Wednesday, April 18, 2018

ONE YEAR LATER


                                                            ONE YEAR LATER
Justice Is a Verb!
©Wendell Griffen, 2018
April 18, 2018

            One year ago I and other members of New Millennium Church took part in a peaceful and reverent Good Friday prayer vigil outside the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion to express our moral and religious opposition to capital punishment and our solidarity with Jesus of Galilee, the leader of our faith who was put to death by crucifixion at the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Palestine.  We remembered that Jesus was a subject of capital punishment.   

On the following Monday (April 17, 2017), the Arkansas Supreme Court permanently banned me from all civil and criminal cases involving capital punishment, the death penalty, or the method of execution in Arkansas.  So last October, I filed a civil rights lawsuit against each member of the Arkansas Supreme Court in federal court. 

In that lawsuit, I challenged the permanent ban issued by the justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court as a violation of my First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and freedom to exercise my religion, and my Fourteenth Amendment right to due process of law (because I was not given notice nor a hearing before it was imposed).  I also challenged the permanent ban as a violation of my Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law (because it is more severe than punishment imposed to white judges who committed notorious and illegal conduct such as accepting a bribe, drunken and reckless driving, and demanding and accepting sexual favors from defendants in exchange for issuing lenient sentences).  And I challenged the permanent ban because it resulted from conspiracy by the justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court and others to deprive me of the powers of my elected office based on animosity against me because I am African-American.   

On April 12, 2018, the federal court ruled that my lawsuit asserts factually plausible claims that the justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court violated my rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom to exercise my religion, due process of law, and equal protection under the law.  The federal court also ruled that my lawsuit asserts a factually plausible claim that the permanent ban issued by the justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court resulted from an illegal civil conspiracy to deprive me of my right to equal protection under the law.  Now my lawyers will uncover and expose the facts that bear out my legal claims, facts that the justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court and others are desperate to hide. 

I am as committed to the rule of law today as I was a year ago, if not more so.  I am as committed to holding and expressing my moral and religious opposition to the death penalty as I was a year ago, if not more so.  That is why I joined other members of New Millennium Church last night (April 17, 2018) in attending another peaceful and reverent vigil and demonstration outside the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion.  Again, I lay on a cot in silent prayer.  Again, I had my Bible.  Again, I wore a button calling for an end to the death penalty. 

Arkansas law makes death by lethal injection one of two alternative punishments for capital murder (the other alternative is life imprisonment without parole).  I followed that law before Good Friday, 2017, and I will follow it whenever my authority to preside over capital cases is restored. I took an oath to follow the law, including laws that I consider objectionable on moral and religious grounds. 

My obligation to follow the law does not compel me to agree with every law.  The First Amendment to the US Constitution  protects my freedom to hold and express moral and religious opposition to the death penalty, including freedom to peacefully and lawfully question the morality of state-sanctioned premeditated and deliberate killing of people who have been convicted for the premeditated and deliberate killing of other persons. 

If a person who has been convicted of premeditated murder is deliberately and premeditatedly killed, we should condemn that killing as murder.  Murder is wrong, even when the state hires people to do it.  Anger and bloodlust are not excuses for the state to commit premeditated murder of people who have committed premeditated murder for an understandable reason.  Two wrongs don’t make anything right.  

That was true a year ago.  

It is true a year later.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

DISHONORING DR. KING’S MINISTRY AND MEMORY THRU EULOGY



Justice Is A Verb!
©Wendell Griffen, 2018


As people across the world commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today, the feature editorial in today's issue of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper chose to eulogize Dr. King rather than criticize injustice as he did. The editorial can be found at the link posted ‎above. It focuses on Dr. King's prophetic Letter From Birmingham City Jail response to white moderate religionists in Birmingham who criticized Dr. King's presence and direct nonviolent civil disobedience challenges to racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.  The editorial author chose to use the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination to applaud Dr. King's eloquence and clarity in that letter penned from a jail cell. 

Some observers will consider the editorial a fitting, if not flattering commentary. However, that is neither fair nor fitting to Dr. King's memory and ministry. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not die on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee because he penned the eloquent Letter From Birmingham City Jail in 1963. He was slain because he insisted and persisted in confronting the United States about its flagrant hypocrisy about and damning dedication to injustice. The Democrat-Gazette editorial dodged that subject, as if King's greatest contribution to humanity was being an eloquent scrivener.  Dr. King's death should not be dismissed by flowery words about his eloquence, erudition, and rhetorical competence.  

Fifty years after Dr. King was murdered, the giant evils of racism, militarism, and capitalist materialism he challenged with increasing alarm and anger during his last years should not be disregarded and discounted by resorting to eulogy. Respect for Dr. King's life and the way he died deserves much more than pleasant words about his skill as a communicator.

Fifty years after April 4, 1968, black, brown, red, and poor white people are routinely being slain by law enforcement agents in the US.  

Immigrants are being mistreated.

Women and girls are being assaulted and subjected to other unfairness.

Voting rights are being undermined.

The air, water, and soil are being poisoned.

US war-making continues 50 years after the assassination of the prophet who courageously insisted that war-making is a human rights issue.

Fifty years after Dr. King was murdered in Memphis, workers are still being exploited in Memphis, Tennessee, Little Rock, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas, and elsewhere across the US.

Fifty years after Dr. King was slain, religionists of all stripes are still more interested in civic ceremonies than social justice.

Fifty ‎years after Dr. King's voice was silenced, we should not be deceived when people eulogize Dr. King after they spent the last half century working against social justice.  We should not accept shallow sentimentality as a substitute for societal repentance and a fierce insistence on doing justice.

Dr. King's memory and ministry deserve much more than sentimental eulogies from us.  Justice is a verb, not a platitude.

Wendell Griffen
Author, The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope
‎Written from Memphis, TN

Hope Fiercely! Love Boldly!