September 18th: A Day in Life and a Reminder of Its Blessings….

 here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 - e. e. cummings, "[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]"

As Facebook reminded me yesterday morning, I have four friends born on September 18th. Like most days, initially, I reflexively prepared to move on to the next notification, but then something caught my eye and I paused to appreciate it: it was the day that four special people, each of whom has played a unique role in my life, were born and now that only three of them are still with us physically, I stopped to ponder a moment over the blessing that each has been and is. In this spirit, I’d like to share my reflections with you, in hopes both that they touch you in the present and, more importantly, motivate you to reflect on, appreciate and celebrate those in your life whom you hold or have held dear.…

I’ll start with Vinnie Wilmot, a college friend and fellow DJ whose moniker at the time was “Neon”: as I remember it, a sly reference to the reality that he’s one of the highest-yellow African-Americans you’ll ever meet. He was also one of those scary-smart people who wasn’t the most socially graceful but was uniquely capable of casually dropping a powerful observation or insight into a conversation and moving on as if nothing of consequence had occurred.

Honestly, I don’t know when the last time I’ve seen Vinnie is, but I suspect that it wasn’t this century, which means that it’s been quite a long time indeed. He’s a great example of why I’m so thankful for Facebook, despite its myriad flaws, because he and I reconnect through this medium on occasion and I’m reminded of the many, many times Neon would drop some knowledge on us or, even more often, a humorous observation, anecdote or joke that would keep us laughing for days. If memory serves, he’s in the DC area now and doing some sort of consulting or engineering or other endeavor where he’s using that powerful mind of his.…

Julie Devine is a college classmate of mine whom I came to know when she went by her maiden name, Friedli. I always thought of this as a variation of the word “friendly,” because that she surely was and is. In fact, she’s one of the most effervescent people I’ve ever known and, in her adulthood, has matured into one of the most compassionate and passionate as well. It’s funny how life works, but at college she met a high school friend of mine, one year our junior, and married him. The college sweethearts have been together for decades now and raised a family, several members of whom have attended our alma mater as well.

And there’s more to the story: that friend of mine whom Julie married is actually the younger brother of my high school classmate to whom I lost the election for the presidency of our student senate. It was a crushing blow at the time, compounded by the infuriating reality that I lost by a handful of votes but about ten of my classmates whom I considered friends had skipped school that day and missed the election: man, did that suck!

More representative of how funny-wonderful and strange life can be, a year later that younger brother ran to succeed his older one – who had, in fact, succeeded an even older one – and his opponent, now a Jesuit priest, asked me to give his nomination speech. There was a bit of a kerfuffle when word got out that I had agreed, to the point where the administrators in charge of the election actually censored my speech. But Tim went on to win and serve brilliantly in the role and then join Julie and me in Cambridge a year later … and the rest, as they say, is history: he and Julie met, they’ve been together ever since and had a wonderful life together and Tim has gone on to enjoy great success in his career as an attorney, including in its latest iteration focused on the public interest.

It’s funny how life works, but I’ve seen Tim and Julie just a few times in the past few decades, but, again, via the medium of Facebook, have come to know them even better as adults than I did when we were students together, and, even better, my esteem and admiration for them has grown even more so.

One of the most indelible memories of our last class reunion is reading Julie’s heartfelt, raw and amazingly honest meditation on her concern for our society and the role she felt compelled to play in addressing its challenges in our Class Report. As I read it, I couldn’t help but think that she couldn’t have found a better and more aligned life partner than Tim, which brings me joy to this day. I’m so happy that they found each other and that I’ve been blessed to know them individually and as a couple throughout this journey of our shared adult lives.…

The person whose birthday notice caught my eye and drew me in was none other than Jon Isham, a dear college friend who’s now a professor at Middlebury. Jon and I were cool but not especially close in college, though I shared one of my most memorable adventures with him back in the day. Since our time together, he’s gone on to craft an impressive and impactful career in academia, highlighted by his application of economic science to real world social issues and concerns. How do I know this since I haven’t seen him this century? Yep, Facebook.

In addition to his sterling and contributory career, Jon’s raised a family, shared a sabbatical year with them teaching in Africa and become an influential and socially aware and engaged pillar of the community in Vermont. But when I first got to know him, he was my club brother who lived in Central Square – which, at the time (long before it was gentrified), was considered a bit seedy – and commuted to campus via bicycle. And he always looked a little shaggy and, dare I say, ‘informal’ (read = scruffy), so I assumed that, like me, he was a working- or middle-class kid work-studying his way through our tony Ivy League college.

Wow: how very wrong I was, it turned out! Which has been a lesson that’s stayed with me ever since.

In reality, Jon is about as WASPy as one can be, the scion of a distinguished family from Newport, Rhode Island. I can only speculate as to their wealth, but what was most impressive is that it was so old that they’d reached the stage where rather than advertise it, they lived simply and humbly so as to seem without it.

But one weekend I was treated to a fabulous adventure: as part of its pledging process, our club decided to have a series of weekend road trips, including two in which I participated, one to New York City and one to Newport. The latter would not only reveal a completely contrasting picture of the one I had of Jon to that time, but it proved so indelible that I’ve never forgotten its lesson: never, ever judge a book by its cover or a person by his or her appearance. Here’s why:

We piled into somebody’s car – or possibly Frank Foster’s dad’s customized, carpeted and tricked out ‘n’ tacky Econoline van (you know, just like the one you’d expect every uber wealthy, patrician Texan to have) – and proceeded on the less than two-hour jaunt to Newport. We would be staying at Jon’s house, which, given how modestly he lived, struck me as a perfect venue for a bunch of rowdy college bros and their aspiring associates. As we arrived in town, we took a left turn onto Ayrault Street. Sitting in the front passenger seat, I gazed ahead and saw one of those beautiful mansions at the end of the street, the kind that make you look twice and think to yourself “Wow, whoever lives there must be rich as hell!” And then Jon instructed us to pull into the driveway!

How incredible was his family abode? Let’s just say that it’s the only home in which I’ve been – and Lord knows I’ve been to many incredible homes as well as lived in a few myself – that featured a central five-story spiral staircase with a glass skylight at the top that we let in sunlight so radiant that the entire place glowed warmly. In a word, the Isham abode named, appropriately, Ayrault House, was splendiferous! In fact, the only memory I have of it now, in addition to first seeing it positioned strategically and majestically at the end of its eponymous street, is that incredible spiral staircase which, for a poor boy on work-study and financial aid from inner-city Detroit became my inspiration: someday, I promised myself, I would live in such an incredible mansion.

That Jon was embarrassed to be found out was one of my favorite memories of the trip: no, he wasn’t some regular kid workin’ his way through college, he was a silver spoon scion too down to earth to ever let anyone know … until he hosted that pledging party, that is. Thereafter, I could kid him legitimately, because it turns out that he was to the manor born but playing a working-class kid on the make, while I actually was one.

What I didn’t realize at the time was just how intellectually aligned Jon and I were. Sure, we had many pleasant conversations about things somewhat meaningful to twentysomethings as well as about trivial ones, but we never really discussed our shared intellectual and academic interests. It’s perhaps ironic that Jon took more African-American history courses in college than I did, but, I’m happy to report as an adult that he, too, is a passionate student of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among other shared heroes, and is one of the most socially concerned and influential of my friends.

Not surprisingly, my appreciation for Jon has grown greatly in recent years, but, so, too, has a sense of regret: man, what a missed opportunity it was for us not to connect on our shared academic and intellectual passions back when we had hours of free time to indulge them! We chat occasionally over Facebook (Messenger) now and I find myself invariably Liking or otherwise responding to his posts, but I’m ever mindful of what could’ve been: imagine how much closer we could have been and could be as friends had we fully appreciated our shared interests and passions before the world and our adult lives took us on such widely divergent paths. Simply put, Jon’s among a select group of college friends who remind me just how blessed I was to come of age physically, emotionally and intellectually in such a fertile environment with such incredible and incredibly gifted people. I’m thankful for them every day, even though the gift of them dates to a century and a decade long past.…

The fourth and final of my friends for whom September 18^th was his birthday is the hardest to write about because, even a decade later, his passing still hurts. He was a young man of such promise who didn’t live to fulfill it fully; indeed, a tragic loss for us all.

Dominic Morabito was on my leadership team and served as our in-house tech guru. Simply put, Dom had a gift: I don’t know how he did it, but he seemed to be able to figure out just about anything having to do with technology eventually, so I both admired him as a young professional and felt undeservedly fortunate to have such an incredibly talented young man on my team.

Don’t get me wrong, Dom wasn’t an angel: as savants are wont to do, he had to learn to overcome his innate impatience with those not technologically inclined either from a skill or will standpoint. Suffice it to say that I had to intervene more than a few times with several of my most senior and influential financial advisor colleagues whom he had managed to anger with his precociousness. Yep, one of Dom’s “developmental opportunities” was to develop the ability to serve others far less gifted as well as less inclined to learn, at least about his domain of mastery. After several quite candid and even pointed conversations, he began to take my guidance to heart and thereafter was a joy to behold: sharing his gifts so freely but more effectively was an inspiration to us all.

Like most tech geeks, truth be told, Dom was a bit socially awkward. Once you got to know him, you couldn’t help but love him … but he wasn’t the easiest person to get to know, at least initially. In other words, he was an older version of my eldest son, who at the time was entering his double-digit years with incredible gifts with respect to technology, music and automotive pursuits but was not exactly particularly socially adept. He and Dom hit it off immediately, and I made an effort to include Junior in as many opportunities to hang out with Dom as I could. On occasion, I would bring my son to conferences that I sponsored so that he could hang out with Dominic and help him run the tech infrastructure that animated the event. They were both in their glory.

So when Dominic passed away a few years later after some struggles with depression, it devastated both of us and all who knew and loved him. To this day, I think back to the last conversation I had with him the week before he died in which he expressed pride in having mentored a family member successfully to make positive choices in his young life. He was really looking forward to being this young man’s older brother by proxy, a role that I hoped he’d also play in my son’s life as well. But it was not to be.…

A few years before I retired and left the company, one of my last adventures was to treat my wonderfully diverse, extremely hard-working and supremely successful team to a half-day paintball extravaganza. Even those of us who’d never indulged in this pursuit previously, or had any awareness of the huge subculture associated with it, had a blast. And I learned something about my protégé on that day: Dom was a paintballer, and a highly skilled one at that. Though we switched up the teams several times, I had the opportunity to benefit from his exceptional skill more often, thankfully, than I was subjected to it.

Someone took a picture of the two of us, mid-stroll, reviewing our learnings from the last session and plotting our strategy for the next. It’s one of my most treasured memories of him and every year when it pops up in my Facebook feed, I smile broadly and then begin to cry. I miss my friend and protégé dearly and am so saddened for all of us who knew and loved him and for the world that he didn’t live to manifest his beauty and brilliance fully. He deserved that, as I hope, did we.

But my most indelible memory of Dominic is a private one: he called and asked if we could meet, just the two of us, because he wanted to seek my guidance. It turns out that after the tragedy of 9/11, he’d been searching for a way to be of service and to help heal the wound that we all felt, lingering so long as it did after that fateful day. He had considered pausing his career and joining the military, but instead decided to become a volunteer paramedic.

In order to do this, however, he needed a favor from me: his training would interfere with his regular work schedule and he needed me to approve a modified one so that he could pursue both of his service passions. I look back and laugh a little about his discomfort asking me: he was truly nervous that I might say no. I laugh because there was never any chance of a negative response given that his choice filled me with such pride that I was honored to be able to grant his wish.

He went on to serve for several years with distinction before he met his own untimely end. Truth be told, I don’t know that any of us who knew and loved him have fully recovered since….

So on September 18th each year, I thank God for the blessing of Vinnie and Julie and Jon in my life and shed several tears for dearly departed Dominic. Collectively, they represent the wonder and wounds of life: beautiful people who’re blessings but also gifts whose term is unknown, as is our own.

Yesterday, I cried a little more than usual as I realized that Dom’s been gone for a decade now, though I’m also heartened by the continuing and ever-increasing realization how great a blessing he was in my life. So I carry his spirit forward with me and remind myself to slow down occasionally and revel in the continuing gift of his fellow Virgos, a diverse and wonderful bunch they are.

Each of them remains forever in my heart and, I hope, in yours as well, though for you they’ll have different names and have gifted you with different memories and moments of meaning. Ah, youth: that time of life when we’re bestowed with so many blessings and yet too often insufficiently mature to appreciate them fully.

While I can’t go back and change the past, I can be sure that I carry these cherished souls with me now and into the future with an ever greater appreciation for who they were and are as unique souls and beautiful human beings as well as for the profound sense of gratitude that they’ve engendered by being such blessings in this, my one and only life.…

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear

For auld lang syne

We'll take a cup o' kindness yet

For days of auld lang syne

- Robert Burns (Traditional, 1788) 

Bryan Stevenson Gives Me Hope ... and Other Reasons to Believe Right Now....

(U)ltimately, our humanity depends on everyone's humanity. ... I've come to understand and to believe that each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done. I believe that for every person on the planet. ... And, because of that, there's this basic human dignity that must be respected by the law. I also believe that in many parts of this country, and certainly in many parts of this globe, that the opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.

- Bryan Stevenson, TED Talk (2012) 

Bryan Stevenson gives me hope. Few things do at this confounding moment in our national history, but his profound and impactful example inspires in a way that I can’t fully explain … except to say that every time I ‘re-discover’ him, I’m healed, lifted, made hopeful and steeled to continue to fight for equality and justice in our country and our world.

And each time I encounter him again, I ask myself why I ever lose touch with him from time to time….

Have you seen his 2012 TED Talk? If not, you absolutely should. No, you absolutely must.

Have you seen his Super Soul Sunday interview with Oprah Winfrey? If not, you absolutely must.

Have you read his book Just Mercy? If not, you absolutely must.

Do you want to be more hopeful in life? Learn more about Bryan and his work at the Equal Justice Initiative.

Do you want to believe that we can be better (read = more equitable, just and inclusive) as a society than we are now? Learn more about Bryan and his work at the Equal Justice Initiative.

Do you want to do something meaningful to help us evolve into a better world? Support Bryan and his work at the Equal Justice Initiative (especially by donating/investing in it).

I was reminded of this reality and opportunity earlier today when, after reading the transcript of his Ted Talk (which I have viewed again last week), by chance, I saw his Super Soul session with Ms. Winfrey. I’ve now watched the latter twice and cried both times. It’s hard not to be struck, wounded and yet inspired by two juxtaposed realities: Mr. Stevenson works with some of the worst situations that humans ever experience and yet he’s emerged bigger and better for it. As Ms. Winfrey’s described him, a Super Soul, indeed….

He’s dealt with myriad demonstrations of man’s inhumanity and yet in response become more compassionate, more incisive and brimming with a hopefulness that can’t fail to inspire. He is, in a word, who we all hope to be on our best day.

When he speaks of the need for Mercy and Grace in our lives, I can’t help but contrast his constructive bent with the ugliness and evil so prevalent in our society (and not just that of those who commit crimes and deserve to be punished, but also, and perhaps especially, that of those whose presumed vengeance compounds rather than consoles). When he speaks of each of us being better than our worst mistake and therefore deserving of Dignity and Compassion, I can’t help but flash back to scenes of the abject hatred and inhumanity so broadly on display in recent months, much of it in opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement, as if any effort to recognize the humanity of any group of our fellow humans is a bad thing. And when he speaks of the Redemption possible on the other side of Forgiveness, I can’t help but think of how comfortable we’ve become judging each other across the divide while continually failing to recognize each other as brothers and sisters.

In other words, I can’t help but marvel at his ability to see and experience the very worst of us regularly and yet to have compassion for our – and his own – brokenness to such an extent that he veritably radiates Hope and Love. Again, he is who we hope to be on our very best days.…

And, I’ve come to believe, he’s also the model for our own redemption as a society/world. As is so painfully clear so consistently now, if we continue to make the choice to divide ourselves along fictitious, superficial lines, this’ll continue to accrue to our mutual detriment: really, does anyone of goodwill honestly believe that disunion due to Difference is a good strategy to achieve harmonious social relations? Does anyone among us who affirms the humanity of us all really think it’s a good idea to perpetuate and/or establish hierarchies within our shared humanity in order for us to share that humanity ever better?

Sadly, though the responses to the preceding questions may seem obvious on their face, the reality is that we answer in opposition with our behavior every day. That we continue to allow the social construct but biological fiction of race to divide us is proof of this. That we continue to value the lives of the already fortunate few over those of the deserving many is proof of this. That we can’t even engage in a civil and constructive discourse about these realities is further – and perhaps the most damning – proof of them.…

Which brings me back to Bryan Stevenson’s example: simply put, if we want ours to be a better world, we must emulate it … or we’ll continue to reap the bitter fruit of our choice not to.

And don’t get me wrong, I know that it’ll be supremely challenging and painful, wounding even … but what’s the alternative? Clearly, what we’re doing now isn’t working, and since it, too, is already supremely challenging and painful and wounding, why not take Mr. Stevenson’s contrasting approach?

No, I’m not naïve, and, in fact, am well-versed in our history of how we treat Apostles of Love and Light. But, maybe, just maybe, we’ve all heard and seen enough right now to be willing to face the pain of change to position ourselves to envision and then evolve into a better world. Especially since there’s virtually no defensible rationale for not doing so, either by maintaining this sub-optimal equilibrium or by engaging the fantasy of progress through regression into the past.…

In this spirit, then, I urge you to become a fellow disciple of Mr. Stevenson. No, he’s not God or a god, but a highly evolved fellow human whose example is most worthy of our emulation. And who among us doesn’t want to realize his – and our – vision of a more equitable, just and inclusive world?

Thanks to Bryan Stevenson, I can envision this, which is why he gives me hope.…

I believe that despite the fact that it is so dramatic and so beautiful and so inspiring and so stimulating, we will ultimately not be judged by our technology, we won't be judged by our design, we won't be judged by our intellect and reason. Ultimately, you judge the character of a society not by how they treat their rich and the powerful and the privileged, but by how they treat the poor, the condemned, the incarcerated. Because it's in that nexus that we actually begin to understand truly profound things about who we are.

- Bryan Stevenson, TED Talk (2012)

The ‘Lost Cause’ Isn’t Lost and It’s Still a Cause….

 

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

 

- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Strength to Love (1963)

At the heart of our tacit agreement to avoid the subject, we routinely engage in a significant amount of euphemism to avoid calling things what they are and thereby having to deal with uncomfortable (and often tragic) realities and their consequences. I’m reminded of this yet again because, while reflecting on the tragedy in Kenosha, Wisconsin, earlier this week, it struck me – wounded me, really – that there are many of our fellow citizens who invariably consider themselves ‘good Christians’ who’ve not only celebrated the young man’s commission of cold-blooded murder but are now rallying around him to support and fund his defense (and, they hope, his liberation).

I was moved to reflect on this even more deeply than usual because I’m reading a powerful, compelling and incisive book, Robert P. Jones’ White Too Long, about how White Supremacy has been woven into the fabric of (white) American Christianity over the centuries to become, for too many, inextricably intertwined. This history is at once profoundly dismaying and yet imperative to navigate, because it tells the truth about a lie that we’ve perpetuated to our collective detriment for far too long: White Christianity has sponsored White Supremacy, harbored and protected the racists who’ve created a system of both overt and systemic racism that excludes an ever higher proportion of our fellow citizens and is very much at work to this day perpetuating this inhumanity.

It ‘legitimated’ the settlers of our country in bringing enslaved Africans with them to the New World; as it did our Founding Fathers when they discounted our lives in the very documents that proclaimed Bowers to be a free country; as it did during the Civil War when it gave righteous cover and a supposedly divine sanction to an horrific conflict waged to protect the institution of slavery; as it did during the nearly nine-decade period of legal apartheid that was Jim Crow; as it did to the Christian Right that became so influential in our politics and policies after the Civil Rights Movement (especially within the Republican Party); and as it does now to lunatic fringe elements on the Alt-Right that seek, among other supposedly sanctified actions, a race war to result in the establishment of a new whites-only nation.

Which brings me back to the alleged murderer in Kenosha who, under the guise of joining a group of vigilantes in a self-appointed defense of (other people’s) property against peaceful protesters advocating for a just response to yet another unnecessary shooting of an innocent Black man by the local police, armed himself illegally with an automatic weapon, joked amicably with members of that very same police force who offered him refreshment, went out into the crowd and shot three people and then walked back by those very same officers who allowed him to escape and return to his home where he got a good night’s rest after his craven carnage. Apparently, some of you white folks like your property– or, actually, other people’s property – so much that you’re willing to kill innocents who pose it no threat.

And then it hit me: Just like the millions of southern white men a century and a half ago, this teenage killer had chosen to value other people’s property that was in no meaningful danger more than human life and to risk his own life in ‘defending’ it. What is he, really, but a 21st century version of a Confederate? Just like they sacrificed themselves to protect a system in which other whites could enslave Africans in ways that actually depressed the economic well-being of these misguided volunteers, members of today’s Alt Right are claiming commitment to protecting others’ property rights so that African-Americans remain disenfranchised, if now only meaningfully but not totally.

The ‘Lost Cause’ isn’t lost and it’s still very much a cause.…

No, it’s not news to anyone that racism is alive and well – thriving, actually – in our country today. We need only to look at our president to see that such inhumanity has its most proactive sponsor in the modern era in the Oval Office at present. Not surprisingly, then, we’ve seen a proliferation of racist incidents and unprecedented growth among hate groups intent upon bringing their darkness into our light.

But it is still shocking that such darkness can overtake someone so young, that a police chief under siege could make multiple statements that, in effect, blame the murdered and wounded victims for their fate and that it can all be caught on videotape as if it’s just another nightmare in our continuing national repose of unrest.

Seriously, America, who are we and what have we become?

As far as I can tell, for too many of our fellow citizens, the American Dream that they seek would still presume to dispossess others meaningfully or fully. Their vision of our collective future is one that doesn’t include me or you if you’re not a “White Christian,” a designation that I feel compelled to put in quotes because it appears, definitionally, to be the complete and utter antithesis of the example of its claimed Patron.

And yet I want to be hopeful: after all, if you look back a half-century, it was perfectly acceptable to be a racist in many white circles, which is far less true today (at least overtly so). Organized hate groups are far more on the fringe of white society today than they were then. But, ominously, still they thrive, enabled by technology to connect, coordinate and multiply mostly out of sight of the mainstream of our country (though they have been brought back closer to it thanks to the president and his minions who not only don’t repudiate but actually help spread this movement’s bigotry and hate).

That there are now self-proclaimed White Christian groups that have raised more than $100,000 for the Kenosha murderer’s defense is another indication of the twin realities of the perversity of White Christian Supremacist doctrine and how modern technology can enable its propagation in ways that both legitimate it and give it far greater reach than was possible in the past. It may be fringe still, but it’s getting awfully close to the mainstream.

Which means that it verges on becoming a modern version of the post-Civil War travesty that’s known in apologist circles as “The Redemption”: while the reality is that in the Compromise of 1877 the US Government turned its back on the newly formed and integrated state and local governments within the former Confederacy, which then allowed the resurgence of White Supremacy via a widespread and extended campaign of violence and terror, Lost Cause enthusiasts consider this a development worthy of great celebration because it represents a return to the proper order of things (i.e., Black subjugation).

Relating this to the present incident, as Andy Richter asked poignantly via tweet:

What stake does a white 17 year old from Illinois have in “protecting the streets of Kenosha,” other than the opportunity to fulfill the gun culture fantasy of hunting Black people? Law and order? The protection of property? Bullshit.

That any self-professed people of faith could see this cravenly but casually executed murderous rampage as a righteous cause is an indication of just how divorced from reality – and inextricably tied to White Supremacy – so/too many of our fellow citizens have become … which means that it’s incumbent upon us to address this head-on and draw this supposedly religious inhumanity out into the light and expose it for what it is.

Though this will be painful, we have to contest this ideology directly and listen carefully so that we can discern its root causes and then work to eradicate them … because if we choose to ignore this, not only won’t it go away but, thanks to the Internet, it’ll continue to grow like a cancer within our body politic.

Our choice is clear: either we must do the hard work of seeking to understand and then endeavoring to ameliorate this scourge of White Christian Supremacy, or the Lost Cause will continue to grow in ways that threaten the very communal life of our nation that we all treasure.

(W)hite Christian theology has evolved to play this role powerfully: to render black claims to justice invisible while protecting white economic and social interests, all the while assuring them of their own moral purity. …

This double standard exists despite evidence that white supremacists account for far greater numbers of domestic terrorism than any group and a growing proportion of extremist violence worldwide. 

- Robert P Jones, White Too Long (2020)

The way forward out of our present darkness.…

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

 - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (1963)

 

My soul is tired. The events of this year have exposed a reality that we African-Americans have long known and lived, but their ‘revelation’ in the mainstream of American media and life has both exposed ugly realities in and to our society as a whole (and especially to its white members) and traumatized us yet again: it’s one thing to live in a racist society, but quite another to live in it and be reminded of just how racist it is damn near every day….

And it’s not just us Black folks: yesterday, I got a plaintive message from a white friend of progressive bent (who also happens to be Jewish) and his laments struck a chord. Simply put, he is overwrought by the evidence of evil in our society so broadly and, now, boldly displayed and worries that his individual contributions simply aren’t enough to help turn the tide.

I thanked him for his positive example and encouraged him to keep leading in his local community … and then I advised him to “kiss it up to God” and let it go. His worrying himself into a (depressed) tizzy isn’t going to help him or anyone else, as understandable a response as it may be to our current travails.

You know it’s bad when the white folks are suffering, too….

Yet, despite this increasing sense of individual and collective enervation, I can’t relent in my personal commitment to the cause of equity and full inclusion in our polity. I’m reminded of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s reference to the “ungrammatical profundity” of Mother Pollard, whose response to his inquiry about her welfare during the waning days of the ultimately triumphant Montgomery Bus Boycott was “My feets is tired but my soul is rested.” As much as I really, really, want to at times of late, I really, really just cannot let my feets be rested ’cause my soul is tired….

And, yet, what to do?

As tired as I am, I believe that there are always three options at our disposal: we can always educate, advocate and celebrate.

The education is the preparatory hard part: we must engage fully in our world and embrace its realities, soul-wrenching as so many of them may be. There simply is no other way: as James Baldwin reminded us, not everything that is faced can be changed, but everything that is changed must be faced.

Among other things, we must peer into the realities of how we’ve structured our society and who wins and loses because of this (followed, of course, by our acting on this expanded knowledge by taking action in advocacy). There is most assuredly some ugly stuff: for example, just thinking about getting a clearer understanding of what drives so many to hate is already depressing me, but if we’re going to address the virulent racism that has always raged beneath the surface of our society – and that has erupted lately because of the immoral and repeated sanction of our political leaders – we’re going to have to get to its root causes, the factors that continue to lead to the embrace of White Supremacy.

Followed closely thereon, of course, by the examination of the root causes of all the other -isms that continue to plague our society (i.e., sexism, heterosexism, religiocentrism, xenophobia, classism etc.). In a word, this is going to suck, but it’s both necessary and required if we’re going to craft effective and sustainable solutions to problems that have both dogged and malevolently influenced our history. We can’t fix what we don’t know, so it’s incumbent upon us to learn all that we can, as painful as this may be.

In this regard, I think it bears noting that we should also fortify ourselves by exploring the good that so many do in our world, not just to heal our souls and steel our sense of commitment, but to identify models for practical change in societal evolution. In fact, I suspect that the only way that we can get through the challenging educational mission before us is to ensure that we balance it appropriately with the knowledge of positive realities that elevate and inspire. Let us champion the good as diligently and resolutely we seek to remediate the bad.

This must be followed, of course, my thoughtful, sustained and courageous advocacy, which is the active hard part of this mission. Simply put, if the world is going to change for the better, as Gandhi reminded us, we’re going to have to be that change. And even the briefest surveys of our broken world tells us that this is going to be one long and costly fight … but fight we must.

Strategically, our goal must be to seek a more equitable and inclusive society and world. Among the many things that this will inevitably entail is addressing yawning and ever widening economic inequality and a myriad of other self-imposed afflictions that bedevil the full flourishing of too many of our fellow citizens and human beings.

Tactically, in America at this moment, it means to continue our protests and especially to have them registered profoundly on November 3^rd. Simply put, all of the courageous marching in the street will come to naught if we don’t march on the polls as powerfully. As is abundantly clear, the very future of our democracy is at stake and the trend toward the dissolution of our society must absolutely be arrested, for, if we think it looks bleak at times now.…

I really don’t feel the need to dwell on the many solutions that we need to implement – from fairer tax policies and wiser government spending to repairing and reestablishing the protection of our right to vote to strengthening our educational system to addressing economic inequality and the fast-approaching retirement crisis to reducing our militarism, etc. – largely because they’re self-evident: it’s not that we don’t know what to do, but that we haven’t summoned the will to do it … and, this, too, is an issue that we must trace to its core and address. In sum, we need to engage in what the Rev. Dr. King described as a “radical revolution in values” that would lead to the establishment of a “Beloved Community.”

And we need to celebrate, a seemingly decidedly happy endeavor in contrast to the previous two … and yet it’s the necessary destination and state of grace that we must attain. By celebration I mean the full acceptance and embrace of our humanity, idiosyncratically expressed in each of us, that, in turn, should be recognized, appreciated and exalted by us all. In truth, this’ll necessitate a major paradigm shift from seeing Difference as something that separates and often repels us to viewing it as an invitation to exploration and mutual benefit and growth. Simply put, when we realize that our differences can provide opportunities for us to grow closer to each other while expanding our appreciation of our world and the beauty of its creation, we’ll truly begin to live into our humanity fully.

I could expand on what the celebration means at greater length – like, say, by relating it to Bishop John Shelby Spong’s encouragement for us to live fully, love wastefully and be all that we can be – but I trust that this, too, is self-evident: it’s not that we don’t know how to live peaceably with and love one another but that we just haven’t summoned the courage and commitment to do it. I genuinely believe that, if we do the admittedly hard work of educating ourselves fully and advocating forcefully, then this step of celebration will flow naturally and abundantly from such an effort.

Yet, truth be told, at this very moment my mind and soul are tired, so I’m going to rest them. And when I arise, I’ll keep going – educating, advocating and celebrating – because, then, my feet may be tired, but my soul will indeed be rested.…

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

 - (Perhaps erroneously) Attributed to Margaret Mead

The Stories We Tell Ourselves....

Now, it is entirely possible that we may all go under. But until that happens, I prefer to believe that since a society is created by men, it can be remade by men. The price for this transformation is high. White people will have to ask themselves precisely why they found it necessary to invent the nigger; for the nigger is a white invention, and white people invented him out of terrible necessities of their own. And every white citizen of this country will have to accept the fact that he is not innocent, because those dogs and those hoses are being turned on American children, on American soil, with the tacit consent of the American Republic; those crimes are being committed in your name.

- James Baldwin, “The White Problem” (1964)

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As we begin, let me address it straight on: yes, James Baldwin uses what we’ve euphemistically come to call the ‘N-word’ … so I’ve recorded it as he wrote it specifically to highlight how offensive it is to see (which, I believe, was his intent as well…). Perhaps in our discomfort we’ll be motivated to address what the creation of this concept and its use have really mean – and still mean – and, in so doing, to end it….

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As I’ve written previously, at times like these, when I’m dismayed by what I perceive in our society and/or world, I find myself returning to three spiritual-social justice pillars: post-Mecca Malcolm X, post-“I Have A Dream” speech MLK and post-Paris James Baldwin. Their words and wisdom comfort me, challenge me, give me hope and inspire me to keep pressing forward in my commitment to helping to make this world a better, more equitable and more inclusive place.

Last week, I turned to MLK, especially as captured in the brilliant tome To Shape A New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Professors Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry. This week it’s to Baldwin, especially as captured in the brilliant volume The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, edited by Randall Kenan.

With both of these explorations, I’m most struck by the reality that so much of what they share is still so relevant because so much of the work remains.…

In his 1964 essay “The White Problem,” Baldwin ruminates on the “invented reality” of identity – especially in the particularly virulent form in which it manifests itself in American society, that of race – and how this has negatively impacted our ability to realize the promise of our nation. As he notes:

The crucial element I wish to consider here is that element of the life which we consider to be an identity; the way in which one puts oneself together, what one imagines oneself to be; for one example, the invented reality standing before you now, who is arbitrarily known as Jimmy Baldwin. This invented reality contains a great number of elements, all of them extremely difficult, if not impossible, to name. The invented reality has struck a certain kind of bargain with the world: he has a name, we know he does, and we think, therefore, that we know who he is. But it is not that simple. The truth, forever, for everybody, is that one is a stranger to oneself, and that one must deal with the stranger day in and day out – that one, in fact, is forced to create, as distinct from invent, oneself.

In essence, Baldwin is saying that all of us individually and then collectively create personae that govern the way we interact with ourselves, each other and the world … but this choice* has consequences:

(O)ne begins to discover, with great pain, and very much against one’s will, that whatever it is you want, what you want, at bottom, must be to become yourself: there is nothing else to want. Whatever one’s journey is, one’s got to accept the fact that disaster is one of the conditions under which you will make it. … And you will learn a certain humility, because the terms that you have invented, which you think describe and define you, inevitably collide with the facts of life.

It would seem that in the “Land of the Free,” such identity creation would be virtually costless and that living into it would be almost frictionless, at least in theory, but, as Baldwin elucidates, reality is very different: as members of a larger group, including that of a society, we often have to deal with the consequences of identity characteristics that are thrust upon us by others. Isn’t this exactly what race – which has never been, nor was ever intended to be, a neutral concept in theory or in practice – really is? The “facts of life” for Americans are that race looms large and that it does so with impacts that can at best be politely described as disparate.

In other words, there are the stories that we create about ourselves and about each other, and it’s these latter stories that have a way of being used to include some and, most often, exclude others. Baldwin wisely cautions us to be careful of the stories that we construct, as we too often confuse them with reality to pernicious effect:

The beginnings of this country (it seems to me a banality to say it, but, alas, it has to be said) have nothing whatever to do with the myth we have created about it. The country did not come about because a handful of people in various parts of Europe said, “I want to be free….” (T)he people who settled the country, the people who came here, came here for one reason, no matter how disguised. They came here because they thought it would be better here than wherever they were. … Anybody who was making it in England did not get on the Mayflower. It is important that one begin to recognize this because part of the dilemma this country is that it has managed to believe the myth it has created about its past, which is another way of saying that it has entirely denied its past.

As I reflect on it now, I understand what he means so much more profoundly: much of what I was taught as a youth was the myths of our society and especially, in my ‘history’ and other social sciences classes, the myths of our country. While I can’t say that the particularly challenging aspects of our national history weren’t addressed, I think it would be a fair assessment to say that they were softened and, in some cases, glossed over entirely. Our horrific treatment of Native Americans and enslaved Africans come to mind here, as they do for Baldwin:

In this extraordinary endeavor to create the country called America, a great many crimes were committed. … I’m talking about denying what one does. This is a much more sinister matter. We did several things in order to conquer the country. There existed, at the time we reached the shores, a group of people who would never heard of machines, or, as far as I know, of money – which we had heard about. We promptly eliminated them; we killed them. I’m talking about the Indians.… I’m willing to bet anything you like that not many American children being taught American history have any real sense of what that collision was like, what we really did, how we really achieved the extermination of the Indians, or what that meant. … I suspect all those cowboy-Indian stories are designed to reassure us that no crime was committed. We’ve made a legend out of a massacre.

It’s in this context, I hope, that you can understand how for many People of Color the near-constant calls for “law and order” from our white fellow citizens can seem quizzical if not downright hypocritical: it’s easy to call for law and order when you’ve broken all moral (et. al.) laws to create a system in which you’re dominant and then demand that the rest of us respect this. So, too, with wealth inequality in this country: it’s easy to suggest that the vast differences in wealth among members of various racial communities is a reflection of individual initiative and the markets of our hallowed, well-functioning capitalist system when you choose not to acknowledge that much of this wealth was built on the backs of enslaved Africans and that for centuries our government’s policies have proactively privileged whites over the descendants of those Africans (whether it’s land grants after the Civil War or FHA redlining after World War II or…).

In fact, the denial of these realities is a defining characteristic of the society that we’ve built on top of this myth:

What is most terrible is that American white men are not prepared to believe my version of the story, to believe that it happened. In order to avoid believing that, they have set up in themselves a fantastic system of evasions, denials, justifications, which system is about to destroy their great grasp of reality, which is another way of saying their moral sense. 

What I am trying to say is that the crime is not the most important thing here. What makes our situation serious is that we have spent so many generations pretending that it did not happen.

In other words, the myth of our country has shielded us, by design, from addressing some of the structural elements that have led to the reality of it being so very different for a hundred million or more of our fellow citizens. But when the illusion of that myth is shattered as it was by the murder of George Floyd by unfeeling and inhumane agents of the state, captured on video for us all to see, it’s damn near impossible to deny that supremely important aspects of the myth like equal justice for all are anything but fantasies that reinforce our comfort and help us “deny what one does,” to use Mr. Baldwin’s phrase.

I can only hope that the peaceful demonstrations in our country and around the world – by people of all races, colors and creeds – in response to the tragedy of Mr. Floyd’s murder represent a turning point and signal a willingness to rewrite our social contract as well as the myth of it. It is perhaps sad that it takes being confronted so incontrovertibly with the brutality that we’ve allowed – that’s been done in our name, to use Mr. Baldwin’s phrase – to motivate us to do this, but so be it. Despite the unfortunate reason, let’s take this opportunity to create anew a truly equitable and inclusive society and thereby ensure that Mr. Floyd’s tragic death was not in vain.

I can further hope that one of the changes that we choose to make in creating our society anew is not to eliminate race but to expect and encourage its celebration: the former would be to deny the reality that there are some differences among us whereas the latter treats these as the opportunities for mutual learning and growth that they truly are. In this way, we’ll create a community in which it’s OK to be whoever you are and to be celebrated for this idiosyncrasy rather than denigrated for it. When this day comes, we’ll truly be living into our foundational creed that all of us can indeed experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as God-given endowments to be enjoyed individually and shared collectively.…

Thus spake Zarathustra to himself while ascending, comforting his heart with harsh maxims: for he was sore at heart as he had never been before. …

 

Before my highest mountain do I stand, and before my longest wandering: therefore must I first go deeper down than I ever ascended: – Deeper down into pain than I ever ascended, even into its darkest flood! So willeth my fate. Well! I am ready.

 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Wanderer,”
Thus Spake Tharathustra (1885)

*  I'm reminded here of the excellent work of Prof. Kenji Yoshino in exploring the consequences of identity constructs in the context of individuals navigating their affiliations with larger groups. Specifically, I recommend his book Covering highly: it thoughtfully and incisively lays bare the challenge of ‘fitting in’ and the costs, psychological and otherwise, associated with this fundamental human behavior driven by the desire and need to belong.

What Price Freedom?

Americans are the youngest country, the largest country, and the strongest country, we like to say, and yet the very notion of change, real change, throws Americans into a panic and they look for any label to get rid of any dissenter. A country which is supposed to be built on dissent, built on the value of the individual, now distrust dissent as least as much as any totalitarian government can and debases the individual in many ways because it places security and money above the individual; and when these things are cultivated and honored in the country, no matter what else it may have, it is in danger of perishing, because no country can survive, it cannot survive, without a patient, active responsibility for all its citizens. 

- James Baldwin, “What Price Freedom” (1964)

At times like these, when I’m dismayed by what I perceive in our society and/or world, I find myself returning to three spiritual-social justice pillars: post-Mecca Malcolm X, post-“I Have A Dream” speech MLK and post-Paris James Baldwin. Their words and wisdom comfort me, challenge me, give me hope and inspire me to keep pressing forward in my commitment to helping to make this world a better, more equitable and more inclusive place.

Last week, I turned to MLK, especially as captured in the brilliant tome To Shape A New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Professors Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry. This week it’s to Baldwin, especially as captured in the brilliant volume The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, edited by Randall Kenan.

With both of these explorations, I’m most struck by the reality that so much of what they share is still so relevant because so much of the work remains.…

For example, consider this from Mr. Baldwin’s essay “What Price Freedom?”:

I was trying to a suggest before that what the country has done to one-tenth of its citizens has had a disastrous effect on the country. It is obvious – or maybe it is not so obvious, as it seems to be a controversial point, but it seems to me obvious – that if you are intending to establish, to live in, to create a democracy, then you have a responsibility to all of your citizens. It would seem obvious to me that any son, any native son or daughter, has all the rights than any other native son or daughter has.

It’s bad enough for this not to be so; that’s bad enough. But what is really much worse is the system of lies, evasions, and naked oppression designed to pretend this isn’t so. … (T)he militancy and the vitality that I heard … today come from the kind of energy which allows you, which in fact forces you, to examine everything, taking nothing for granted. … It is a vitality, in short, which allows you to believe, to act on the belief, that it is your country, and your responsibility to your country is to free it, and to free it you have to change it.

Yes, fifty-six years after he wrote this, it’s none the less true as the unprecedented social unrest that we’re experiencing at present reminds us. There is not and never has been true equality in this country, as the disproportionate deaths of African-Americans have demonstrated since before its founding. Before the first half of the 20^th century, we were enslaved for hundreds of years and then subjected to a perfectly legal though morally indefensible apartheid for the better part of another hundred years during which millions of us died and untold thousands of us were lynched, either by private actors or the state. Since the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, the killing has continued, especially at the hands of those sworn to serve and protect us, as was the case with Jimmie Lee Jackson in 1965 or with Amadou Diallo at the end of the last millennium or with Eric Garner, Alton Sterling and Sandra Bland just a few years ago or with George Floyd last week.

That #DeathByPolice is really a thing in our society, especially for unarmed African-Americans, is both an indictment of us – or, to use Mr. Baldwin’s words, “part of the system of lies, evasions, and naked oppression designed to pretend this isn’t so” – as well as proof of the difficult, transformational work that each of us has left to do – or, again quoting him, that we must “act on the belief, that it is your country, and your responsibility to your country is to free it, and to free it you have to change it.” How profound the need for change remains.…

And doubtless many of us feel now like he did then:

I am going to take my freedom. That problem is resolved. The real problem is the price. Not the price I will pay, but the price the country will pay.

And why will this price likely be prohibitive?

People are as free as they wish to become. If one thinks of Americans in this way, “freedom” is used here as a synonym for “comfort.” People think they are free because they don’t have a military machine oppressing them.…

And, yet, as has been evident in our nation’s capital this week, in fact, we are beginning to experience this type of oppression in response to our primary need for comfort, in this case expressed as the growing outrage over the modest amount of rioting and property damage in many cities, which stands in contrast to the overwhelmingly peaceful protests and yet furnishes a convenient excuse for so many to look beyond the appalling structural causes of the present unrest.

Or, as Mr. Baldwin put it:

I still believe when our country has lost all human feeling you can do anything to anybody and justify it and we do know that in this country we have done just that.

How do we know that our country has “lost all human feeling”? One indication is certainly when its ostensible leader conflates a fake economic statistic with the supposed approval of a man just murdered by the police in one of our major cities. How craven and inhumane is it to suggest that a man who would undoubtedly prefer to be alive still would even care about an incorrect economic indicator that, when parsed, actually reveals that members of his community are experiencing heightened disadvantage?

And yet I choose to remain hopeful, including because so many of the so-called silent majority seem to have been awakened by this latest demonstration of the profound cruelty and inequality at the core of our society and, in addition to supporting the cause of protest philosophically, have actually joined us in the streets in peaceful solidarity with our demand that the nation live up to and into its constitutional creeds. Intriguingly, as with the Civil Rights Movement, young people of all hues and backgrounds and aspirations have rallied to this emanicipational cause, and yet they have also been joined by far more of their elders, many of them children of the 1960s, who feel compelled to finish the work left uncompleted since their own youth.

(Of course, this wouldn’t be modern America if there weren’t a lesser but nonetheless troubling ‘innovation’ amidst our civil unrest: the craven, immoral and anti-social behavior of groups of far-right agitators who’ve been identified as inciting the resulting rioting in order to promote Accelerationism, which is their desire to provoke a race war in our country [that they assume they’ll win and then be able to install and govern a white supremacist state thereafter]. That Accelerationism, too, is really a thing in our society is also an indictment of us as well as a dispiriting reminder of just how much work there is left to do.)

What I value most about James Baldwin is that he always kept it real, as we say today. This made many people – some of Color but a vast majority of those who were white – very uncomfortable in his time, as, no doubt, it would do today were they to examine and consider his perspectives and prescriptions. So, for some if not many, they can’t see Baldwin as a bridge to our better future. But I do: as he noted, not every challenge that is faced can be changed, but everything that is changed must first be faced. In this way, his clarion call to truth beckons me initially to greater clarity and then, most importantly, to action, firmly grounded in the world as it is and on our way to how we want it and, hopefully, will make it, to be….

(N)ow we have seen with our own eyes the danger we are in. We have seen with our own eyes what happens to a society when it allows itself to be ruled by the least able in the most abject among us. We have seen what happens when the word “democracy” is taken to be a synonym for mediocrity; is not taken to mean to raise all of its members to the highest possible level, but on the contrary to reduce such members as aspire to excellence down to the lowest common denominator.

- James Baldwin, “What Price Freedom” (1964)

Yes, he can go lower, but we must go higher ... to the polls!

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands

in moments of comfort and convenience,

but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige,

and even his life for the welfare of others.

- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Strength to Love (1963)

A new low … until the next one that is….

You think that we would have learned not to underestimate his inhumanity by now: what is this, like, the 7,842^nd new low? (Or is it the 29,712^th? I’ve lost count.) Yes, that was the President of the United States having peaceful demonstrators tear-gassed so that he could stage a photo-op by standing in front of a boarded-up church and holding the Bible so awkwardly that you know that he has no familiarity with it whatsoever. Two Corinthians, indeed.…

On one level, of course I’m outraged: what decent human being isn’t or can’t be by such a fundamentally disrespectful and craven act? But on another sadder, more resigned level, I’m just tired: tired of the inhumanity, tired of the immorality and tired of the immolation of the country that we hold dear.…

So how do you respond to such a sickening act of depravity and the abdication of leadership? Not in kind. As angry as any of us may be, let’s not give him the excuse to focus on anyone else’s lawless behavior. And I’m mindful that there are right-wing groups mixing in with the legitimate protesters, committing acts of vandalism and trying to incite even greater chaos: film them, call them out and then let them go.

Then get back to the business that should be our primary focus for the next five months and a day: getting as many fellow citizens registered to vote and then marching in massive protests on Tuesday, November 3^rd, to the place where we can truly be heard: the polls. Truth be told, it almost doesn’t matter what happens between now and then, as long as every single person in the streets now and every person of good conscience shows up on November 3^rd.

Don’t get me wrong, I realize that there will be plenty of new lows and deliberate provocations between now and then, but we have to ignore them: to engage with this depraved inhuman and his enablers is both a complete waste of time – as is painfully, lethally clear, they’re not going to change – and a distraction from our singular focus, which is to restore some modicum of decency to our executive and legislative branches on November 3^rd and to their judicial counterpart thereafter.

As with so many other things in modern American life, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was correct in observing that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” But, as usual, we’ve chosen to remember the phrase and not the full context in which it was uttered. Here’s what the Rev. Dr. King said in a September, 1966, interview with Mike Wallace of CBS News:

I will never change in my basic idea that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and justice. I think for the Negro to turn to violence would be both impractical and immoral.

And I contend that the cry of Black Power is at bottom a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro.

I think we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.

As I find myself doing so often in adult life when mystified and saddened by our world, I turn to Dr. King … so this current conflagration is no different: I can find solace only in his incision and guidance.

Yes, it’s sad – maddening, even – that what he expressed more than a half-century ago is still true: that violence is both impractical and immoral as a long-term strategy for social change, that the largely white power structure in our country has made too few of the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the vast majority of African-Americans and that, in light of record economic inequality, the plight of poor People of Color has worsened in recent years (on a relative basis for sure, and, by some measures, on an absolute one).

But we have to be smarter and better in our response to the injustice we experience and to that, more broadly, that all of the dispossessed experience, especially as nefarious groups whose agendas include provoking a race war have organized to incite disorder and violence that seem to flow so naturally when pent-up anger is released. In sum, as Dr. King advised so long ago – and so frustratingly to so many at the time – we have to respond forcefully and yet nonviolently to the continuing, unaddressed injustice and inequality in our society. And the best nonviolent protest is to vote.…

Let’s not get it twisted: we are indeed experiencing the most inept, corrupt and immoral administration in memory and likely in history, but the solution to this most vexing of short-term challenges has to be the ballot box. Peaceful protest is a great thing, both to summon and demonstrate humane solidarity, but it’s still secondary to the ballot box.

And violent protest? Let’s just not: in the end, it distracts from the real issue – the profound inequality and injustice in our society – and enables corrupt elites – and even those who think of themselves as reasonable – to focus on the wrong thing and thereby avoid responsibility for engaging to address its cause.

Especially in this moment, we cannot be provoked into providing a distraction and an excuse for this administration to expand its inhumanity. In fact, I would argue, that given its track record, we should pretty much disregard it for the next five months and focus solely on registering every eligible adult in this country and having them all turn out on November 3^rd. Nothing else will matter as much as this, now or in the future.…

I abhor our president and his enablers. Shame on us that we’ve given them the ultimate seat of governmental power. But we can learn from this mistake and change this unfortunate reality on November 3^rd. So, if you’re called to march in the streets peacefully today or any day, great: please do so. By contrast, if you’re called to be disruptive in a violent way, please don’t: each such action provides justification for the continued immorality of the current regime. So whether you feel compelled to express yourself peacefully or not, be aware that the most important time for you to express yourself is in five months and a day and that the most important place to do so is at the polls.

As long as we can keep it peaceful, I’ll see you in the streets. But for the love of each other and this country, we must see each other again – all of us – on November 3^rd. If every single one of us exercises his/her/our right of expression on that day, then it’ll be the greatest protest in American history and, more than this, the beginning of a new American Dream, one that includes us all.…

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate,

adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness;

only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate,

only love can do that.

- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Strength to Love (1963)