Holy Saturday: Stephon Clark is in his Grave

Stephon Clark is in his grave.

The sadly predictable blur rises through the electronic ether as pundits and talking heads push for a “thorough investigation” of why two Sacramento police officers shot and killed anunarmed Stephon Clark in his own yard.   The Mayor of Sacramento presses publicly to know “all the answers,”  while the dismaying results of the autopsy which reveal that Stephon Clark was shot six times in the back, seems unworthy of anything but scant notice.    Protest marches engender commentary on motorists who are stopped in traffic and are afraid.  Is it permissible to drive through and mow down protestors?   Apparently, yes.  If you are afraid, you can run down pedestrians with your car.    It is a chilling parallel to reports of how the two armed officers were “afraid” of Stephon Clark.

Stephon Clark is in his grave.

Fear is the stock and trade of those who seek to oppress.    We swim in a sea of fear, so much so, that many fall zombie-like into its thrall.  There is fear of crime, though crime rates are at a fifty year low in the United States.   There is fear of homeless people, where many sit at intersections with hand-scrawled signs begging for help.   It doesn't matter how desperate the situation, the studied gaze that avoids any eye contact wins out in the end.  And there is  the wonderfully vague “other,” who can magically take the shape of Muslim, Russian, North Korean,  Democrat, Republican, Mexican, any number of people from “shit-hole countries,” and of course, let us never cease being afraid of African Americans.

Stephon Clark is in his grave.

In the dark recesses of the tomb, death and the crippling fear of it, rules like a petty tyrant.   It whips us into shape and causes us to fall in line, nodding in mute ascent as victims die from hunger in a back alley or fall in a hail of bullets.  Starvation and gun-fire are but two of the methods employed.   Poor housing, lack of education, non-existent health care, denial of access to financial services, unemployment are all collaborators in the war on African Americans.   Yes, death’s methods are myriad, but the ensuing goal of control, dressed in clownish fear, never wavers.   Death strides the landscape claiming dominion as African Americans continue to succumb.   Through it all, we are collectively persuaded by the bountiful evidence that death is the final sanction.   And, the message is clear.  If you are not careful it will come for you as well.

Stephon Clark is in his grave.

The staccato click of reactive retort comes to the surface.  “You know that African Americans are not the only ones who suffer, don’t you?”   Well, yes.   Oppression and it’s accompanying panoply of suffering is a growth industry, it’s true.    Is this a reason to dismiss centuries of slavery, lynching, rape and torture?  Is it justification to turn from sisters and brothers who suffer from generational trauma?   Does it give permission to walk away from a community who continues to be hunted and killed by those who are called to “serve and protect?”   Does it free us of our moral responsibility  to step up and stand in solidarity with sisters and brothers whose whole lives are governed and stalked by the powers of fear and death?

Stephon Clark is in his grave.

One would think that the tomb would be silent, but it’s not.   The voices of our own surrender whisper into the darkness.   These siren sibilant hisses join a choir whose disjointed harmony sings an anthem that calls us, one by one.    No one who has benefitted from a culture built on the free labor of millions of slaves goes un-named.   No one who has dismissed the plight of a whole people living among us gets to stay anonymous.   This chorus will not be silenced.  It will not go away.    In these days of manufactured confusion let us listen to the sounds of death.   In these hours after the preacher has spoken, the coffin is closed, and the media takes over, let us listen for the sounds of our own name.    

Stephon Clark is in his grave.

Maundy Thursday: Today is the Day of Stephon Clark's Funeral

Today is the day of Stephon Clark’s funeral.   

Replete with celebrity preacher and accompanying crowds, this unarmed young man who was shot twenty times by Sacramento Police officers in his own back yard will be laid to rest.   

The sounds of weeping and angry shouts barely filter through tight lipped media  as one more time we encounter the appalling and ongoing war on African Americans carried out with lethal effectiveness by police forces around our nation.

The rest of the nation cannot simply stand by and shake their collective heads any longer.   While outrage finds voice in accompanying mass shootings in schools around the country, we cast a sideways glance as African Americans, particularly young African American men, fall victim to police violence.

Today is the day of Stephon Clark’s funeral.  

As one more life is cut short we need to pay attention to the fact that the leading cause of death among African American men under thirty is gun fire.   As Stephon Clark’s family and children move dazedly through their grief,  the responsibility for this war is certainly laid at the doorstep of our police departments and the way they are trained, not as civic protectors of the people but as paramilitary forces.   Yes indeed, the steady transformation of our nation’s police into military assault units is part of this ongoing slaughter.    However, the real responsibility needs to laid at the feet of the rest of us.   Those of us who are white, privileged, and not under assault are morally accountable for the safety and protection of our sisters and brothers who live their lives in harm’s way.

Today is the day of Stephon Clark’s funeral.  

The story of history resonates as we recall the fact that perfectly nice people, good people, church going neighbors stood by as Europe’s Jews were murdered by the millions.     As a nation we are unwilling to gaze into the face of slavery and it’s continuing impact on our sisters and brothers.  When the possibility of reparations is mentioned in any quarter, the reaction is swift and curt as nice people dismiss this out of hand.    With our collective unconsciousness we want to turn from this and also turn from real people who are being killed every day.  Here are just a few of the names.   Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Dante’ Parker, Tanisha Andersen, Tamir Rice, Rumain Brisbon, Akai Gurley, are but a few who have died.    

Today is the day of Stephon Clark’s funeral.

In the Christian community this day is known as Maundy Thursday.   It is the day that we commemorate the last meal that Jesus ate before he was betrayed, arrested by military police, tortured and then executed.    In our community we walk, sometimes numbly through the horror of this story in anticipation of the resurrection, of the advent of new life.   As we contemplate Jesus’ last supper, let us also rise up and contemplate Stephon Clark’s last meal.  Let us open our eyes and our hearts to the last supper that so many African Americans have eaten before their lives were terminated by police.    

Today is the day of Stephon Clark’s funeral.  

Instead of turning our hearts and our minds away while countless last suppers take place across the nation, let us own our responsibility.   Yes, police and their minions need to be held accountable, but the real reckoning comes to those who are not in danger.   The real accountability for this ongoing horror falls to the sisters and brothers who could and should do something but somehow manage to go about their daily business, unaffected and uninvolved.

Today is the day of Stephon Clark’s funeral.

The violent whirlwind we are reaping can find a pathway to healing and hope.  The wailing of grief and pain can finally end as justice rolls down like a mighty river.   The ravages of slavery and a history of unabated racism can begin to be addressed by White America.    Peace can emerge from the smog of our complicity.   But it must begin with a surge of compassion and a recognition that we are each other’s sisters and brothers.  We are responsible for the welfare and safety of those under attack.   We are, as we sit down to table with Jesus, both the problem and the resolution.

Today is the day of Stephon Clark’s funeral.

May he rest in peace, and may real peace accompanied by justice become the work of every person who has the luxury of being safe today.

sr

The Spirituality of Violence

         I grew up in the powerful grip of the American myth of righteousness.    In my naïve world,  we were the good guys.   We stood for freedom and democracy.   We lived, as we were told incessantly, in “the best country in the world.”  And, we believed it.   In the heady years following the Second World War, we were awash in the flickering black and white television images of American triumphalism.   Sitting in our PJs at night we would stare blankly as we were indoctrinated into the narrative of  American power and its accompanying, deeper myth of redemptive violence.   TV shows like “Combat,” “Wagon Train,” “Gunsmoke” and “Have Gun, Will Travel”  programmed our minds with a panoply of endless violence which was the panacea for every conceivable problem.  This trend has grown.  Today it is estimated that by the age of eighteen the average American has seen over 200,000 acts of violence on television (American Psychiatric Association http://w2.parentstv.org/main/Research/Facts.aspx) . 

Our play time reflected the violence that surrounded us.  On jungle gyms and playgrounds we whooped and yelled, and it was always about  American nobility and valor vanquishing an endless series of bad guys that reflected the nation’s enemy du jour.   Each day we would take our toy guns and sally forth against Indigenous Americans, the British,  the Confederacy, the Spanish, the Germans and of course, the Commies.  Today, the targets of horribly graphic computer games for children are the wonderfully non-descript “terrorists,” who can take on whatever race or ethnicity befits the agenda of the moment.   In the face of each threat, each enemy, we continue to resort to a justified, even noble violence which we are told will sweep clean the soiled landscape.

Redemptive violence is a deeply imbedded cultural belief that, at the end of the day, only violence will truly solve our problems.    It’s nice, of course, to give a cursory nod to the idealistic dreamers.  Indeed, restrained acknowledgements are given to  Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Dr. King and their ilk but we have it drilled into us daily that  violence is the final sanction: the only thing that will really get the job done.    We are taught in our history classes, for example, that we had no choice but to use the atomic bomb on Japan because they would never have surrendered otherwise.   This all too familiar conceit conveniently forgets that in reality Japan had put out several feelers for peace talks prior to the “dropping” of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Moreover, the entry of the Soviet Union into the war had a profound impact on the surrender as well.   We did  have options to vaporizing two whole cities, but peace talks were not acceptable.  Only total surrender would do.  So the Enola Gay  and Bockscar took off with their nuclear payloads and headed for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In all this we cannot overlook the. story of a nation whose history is one of continual violence.   The evidence is so overwhelming that it cannot be fully illustrated here, but the horrible truth is that this nation was literally built upon the bloody backs of millions of enslaved human beings  (http://civilwarcauses.org/stat.htm).   More than a century later, the generational trauma still tears at the souls of African Americans everywhere.  Talk of reparations for this crime against humanity is met with derision and dismissal.   Our so-called “manifest destiny” rolled across the continent over the mass graves of indigenous people (http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide5.htm), in what some call the largest genocide in human history.     Our industrial might rose through smoky haze of the ghosts of martyred union activists (https://study.com/academy/lesson/a-historical-outline-of-organized-labor-in-the-united-states.html) .   And today we are forced to look at the truth that we are locked into an endless arc of warfare in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, The Philippines, Turkey, Somalia,  Niger, and around the globe that literally sees no end.   And to fuel this widening global conflagration, the United States of America spends more on its military than the next eleven countries combined (https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison).

So inured are we to the violent core of our national reality that it has become part of our spiritual reality.  Indeed, it is clear that we need to come to grips with the fact that violence has become the spiritual underpinning of the American conscience.   From our greed-inspired upper class revolution to the genocidal westward expansion to the prosecution of computerized drone wars that spread out endlessly before us,  America has been baptized in the blood of the innocent.    Our spirits have been harnessed and hitched to the wagon of a highly individualistic materialism that is narcissistically clueless about the suffering we cause around the world.    

This spirituality of violence is more than a vague unfettered strain in American culture.  It is highly organized into a quasi-religious practice and enforced with an increasing rigor that should disturb even the most calloused heart.    The cult of violence protects gun ownership as zealously as any religious fanatic.   Indeed, the National Rifle Association, which functions as a   priestly voice for the spirituality of violence, funded American politicians to the tune of tens of millions of dollars last year to assure that no realistic gun control could pass through Congress or the Senate. 

(https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000082&type=P&cycle=2016).   

On top of the clear corruption of our government through literal buying of votes is the fomenting of fear and racism that drives the sales of weapons.   Last year there were 14.5 million applications for concealed handgun permits in the US (https://crimeresearch.org/2016/07/new-study-14-5-million-concealed-handgun-permits-last-year-saw-largest-increase-ever-number-permits/) .   14.5 million.  This does not include the voluminous sales of Military style assault weapons and a host of other implements of destruction.  In. the face of nearly daily mass shootings in schools and other public areas, the US government is quietly repealing the few regulations that do exist regarding these weapons (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-house-refused-to-release-photo-of-trump-signing-bill-to-weaken-gun-law/).  The alleged right to possess these instruments  of death is enshrined in a holy misinterpretation of the US Constitution and God help the person who tries to legislate even a modest control over these weapons.

Propaganda notwithstanding,  the US is currently  experiencing the lowest crime rates in fifty years (http://time.com/3577026/crime-rates-drop-1970s/) .   Murder, violent crime and property crime are at an all-time low.  Yet if you watch the news this is not what we are being told.  Our police forces are being deliberately militarized with armored personnel carriers, military assault weapons, and military training to combat a crime wave that does not exist.   No longer do our civilian police forces protect and serve.   Instead, they have been formed into military assault units leaving a trail of dead bodies, almost all of whom are people of color.  

The violence of our spiritual core is coming home to roost.   The bombs we have dropped around the world are exploding in our towns and cities, and the wholesale use of our national resources to support this violence has hollowed out the center of what used to be our shared values.   Today, the “best country in the world” has the lowest literacy rate in the so called developed world with an education system that is starved of funding and crippled by a never ending drive to privatize and diminish it.  Today the “best country in the world” has the highest infant mortality rate in the so called developed world.  Today the “best country in the world” has one in ten people in its whole population suffering from malnutrition.   Today, we cannot claim being the top dog in anything except the number of killings by fire arms.  

The spirituality of  violence and death has seeped into every corner  of our existence.   It is an unescapable part of who we are as a nation.   If we pause and take a look in the mirror we will no longer see an idealistic, freedom loving people who are setting out to improve the world, if ever that was anything but an illusion.   No.  If we look through the eyes of the rest of the world we are fast becoming the ones who must be stopped.   We are no longer seen as heroes.  We are no longer the ones that everyone seeks to emulate.   We have become an active and grave threat to the whole global community and it is  a matter of time before the world comes together to put a halt to our spiritual madness.

The collective weight of our violent history has resulted in an American Spirit that is twisted and contorted.  The call comes to us to renew it.  The American heart is hardened and cold.   We must thaw it with compassion.  The American hope is shriveled into a cynical echo of shattered dreams.  We must bring a new kind of hope.   Now is the time to act for the healing of the nation.  Now is the time to name the lies that poison our people.  Now is the time to stand up and be counted.

This is more than a call to simple resistance in what is rapidly turning into an authoritarian state.   This is a call to spiritual conversion.    Let us throw off the tyranny of our own desires and reach for the welfare of the human family.    Let us shed the spirit of death that has gripped our people and together let us reach for life.    Let us name the lie of redemptive violence and live into the spiritual redemption that comes from self-giving love and compassion.   In short, let us step out of this twisted and evil culture and build something new together.    Let us begin to lay the foundation stones for a new America where people come before profits and where the welfare of the human family is something for which we are collectively responsible.

Let us act now to tear down the temples of violence and greed before it is too late.   Let us be the midwives who birth a new spirituality that even now groans in anticipation, waiting to come forth.