Roger O Green

MLK: When Peace Becomes Obnoxious

If peace means… I don’t want it.

MLK 1956 — Per the Smithsonian: 2008-2128, Photographer- Addison N. Scurlock, 1883-1964, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. at Howard University, December 1956, from 4″ x 5″ silver gelatin on cellouse acetate bw film

When Peace Becomes Obnoxious was a sermon delivered on 18 March 1956 at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church by Martin Luther King, Jr. This is roughly the second half.

“In a very profound passage which has been often misunderstood, Jesus utters this: He says, ‘Think not that I am come to bring peace. I come not to bring peace but a sword.’ Certainly, He is not saying that He comes not to bring peace in the higher sense. What He is saying is: ‘I come not to bring this peace of escapism, this peace that fails to confront the real issues of life, the peace that makes for stagnant complacency.’

“Then He says, ‘I come to bring a sword’ not a physical sword. Whenever I come, a conflict is precipitated between the old and the new, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. I come to declare war over injustice. I come to declare war on evil. Peace is not merely the absence of some negative force—war, tension, confusion, but it is the presence of some positive force—justice, goodwill, the power of the kingdom of God.

Peace, peace, when there is no peace

“I had a long talk with a man the other day about this bus situation [the Montgomery boycott]. He discussed the peace being destroyed in the community, the destroying of good race relations. I agree that it is more tension now. But peace is not merely the absence of this tension, but the presence of justice. And even if we didn’t have this tension, we still wouldn’t have positive peace. Yes, it is true that if the Negro accepts his place, accepts exploitation and injustice, there will be peace. But it would be a peace boiled down to stagnant complacency, deadening passivity, and if peace means this, I don’t want peace.

1) If peace means accepting second-class citizenship, I don’t want it.
2) If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I don’t want it.
3) If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening status quo, I don’t want peace.
4) If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated, and segregated, I don’t want peace. So in a passive, non-violent manner, we must revolt against this peace.

“Jesus says in substance, I will not be content until justice, goodwill, brotherhood, love, yes, the Kingdom of God are established upon the earth. This is real peace–a peace embodied with the presence of positive good. The inner peace that comes as a result of doing God’s will.”

Part of the problem

My blogger buddy Thom Wade wrote this some months ago, after George Floyd’s death: “It is frustrating to watch fellow white people constantly appeal to MLK while using the very arguments used to condemn him to condemn protesters today. I remember how some folks responded to non-violent protests just a few years ago. It was not good enough. Some people in my own friend and family sphere posted disdain for athletes peacefully kneeling. No form of protest was appropriate or good enough.

“When MLK was marching peacefully, he was met with gas and beatings. He was ultimately murdered. And you are going to complain NOW? When you would not listen before? When no protest was good enough for you? You are part of the problem. Crying out for peace when peace was not good enough over the past several years? I look at this city and my heart breaks. Mainly because people want to decry the results of their unwillingness to face the problem.”

IMPOTUS squared: djt, Please GO AWAY

The breakdown of civil society?

A Mark Evanier tweet this Monday: “Sometimes, it’s great to turn on the TV and see a rerun you enjoyed before. I just turned to CSPAN and it’s the ‘Democrats impeach Donald Trump’ episode. Almost as timeless as Lucy and Ethel working in the candy factory…

The House of Representatives impeached djt again. IMPOTUS squared. I’m of two minds on this. As Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said, “I don’t think is the smart move” because it lets IMPOTUS play the victim.

On the other hand, as Kinzinger also noted, “There is no doubt in my mind that [he] broke his oath of office and incited this insurrection. He used his position in the Executive to attack the Legislative.

“So in assessing the articles of impeachment brought before the House, I must consider: if these actions—the Article II branch inciting a deadly insurrection against the Article I branch—are not worthy of impeachment, then what is an impeachable offense?”

Previously

When djt was impeached the LAST time, I thought it was justifiable. But I felt that Ukrainian stuff was too arcane for the general public to understand. I wish the House had tacked on an article regarding the emoluments clause, how he and his family were lining their pockets.

I knew that Mike Pence would refuse to invoke the 25th Amendment. “In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Pence said he didn’t think it would be ‘in the best interest of our Nation or consistent with our Constitution.'” One can argue about the former, but “if these actions… are not worthy,” then what is? His boss ACTUALLY shooting someone on Fifth Avenue?

In fact, I thought djt’s constant shuffling of his Cabinet, with many of them in “acting” roles, was a strategy to insulate himself from being dumped by A25. Then when Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, two of the four original appointees left, quit, it was probably a lost cause. (Can Acting Secretaries participate? I dunno.)

Mitch McConnell reportedly believes impeachable acts took place— “And Aims To ‘Purge’ Him.” Of course, “it should never be forgotten that the Senate majority leader is the spawn of Satan.”

What a Cluster…

You know you’ve screwed up when all four of the living presidents— Carter, Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama– called out IMPOTUS2 and his party for inciting the rioters.

Bill Clinton: “The assault was fueled by more than four years of poison politics spreading deliberate misinformation, sowing distrust in our system, and pitting Americans against one another…

“The match was lit by Donald Trump and his most ardent enablers, including many in Congress, to overturn the results of an election he lost. The election was free, the count was fair, the result was final. We must complete the peaceful transfer of power our Constitution mandates.”

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick has decided NOT to travel to the White House today and receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Bad news

There’s a conservative influencer named Tomi Lahren. I know who she is because she appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart shortly before he left the program.

She had a post on Nov 3, 2020. “If @realDonaldTrump were to lose (he won’t) his supporters will go to work tomorrow just as we do everyday. When Biden loses, his ‘supporters’ will likely loot and riot. Tells you everything you need to know! #Trump2020”. Her skills as a prognosticator need work.

I feel SO much worse now than I did on January 6. U.S. Capitol Police in shambles after the attack, undermined from within. The FBI Ignored Its Own Report Warning of ‘War’ on Capitol – Details Included MAGA Had Maps of Congressional Tunnels. Threats to ‘Storm the Capitol’ were public. Why did the police let it happen anyway?

Worse, Congressperson Mikie Sherrill says unidentified lawmakers led ‘reconnaissance’ tours ahead of the Capitol attack. There are members of Congress who bear responsibility. Republicans tried to blame the insurrection on ‘Antifa,’ “but they own every ounce of this treason.”

A very small start: Simon and Schuster canceled the book contract of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), one of the instigators of challenging the electoral votes. He whined he was a victim of “cancel culture.” The publisher has committed a “direct assault on the First Amendment,” he insists. The constitutional lawyer was lying. He knows a private publishing company is not required to publish anything.

Evangelicals should examine how they may have helped fuel the deadly siege, Ed Stetzer, head of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, told NPR in an interview published on Wednesday.

It Ain’t Over

“Trump: Nothing is my fault. Ever.” This is the headline in a lengthy Boston Globe piece by Teresa Hanafin. Like his “perfect” call to the Ukrainian president.

“Are we witnessing the breakdown of civil society?

“That’s what former DHS official Christopher Krebs thinks. (He’s the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who Trump fired because he said there was no election fraud.) Krebs told CNN that the disinformation about the election spread by Trump “created a tinderbox.” Now they have decided to hire the services of https://www.sapphire.net/open-source-intelligence-osint/ to handle of the data security.

“We are on the verge of what I fear to be a pretty significant breakdown in democracy and civil society here,” he said. He called on law enforcement to forcefully quell the current insurrection, and in the next couple of years, for all Americans with a brain (my words) to “chip away at the disinformation, propaganda, and lies that motivate and incite these insurrectionists.”

“Think he’s exaggerating? The FBI issued a bulletin to its field offices warning that Trump Terrorists are planning armed protests at all 50 state capitols and at the US Capitol — site of last week’s insurrection — starting as soon as this weekend and continuing to Inauguration Day next Wednesday.”

Check out How To Quell A Domestic Insurgency is the January 13, 2021 segment of On Point. (ht/ADD) Also, the statement by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Home, or the lack of it

what is required

I have long had this peculiar ambivalence about the idea of home. It started as a kid. Our dwelling seemed so small, the first floor of a two-story house.

I seldom had my friends over, though I’d go to several of their homes. My bedroom was carved out of the dining room with two walls my father built. When we visited my mother’s first cousins in St. Albans, Queens, NYC, their house seemed like a mansion.

But that wasn’t it, really. My grandma Williams house was hardly roomy. Yet it was the headquarters where her family would congregate. Based on photographs, this was the case for a number of generations.

It may be that my father and mother didn’t own our house, grandma Williams did. And while this didn’t faze me, I think it ate at my father. Why didn’t he buy a house? Was it that he was shut out of the GI Bill’s provisions, as many black veterans were? Could he not find a house to buy in Binghamton?

I have since found out my parents were barred from renting some places there because they were (incorrectly) perceived to be an interracial couple. Or was his upbringing such that he never thought of himself in that role?

Inkwell

Two things brought this to mind. One piece in my brain is this Boston Globe article, “Claiming land and water on Martha’s Vineyard. Inkwell, a historically Black beach in Oak Bluffs, is a resistance.” It’s about a young black woman who bought a home with her brother. And one of the things she wondered about was whether she was worthy to own a house. And not just for her, but for future generations.

Since I never owned a house before my current address – and I lived in 30+ apartments before that – I totally get that vibe. Add to that all of those stories of people who lose their homes, often to fire or flood. I see them on TV. They almost always say, bravely, “At least everyone’s safe,” if that’s true. “We can always buy more stuff.” Except that the loss of a homestead is more than “stuff.”

Or maybe not. Several years ago, there was a young woman on JEOPARDY who noted that she lost her possessions in a fire. She felt liberated. Alex Trebek appeared aghast.

OT

Another stream in my consciousness was a lectionary reading from December 20.2 Samuel 7:1-11. In part: “Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.”

In our Bible study, we kicked around the idea of what is required in a physical structure, whether in a home or a church. Someone commented, “There is something to be said about the church as ‘home.’ To strike the balance of Church as a welcoming architecture of physical materials, comforting relationship, sense of belonging, and vessel for the holy, is I believe the challenge we face.”

Of course, we haven’t been IN our church building for over nine months. The early church was in people’s homes. So do we need a fancy structure? Surely we mourned when Notre Dame burned in Paris. Or when racists torch black churches. These are not just buildings, but symbols of something greater. My previous church burned down twice in a 30-year period, and they rebuilt the current cathedral-like structure in the midst of the Depression.

In conclusion… well, I have no conclusion. I just have musings about the importance and impermanence of place.

Movie documentary: Boys State

youth politics

OK, I’ve decided that I need to try to systematically see more movies. Recent movies. Normally, I would be at the cinema a lot this month, but I’m not. Luckily, I saw this list of Ty Burr’s “Watch these 10 recent movies.”

Currently, I don’t have Netflix or Disney+ or Hulu, or HBO Max. But only since the end of December, I do have Apple TV+. I bought a new phone, which I haven’t figured out how to operate yet. But it came with a free year of the streaming service. And Boys State is available presently on that platform.

It is a “documentary about the Texas version of the one-week civics program where high school kids divide into parties and run for office.” As a political science junkie, this could be heaven or horrific. I found it closer to the former. “It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2020, where the film won the U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize.” Then it was released in August.

One may be potentially seeing “the next generation of politicians.” The program is sponsored by the American Legion across the country, with separate tracks for boys and girls. Alumni include political figures as diverse as Bill Clinton, Samuel Alito, Dick Cheney, Cory Booker, and Rush Limbaugh.

Politics, and tricks

Are the young men better than what we have now, or are they just emulating the mistakes of the adults they admire? “They are fascinatingly complex.” For certain. “Boys State shows that those [noble] aims can only do so much to keep the uglier side of that process at bay,” Erik Adams of AV Club noted.

One candidate for governor took a position diametrically opposed to what he believed because thought it would be more palatable to the constituents. Steven, on the other hand, was “a young man whose political skills are second to his open-mindedness and decency. In short, there’s hope.”

I highly recommend Boys State.

“Who we are” about race

stark contrast

who we are

Jaquandor noted, in his blog response to the January 6 tyranny, “We are who we were.”

Specifically, “The road we walk is the one our ancestors paved, for good or ill. It’s a road that leads to amazing things: a nation that helped defeat Fascism on opposite sides of the globe, and a nation that built itself on the stolen labor of some and the stolen land of others…

“We’re a nation that elected a black man President, and then turned around and enabled a four-year tantrum by people who hate that this ever happened.

“‘Who we are is who we were.’ We were racists and white supremacists and violent conquerors of people who lived here before us. We weren’t just those things, but we were those things…and who we are is who we were.” It’s impossible, then, to avoid looking at America through the prism of race.

Why is it ALWAYS about race?!

As I read conservative websites, few philosophies of “the Left” aggrieve them more than the critical race theory.” The view is that “the law and legal institutions are inherently racist.”

Some conservatives actually say we need to root out racist behavior. The trouble is that the examples of blatant announced racism they can point to are comparatively unusual.

What’s more likely is that a white Columbus, OH policeman, Adam Coy, a “19-year veteran of the Columbus Division of Police,” will shoot and kill Andre Hill, an unarmed black man holding a cellphone. And within 10 seconds of the encounter. Coy refused “to administer first aid for several minutes.”

Did Coy shoot Hill because he feared him based on his race? Can someone prove that? No, but the preponderance of unarmed black folks dying that way forces one to ponder that possibility.

You might have heard about that attempted coup of the US government on January 6. According to the Associated Press report: “The Pentagon asked the U.S Capitol Police if it needed National Guard manpower. And as the mob descended on the building, Justice Department leaders reached out to offer up FBI agents. The police turned them down both times…”

This despite the fact that far-right activists on social media telegraphed violence weeks in advance.

By comparison, last summer, “a diverse group of largely peaceful protesters for racial justice were met with tear gas, military tactics, and legions of police in riot gear.” The contrast was stark.

Difference in tactics

Ed Davis, a former Boston police commissioner wondered, “Was there a structural feeling that well, these [on January 6] are a bunch of conservatives, they’re not going to do anything like this? Quite possibly. That’s where the racial component to this comes into play in my mind.

“Was there a lack of urgency or a sense that this could never happen with this crowd? Is that possible? Absolutely.” No rows of “camo-clad and helmeted National Guard troops” watching this crowd, some of them wearing neo-Nazi apparel and/or waving the Confederate flag.

President-elect Biden saw it. “No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting…, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that’s true, and it is unacceptable.” As the article title declares, “What’s happening is white privilege.”

I just started reading The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. The subtitle is “a forgotten history of how our government segregated America.” I’ve gotten far enough to know that the redlining of the US occurred as a result of de jure, rather than de facto segregation.

I’m sure the folks at the Daily Signal are tired of what they deem identity politics. Their conclusion: “the purpose of all teaching about race in American schools is to engender contempt for America.” (SMH) No, the purpose of teaching about race is to recognize that we are on a long, and sometimes imperfect journey. We are striving to form a more perfect union, and we’re not quite there yet.