#blacklivesmatter
Illustration by Laura Freeman
For Elijah McClain (1996-2019). Killed by police in Aurora, Colo., he was known as a gentle soul who played his violin to soothe anxious animals in shelters.
If only a violin could redeem
the world.
Your skin, glowing like the violin’s wood,
might still sing its humble lament.
Photo by Johnny Silvercloud | Shutterstock
The question is: How do we broaden our bandwidth for advocating with our African American brothers and sisters while also bringing into view what is happening to Asian Americans in this moment? How does this moment continue the entire history of anti-Asian American racism? How can we expose the ways “racial capitalism” has sought to turn “non-white” races against each other?
Steve Harmon (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) in Monster on Netflix
Director Anthony Mandler's movie Monster, focuses in on a myriad of social issues — race, class, mass incarceration, crime, and the U.S. penal system — but it also is a monster movie of sorts.
Protesters hold signs at at Black Lives Matter demonstration in Omaha, Neb., in support of Daunte Wright on April 12, 2021. Photo by Aspect and Angles / Shutterstock.
Christians talk a lot about grace but we don't seem to have the same grace for everyone in the U.S. I’ve heard people say they feel sick for former Brooklyn Center police officer, Kim Potter, who despite serving 26 years on the police force, claimed she grabbed her gun by mistake, killing Daunte Wright just 2.5 miles from the Brooklyn Center Community Center where I went with my church youth group as a kid. Potter seems to automatically receive a lot of grace from the same people who say if Wright had just followed instructions, he would still be alive.
Although more politically conservative and evangelical voices are joining in the #BLM chants of “No Justice, No Peace,” there are undoubtedly shaky voices and (perhaps hostile) minds who hold that while black lives do matter “in theory,” radical institutional change is far too dangerous and subversive, if not completely un-American.
Image via Union Theological Seminary / Michael Barker
One of the reasons I liked going to church was because I loved hearing stories about Jesus. One of the most compelling, yet saddest, stories I heard was about his manger birth. As a little girl, I simply could not understand how people could allow a baby to be born in a cold barn, in a manger. I cried every time we sang, “Away in a manger, no crib for a bed. The little Lord Jesus Lay down His sweet head.” Every time I heard that hymn, I was reminded of the little girl and boy I had seen on that rainy evening. Somehow, I instinctively knew that there was a connection between Jesus’ manger birth and their inner-city life.
Image via Shutterstock/ Allison C Bailey
While many Americans, especially white Americans, expect the police to protect their privileges, they often criticize police for the tactics used to protect those privileges. While people should indeed be appalled by racialized police violence, racialized policed violence is actually a symptom of the underlying pandemic of racism — a socially constructed malady designed to protect white privilege.
Prior to this moment, new allies have preached a gospel of Jesus devoid of justice. They failed to make the theological connection that Jesus and justice are, in fact, mutually inclusive. To invoke Jesus and then to invoke justice is redundant. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we commit ourselves to the ministry of justice. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we declare the psalmist’s decree that justice and righteousness are the foundations of God’s throne. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we summon the messianic prophecy that the spirit of the lord was upon Jesus, to preach the good news to the poor, to set the prisoners free from the Roman industrial complex, and to proclaim liberty to those who were oppressed. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we remember that Jesus was convicted of a crime he did not commit, received an unfair trial, and was sentenced to a state-sanctioned lynching on a tree. The ministry of justice is the ministry of Jesus. We cannot divorce our theology from the ministry of justice. To do so is to divorce ourselves from Jesus himself.
IF I WERE MURDERED TODAY—say, shot and killed while walking unarmed through a residential area, wearing my hoodie—and my murderer weren’t arrested by dawn, my family would make one phone call. To Benjamin Crump.
This has become the African-American family emergency plan—set in motion when the “hurricane” is a white person with a gun. Call Benjamin Crump.
This is what Trayvon Martin’s family did in 2012 when they realized the criminal justice system would not punish the man who killed Trayvon. They called the lawyer who once stood on the steps of a courthouse where two white men had just been acquitted of beating to death a 14-year-old boy and said: “You kill a dog, you go to jail. You kill a little black boy, and nothing happens.” They called the attorney who, time and time again, tries to make something happen. They called Benjamin Crump.
In Trayvon’s case, Crump, one of the best-known civil rights attorneys practicing today, thought at first that something would happen without his help—since the only thing Martin had in his possession when George Zimmerman shot and killed him was a can of fruit juice and a bag of Skittles. When Crump realized there was a strong possibility that justice would not be served, he came face-to-face with what he calls “a test from God.”
“Nobody was watching this call between me and this brokenhearted father, save God,” Crump told Sojourners in a phone interview in October. “And I believe God was testing me to see if I was going to answer the bell, use the blessings and education and all the other things [God] has given me to be a blessing to the least of these. I stepped out on faith to do the right thing. And God took over from there.”
SEVEN YEARS AGO this month, Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old high school student, was shot and killed while visiting relatives in Sanford, Fla. After George Zimmerman’s 2013 acquittal for Trayvon’s murder, I wrote about what it meant to me, particularly as a father.
I wrote about the fundamental injustice of a system and a nation in which a teenage boy like Trayvon could be killed as a direct result of being racially profiled, and his killer not held accountable, while my own teenage boys would never need to fear that a stranger would target them due to their race:
If my white 14-year-old son, Luke, had walked out that same night, in that same neighborhood, just to get a snack, he would have come back unharmed—and he would still be with me and Joy today. But when black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin went out that night, just to get a snack, he ended up dead—and is no longer with his dad and mom. Try to imagine how that feels, as his parents.
Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” King’s dream failed on Feb. 26, 2012, when George Zimmerman decided to follow Trayvon Martin because of the color of his skin. Racial profiling is a sin in the eyes of God. It should also be a crime in the eyes of our society and in the laws we enact to protect each other and our common good.
Image via the 'Hate U Give' trailer
For these characters, and for many black people in America, this is the way life is. Thomas’ novel won a plethora of praise and awards after its 2017 release for combining the social realities of life as a young black woman in contemporary America with a heartfelt coming-of-age narrative that resonated with a diverse array of readers. George Tillman Jr.’s film adaptation of the book, out now, admirably walks that same line. From every aspect, the film shows great respect for its source material, with an excellent script and stunning cast who clearly care about the story they’re telling.
Image via Shutterstock/ Lucas Maverick Greyson
America’s allegiance is not to black and brown bodies. It is bound to prejudice, racism, militarism, and violence predominantly against people of color. And while Black Lives Matter rose as a voice and movement for black lives, the NAACP’s Youth & College Division amplified its voice, and black Americans across this nation cried out, the American majority kept quiet.
Image via TheNoxid / Flickr
Protestors have marched the streets of downtown Pittsburgh since Rose, 17, was fatally shot three times by an East Pittsburgh police officer as he ran from a vehicle, after it was stopped by police who were investigating a nearby shooting.
Image via Shutterstock/ Diego D. Diaz
Critics mock that success at football does not qualify Kaepernick to speak on social issues. Yet the athletes of the NFL have achieved their elite status through years of focus, passion and training in an industry that is inextricably tied to conceptions (right or wrong) of black and brown masculinity and success. They are probably more qualified than anyone to comment on the intersection of strength, fear, security, and vulnerability that undergird the state-sanctioned brutality in America’s streets.
The sacred space of the mind in black men and women in 2018 must be reclaimed, reexamined, recalibrated, and reignited for the fight that is ours.
In a moment, everything changed. Scores of police in military garb surrounded the crowd, firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. With nowhere to go, protesters poured into our synagogue and the neighboring church. We pulled them in and promised to keep them safe. Concern over property damage may have prompted the aggressive police response, but in our sanctuary, the protesters were our guests and were treated with respect.
Hate groups seized this opportunity to stir up more violence, challenging the police to violate the sanctuary and “gas the synagogue.” This truly horrifying slogan began circulating as a hashtag on Twitter, along with other racist and anti-Jewish statements.
"I have always believed that we can attain this necessary but difficult goal by getting beyond the superficial and tribal nature of our political debates as they play out in the media and the halls of power. We can accomplish that by identifying the deeper moral and spiritual values that are at stake and lie behind these debates. Don't go left, don't go right, go deeper."
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
ADVENT MARKS THE BEGINNING of the Christian year, for many. We await the return of Jesus and prepare for it by revisiting the story of his first coming. In Isaiah 64, the prophet longs for God to tear the heavens and come down, a description more apt for the latter return of Jesus than his first appearance. The longing for Jesus to return and fix the world’s mess escalated for many last year about this time and was expressed by a widely read online Advent devotional under the hashtag F**kThisS**t. (The original title was unapologetically uncensored. The originators argued that “to convey a visceral gospel, we must sometimes use visceral language.”)
There is a theology that says one day God will clean house and fix everything. In the meantime, we have to live here. Advent is about waiting and preparation. What shall we do while waiting for the return of Christ? What can we do about the state of the world? The gospel for the second Sunday in Advent calls for spiritual work, confessing and repenting sins (Mark 1:4-5). The following week the gospel suggests that there is work to which we can put our hands: “Make straight the way of the Holy One” (John 1:23).
Image via Step Facebook page
It’s a powerful setup, and the girls’ (and their team’s) journeys are inspiring. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that Lipitz is more concerned with crafting a tidy, three-act narrative than with taking an honest look at who these girls are, and the issues they face.
FILE PHOTO - Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez. Courtesy of Ramsey County Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS
After five days of deliberation, a jury has found the police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile not guilty on all charges.