HONORING DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

HONORING DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

©Wendell Griffen, 2015

            Each year people in the United States observe a holiday to honor the life, ministry, and memory of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Atlanta, Georgia black Baptist pastor whose dedication to social justice through nonviolence challenged our nation and world.  People from various political, social, religious, income, ethnic, gender, and other identities pause to remember Dr. King’s life and work with more ceremonies and activities than they do for the holidays that honor U.S. presidents.  Why is that so?

            Perhaps Dr. King’s life, work, and memory are honored so much because he confronted our society and world with moral claims that cut across the boundaries of ethnicity, income, class, religious creed, nationality, and political ideology.  Dr. King constantly preached and protested about social justice, equality, peace, and the need for us to create the “beloved community.”

Dr. King refused to compromise or water down his vision that all people are entitled to be free, fed, healed, educated, safe, welcomed, and hopeful.  He refused to limit that vision to black people, people in Georgia, the U.S. South, or even the United States.  King resisted attempts by politicians to coopt his vision.  His vision was prophetic, not political.  His value system was communitarian, not nationalistic or patriotic.   We should honor the life, ministry, and memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. for those reasons.

However, Dr. King probably would not be pleased with the gap between the ceremonies and symbolism associated with the King Holiday and the policies and practices that determine how people are living today.  While Dr. King would have welcomed the election of a black person as president of the United States, he would openly question President Obama’s refusal to address the poverty, classism, and militarism that infect our society and world. 

Dr. King would question how U.S. national, state, and local leaders continue to do little more than pay lip service to the cancer of racism and brutality within law enforcement agencies. The preacher who penned the 1963 Letter From a Birmingham Jail that lovingly indicted the hypocrisy of religious leaders and the soft-mindedness of white moderates would probably not be impressed with talk about how much our society has improved concerning social justice. 

Dr. King would probably remind us that the U.S. public education system continues to disserve children who are poor, not white, and unprivileged.  Dr. King would not be impressed by how many black people are able to drive luxury automobiles and live in gated communities.  Instead, he would question how a society can brag about being prosperous when so many more people from every ethnicity lack decent housing, are hungry, and are given only passing thought. 

Dr. King would remind us that motion is not the same thing as progress.  He would not ignore the vicious backlash that followed the successful campaign he was part of to protect the rights of black people to vote in this society.  Dr. King would tell us that racial profiling and the “war on drugs” has disenfranchised many of the people whose right to vote he championed fifty years ago.  Thanks to the “war on drugs” there are now more politically disenfranchised black people in 2015 than there were black slaves in 1860.  Dr. King would trouble us with the idea that racial profiling and the current mass incarceration of black and brown people are simply current examples of political and social oppression suffered by people of color across U.S. history.

Dr. King would look on our world and be troubled.  He would not be silent about or support how the United States subsidizes mistreatment of Palestinians by the government of Israel.  He would denounce as hypocrisy attempts by U.S. politicians, religious leaders, and business champions to honor his lifelong commitment to peace while ignoring how Palestinians and other vulnerable people are brutalized, marginalized, and otherwise mistreated.  Dr. King would see no difference between the wickedness of the Jim Crow system of racial segregation in the United States, the apartheid regime in South Africa, and present policies of the Israeli government toward Palestinians.  And Dr. King would probably question, aloud, how black religious, political, and social leaders can be silent about, if not complicit in, the oppression of Palestinians given our own history.

It is fitting and proper that we honor the life, ministry, and memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  But we must do more than hold solemn assemblies and listen to recitations of his “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington.  Perhaps we would be better served by assembling to listen to Dr. King’s April 4, 1967 sermon titled “A Time to Break Silence” at Riverside Church in New York City.  In that sermon Dr. King boldly urged our society to cease its military operations in Southeast Asia and, beyond that, to embrace what he called “a radical revolution of values” away from the “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered exactly one year after preaching that sermon.  He was not murdered for his “I Have a Dream” oration, but for breaking silence about those “giant triplets” and demanding that our society and world turn away from our addiction to them.  It is clear that we have not broken that addiction since Dr. King’s life was taken on April 4, 1968. 

We should not profess to honor Dr. King’s life, ministry, and memory today while refusing to practice the values for which he lived and died.  Until our society and world does so, we do not truly honor Martin Luther King, Jr.  We simply hype his name.  Dr. King’s memory deserves better than that.  But more importantly, so do our society and world.

DIALOGUE AND DEMANDS

DIALOGUE AND DEMANDS

©Wendell Griffen, 2015

            Current attention to the cancerous issues of racial profiling and police brutality is long overdue.  Growing numbers of people who are white are finally beginning to openly question and challenge the wrong-headed mindset that law enforcement agents are above criticism when they abuse and slaughter people of color.  Young people have moved beyond agitation to activism in communities across the United States.  Perhaps these and other developments are signs that our society may be, finally, arousing from a hangover caused by decades of “law and order” and “tough on crime” rhetoric and policies that were, in many instances, merely a veneer for racism. 

But the mindset responsible for racial profiling and brutalizing of people of color by law enforcement agents will not be easily overcome.  At the root of that mindset is a belief based on concern—if not fear—on the part of many people of white privilege about losing control over people of color. 

The hard fought victories over more than 250 years of slavery and another 100 years of racial segregation struck fear into the hearts of people who depended on white privilege and a false sense of self-worth based on white supremacy.  During the 1960s it became clear that black people were no longer willing to put up with segregation.  The nonviolent civil disobedience efforts of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (the organization led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (led by young black activists such as John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael, Diane Nash, and Robert Moses) presented an outright challenge to white supremacy and white privilege. 

Those campaigns also showed black people openly challenging the immorality of white supremacy, racism, and the law enforcement system established and maintained to enforce it.  Racial segregation and white opposition to black equality have always been enforced by threats and acts of violence against people of color.  Dr. King and others of his era showed white supremacists that black people would no longer cower in fear when confronted by racism-inspired threats of violence whether the threats came from Ku Klux Klan members dressed in white sheets and hoods or from uniformed baton-wielding and armed police officers, state troopers, and National Guards soldiers. 

Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, Governor George Wallace of Alabama, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and other political and law enforcement leaders responded to nonviolent efforts of civil rights activists by denouncing efforts to achieve social and political equality as threats to “law and order.”   Civil rights activists and the people whose equality they advocated—black people and white people joined with them—were viewed as criminal suspects, not patriots.  The police became the foot soldiers in a deliberate effort to intimidate black people. 

“Law and order” rhetoric and tactics eventually morphed into “tough on crime” tactics. The targets of the “tough on crime” agenda were black people—descendants of Africans who were enslaved, raped, robbed, murdered, cheated, and denied education as part of a calculated effort of racial control.  Again, police officers were the foot soldiers for the “tough on crime” counter-thrust to black activism. 

This is a thumbnail summary of the long and disturbing history of racial profiling and police brutality.  That history lies at the root of the wariness many black people exercise during even casual encounters with people in law enforcement.  That history is almost never acknowledged, let alone admitted, by law enforcement and political leaders who urge people of color to “trust the police.”   

Police and civic leaders who want honest dialogue with people of color must recognize and admit that black and brown people have valid claims against the law enforcement apparatus that enforces white supremacy and upholds white privilege.  Those claims will not be talked away in “dialogue” sessions, community forums, or other “meet and greet” exercises. 

Black and brown people are not responsible for racial profiling and police brutality.  Police and civic leaders who urge people of color to take responsibility for being victimized by racial profiling and police brutality are trying to shift the blame for racial profiling and police brutality onto the black and brown victims of those evil practices rather than accepting responsibility for confronting and ending them.  People of color have no reason to expect positive results from “dialogue” with law enforcement and other civic leaders about racial profiling and police brutality when those leaders are not honest enough to admit that racial profiling and police brutality are evils caused by a law enforcement culture infected by racist notions of white supremacy and dedicated to protecting white privilege.

            The time is past for meetings about “dialogue.”  People of color and others who understand the forces behind racial profiling and police brutality now demand that the law enforcement community change its culture, thinking, and behavior towards black and brown people.  Instead of talking about how black and brown people should behave during police encounters, communities of color demand that police leaders command their personnel to treat black and brown people with respect and dignity, not consider them criminal suspects based on their ethnic identity. 

Simply put, people of color demand that the police treat them the way the police treat people with white privilege.  That isn’t something black and brown parents need to talk with their children about.  It is a discipline police and civic leaders must instill in and demand from every police officer.  Until police and civic leaders demonstrate they have the integrity and determination to end racial profiling and police brutality, they should expect the distrust that many people of color have concerning law enforcement to grow wider and deeper.

The message to police and civic leaders concerning the evils of racial profiling and police brutality and the growing resentment toward the police by many people in communities of color is simple.  Stop blaming the victims of police misbehavior for not trusting you while you defend abusive and homicidal police officers.  Stop pretending you don’t know who the vicious people are in your police agencies and can’t get rid of them.  Stop asking people of color to take responsibility for fixing the system you operate. 

If police and civic leaders want to heal the relationship between law enforcement and communities of color those leaders should look in the mirror—to borrow from Michael Jackson—not across the table at victims of racial profiling and police brutality.  You created and run this mess. Fix it.

MASS INCARCERATION AND THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

MASS INCARCERATION AND THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

©Wendell Griffen, 2015

Arkansas political leaders, led by recently elected Governor Asa Hutchinson, have begun openly talking about shipping prison inmates to privately owned prisons in other states.  They say doing this is better than building a new 1,000 bed prison at a construction cost of $100 million, and then operating that facility in future years.  Before people compliment Governor-elect Hutchinson and other politicians for what they may claim is an effort to save tax dollars we should consider some uncomfortable truth.

In 1972 there were fewer than 350,000 people in local, state, and federal prisons and jails.  In 1974, the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals recommended that no new lockup facilities be built for adults and that the then existing institutions for juveniles be closed.  There are now over 2.3 million people locked away in prisons and jails across the United States. 

The United States leads the world in producing prisoners and Arkansas faces a prison and jail overcrowding crisis because voters unwisely embraced arguments by politicians that demonized people suffering from drug dependency, mental illness, poverty, and homelessness for the past forty years.  If prison rates in the U.S. dropped to early 1970s levels it is estimated that four out of five people currently behind bars would need to be released.  More than a million people would lose their jobs, including more than 700,000 prison and jail guards, prison administrators, service workers, and other personnel.  Prisons would have to be closed!

Prisons are intended to remove people that society considers dangerous from those who are peaceful.  However, non-violent offenders make up the overwhelming majority of people in Arkansas prisons and jails.  Arkansas prisons and jails are overcrowded, by and large, because politicians decided over the years to treat people suffering from drug dependency, mental illness, unemployment, and homelessness as criminals. 

Building new prisons won’t solve the problems of drug addiction, mental illness, unemployment, and homelessness.  Solving those problems will require investing in community based health and wellness clinics, building and staffing more public schools that educate people of all ages so they can be better educated, encouraging employers to pay decent wages and salaries to workers, and making affordable housing available to workers and their families.  But as my father would often say, “doing that would be too much like right.”

There would not be a prison overcrowding problem if the people we have criminalized because of drug dependency, mental illness, poverty, and homelessness had been treated as disabled rather than dangerous.  These people would not have been stripped of their civil rights, including the right to vote.  Their families would have been supported, not marginalized.  We would be a healthier, productive, and compassionate society. 

However, mass incarceration is essential to what I call the “prison-industrial complex.”  A prison is a place of custody or confinement.  There is money to be made in building, maintaining, and operating prisons. Land must be purchased and developed.  That produces money for real estate developers, bankers, attorneys, surveyors, and construction companies. 

Prisons must be staffed.  Guards must be hired, trained, outfitted with uniforms and equipment including weapons (firearms, Tasers, and restraint devices).  Health care services must be provided for prisoners and prison staff.  That produces money for manufacturers of firearms, uniforms, prison furnishings (beds, mattresses, laundry, etc.), and for the companies that provide medical, dental, and other healthcare services. 

Governor-Elect Hutchinson and the politicians talking about sending Arkansas prison and jail inmates to lockup facilities in Louisiana surely realize that sending Arkansas inmates to Louisiana means paying someone to hold and care for those inmates.  Who will be paid?  How much will Arkansas pay? 

This issue, like anything else involving justice, is fundamentally a moral concern.  Why should we out-source caring for Arkansans who are not dangerous, but who suffer from drug dependency, mental illness, poverty, and homelessness? 

Why shouldn’t we love our neighbors enough to care for them in Arkansas rather than treat them as disposable waste to be deposited elsewhere? 

What is just about a process where our disabled, mentally ill, impoverished, and homeless neighbors are systematically stopped, arrested, charged, convicted, sentenced, and incarcerated as part of complex series of business ventures ultimately intended to create profits for investors? 

I have long called for a moratorium on building and expanding prisons and jails in Arkansas.  I also oppose the idea of sending Arkansas inmates out of state.  We won’t solve the injustice of mass incarceration by shipping the victims of that injustice elsewhere. 

QUESTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR

QUESTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR

©Wendell Griffen, 2015

The Yuletide revelry and carols have ended.  Christmas decorations will soon be taken down and stored, if that has not already happened.  The holiday hustle and bustle is behind us—perhaps this means people will drive more sensibly and not compete for parking spaces in shopping centers.  Children and teachers and staff members return to schools next week in most places, and workers will resume our usual schedules.   Public officials have been, in most cases, sworn in for their new terms of office. 

During the holiday season it is fashionable to make charitable contributions to needy causes, including those who are poor, homeless, sick, and otherwise vulnerable.  But the Christmas and New Year holidays are behind us now.  Will the people who opened their purses to make charitable donations open our eyes and hearts to understand the systemic causes for poverty, homelessness, sickness, and other vulnerability that operate every day?  Or will we refuse to understand that it is hypocrisy to practice heartlessness throughout the year and pretend to remedy the violence of systemic heartlessness during the Christmas season? 

Will the much needed and long overdue outrage about police brutality and racial profiling that rose last year after Michael Brown, Jr. was gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner was choked to death in Staten Island, New York continue in the new year?  Will activists and advocates continue challenging the myth that people who work in law enforcement are above criticism when they brutalize and kill others?  Or will we become nonchalant about the relationship between cultural incompetence and racial injustice?

Will this be the year, finally, when people of goodwill and moral insight across the United States demand that our nation stop throwing its money, military support, and moral influence behind racist policies by the Israeli government towards Palestinians?  Will this be the year that leaders of Christian congregations and larger bodies finally realize that the modern nation of Israel is not above the great Biblical teaching that one must love others as one loves oneself?  Or will we continue ignoring the land theft, economic oppression, and political inequality suffered by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government?

Will Arkansas politicians continue cheating families and the future of our State by refusing to provide and fund early childhood public education?  Will the people of our State stand by and watch funds that could be used to strengthen families, neighborhoods, healthcare, and build lives be diverted to construct a new prison estimated to cost $100 million? 

We have entered a new year.  What will we do this year to make life different and better?  What will you do?

LOGIC 101 AND GETTING THE NYPD MURDERS TWISTED

LOGIC 101 AND GETTING THE NYPD MURDERS TWISTED

©Wendell Griffen, 2014

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.  Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.  Arthur Conan Doyle from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Adventure I--A Scandal in Bohemia

Last night New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio called for organized protests against racial profiling and police brutality to cease until the funerals of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu are concluded out of respect for the grief now suffered by the families of those New York City officers who were murdered on December 20 by Ismaaiyl Brinsley.  When one analyzes the facts known about the murders of Officers Ramos and Liu and about Brinsley, Mayor De Blasio’s call doesn’t pass a basic principle of deductive reasoning.

Ismaaiyl Brinsley was a lone gunman. 

Brinsley was a black man with a long history of anti-social conduct that included violence against his family members and numerous criminal acts before December 20.

Brinsley shot and wounded a former girlfriend before he murdered Officers Ramos and Liu.

Despite Brinsley’s recent social media comments announcing his plan to attack police officers, no information shows that he was ever involved with any nonviolent organized protests against racial profiling and police brutality after the deaths of Eric Garner on July 23 in Staten Island, New York and Michael Brown, Jr. on August 9 in Ferguson, Missouri at the hands of police officers. 

None of the organized protests against racial profiling and police brutality included calls for vigilante actions against people in law enforcement.  [However, Baltimore Fox News affiliate WBFF edited a chant by peaceful protestors who called for killer cops to be placed in cell blocks two days ago and televised an edited video in which the station accused the protestors of chanting “kill a cop.”  The televised video was a deliberate lie aired three times before the station finally admitted the fraud perpetrated on its viewers.]   

People associated with protests against racial profiling and police brutality have emphatically expressed outrage, grief, and sorrow about the murders of Officers Ramos and Liu.  They have denounced and condemned Brinsley’s conduct as murderous and unjust.  They have expressed condolences for the Ramos and Liu families, and for the grief-stricken colleagues of these slain police officers within the New York Police Department and across the nation. 

In my last blogpost—titled “Sorrow and Justice”—I wrote, “Brinsley’s murderous conduct was an act of injustice.  Let no one mistake that fact (or as young people might say “don’t get it twisted”).   Those of us who denounce and condemn police brutality and racial profiling also denounce and condemn what Brinsley did.  It is as wrong to profile and brutalize people in law enforcement as it is wrong for people in law enforcement to profile and brutalize others.  All lives matter equally.” 

These facts raise the following question.  How is it disrespectful to the memories of Officers Ramos and Liu and to their grieving  families to protest racial profiling and police brutality, whether before the murdered officers are laid to rest or afterwards?

It is wrong to condone profiling and brutality against people in law enforcement.  It is wrong to condone profiling and brutality against persons of color by people in law enforcement.  These things are always wrong.  They were wrong before Brinsley murdered Officers Ramos and Liu.  They are wrong now.  They will be wrong after Officers Ramos and Liu are laid to rest. 

Ismaaiyl Brinsley was a lone gunman who murdered two police officers as they ate lunch.  He shot and wounded his girlfriend before he murdered the officers.  He killed himself minutes after murdering the officers.  None of that conduct has anything to do with organized nonviolent protests against racial profiling and police brutality.  That’s basic logic.  It violates every basic principle of logic to assert that organized nonviolent protests against racial profiling and police brutality are somehow offensive because a lone deranged thug murdered two police officers. 

When Adam Lanza, a lone white mentally unstable gunman, murdered elementary students and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School after having already murdered his own mother in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012 people weren’t asked to suspend protests about gun violence.  When James Eagan Holmes, a white man, allegedly killed 12 people on July 20, 2012 inside a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado during a midnight screening of the film “The Dark Knight Rises” people weren’t asked to suspend efforts to protest gun violence. 

When those lone white assailants engaged in murderous conduct politicians and pundits didn’t ascribe their viciousness to people who protest gun violence for a good reason.  It would have been nonsense to do so.  Flunking basic logic always produces nonsense.

Instead of the nonsense of asking people to suspend peaceful protests against racial profiling and police brutality Mayor De Blasio should have taken the following actions. 

First, he should have restated public outrage, grief, and sorrow about the murders of Officers Ramos and Liu.  He should have emphasized that there is no information linking their murders to the many peaceful protests against racial profiling and police brutality. 

Mayor De Blasio should have also called on people in law enforcement and protestors against racial profiling and police brutality to express concern and support for the Ramos and Liu families and share their sorrow.

Mayor De Blasio also should have reminded us that Officers Ramos and Liu’s deaths highlight the wickedness of profiling and brutalizing people, whether people in law enforcement or people like Ismaaiyl Brinsley do so.   

What Mayor De Blasio should have not done was suggest that there is anything disrespectful, insensitive, or offensive about peaceful protests against racial profiling and police brutality now, tomorrow, next week, or at any other time.  Officers Ramos and Liu were profiled and murdered by one twisted person.  That doesn’t justify twisting logic to associate their deaths with peaceful protests against profiling and brutality.

So we should respectfully dismiss Mayor De Blasio’s call to suspend nonviolent protests against racial profiling and police brutality until Officers Ramos and Liu are buried because it flunks basic logic.  People who flunk arithmetic aren’t reliable authorities on algebra, let alone calculus.  

SORROW AND JUSTICE

SORROW AND JUSTICE

©Wendell Griffen, 2014

Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu of the New York Police Department were murdered on December 20.  Their assailant, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, also shot a former girlfriend before killing the police officers and then killing himself.  Officers Ramos and Liu were murdered.  Their families are permanently wounded.  Their colleagues in law enforcement grieve as only those who know the loss of professional comrades from violence can grieve. 

Ismaaiyl Brinsley was, from what has been reported thus far, one man with a long record of violating the law and mental instability.  Brinsley reportedly invoked the deaths of Eric Garner (who was killed July 23 on Staten Island, New York) and Michael Brown, Jr. (who was killed August 9 in Ferguson, Missouri) as the motivating factors for his hateful and murderous actions.  But nothing shows Brinsley had any connection to the peaceful protests about police brutality and racial profiling that have occurred during recent months. 

Brinsley’s murderous conduct was an act of injustice.  Let no one mistake that fact (or as young people might say “don’t get it twisted”).   Those of us who denounce and condemn police brutality and racial profiling also denounce and condemn what Brinsley did.  It is as wrong to profile and brutalize people in law enforcement as it is wrong for people in law enforcement to profile and brutalize others.  All lives matter equally. 

It is also wrong for law enforcement leaders (including Patrick Lynch, president of the New York City police union) to attribute Brinsley’s vicious behavior to the legitimate calls for reform and the non-violent protests and acts of civil disobedience that have occurred in recent months.  Officers Ramos and Liu were murdered.  Their assassination was evil.  The people who are protesting abusive and homicidal conduct by police officers know this painfully well.  Grief and shock at the murders of Officers Ramos and Liu are no excuse for anyone to blame people who are protesting abusive and homicidal conduct by police.

That is why we join police officers in New York and elsewhere in mourning the assassinations of Officers Ramos and Liu.  We join the families of two police officers in sorrow for their horrible loss. 

People who believe in justice believe that it is wrong to brutalize and slaughter other people.  We who condemn and denounce racial profiling and police brutality should not allow anyone to suggest that Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s murderous conduct was vengeance for Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Jr., or any other victims of abusive and homicidal conduct by law enforcement agents.  Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s actions were hateful, not honorable.  People who believe in justice should say so.  And people who believe in justice should say that racial profiling and brutality by law enforcement agents is hateful, not honorable.      

We who believe in justice must mourn the deaths of Officers Ramos and Liu.  We must denounce and condemn Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s murderous conduct as hateful and unjust.  And we must continue to denounce racial profiling and police brutality as unjust until racial profiling is ended and long demanded concerns about police brutality have been resolved.   

TO THOSE WHO CAN'T BREATHE

TO THOSE WHO CAN’T BREATHE

A Sermon delivered December 14, 2014

3d Sunday of Advent

New Millennium Church, Little Rock, Arkansas

©Wendell Griffen, 2014

Isaiah 61:1-11

61The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; ²to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; ³to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

⁴They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. ⁵Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines; ⁶but you shall be called priests of the Lord, you shall be named ministers of our God; you shall enjoy the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory.⁷Because their shame was double, and dishonor was proclaimed as their lot, therefore they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs. ⁸For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. ⁹Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.

¹⁰I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.¹¹For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

          “I CAN’T BREATHE!”

      

When compassionate people hear those words we rush to help the victim.  We loosen collars.  If there is reason to suspect food is lodged in the person’s throat the Heimlich maneuver is performed.  When we hear someone say “I can’t breathe!” and when we see someone appear to have trouble breathing we rush to help.

We rush to help because we know humans can’t survive without oxygen.  Although the human brain makes up less than five (5) percent of our body weight, our brains require 20 percent of the oxygen our bodies need. 

Decrease of oxygen to a part of the brain is called cerebral hypoxia.  When oxygen is cut off from the entire brain the term is anoxia.  When oxygen flow is completely cut off to our brains (anoxia) we lose consciousness in ten (10) seconds. 

Brain damage depends on how long we are without oxygen.  If oxygen flow is restored momentarily people usually make a full recovery.  But the longer the victim is in an unconscious state the lower the chances are for recovery because brain cells begin dying after 4 to 6 minutes without oxygen. 

This is why performing cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on a person who can’t breathe is so important.  That is why we call 911.  People who can’t breathe die without immediate help.

“I CAN’T BREATHE!” were the last words Eric Garner gasped as Daniel Pantaleo of the New York Police Department choked him from behind and as other police officers tackled him.  “I CAN’T BREATHE!” are the words we hear on the video filmed by an onlooker as Eric Garner was assaulted by the police on Staten Island on July 23.  “I CAN’T BREATHE!” is what Eric Garner said 11 times—11 times!  

“I CAN’T BREATHE!” was Eric Garner’s desperate final struggle to be treated as a child of God. 

Meanwhile Daniel Pantaleo was choking him.  Another police officer was pressing his knees onto Garner’s torso.  A police supervisor, a black woman, was watching.  Their collective response to Eric Garner’s gasps for help amounted to “WE DON’T CARE!”

They didn’t treat Garner’s words as cries for help from a suffering person.  They didn’t protect or serve him.   Eric Garner wasn’t treated like he mattered to his wife and children, to his community, to humanity, or even to God! 

Eric Garner was treated by the police—people sworn to protect and defend life—as a threat simply because he was standing on a Staten Island sidewalk and the police claim he was selling loose cigarettes.  Police killed Eric Garner.  Other police watched him suffer and die without doing anything to stop their colleagues from killing him. 

A Staten Island grand jury refused to charge Daniel Pantaleo with a crime for choking Garner to death.  When other people choke their neighbors to death we call it murder.  Daniel Pantaleo, a policeman, choked Eric Garner to death, but the grand jury decision amounts to an official declaration that Pantaleo was simply doing his job when he killed Garner, an unarmed black man.    

But Eric Garner’s death and the official response to it isn’t about one notorious tragedy.  Eric Garner’s death actually represents what is happening across the world in the “ordinary course of business.” 

In the ordinary course of business Palestinians are being killed, starved, attacked, robbed, and otherwise brutalized as a matter of official policy by the Israeli government.  Palestinians can’t breathe.  The U.S. is doing nothing to help them, but is, instead, actually bankrolling their oppressor.  U.S. corporations are making profits by selling equipment and services to the Israeli government so that Palestinians can’t breathe. Every day, Palestinians are saying, “I CAN’T BREATHE!”  Can we hear them?  Will we help them? 

In the ordinary course of business wealthy people decided to sell defective cars with safety defects that maimed and killed people.  Every day, people who’ve been killed, wounded, and left grief-stricken are saying “I CAN’T BREATHE!”  Can we hear them?  Will we help them? 

In the ordinary course of business agents of the U.S. government tortured people.  In the ordinary course of business, people are being held hostage in Guantanamo, Cuba.  In the ordinary course of business innocent civilians are being killed and maimed by U.S. drone attacks.  Every day, the tortured, captured, killed, and maimed people and their families are saying “I CAN’T BREATHE!”  Can we hear them?  Will we help them? 

In the ordinary course of business, black and brown men, women, and children in Arkansas and elsewhere throughout the U.S. are racially profiled as criminal suspects.  In the ordinary course of business they are stopped, frisked, humiliated, and insulted.  In the ordinary course of business they are beaten, shot, electrocuted by Tasers, chemically assaulted by tear gas and pepper spray, and killed.  Every day, people of color in the United States are saying “I CAN’T BREATHE!”  Can we hear them?  Will we help them?

In the ordinary course of business children from families with modest incomes who attend public schools in rural and urban communities are receiving sub-standard education.  Every day they are gasping and saying “I CAN’T BREATHE!”  Can we hear them?  Will we help them?  Meanwhile, in the ordinary course of business people in power are refusing, every day, to finance early childhood education.  Every day, these people and their functionaries in government are working to build new prisons and jails. 

Every day and in the ordinary course of business men, women, and children who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender are being oppressed.  Children are bullied, shunned, and otherwise mistreated at schools.  Workers are fired from jobs.  Families are evicted from places they live.  Every day these children of God are saying “I CAN’T BREATHE!”  Can you hear them?  Will you help them?   Meanwhile, in the ordinary course of business other people who are privileged in their sexual orientation and gender identity—including some who claim to love God—claim that it is right to discriminate against others based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 

In the ordinary course of business, lest anyone forget, the world’s drug manufacturers and the governments that allow them to operate stood by as the virus known as Ebola sickened, infected, killed, and then spread as an epidemic in nations within the continent of Africa.  Every day the victims of Ebola and their surviving families and care givers are saying “I CAN’T BREATHE!”  Can we hear them?  Will we help them? 

These atrocities and injustices are not aberrations.  They are the ordinary course of business across the world for people who can’t breathe. 

These “I CAN’T BREATHE!” atrocities and injustices are moral and ethical issues that challenge our faith in the love and justice of God.  We wonder how God can breathe in the face of pervasive and systemic disregard for love and mercy.  We wonder how God cannot see the suffering.  We wonder what God is doing to bring deliverance and justice for those who can’t breathe.

Isaiah 61 answers our concerns.  There an anonymous figure declares that he or she has been endowed with the spirit of God and anointed to proclaim good news to the poor and downtrodden.  This anonymous person has been commissioned to proclaim the jubilee year of release from bondage for all who are enslaved. 

These “good news”—meaning gospel—words were originally intended for Hebrews in Judah who suffered the effects of Babylonian oppression and power.  But they apply to oppressed people everywhere and in every age. 

The good news for those who can’t breathe is that God sees!  God knows!  God cares!  And God is acting to overthrow oppression and liberate oppressed people! 

God sees every Eric Garner situation including those that go unreported, unrecognized, and unattended.  God knows the anguish and sorrow of every wounded soul and every victim of injustice everywhere. 

God cares that the ordinary course of what passes for business in our world is strangling the powerless and vulnerable to death.  God cares that violence and viciousness has become our ordinary course of business instead of justice and mercy.  God cares that people who should be performing physical, economic, social, emotional, and moral CPR in the world are instead using their power and privilege to help compress the throats and chests of people and a creation choking to death. 

All the choking, strangling, suffering, and grieving we see, feel, know, and tolerate offend God’s love and justice.  It’s a stench to God that people who claim to believe in love and justice will march for the unborn but won’t move a muscle to save living people who can’t breathe. 

It’s an outrage to God that people sworn to protect and defend life use power and privilege to abuse and slay their helpless brothers and sisters.  God is furious when a nation claims to be the leader of freedom and peace in the world on one hand while it enables genocide and viciousness against Palestinians and racial profiling against its own people and immigrants.

Isaiah 61 also shows God’s response to the plight of a world trapped in a stranglehold of violence, hate, and systemic injustice and oppression.  Unlike the imperialistic responses that people get so fired up with patriotism about, God’s response to violence isn’t to train more killers.  God’s response to robbery isn’t to create a religious order of better crooks. 

God’s response to the toxic realities and threats of evil and injustice isn’t to let loose a religious version of the CIA, NSA, FBI, or the KKK!

Instead, the divine remedy and deliverance for those who can’t breathe, and for our strangled world, is the power of redemptive love made personal.  The reality of redemptive love made personal is what we read about in Isaiah 61.  The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, … the LORD has anointed me …; he has sent me to bring good news, … to bind up …, to proclaim liberty … and release … the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn…(Is. 61:1-2).  God performs CPR on God’s strangling children and strangled creation by empowering persons as counteractive agents of divine love, liberation, justice, and peace! 

This good news of redemptive love made personal is summed up by the life, ministry, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ!  The good news of God’s redemptive love made personal is what Jesus presented the world and now calls us to embrace. 

Jesus calls us to be divinely appointed agents of redemptive love.  Jesus calls us to confront and counter the systemic and institutionalized violence and oppression that is choking people and the world to death. 

Jesus calls us to do more than offer condolences to people who are being choked to death by the systemic violence and oppression that passes for the ordinary course of business.  We are called to be more than religious funeral directors for casualties of oppression and injustice. 

No!  God has appointed us as messengers and methods of liberation, truth, justice, mercy, and peace.  And God has appointed us as messengers and methods of divine judgment on the purveyors, practitioners, and apologists of systemic violence and oppression.

Finally, God promises that justice will triumph over oppression.  Because of God’s redemptive love made personal, those who can’t breathe are promised a garland instead of ashes, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.  They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display [GOD’s] glory.  They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.  (Is. 61:3-4). 

The reason for that promise is found at Isaiah 61:8:  For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. 

Because God loves justice and hates oppression, redemptive love made personal will triumph over violence, greed, hate, and fear. 

Because God loves justice and hates oppression, God will avenge those who are choked to death by agents of violence, greed, hate, and fear. 

Because God loves justice and hates oppression, God’s people of redemptive love must not stand by as people and the creation gasp “I CAN’T BREATHE!”  We must not be content with reading Bible lessons and singing praise songs and hymns.  We must not, should not, and will not be satisfied with symbolic prayer meetings and vigils, goodwill and fellowship meals, time-consuming and pointless meetings filled with political excuses, posturing, and other commonly accepted pretenses for peace and righteousness while our brothers, sisters, children, and the rest of creation are strangled to death. 

So as people inspired by the gospel of redemptive love made personal in obedience to the life, ministry, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, let us do moral, physical, intellectual, economic, social, emotional, and global CPR for those who can’t breathe.  In God’s name and as people empowered to live out the gospel of redemptive love made personal let us intervene and stop officious and officially-sanctioned violence, robbery, and every other oppression.    

Then those who can’t breathe will see themselves and be acknowledged as people whom the LORD has blessed (Is. 61:9).  They will rejoice in the LORD (Is. 61:10).  For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations (Is. 61:11).

Amen.