Monuments and Statues

One of the big things in the news lately is the odd phenomenon of protestors and anarchists desecrating, defacing, and destroying monuments and statues around the country.  I say odd because it's really sort of a new tactic.  I guess maybe we've seen some of this in the past, but it seems to be something that those who feel the need to protest and destroy seem to think is effective.  It's not.

In the scheme of things, a protest is an effort to bring people around to your way of thinking.  In a country as big and diverse as ours, change only comes by changing the way some majority of the people think.  Especially in America change can't be forced.  It can't be forced by the government.  It can't be forced by the mob.  It can't be forced by slogans.  It can only occur when there is some agreement and belief by a significant body of people that change is appropriate.  But in my view the protestors are blowing it.

First we saw the phrase "defund the police".  As I said on other posts this is a huge blunder and maybe the worst marketing/branding mistake I've ever seen.  As soon as that phrase pops up, the vast majority of people turn away.  And even if some of the more rational voices in protest try to explain, try to bring up reasonable reform, try to distance themselves from it...it's too late.  Their only solution is to totally divorce themselves from that ridiculous and emotionally charged phrase.

Now we see the legitimate protestors being jumbled up with the anarchists.  Antifa has smartly taken up the cry from BLM and has distorted that message to be perverted to their own.  The reason for that is that Antifa methods and actions are so outrageous, so offensive, so damaging that they see cover in the BLM movement.  Because here's the deal. After the George Floyd murder and resulting protests, the BLM movement had a lot of potential allies.  A large number of people in the country have recognized the oppression and inequality that our fellow black citizens have faced.  They are sympathetic and they want to "do something".  I've seen more of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances than I can believe voice that very thing.  I've seen people reaching out and wanting to understand, take action and seek change.  Many, many people want to get involved and take some action (which may be undefined today) to positively effect change.  But when things are uncertain, the tendency is to be reluctant in the face of that uncertainty.  Whether they know it or not, the good people who are sincerely protesting racial inequality have been lumped with the anarchists and that will do them damage.  If people sitting at home watching who are sympathetic and want to see change can't tell the people protesting for racial justice from the anarchists, the anarchists are winning.

  

Over the last several days we've seen a part of Seattle deteriorate into a chaotic, fascist state.  We've seen statues and monuments of Christopher Columbus desecrated and destroyed.  I wrote a post about Columbus last year that still applies and you can read it here.  We've seen statues and monuments of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson pulled down.  Probably most oddly we saw the statue of Ulysses S. Grant, a key opponent of slavery and a President who did a lot of advance the lives of slaves after emancipation, destroyed.  That makes no sense at all, except it fits with the narrative of destroy everything connected with the country.  This weekend we have seen that statues of Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner and Father Junipero Serra, a Jesuit missionary in early California days were toppled.  And of course we've seen a lot of statues of heroes of the Confederacy desecrated and destroyed.  The Confederate statues and monuments have been controversial for quite a while and we've seen a growing movement to take action to move them out of the public view.  Personally, I'd be in favor in moving them to a place, community by community, that is more appropriate than a public park or venue for all to see.  These things are historical and deserve to be preserved to tell the stories.  But I'm sympathetic to our black citizens who might have to walk by them every day and relive that horrible history.  The city of New Orleans has done a good job with this as they've moved a lot of Confederate statues to more appropriate places.  They didn't destroy them, they moved them.  Big difference.  But I get that there are many who strongly disagree.  So be it.  In time the situation will be resolved.  But most don't believe the resolution comes when violent mobs pull down a statue.

All of this is in addition to the ongoing protests and riots that aren't getting huge coverage in the media, but they are there.  The media is way more focused on how big Trump's rallies are and what is his latest outrageous screwup to indicate what a genuine asshole, traitor and criminal he is...according to them.  But I digress.  The point is that when good people are protesting and urging legitimate change in an area that cries for change and they get lumped with anarchists who want nothing more than to destroy, their cause will become diluted and lose inertia real fast.  Because while many average folks, both white and black, will buy in to helping with legitimate and rationalized change, they will not stand for the destruction of their society and way of life.  They may be patient.  They may not want to get involved when the destruction is far away and lightly covered in the media.  They may even be willing to suffer insults while trying to understand how to help.  But protests and change are one thing, destruction and devastation are another.  

The anarchists (Antifa) deserve to be punished and destroyed.  There is no place in our society for them.  A lot of people look to the Trump and the federal government to "do something".  But this is really a state and local government issue.  And if the state and local government won't do anything, then it will continue.  I hope (and believe) that at some point enough people will be fed up that they will vote in officials who will take decisive action against these assholes.  And by decisive, I mean strong, harsh action that will squash them.  And the BLM protestors, the sincere ones, deserve to have their voices heard and to be allowed to build a movement that will stimulate change for the better.  But as long as they align themselves with things like "defund the police" and the anarchist movement they will be stymied.  Their voices will be drowned out.  And that's too bad.  Because it's a message we all need to hear.

Shocking

I don't watch 60 Minutes every week as some of their stories have lost the legendary balance.  But I'm always drawn to at least the beginning to see what they are covering.  Last night they had a story on the race massacres in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921.  I sat watching this 12 minutes story and was stunned.  Stunned is the only descriptor.  I thought to myself, "how had I never heard of this".  Take a few minutes to watch this.  It is deeply disturbing that something like this could have happened in our country in 1921.

Changes

I saw this little hokey saying the other day somewhere out on the net and thought that it was pretty outlandish.  I mean after all, so far and by almost any estimate 2020 has generally been pretty bad.  I don't have to list or detail them all but its generally been one catastrophe after another.  So I was going to just pass it on by but the more I thought about it the more intrigued I became.  Now, I'm not some person who tries to look at the world through rose colored glasses or discounts troubles along the way, but I began to think what if all of these events and resultant angst could actually result in some changes.  What if all of the deaths, the businesses lost, the economic devastation, the lockdowns, the uncertainty, the curious moves by governments at all levels could actually stimulate some positive action.  What if this time something actually changed?

We've seen it way, way too many times in the last several years and decades.  Something big happens like a controversial death at the hands of police or some other all-to-common injustice, there is initial stunned silence, and then all hell breaks loose.  Riots, looting, protests, larger than life funerals, media frenzy, hopes and prayers offered all around, feel better hashtags...and then life returns to normal.  It's all so predictable and so tiresome.

But this time I thought might be different.  The murder of George Floyd was heinous by any measure.  And it was right there for all the world to see.  I wrote about it soon after it happened here.  There have been moments in our history that have served to come as an awakening.  Sometimes it didn't happen right away, the murder of Emmet Till comes to mind, but this one was so blatant, so over the top, so raw, and so unbelievably seemingly condoned by the officers present, that I thought maybe this event could be a catalyst for change.  As the days go by though, I'm becoming less and less sure and more and more jaded.  And I hate that.

As the events unfolded after the murder there were the predictable riots and looting but that seemed to abate in the wake of so many ordinary citizens coming to some awakening that there are a lot of examples of mistreatment of our black citizens in all areas of the country.  It's not new and it's not okay.  But in the past the event that caused the trauma of riot and protest seemed to be executed by a few and observed by most.  But in this case, there were and are a ton of people of all races standing up to say "no more".  That part has been heartening to see.

But what I think is happening now is that those on each end of the spectrum of the fight for racial justice are overplaying their hand.  First we saw the slogan "defund the police" emerge from many zealots on the left and in the Black Lives Matter movement.  I don't know if they were caught up in the moment or just so pissed that they thought they would press their case, come hell or high water, but it was a bad, bad mistake.  As a friend of mine likes to say, "that dog won't hunt".  If ever I've seen a terrible and tragic blunder in branding and marketing, "defund the police" is it.  It's almost case study bad.  The zealots on either end of the spectrum on any issue don't want to hear it, but that kind of rhetoric will turn off so many people that they won't even see past it.  Those who want to fight for real police reform (and most think that is necessary) have been drowned out by the zealots.  And so even if cooler heads are now trying to calm the storm and argue that "defund the police" never meant what it said, it's too late.  The reformers path now should be to distance themselves from this crazy slogan and anyone who utters it if they are going to have any chance to advocate for the kinds of programs, training, and funding that will be necessary to improve our police departments.  But I fear it's too late.

The second thing that the zealots on the other end did was take up the cry that "all lives matter" or "blue lives matter" to try and blunt what they perceived as a threat from BLM.  I'm a huge supporter of law enforcement and and believe that they should be funded, trained, and deployed properly to serve the community.  But in this moment, the cry is Black Lives Matter.  That doesn't take away from anything.  It's really just a cry for understanding.  So to see it as a threat seems to me to be reading the situation wrong.

There are two other things that have gotten attention that blunt the issue.  The first is dredging up the whole Colin Kaepernick thing about kneeling during the national anthem at an NFL game.  You have to be aware of this emotional issue.  And so a lot of folks now say he was right.  That he was kneeling for justice for black people and he was right.  And a few other folks have been raked over the coals for resisting that narrative.  You've probably seen the dust up with Drew Brees saying he could never support anyone who disrespects the flag.  And he got pilloried in the press and by some players.  Well, I'll just go on record right now as being in Drew's corner.  There are a lot of ways to express your frustration with the criminal justice system and to support racial justice, but disrespecting the flag is not one of them.  At least in my book it's not.

The other thing is this takeover in Seattle by a bunch of anarchists.  That is a whole other story and these guys are assholes who the Seattle government should never have allowed to occupy the area.  But they are clearly using the BLM and George Floyd issue as a cover for the their shenanigans.  They need to be called out, cleared out and put down.  Unfortunately, given the government in Washington, it's not going to happen anytime soon.

So where are we?  My big fear is that we're where we've been before.  The protests are fizzling, the zealots have taken over and demanded unachievable things, the majority is digging in in fear that the status quo will be upset, and we await the next episode which will surely come.

But I have seen a few glimmers of hope.  There have been a lot of companies responding to employe demand to pay way more attention to diversity.  There are a lot more people who have become aware and I don't think are going to leave this alone.  There are a lot more responsible people in government, media (although there aren't too many there), and business who are talking about ways to change the dynamic, which is good.

I've seen a few interesting proposals that I think are the kinds of things we need to see happen.  My good friend and priest who I have sometimes quoted here sent a proposal for the Episcopal Church to sell 50% of their property and invest it in education for black kids.  Now that's out of the box thinking!  His reasoning is that the church is declining and has lost about 50% of its members, so we don't need the property.  The Episcopal Church has a lot of schools.  So why not insist that in the future 50% of the student body comes from poor black families?  Why not indeed?  I would prefer that a blind admissions policy be adopted with a commensurate influx of minorities, but that's a detail.  His point is that this is a 20 year project and it can be done.  That's what we need.  Not something that will be a 2 or 3 or 4 year project but long term solutions with buy in from the population.  All churches should be looking at themselves pretty hard and deciding what is important.

I've seen proposals to vastly change the tasking of police departments to focus more on community policing and get them out of the jack of all trades that they do now.  I'm not an expert, but it makes sense to me.  Once again, I'm not an expert, but I've seen a lot of evidence that the police unions have a big responsibility in protecting cops who are identified with being abusive and having issues.  Like so many things, there aren't any simple answers here.  But somehow, a process that identifies and weeds out bad apples has to be implemented.

What Senator Scott and President Trump have done with economic opportunity zones focused on the black community has been a huge success and needs to be expanded.  Likewise, the prison reform programs that President Trump has implemented is making a difference.  School choice is a win for the black community but the education establishment and the teacher's unions will fight it to the death.  Good...bring it on.  I think they are on the losing side of history here.  Black employment must continue to be a priority because economics is a big part of this problem.

There are so many facets to this complicated issue that has been festering for 250 years that is not going to be solved overnight.  Much of it lies in the hearts and minds of Americans.  I fundamentally believe that most want to do the right thing.  I believe that most want us all to prosper and live the lives guaranteed by the Constitution.  But we've seen that many don't and that has impacted a whole segment of the population.  We've got to root out those people and provide help to the people who have been impacted by generations of neglect.  It's the right thing to do.

The Message We Need

With the unfolding of events over the last several days we've been inundated with analysis, articles, photos, meme's, and 24/7 coverage.  It becomes difficult to sift through all the narratives.

I've previously posted articles on this blog from a Priest who served our church many years ago.   I think this is his best, exactly at the time I (and maybe you) need it.  He is as wise as they come.  His message today is frankly, from my perspective, the best writing I've seen about our current troubles.  He presents a calm, hopeful, fair and ultimately uplifting message that I would expect, but don't always get, from clergy.

Lessons Learned on the Civil Unrest

The first thing I usually do when I awake in the morning is to check the internet for any news updates. For the last several days, the EOIR (Executive Office for Immigration Review) has sent out announcements that read: “Due to civil unrest, the [city] immigration court will be closed today.” Imagine that, even federal courts have had to shut down because of all the turmoil in the country.

We are going through a horrific period in American history – not the worst by far – but horrific, nonetheless. Cities are war zones, police are being shot and killed, stores, cars and buildings are burned, vandalized and looted, the estimated rebuilding cost is in the billions of dollars, and even churches are not immune to attack – St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City was desecrated and St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square in Washington was set on fire with the “F” word graffitied on church walls. If you are like me, you suffer from a broken heart.

As it happened, in my Morning Prayer on today, Psalm 46 was one of the readings. This was Martin’s Luther’s favorite psalm, and he wrote “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” based upon it. I commend it to you as we pray for our country:

God is our refuge and strength, 

a very present help in trouble. 

Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth be moved, 

and though the mountain be toppled into the depths of the sea; 

Though its waters rage and foam, 

and though the mountains tremble at its tumult. 

The Lord of hosts is with us; 

the God of Jacob is our stronghold. 

I want to offer ten lessons that may help us get through these tumultuous times. 

First, there is wide agreement in the country that George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, while three other police officers looked on but did nothing. This is such a clear-cut case of murder that the District Attorney could have filed murder charges almost immediately. The fact that he waited until Friday precipitated the anger, rage and suspicion that has led to civil unrest. How different things might be now if by Tuesday Officer Chauvin was charged with murder, arrested and put in jail without bond.

Moreover, the Murder 3 charge is too low – the officer should be charged with Murder 1 – there was clear intent to kill. I will not go through the details of why Murder I is justified, but as one prosecutor told me recently, you always aim high in the initial charge. In this case, the prosecutor aimed too low – a bare minimum. Sadly, the District Attorney is incompetent. So, it is not surprising that the Attorney General of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, has taken over the case.

Second, the good news for the Floyd family is that they have retained an excellent civil rights attorney, Benjamin Crump, to represent them in collecting damages against the City of Minneapolis. No one can bring back the life of a loved one so cruelly murdered, but at least there will be compensation for a grieving family. I would expect the compensation to be in the millions of dollars. 

Third, racism is a sin. I should not have to remind any Christians that God hates prejudice, discrimination, and any kind of racial superiority. Every human being is made in the image of God, and therefore deserving of equal treatment under law. A question that needs to be asked is, “If George Floyd was white, would the police officer have treated him in the same way?” The answer is definitely not. He might have been handcuffed, but he would not have been forced to the ground with the police office putting his knee on Mr. Floyd’s throat. The officer was treating Mr. Floyd like a wild animal and not as a human being who posed no physical threat. 

Fourth, racism is embedded in the United States – and we have to deal with it. This is very painful to write, because there are many good things about America, and for all our problems, millions still want to come to this country, but few want to leave it. And yet, for all our progress on race, we continue to live with the vestiges of slavery and segregation. 

We need to remind ourselves that slavery came to the American colonies in 1619 and was only abolished after a Civil War that cost up to 750,000 lives. After the war, Reconstruction was an attempt bring about equality between blacks and whites in the southern states, but that was halted after President Grant left office. With the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1892) ruling that “separate but equal” was constitutional, we legalized segregation – separate water fountains, separate schools, separate passenger railway cars, separate sections on buses and in restaurants. Even in northern states, blacks and whites lived in separate neighborhoods and mostly attended separate schools. 

Only in 1954 did Brown v. Board of Education rule “separate but equal” unconstitutional, but it would not go quietly into that good night. The southern states resisted, and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy had to use federal troops to ensure blacks went to the schools of their choice. In the 1960’s, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, then the Voting Right Act, and then the Fair Housing Act to undo vestiges of discrimination – and still there was resistance. Northern states resisted busing that would have allowed black and white children to attend the same schools. Affirmative action also came under attack that would have ensured black representation in our colleges, universities and workplaces. 

By 2020 we have made considerable progress as a nation. We have had a black President, 13 percent of Congress is non-white, and even South Carolina (the first state to secede from the Union) now has a black United States Senator, Tim Scott, who one day, I hope, will be President. We have black mayors of some of our nation’s most important cities – Chicago and Atlanta, for example. There is still, however, a long way to go – and no where has this become more evident than in our policing of black communities. We need to do better – better recruitment, better training, better oversight of police. 

Finally, I don’t know if reparations for slavery is a viable answer to the race problem in America. The cost for meaningful reparations might be as much as 14 trillion dollars. Then, there is the question of other disadvantaged groups in America, such as Hispanics and poor whites in rural areas – do we include them? Perhaps the answer is a just society for everyone, however we get to that goal.

Fifth, as bad as the present civil unrest is, it has been much worse at other times in our history. Here are some of the worst riots in recent times:

• Watts, Los Angeles, August 11 – 16, 1965 – There were six days of rioting and looting that resulted in 34 deaths and 3,500 arrests.

• Newark, New Jersey, July 12-17, 1967 – The riot was prompted by police beating a black cab driver by the name of John Smith. There was massive property destruction and looting resulting in 26 people dead and hundreds injured. This was the “beginning of the end” of Newark as a great city (its’ school system was one of the best in the country) and a massive exodus of white people to the suburbs. 

• Detroit, July 23 – 27, 1967 – There were 43 deaths, 2,000 buildings destroyed, and 7,300 people arrested. Similar to Newark, this was the beginning of the end of the once great motor city and resulted in a “white flight” to the suburbs.

• Los Angeles, April 29 – May 4 – This was the riot in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating by police officers caught on camera, and the subsequent acquittal of all the police officers at trial. 63 people died in this riot.

What is happening now on the streets of our cities is heartbreaking, but let’s keep our perspective: compared to other incidences of civil unrest, the loss of life in these disturbances has been very low. In fact, as I write this, there are more police deaths than protestors or rioters. 

Sixth, there is enough blame to go around for everyone – no one comes off looking good. The Mayor of Minneapolis ordered police to abandon a precinct rather than defend it, resulting in its complete destruction. This sent a signal to rioters that they could engage in burning and looting with impunity. The Mayor of New York allowed stores and buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan to be vandalized and looted, with police doing little or nothing – almost a thousand stores destroyed – and all the while the Mayor claimed it was “peaceful protest.” Even Governor Cuomo had to take issue with the Mayor. The President meanwhile gave an excellent speech on Saturday at NASA, but too few Americans heard it. Unfortunately, some of his other rhetoric and tweets have been acerbic and not helpful to calming the situation. 

It is easy for us to become highly partisan in this situation. We need to resist that tendency. When the civil unrest ends, there will be time to examine what went right and wrong, and what government can do better to respond to an incendiary situation. For now, I would remind all of us what St. Paul said in Romans, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” – we are all sinners, fallible, prone to mistakes, with hearts less than pure. The great Russian Alexandre Solzhenitsyn put it best when he said, “The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.” We all need a little more humility and a willingness to engage in self-examination about our rhetoric.

Seventh, we are living in a post-modern world where very little of cable news reporting – CNN, MSNBC and Fox – reflects the truth. News reporting has become opinion, spin, and commentary under the pretense of being objective. “Truth” is what we say it is and how we understand it or want it be. It is “truth” from a particular perspective to further a particular purpose. Frankly, I believe cable news does more to endanger democracy in America than any other institution.

St. Paul referred to the devil as “the father of lies.” The devil will always try to distort the truth, mislead and misinform, all under the pretense of being fair, objective and reasonable. All of us might do well to read George Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm – even back in the late 1940’s Orwell understood the dangers of our modern technological age. You might also read C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man – a somewhat dated titled but the book zeroes in on the modern age and its dangers. We are becoming more divided in America now than perhaps at any time since before the Civil War, and cable news and the internet are largely responsible.

Eight, we can all affirm the right of Americans to protest racial injustice. Most of the protestors are doing just that – protesting racism in America as reflected in the murder of George Floyd. God bless them for their passion for justice. I remember Pope Paul VI saying, “If you want peace, then work for justice.” Without justice, a society will never enjoy peace. 

Unfortunately, in addition to legitimate protestors, there are two other groups – anarchists and looters. I hope we will all agree that breaking windows, setting fires and stealing goods is not acceptable or justifiable under any circumstances. It doesn’t take many people for a legitimate protest to go bad – Lenin said it took only five or ten percent to change the entire thrust of a protest. In the present case, it is more likely 20 or 30 percent. The tragedy is, that a good cause can get subverted by a minority, and the focus is no longer on the original injustice (the murder of George Floyd) but on stopping civil unrest. 

The good news is that the President does have the authority to go after these bad apples – whether they be Antifa or some other groups. While the President cannot legally and unilaterally declare Antifa a domestic terrorist organization, the Department of Justice has many legal tools to prosecute such groups, including use of RICO – Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act. RICO has been used to combat organized crime, and even to go after corrupt labor leaders, but it can be used wherever a group is organized to commit crime. In addition, the President can use the Insurrection Act to call up the military to take charge of uncontrollable situations if state and local officials are unable or unwilling to do so. The Insurrection Act was used by President Eisenhower against Governor Orville Faubus of Arkansas who resisted school desegregation, and President Kennedy used it against Alabama Governor George Wallace. President George H.W. Bush also used it in his time in office.

Ninth, a friend just called me and asked, “Is it possible to be a Republican or a conservative, and be a member of the Episcopal Church?” I was startled by the question and answered, “Of course, it is – we welcome everyone.” She replied, “But when I see the Bishop of Washington attacking my President but not saying a word of criticism against the arsonists who tried to burn down St. John’s Episcopal Church, I am concerned that the bias in our church is making it increasingly difficult for me to remain.” I understood her concern, but I did point out Presiding Bishop Curry’s much more balanced statement about the President standing in front of St. John’s Church. I also said that not all bishops – and certainly not all clergy – think alike. The Diocese of Washington is a very liberal diocese, but that is not the norm everywhere. So, to my dear friend and to any of you upset at the reaction of church officials to the President, hang in there and stay with us. There is room for all in the Episcopal Church, and no one is excluded – left or right or middle.

Tenth, what we all need to do – and I hope you are doing it now – is pray for our country that peace and justice will prevail, and that violence and discord will cease. Pray for our leaders – and yes, pray for President Trump. He needs our prayers at this difficult time. Pray also for the governors and mayors who are trying to balance the right of peaceful protest with maintaining public safety and order. We need to lower our voices, listen to one another, and engage in what the late Reuel Howe called, “The Miracle of Dialogue.” As Americans we can find common ground and act on common values to build a just, prosperous and peaceful America where the dignity of every human being is affirmed and the rights of every American are upheld.

The Rev. Dr. Gary Nicolosi

June 2, 2020