting any pressure on Israel to actually comply with international law or create a sovereign Palestinian state.