Motherpain, working

Sometimes I wonder if, had it not been for women and children, would there ever be real change in the world?

Women in Liberia were responsible for stopping civil war there. Women and especially children were the ones who faced fire hoses and dogs in Birmingham, Alabama, as the South tried to hang onto segregation. College students endured amazing humiliation and some pain as they defiantly sat at lunch counters in the South, demanding to be served. Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of a bus; Fannie Lou Hamer demanded that there be justice for all, especially and including, black people. Ida B. Wells Barnett fought to wake up a complacent and disinterested Congress about the horror of lynching in this country.

And mothers, heartbroken over the deaths of their children, have been a force to contend with, over and over.

Mamie Till, the mother of Emmett Till, refused to let America miss out on what a lynched human being – who happened to be her son – looked like. She demanded that her son be sent home to Chicago to be buried; it is said that the stench of his deceased body, though it was in a coffin, could be smelled from blocks away as he was brought home for burial. That didn’t matter to Mamie, though it must have broken her heart. This was her baby. He had been lynched. Someone, no, everyone, would know …

It was those things that I thought about as I listened to a woman this past weekend in Valdosta, Georgia. There was a rally held in that city to energize and mobilize people to help fight for justice in the case of Kendrick Johnson. Johnson’s body was found in a rolled up wrestling mat earlier this year. Officials said it was an accident, that Johnson apparently died while trying to retrieve a shoe, but his parents never bought that explanation and pushed for an independent autopsy, which revealed that the young man, only 17 years old, had died of non-accidental blunt force trauma. The rallies are being held to draw attention to the case, and to inspire law enforcement agencies, including the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, to open an investigation in the case.

At that rally, a young mother approached Ruby Sales, who is keeping tab on these suspicious deaths of young black men. This mother, who had driven to Valdosta from someplace in central Florida, told a horrendous story of what happened to her teen son. He was shot by police officers, she said, and was left on the side of the road to die.

He didn’t die.

What sticks out for me is this woman’s courage, tenacity and determination to get justice. She is a single mother. Her funds are limited. She doesn’t have a high-powered attorney to plead her case for her.

All she has is her mother’s love, not unlike that of Mamie Till.

These women are what the Bible calls “Rachel, weeping for her children.” Specifically, the verse, which is found in the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 31, says, “A voice in heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping. Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

How many mothers are “out there.” seeking justice? How many young mothers are fighting the scorn of a system which basically blames victims, too often, for what happens to them at the hands of law enforcement? How many mothers are “mourning and weeping” because their children are suffering, or have died, and there has been no justice?

I realized, as I listened to this woman in Valdosta, that my role as pastor has expanded some. My heart bled for her as I listened. Justice in this country is not a given; indeed, many people have tasted injustice, made all the more painful and difficult to endure because we exist in a country that promises that there is “liberty and justice” for all.

Not so much.

As she talked, I stopped taking notes and looked at her eyes. I saw “motherpain,” a term I have just made up, but which is not a new phenomenon. She needed strength for this journey, a journey she is not going to stop, no matter the barriers and frustrations.

I prayed with her, and hugged her. Her journey and quest for justice will be long and difficult.

She is not the only mother fighting for her child. She is not the only mother who will, again, fight for justice in a world which is so reluctant to mete it out. Our world is bent on saving the status quo, which is not, in the long run, all that concerned about justice for us common folk.

So, the mothers and children will continue to be the Davids of this world, going against Goliath, with so few resources, but hearts full of love. They will be going up against a society where the Prison Industrial Complex would rather they sit down; they need bodies to fill their new prisons for profit. Justice isn’t an issue. Profit-making is.

And so, I’ll continue to pray and offer hugs to these women as I listen to their stories, functioning in an expanded pastoral role. I am learning that one does not have to be in a church …to be a pastor . Mothers and children will make change in our world, but it won’t be without experiencing a fair amount of loneliness and fatigue, and, probably, some harsh criticism from people who will want them to go and sit down and be quiet. They will wonder why God has allowed their situation to happen, much less linger on. They will need a pastor.

Because for sure, they won’t stop fighting. They can’t. They musn’t. “Motherpain,” accompanied by “motherlove” will drive them. And at the end of the day, somebody is going to hear their cries for justice.

A candid observation …

Black mothers, wailing …

This weekend, I realized anew that the work of justice … never ends.

It is what I thought as I observed the parents, relatives and friends of a young black man, Kendrick Johnson, who gathered to show solidarity and a resolve to fight to bring to justice the people whom they believed murdered him.

Even as the anger and angst over the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin simmers in this country, the shooting and killing of black youth continues to balloon with very little attention given to this growing crisis.

Early this year, 17-year old Kendrick Johnson was found dead, rolled up in a wrestling mat in Valdosta, Georgia. An early report said that he had died of asphyxiation while trying to retrieve a shoe from that mat.

Johnson’s parents, however, never bought the story and in June, had his body exhumed and a second autopsy performed. The results of that autopsy said that the youth died from “non-accidental blunt force trauma.” They are seeking justice for their son, and have asked the United States Justice Department to re-open the investigation into Kendrick’s death. So far, they say, the answer to their request has been “no.”

Johnson’s parents are looking for support and assistance as they seek justice for their son, much like the parents of Trayvon Martin have done. To that end, they have called veteran civil rights activist Ruby Sales, founder and director of Spirit House, to help raise awareness and action on their son’s behalf.

Sales sees an alarming trend of black youth being killed under suspicious circumstances, and law enforcement either being involved in the killings or turning a deaf ear to the cries of the parents of the youth for justice. She gets calls on almost a daily basis from distressed parents whose children, mostly sons, have been killed and have not been able to get assistance or answers from law enforcement or local government.

Sales and the co-director of Spirit House, Cheryl Blankenship, went to Valdosta, Georgia this week for a rally that the community held for Kendrick. I was there as well, to record what was going on. Similar rallies have been being held consistently in Georgia since the results of the second Johnson autopsy were made public. Even as they stood in the hot sun at Johnson’s rallies, other mothers, hearing of SpiritHouse Project’s work, came to Sales. Many had tears in their eyes; all had stories that were hard to stomach. “Since this all happened,” said a young mother whose son was shot by police officers in Florida and left on the side of the road for three hours, “I have developed seizures. But I can’t stop. That’s my baby. I can’t stop.”

Her son did not die in spite of being left, but has been detained in a jail for the past 17 months. He has been unable to get needed medical care, stemming from his gunshot wounds, which he and his family requested, and was not allowed to complete his schoolwork so that he could graduate with his class this spring. Before being shot, he was a good student and promising athlete. He planned to go to college. Now, said his distraught mother, he doesn’t even know when he’ll have a trial, much less get out of jail.

Many of the parents of the dead youth do not have financial resources to hire attorneys. Some have public defenders who, they say, have shown little to no interest in their sons’ cases.

Sales hopes that by getting the stories out about these suspicious deaths that not only will be the public be made aware, but will be mobilized to push for justice and also be inspired to offer resources that the parents themselves may not have.

“These are no more and no less than lynchings,” Sales says. “It’s got to stop.”

Part of Sales’ vision and plan is to train the parents on how to effectively advocate for themselves and for others. “There’s no power in one or two sets of parents complaining about injustice,” she says, “but there is an enormous amount of power in numbers of parents coming together. (Policy makers) might be able to ignore the coffin of one young person; it would be virtually impossible for them to ignore, say, 35 coffins of young people, killed under suspicious circumstances.”

As Sales and Blankenship gather stories from parents, they are planning their next steps, one of which is to get the parents of these youth to Washington, D.C. to make a statement to their lawmakers and the nation about what’s going on.

Standing in the hot sun in Valdosta at the Johnson rally, Sales remembered “Ella’s Song.” Written and composed by Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of “Sweet Honey in the Rock,” the song says:

We who believe in freedom cannot rest;

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons,

Is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers’ sons …

We who believe in freedom cannot rest.

“This is important work,” Sales said. “We cannot rest.”

I’ll be tagging along with Sales and Blankenship, recording and writing what we hear and learn. Any murder is tragic. However, however the growing murder of young Black people represents both a crisis for the Black community as well as for the nation. As if this is not enough of a travesty, police and coroners dismiss these brutal lynchings, shootings and beatings as suicides, accidents or acts of self-defense by police or individual vigilantes.

Black mothers crying for their children emit a wail that cannot be ignored. The wailing of Black mothers in this nation is getting louder and louder.

Perhaps we are at another turning point, or perhaps the move to get the stories of these killings out will change the heart of the nation from indifference to action. Perhaps, people of all colors in the nation will realize that none of us can rest until justice is a reality for everyone.

A candid observation …

The Cost of Freedom

One of my favorite books is Dietrich Bonhoeffer‘s The Cost of Discipleship. Though by the time of the Nazi terrorism of Germany Bonhoeffer was a world-renowned scholar, writer and teacher who could have stayed in America and pursued an illustrious and prestigious career, he chose to go back to Germany to fight for justice and to, in his own words, “to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany.” In Germany, he worked for the political underground movement but was soon arrested and was placed in prison first, and later, in a concentration camp. He was executed by special order of Himmler at the concentration camp at Flossburg, just a few days before it was rescued by the Allies. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Discipleship. p. 26)

I thought of him as I read this weekend of instances of injustice that are happening in our country, even as the conversation swirls around us about helping (or not) the people in Syria who apparently must worry that their leader, Bashar al-Assad, will continue to allegedly use chemical weapons against them, and while I appreciate the sentiment that we as a nation must be concerned about injustice “over there” somewhere, I absolutely know that we are remiss in not recognizing and doing something about the injustice occurring right here on our own soil.

For example, a most disturbing story appeared in The Washington Post about homes in the D.C. area that are being foreclosed upon. The story, called “Left With Nothing” shows the picture of an old man, sitting in what seems to be a barren space. The verbiage attached to the picture says that he “owed $134 in property taxes. The District sold the lien to an investor who foreclosed on his $197,000 house and sold it.” The man, the verbiage continued, “and many other homeowners like him, was left with nothing.”

The man, who is a retired Marine veteran, is old and is suffering from early stage dementia. He apparently forgot to pay the bill …and thus got caught up in a predatory system that has no regard for human life and suffering here. Judges in the D.C. area are apparently supporting this practice of slapping liens against property owners, and then, adding exorbitant legal and court fees, multiplying an original property tax debt to levels homeowners cannot afford…resulting in many long-time homeowners losing their homes and having no place to go. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/09/08/left-with-nothing/?hpid=z1)

That’s only one area of injustice that is running rampant in our own country. There is also the issue of police brutality (still!), mass incarceration, supporting the growth of the Prison Industrial Complex, abject poverty in every state in this nation, the fact that too many people are not making a living wage, and the erosion of voting rights put in place by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In North Carolina, a group of people who have been feeding people on the streets for six years have now been told that it is illegal to do so. If they want to give the homeless coffee and sausage biscuits, they have been told, they will have to pay $800 to the city every time they go out to do it. (http://lovewins.info/2013/08/feeding-homeless-apparently-illegal-in-raleigh-nc/) It would seem that there is a need for Bonhoefferian commitment to discipleship and the work of freedom …but the reluctance to even see what’s going on, much less to get involved, is palpable.

It is clear that the cost of freedom is hard work and sacrifice, two things that we in a capitalistic, consumer-driven economy do not want to talk about. The whole tax lien situation described in The Washington Post might safely be said to be the outgrowth of pure, unchecked greed – the same type of greed that has driven predatory lending companies to sap poor people of what little resources they have, trying to pay back debts that will never be paid. Bonhoeffer chose to walk away from the comfort that would have been provided him by a capitalistic democracy – meaning, that there is freedom for those who can afford it – and to walk, instead, toward people who had no understanding of how to fight the injustice called Nazism before them. He died working for freedom for “the least of these.”

Bonhoeffer believed that God grieved because of the suffering of His/Her people. He wrote a poem while he was in prison,m called “Christian and Unbeliever,” in which are found the words:

Men go to God when he is sore bested;

find him poor and scorned, without shelter and bread,

whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead.

Christians stand by God in his our of grieving. (p. 25)

Even as Americans protest against this nation intervening in Syria, a position I share at this point, we ought to be reeling with the pain and the stench of injustice being wrought here. We close our eyes, as tightly as we can, when it comes to seeing what is wrong here. If at all possible, we bypass the places where evidence of poverty and injustice is most stark. As we do that, we strengthen a far-too widespread belief that everything in America is good and right and just. We do not want to know what is really going on. We want to be a superpower with all of the glitz but without the responsibility of being such.

Bonhoeffer believed that “nationalism belongs to God and that it is a sin against him and his call for fellowship with other nations if it degenerates into national egotism and greed.” (p. 28) For Bonhoeffer, Hitler was “the Antichrist, the arch destroyer of the world and its basic values.” (p. 28)For us, whether we want to admit it or not, the Antichrist seems to be capitalism, which has no regard for “the least of these” and in fact gobbles them up and spits them out, as if they do not count.

They do.

We do.

Bonhoeffer was hung by the Nazis, but he never lost his zeal for working for “the least of these.” He understood that he work for freedom and justice is costly, and he paid the price. We don’t like to hear about that kind of stuff.

A candid observation …

HBCUs in Danger?

While we as a nation deal with the crisis afforded by student loan debt, there is yet another crisis looming, of equal importance, and that is, the fact that historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are struggling to stay afloat these days largely due to changes made in how Parent PLUS loans and PELL grants are disbursed.

According to an article which appeared in “Essence” Magazine, HBCUs lost 14,000 students in 2013, largely due to these changes. (http://www.essence.com/2013/07/22/there-war-hbcus/) Parents with shaky credit are no longer able to get the Parent PLUS loans that were once more easily obtained, and the result is, many African-American students are having to leave school because they cannot afford it, and many more African-American students are not able to enter HBCUs to which they have been granted admission because they cannot afford it.

While African-Americans have frequently been accused of “whining” in this nation, the fact of the matter is that they have continually beat up against barriers to their advancement. In the “Essence” article cited above, the mother of a student who wants to attend Howard University has battled homelessness and other hardships but has yet pushed to get to make it possible for her daughter to attend college. Without a Parent PLUS loan (she was turned down), it is doubtful that her daughter will be able to attend the college of her choice.

Some would argue that it’s no big deal; that the young woman should merely choose a college which her mother can more afford, apply, get in and be done with it. Yet that argument misses the important role HBCUs have played in the lives of countless African-Americans.

We all know how colleges have been wont to admit African-Americans in our nation. Many HBCUs were established in order to accommodate black students who would not have been admitted to white schools, no matter their grades or ability to pay. The United Church of Christ, for example, established 500 land grant colleges in the 19th century for black students; of these, six remain: Fisk, Toogaloo, Dillard, Huston-Tillotson, Lemoyne-Owen, and Talladega.

These colleges provided not only a stellar education for their students, but also a sense of community, affirmation and acceptance which the students rarely, if ever, received in their daily lives as American citizens. As these students graduated, they did so with a renewed sense of themselves and their talents, and with a belief that they had worth and something of extreme importance to offer to this country and to the world.

Being in an environment where they were not the “minority,” but were, rather, just part of a large group of people with similar goals was worth more than anyone could imagine. They didn’t compare themselves to white people; they had teachers who cared about them as individuals and went the extra mile to make sure they succeeded. College was an extension of home, yet a release from home at the same time; parents were gently nudged to let go of their children and let the college finish the work the parents had begun. It would be OK, was the message given. Their “babies” would be taken care of, even as they were expected to succeed and make the most of the opportunity they were being given.

The result of an HBCU education is often stark. My own daughter attended an all-white, private high school, but opted to attend Spelman College in Atlanta. She left Columbus a little shy and reserved, but graduated from Spelman confident and self-assured. She was, literally, a changed person, a well-adjusted young woman who had found herself in an environment where she was encouraged to do so.

If these colleges slip away because of bureaucratic red tape, making it difficult, if not impossible, for students like my daughter to attend, the result will be devastating to a group of people who have been fighting against discrimination from the beginning of our existence here. Students ought not be penalized because of the financial difficulties of their parents. African-American children deserve the same rights as white students. HBCUs have given them a venue to exercise that right, and have produced some amazing graduates.

Alumni of HBCUs need to take up the banner and make more donations. Endowments of HBCUs are critically low, and far below the endowments of major white universities. Nettie Hailes, a civil rights activist, said to a group of HBCU students who gathered in Washington, D.C. recently for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington that “you owe something for the space you occupy on planet earth.” Those who have gotten ahead because of the opportunities afforded them in HBCUs can’t forget what a gift those colleges were to them.

Sometimes, those who fight for justice get tired and want to stop, but situations like this make it clear that the fight for justice can never stop; the struggle continues, no matter what. When it comes to saving HBCUs, the struggle should be front, center …and made obvious to everyone. The fact that HBCUs lost 14,000 students this year … with the possibility of even more having to drop out because of their need for financial aid but hampered because of a resistant federal government – is unconscionable. Our HBCUs are a national treasure which have produced …national treasures, who have been able to receive a quality education unencumbered by racism. That experience is worth its weight in gold.

Ella Baker, civil rights activist, said, “We who believe in freedom …cannot rest until it comes.” It hasn’t come yet, Ella, not yet.

A candid observation …

The Power of Guilt

The Obama administration is wrestling with whether or not to get minimally involved in Syria, meaning there will be limited military strikes, letting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad know that the United States does not approve of his apparently having used sarin gas against his own people.

Fourteen hundred people were killed.

While it is annoying and frustrating that the United States is so often running to the aid of other countries, sometimes, it seems, with a hidden nationalistic and imperialistic agenda, perhaps our nation in this instance is acting out of a sense of guilt. We did nothing during the Rwandan genocide (http://spectator.org/archives/2013/09/06/the-rwanda-legacy), a fact which apparently still haunts former President Bill Clinton, and we did nothing to help the Jews who were slaughtered during the Holocaust. Not only did we, but other nations were silent as well. As a result, way too many people died. We as a nation bear a burden of guilt for our non-action.

President Obama, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said that he was elected to end wars, and indeed, much of his time and energy has been spent ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even he, however, as much as he seems not to believe that war is the answer to all issues, seems to be haunted some by guilt.”When people say that it is a terrible stain on all of us that hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in Rwanda, well imagine if Rwanda was going on right now and we asked: ‘Should we intervene in Rwanda?'” the president said. “I think it’s fair to say that it probably wouldn’t poll real well.” ( http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/06/politics/us-syria/index.html?hpt=hp_t2)

It is frustrating that the conflict in the Middle East just will not end. It is equally as frustrating that “we the people” really do not know all of what is behind decisions to go to war; we were not privy to that information in the past and we are not privy to it now. But there is something to be said for being a superpower and turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the suffering of others.

Some would argue that the nation turns that same blind eye and deaf ear to the suffering of its own citizens. Ironically, our nation seems to feel no guilt for the way too many of its own people live. In spite of the superpower image, far too many people here live in poverty, some in that predicament even though they work. They do not make a living wage, but there’s no outcry and no guilt felt about that. Likewise, there are far too many people in this country suffering and dying from treatable diseases, but there is no guilt. In fact, there is a fight against working to get health care for all Americans.

But guilt (and, probably, a hidden agenda) seems to be a driving factor in the debates over whether or not to get involved in Syria. Should Congress vote President Obama’s resolution down that would make the way for our intervening in Syria, and al-Assad continues his attacks on his own people, the guilt will grow exponentially. We are trying to make up for ignoring Rwanda and Hitler…

Here’s an observation, though. Guilt doesn’t work. Guilt only makes individuals and nations act impulsively, doing things they later regret. And, it too often turns out, the dissemination of an action based on guilt is wasted energy, because the situation that produced the guilt doesn’t go away.

It would seem that instead of jeopardizing the lives of even more Syrians, and, of course, Americans, that there is a diplomatic answer to the problem and presence of al-Assad. A boycott or some such participated in by all of the members of the United Nations, for example, might get his attention. We would be doing something, not ignoring the suffering of the Syrian people, and therefore would still be in position to assuage our guilt. A military attack, I am afraid, is only going to stoke the fire of irrationality that al-Assad has already shown. He wants that kind of fight, and guilt is pushing us to play his game.

It doesn’t seem wise.

A candid observation …