Politics and Policy Advocacy and Religious Communities–questions about church/state separation
April 16, 2012, 6:32 pm
Filed under:
Becoming and Being Part of a UU Congregation,
Politics,
Politics, Elections, and Government,
Social Action & Social Justice,
Stewardship & Finances,
UUA General Assemblies | Tags:
prophetic religion,
religious activism,
separation of church and stateA member recently asked about materials displayed at our Social Responsibility Network table after church. The question: What about the separation of church and state?
A good and important question. The constitutional prohibition has to do with restricting government rather than religion. The government can neither interfere in the free exercise of religion nor establish or support any particular religion. The restriction on religion in this regard is that it cannot get the government to favor its theology or promote its message.
Churches, and all other not-for-profit organizations, are prohibited from using tax-deductible funds from advocating for candidates for office, political parties, or any partisan political issues. They may, however, raise awareness about civic issues and governmental policies, including explicit advocacy for or against particular policy actions: abortion rights (pro or con), gay rights (pro or con), civil liberties (pro or con), capital punishment, funding of military aid to Israel or Colombia, budgetary priorities regarding food or medical care, and the many, many ballot initiatives.
Hence, our Social Responsibility volunteers legally may gather signatures at church for a proposition to end the death penalty, raise taxes, etc. The church bylaws do make it clear that this must be in the name of the committee and not in the name of the church–unless and until the proper procedures have been followed for taking an official stance. On some issues, our denomination’s General Assembly delegates have debated and taken specific positions, and often a church will get involved in that issue, such as immigrant justice and marriage equality.
A limit: The amount of a church or other not-for-profit organization’s budget that may go toward policy advocacy is limited to a small percentage of the total budget. If spending goes above that limit, then the organization risks losing its nonprofit 501(c)3 status.
I think this limit is now 15%. Our congregation and our denomination spend well below 5% of resources on policy advocacy. We spend most of our budget on personnel, who spend their time serving the needs of our members and friends, holding Sunday worship, hosting a community garden, paying utilities, playing music… having fun!
To learn more, check out The Real Rules.
Politicians–Local Hopefuls Pitch for LGBT Endorsements
March 29, 2012, 12:35 pm
Filed under:
Ordeals and Observations of Pastor Cranky not elsewhere classified,
Politics,
Politics, Elections, and Government | Tags:
candidates,
city council,
endorsements,
LGBT,
local politics,
Sacramento city councilIt’s easy to trash politicians, and easy for me to think it’s merited. Just turn on the national news or open the paper. (Today I’d like to trash a few Supreme Court justices too.) But when you look down at the local level, you see that they are just people, and most of them care a lot about their calling and their work. And they all work hard.
Tuesday night I went to the first-ever endorsement forum of a brand new PAC (Political Action Committee) for the Rainbow Chamber of Commerce (which includes many LGBT-owned, -run, or -friendly area businesses). I have not joined the Chamber so all I could do was watch and listen. The PAC endorsed many office-seekers for seats on a local school board, the county board of supervisors, and state assembly. Several of these folks came by; some of them are Chamber members (not necessarily LGB or T), but even they had to leave the room for the discussions (and hand their ballots in through a volunteer.
The dramatic highlights were three-minute speeches by those seeking office in three city council districts; the June election for these seats (and mayor) is non-partisan. If nobody gets a majority in a given race, there will be a runoff.
All of the candidates were passionate, thoughtful, and articulate in describing their backgrounds, visions, and qualifications. Some showed more expertise in the issues than others, some had more connections to leaders in the group (who made strong testimonies while the candidates absented themselves). None is an incumbent, though some have held office before. My response to the speeches did not always match the outcome of the vote, but this was the first time I met most of them. The PAC’s rules state that a person must get 60% in order for an endorsement to be made, and in every case the vote was overwhelming and not close.
I am grateful to all these folks who dare to step forward and stand for election. They all bring many talents, and already they have served their communities in significant ways. Their willingness to walk neighborhoods, knock on doors, listen to anyone and everyone who wants to bend their ear–it’s so old fashioned! It’s nearly an obsolete phenomenon, except in local politics.
Their generosity and commitment has revived Pastor Cranky’s idealism about the political process and the dignity of elected service.
Notable among those endorsed by an overwhelming vote is the young but smart, experienced, gifted and highly esteemed young man who is competing to be my city council member: Steve Hansen. When I get his sign for my window from him, I’ll bend his ear about the trashy lots in this neighborhood.
“The Best Man” — 1960 Tony-winning play by Gore Vidal, at my church’s community theater
March 22, 2012, 6:41 pm
Filed under:
Politics,
Politics, Elections, and Government,
Theater (Plays | Tags:
acting,
community theater,
Gore Vidal,
The Best Man,
Theater One,
UUAt last Friday’s opening of The Best Man, the UUSS playhouse had the highest opening-night energy level in my recollection. Gore Vidal’s political drama was presented by my church’s 51-year-old community theater group, Theater One. Roberta Stewart, here since the early years, is the director. We have a number of experienced community-theater actors, some fairly new to the stage (or returning after a long interim since high school or college theater), and some members with professional experience on stage and screen. They are a dedicated team!
For me the play is a blast from the past of political history. I was born in 1961, when it won some Tony Awards but lost the Best Play prize to The Miracle Worker. A Sacramento News and Review writer says it’s Gore Vidal’s best play. It’s about a battle for the presidential nomination of an unnamed political party in 1960, but that was in the era of party-convention drama, smoked-filled room dealings, and last minute changes. Nowadays, nominees usually have their delegates sewn up well before the convention, which is more of a coronation and PR occasion than a business meeting. Few platform or campaign positions are determined now at conventions. I can’t think we are better off, with SuperPACS (thanks to the Citizens United court ruling), bundling of campaign donations, and big-money and TV commercials determining decisions about the last man standing (still it’s a man, alas).
(If you want to read more–and weep–about the undermining of our democracy, check out Thomas Frank’s essay in the April 2012 Harper’s Magazine. It’s not online yet, but you can get the gist of it from this blurb about his new book, Pity the Billionaire.)
Now back to the show:
The lighting and sound design were well-planned and effective, and the set was evocative of the hotel suites where so much wheeling and dealing used to take place, while delegates haggled on the convention floor or perhaps hung out in the nearby taverns of an unfamiliar city. (But no TGIF chain, Chili’s or Hooter’s in 1960.) The leads in the cast really looked (and dressed) their parts, evoking both the public persona and the vulnerability, venality and some strong convictions that lurked behind the roles: candidates, political wives, king-makers, press corps members, and an ailing, plain-spoken, lame-duck president. As a nighttime worker here in my minister’s office, I know they worked long and hard, and with creative thoughtfulness, to make it happen.
The drama is engaging, and Vidal’s humor a delight to hear. On opening night, pauses in some of the dialogue kept the show from having as much dramatic energy as the script contains, but actors stayed in character and covered for one another when necessary, and after that first show I am confident they have picked up the pace. Perhaps it would serve us well to have a discounted “preview” night for future plays, as happens in professional theater. That way the audience would expect that there are a few bugs to work out, but we’d have an audience for the energy it gives back to the performers, which helps them in fine tuning for a later show. Then opening night could be the next night.
This play is an excellent choice for this political year; Broadway agrees, for the revival of the play will open April 1 in NYC. I might like to see it if I visit friends there in July, but I was happy to have a front-row seat at my church for 1/10th of the cost of a Broadway show. (No tickets here are more than $14.) We had a new feature, organized by our PR chairperson: an opening-night gala reception before curtain, including dry wines poured by our own “Sweet” winemaker. The snacks lasted through the intermission and I snagged a final slice of cheese after the show. (The reception was free, because selling wine and beer costs more than it brings in, given the county alcohol-sales permit you have to buy for every event.)
It’s an enjoyable experience for a pastor to watch a great play presented by a cast and crew whom he knows and loves, and Friday night there were plenty of church friends and relatives in the crowd, among others, who also enjoyed the show.
I am grateful to Bobby, cast and crew for introducing me to this play, and providing a live and lively experience of it.
I recommend it!
TERM PAPER APPENDIX 4 (finally!)–Reflections on Our Colonial Involvement and Our Post-Colonial Distance
February 5, 2012, 1:39 pm
Filed under:
Adult Enrichment and Group Meetings,
Comparative Religion,
Comparative Religion,
Graduate Theological school/PSR,
International,
Magazine & Newspaper Articles,
Politics,
Politics, Elections, and Government,
Reflections,
Religious Studies: History,
Social Action & Social Justice,
UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views
[If you just got here or stumbled into this blog, this is the last installment of sections from a term paper about the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Philippines. I think if you go backward to read all the posts, you'll find all the sections except those I have chosen not to post.]
Appendix IV: Reflections on Our Colonial Involvement and Our Post-Colonial Distance
It is worth noting that the UUA is an American Mainline Protestant denomination long dominated by elites. We claim several dead presidents and have at least two buried in our churches. (Though the Universalist Church of America did have more class diversity from the Unitarians ever since their separate origins in America, as a movement the Universalists had been in decline and had much less wealth by the 1961 merger.)
According to Stanley Karnow, the Spanish American War had been “masterminded” by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (a Unitarian), among others, and the senator then advocated annexation.[ii] In 1900, William Howard Taft (also a Unitarian) became the first American governor of the Philippines; later he became the U. S. President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Given our contemporary UU self-understanding of the UUA as a justice-oriented denomination, it is worth noting that American religious liberals were involved in the running of the Philippines, and hence from prospering from it as a colony. Perhaps the ambivalence about admitting the Philippine church arose in part from a reluctance to look at our own movement’s connection to the colonial depredation of that nation. These architects of the annexation of the Philippines leaders apparently kept their liberal theological values separate from their careers as advocates for colonial power.
Have we kept our distance from the Philippine church—either in not thinking Filipinos could find anything in our tradition that speaks to their experience, in not wanting to admit the UUCP to the UUA, or in not wanting to share, give, or “impose” our American church practices and theologies on a marginalized group? Perhaps, in the names of avoiding renewed colonialism and promoting the Philippine church’s authenticity and autonomy, we have been endeavoring to distance ourselves from our connections to the American colonial era in the Philippines. Whether we can answer them or not, we carry such complex questions into new and ongoing relationships between UUs there and UUs here.
For further information: The subjects of American colonialism and the Unitarians involved in the Philippines is addressed in Frederick John Muir’s book Maglipay Universalist: A History of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Philippines (Annapolis: Unitarian Universalist Church, 2001).
Muir in particular describes the early contacts between the American Unitarian Association (AUA) and the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, the Catholic breakway movement led by Father Gregorio Aglipay. Aglipay visited the Unitarians here in the early 1930s, and the AUA president tried and failed to lead a strong relationship with that Philippine movement, which later affiliated with the Anglican Communion.
This paper keeps the focus on the later movement (the UUCP) with which present-day North American UUs have a living and growing relationship.
TERM PAPER Part 7–Unitarianism and Universalism from New England to the Pacific Coast
January 28, 2012, 8:06 am
Filed under:
Becoming and Being Part of a UU Congregation,
Books (includes sermons based on books),
Comparative Religion,
Comparative Religion,
Graduate Theological school/PSR,
International,
Politics, Elections, and Government,
Religious Studies: History,
Social Action & Social Justice,
Trends in Religion,
UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views
The first Unitarian or Universalist church on the Pacific Coast was the Unitarian congregation established in 1850 and served by the legendary Thomas Starr King in 1860.[i] In his 1957 book Unitarianism on the Pacific Coast, the Rev. Arnold Crompton wrote that Unitarian ministers and lay leaders came west following the California Gold Rush and the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Crompton attributes the growth of Unitarianism to five factors:
First, “transplanted” New England Unitarians wanted a church like those back home…. Second, the tightening of the lines of orthodoxy [in the larger society] gave rise to conscience problems among liberal Christians which led them to seek their own company…. Third, direct missionary activity… established churches or planted seeds of future churches. Fourth, the great ministers… by their preaching, their leadership, and their lives attracted people to their churches and denomination. The fifth factor was the changing intellectual climate [especially scientific challenges to traditional theology].
While conclusive evidence is lacking about the Universalists, it seems fair to assume that similar economic promises and the transcontinental railroad brought them westward as well. Appendix I shows the dates when most Unitarian or Universalist congregations were established on the Pacific Coast in the nineteenth century. While the dates are similar between the two denominations, it is notable that many of the Universalist churches did not survive. One that did, in Pasadena, was blessed by a large endowment from Amos Throop, who also founded the California Institute of Technology.
In the rest of the United States, as the number of Universalist churches and members declined in the twentieth century. The standard history of the movement reports that the American Almanac for 1832 lists Universalism as the sixth largest denomination.[ii] However, in a sermon given in 1995 and revised later on his website, David Lawyer cited census and other date to estimate that 49,000 to 64,000 Universalist church members existed between 1890 and 1906.[iii] Lawyer argues that, contrary to many claims, Universalism was in decline before the twentieth century, and may never have grown as much as its early leaders announced.[iv]
The Unitarians as a denomination had a stronger missionary activity on the west coast, fueled by the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones[v], a Unitarian leader from the Midwest, and Charles Wendte, who served local churches but also, as part of the Pacific Coast Unitarian Conference, led the planting of many Unitarian churches on the coast. For a congregationally-based tradition, missionary work entailed pulling together enough local people with liberal Christian beliefs (or better, some with Unitarian backgrounds from elsewhere) and gathering them into a congregation. This work included advertising, publications, and lectures, working on local causes and civic projects, holding worship and dedicating a church building as soon as affordable.
In 1892, the Unitarian churches in Los Angeles, National City, Ontario, Pomona, Santa Ana, Redland, San Bernardino, San Diego and Sierra Madre attended a conference to organize the Southern California Liberal Conference “as a subdivision of the [Pacific] Coast Conference.”[vi] This reflects a missionary optimism. Yet few of these churches may have been strong, and half those towns no longer have a UU church. Just a few years earlier, in 1886, Unitarian leader Charles Wendte (heavily involved in church-planting efforts for the faith) listed only four “stable Unitarian churches on the Pacific Coast”: San Francisco, Portland, Santa Barbara, San Diego.[vii]
Though based in Boston like the Unitarians, the Universalist Church in America and its state conferences were a much less centrally organized body, and membership statistics are unclear. While the Universalists’ original evangelistic activity on the other side of the continent was impressive, it is unclear to me whether this Gospel zeal is what led to their founding of West Coast congregations.
In any case, the beginnings of the Unitarian Universalist Church on the island of Negros had no connection to the westward movement of either denomination in the United States. More recent encounters and relationships do show a mostly-Pacific orientation. But the founding of the liberal faith in the Philippines was both accidental and home grown.
Was Christopher Hitchens Religious?
December 22, 2011, 9:19 am
Filed under:
Comparative Religion,
Comparative Religion,
Magazine & Newspaper Articles,
Politics,
Politics, Elections, and Government,
Religious Studies: History,
Social Action & Social Justice,
Trends in Religion | Tags:
anti-religious,
atheism,
Christopher Hitchens,
Iraq War,
polemics,
progressive religion,
religionHitchens was the British-born immigrant American journalist, critic, and polemicist who died last week.
Acerbic, smart, wide-ranging and extreme in argument, he was noted for going after Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, and religious believers of all kinds. Formerly a Marxist and still a leftist, he nevertheless was a strong advocate of invading Iraq in 2003. In the cause of opposing “Islamofascism,” he would attack anyone who seemed to promote tolerance toward Islam as a religion and as a movement. While he may have done significant muckraking journalism about Mother Theresa (but I don’t know), his attitudes about religion left no room for nuance, complexity, and contradictions in the diverse world of religion.
This is an interesting short article from the Rev. Marilyn Sewell of Portland. It’s posted on the Beacon Press “Broadside.”
http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2011/12/was-christopher-hitchens-religious.html
See what you think, and feel free to add a comment here.
The Word of the Year: Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg Speaks!
December 13, 2011, 9:32 pm
Filed under:
Magazine & Newspaper Articles,
Politics, Elections, and Government,
Social Action & Social Justice | Tags:
economic inequality,
linguist,
non-violent protest,
Occupy,
social justice,
social movement,
word of the year,
word usagethis 5-minute commentary was on a recent Fresh Air program on National Public Radio. Nunberg is always interesting.
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/07/143265669/occupy-geoff-nunbergs-2011-word-of-the-year
Progressive Morality and Occupy Wall Street
December 9, 2011, 1:42 pm
Filed under:
Becoming and Being Part of a UU Congregation,
Comparative Religion,
Politics,
Politics, Elections, and Government,
Sermon Archives and Excerpts,
Social Action & Social Justice,
UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views | Tags:
Occupy Wall Street,
Progressive Morality,
Unitarians and Occupy,
UUHere is an excerpt from a Reader Supported News essay by progressive linguist George Lakoff:
Progressives have a basic morality, which is largely unspoken. It has to be spoken, over and over, in every corner of our country.
Progressives need to be both thinking and talking about their view of a moral democracy, about how a robust public is necessary for private success, about all that the public gives us, about the benefits of health, about a Market for All not a Greed Market, about regulation as protection, about revenue and investment, about corporations that keep wages low when profits are high, about how most of the rich earn a lot of their money without making anything or serving anyone, about how corporations govern your life for their profit not yours, about real food, about corporate and military waste, about the moral and social role of unions, about how global warming causes the increasingly monstrous effects of weather disasters, about how to save and preserve nature.
Progressives have magnificent stories of their own to tell. They need to be telling them nonstop. END OF EXCERPT.
…
[I did a small part for this, in my sermon on 11/27/2011. See also the sermon from our minister at the UU Church in Livermore, CA.
He says:
Gandhi’s words are ringing in my head: “First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, and then you win.”
Watch a video of his sermon here.
Occupy the Common Good: How Can We Keep from Singing?..–.. UU Sermon
November 27, 2011, 3:06 pm
Filed under:
Children and Youth,
Comparative Religion,
Politics,
Politics, Elections, and Government,
Sermon Archives and Excerpts,
Social Action & Social Justice,
Special Events,
UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views | Tags:
Amos 2,
Bill of Rights,
courage,
economic democracy,
economic justice,
economy,
non-violent resistance,
nonviolence,
Occupy Sacramento,
Occupy Wall Street,
pepper spray,
public policy,
UnitarianNovember 27, 2011
Unitarian Universalist Society, Sacramento, CA
* * *
Justice will not be served until
those who are unaffected
are as outraged as those who are.
–Benjamin Franklin
* * *
Hymns: We Sing Now Together (67), Spirit of Life/Fuente de Amor (123), My Life Flows on in Endless Song (108). Reading: “The Limits of Tyrants,” by Frederick Douglass (579). All in Singing the Living Tradition. Music: A. Dvorak, Sonatina Op. 100, for violin & piano, 3 movements.
***
Sermon
Our scripture reading today comes from the Constitution of the United States of America. The First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Here ends the reading.
Last spring a friend of mine began telling everyone of his dismay about the growth of income inequality over the past three decades. The middle class has shrunk. Tax rates favor the rich, changes in trade policy and labor laws have taken jobs and made low-wage workers vulnerable. Hunger and homelessness have grown. Public education is in trouble. Considering the devastation to communities, families and children, he said, “I don’t understand, why people are not taking to the streets.” Just a few months later, people did take to the streets.
In the summer, a 69-year-old Canadian man, writing on the web site adbusters.org, proposed “a leaderless people powered movement for democracy.”
Occupy Wall Street started on September 17, but it had a small and slow start. However, a week later protestors marched from New York’s Zuccotti Park to Union Square, and 87 of them were arrested. The resulting attention jump-started the movement. It has spread to 900 cities and four continents. Adbusters’ website, and postings from local Occupy encampments, say the movement’s goal–and its vow–is to “end the monied corruption of our democracy.”
Bear with me for just a few numbers. Since 1982, the share of this country’s income held by the top 1 percent of our population has more than doubled. This top tier takes in one quarter of all income. “The top 1 percent of Americans holds 39 percent of the nations’ wealth…. [In the United States], the top 10 percent of the people hold more than 70 percent of the wealth, and the bottom 50 percent hold 2 percent of the wealth.”
In the words of Gary Dorrien, a minister and professor of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary, “Thirty years of stagnant wages and accelerating inequality offered an opening for a populist movement demanding a full-employment economy and a curtailment of Wall Street’s speculation and gouging.” Dorrien explains the “99 percent” slogan of Occupy Wall Street. The point, he says, “is that the top 1 percent plays by a different set of rules and has made fantastic gains while everyone else falls behind.”[i]
As we’ve heard from billionaire investor Warren Buffet, middle-income families often pay a larger share of their personal income as taxes of all kinds than those at the higher tiers of the income ladder. Tax breaks, capital-gains rates, complex deductions, and a ceiling on Social Security taxes all favor those whose incomes come from investments. They disadvantage those who get most of their income from working.
In Berkeley, Davis and other cities that are home to state-supported universities, students protest the steep hikes in fees and tuition costs of the past several years. College costs have risen several times faster than working family incomes have risen. More and more, college operations are financed by not by tax dollars, but with student debt.
Two Fridays ago in the middle of campus at the University of California, Davis, several young protestors are sitting in the quad, arms linked together, guarding their Occupy encampment. Campus police approach in riot gear, with batons and rifles. The campus chancellor has sent them to dismantle the encampment, “for the health and safety of the whole campus.”[ii]
More students arrive and stand in a large circle, drawn there by phone calls, texts and other electronic messages. As university police approach with bottles of red-pepper spray, friends call out, “Cover your eyes! Cover your nose and mouth.” One person cries out from the crowd, pleading with a protestor to get up and get away. The larger circle chants, “The whole world is watching!” It has indeed been watching—thanks to videos on YouTube. You can hear a middle-aged woman scream to the police, “These are children! These are children.” You see the police lieutenant approach. He walks up and down the line, making big red clouds with his big red bottle. He sprays the seated students around the head, in the face. Chants rise up from the growing crowd: “Shame on you, shame on you!” It’s horrific, sickening scene.
Afterward, a young man calls out, with a hoarse voice: “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this, officer. I swallowed pepper spray because of you. I didn’t bring any pepper spray. I brought no weapons. We have no weapons. Shame on you!” The police arrest 10 of the protestors, and back away in a group, holding their rifles along their chests.
This movement has been sparked by frustration and fear about what kind of nation we are becoming. Now it is fueled by outrage, growing solidarity, and passion for healing and restoring the common good of our country and our communities. This is a movement about the moral issues that shape our common life.
William J. McDonough, formerly CEO of a large bank in Chicago, spoke about executive compensation to a group of that city’s business leaders:
“ ‘In 1980, the average large company chief executive officer made 40 times more than the average employee in his or her firm.’ [Twenty years later] the multiple had risen to at least 400 times [the average salary]…. In other words, [in] 20 years the multiple [of] CEO pay went up by 1,000 percent. ‘There is no economic theory, however farfetched, which can justify that increase,’ McDonough. ‘It is also grotesquely immoral.’”[iii]
Such inequity and immorality is perhaps as old as humanity. It’s certainly as old as the Bible. Over seven centuries before Christ, the Hebrew Prophet Amos attacked elite society’s dishonor of God’s law and the oppression of the poor. From Amos, chapter 2: “They sell honest people for money, and the needy are sold for the price of sandals. They smear the poor in the dirt, and push aside those who are helpless.”[iv]
Since the early 1980s, on average, working people’s wages have stagnated, and investment incomes have skyrocketed. Except for those who invested their savings in the place where they live. In the past three years, the recession has wiped out eight trillion dollars of home values. Countless people have lost their homes due to foreclosures. Even some who rent have been evicted because they didn’t know that their landlords were going through foreclosures, and banks were reclaiming the rental properties.
Some of you, or those you love, have been hit–losing a home, losing a job, feeling confused and uncertain about the future. In every community, desperation lives just under the surface of our shared interactions. Many people are “under water,” which means they owe more on a mortgage loan than their house is worth—lots more.
Two couples I know made the painful decision to walk away from the houses they had loved and lived in, and which they had bought at the top of a market, when loans were plentiful and “collateralized debt obligations” seemed only a boring phrase of jargon and not a house of cards. Of course, some needed to walk away in order to move away to the only place they could get a job. Others, facing their own guilty feelings and a surely ruined credit score, decided to scale back expenses, get out from under mortgages that would never end, and go into default on their loans.
A necessary part of our money-driven political system is a propaganda machine. Run by many, and accepted by many more, for the benefit of a few, this machine tries to hide the growing injustice. It fills political discussions with myths and falsehoods. Here is the biggest myth: the idea that our economy is just a self-created, self-generating entity, just a force of nature, which we must learn to live with and obey. In fact, an economy is a structure that we build, shape and change. The Greek root for the word economy means household, or household management.
We shape our common household by the common choices we make about our financial and commodity markets, laws dealing with labor, property and incorporation; and by our business, personal and government spending decisions. We shape our household by policies dealing with commerce, foreign trade, energy, natural resources, health care financing, transportation, pensions and Social Security, and educational and vocational training institutions. We structure our economy through regulations of investment and banking systems (or the dismantling of those regulations).
In other words, the mess we are in today didn’t just happen. Laws, court rulings and policies allowed it to happen. The progress and prosperity we experienced from the 1940s to the 1970s didn’t just happen. The emergence of a large middle class didn’t just happen. People decided to make it happen.
The frenzy, the frauds and the convoluted real-estate financing bubble of the past decade or two have led us to the widespread upheaval known as the Great Recession. It’s an outrage—and it has led people to take to the streets and college campus quadrangles. Fear of this outrage—fear of this eye-opening, pro-democracy movement—leads authorities in some places to unjust suppression and even violence. Mass outrage is understandable. Perhaps it’s a necessary ingredient for our common courage. Yet we must resist the temptation to demonize or dehumanize police officers, and well-off people, even politicians. Demonizing undermines the principle that all people have dignity and worth. It undermines the value–and the reality–that we are all in this together.
A few ministerial colleagues in the East Bay have been to Occupy Oakland, including the march to the Port of Oakland. In contradiction of the depictions of Occupy Oakland by at least one of the Bay Area’s daily papers, my friends reported a festive atmosphere, with people of all ages, ethnicities, and occupations walking together. One friend chatted with police officers as they waited in line together to use the porta-potty toilets.
Yesterday, on my noon visit to Occupy Sacramento at Cesar Chavez Park, I spoke to a retired woman standing at the corner of 10th and I streets, by City Hall. She was holding her home-made sign. She belongs to an Episcopal church in a suburb. Beside her was another sign listing this region’s Congressional representatives and U. S. senators, and urging us to contact them and insist on change, insist on justice and fairness.
After that conversation I crossed over to the Occupy encampment and spoke with two women at the information table. They told me about the General Assembly, open to everyone, every day at 5:30 p.m, except for Tuesdays, when they attend Sacramento City Council meetings.
After wishing them well, and thanking them for being there, I went up to three police officers on bikes in the middle of the park, near the fountain. “How’s it going?” I asked. One officer answered: “Lackluster.” With only a few of the daytime-only tents and information tables in the background, he said that the big crowds of earlier days are not so regular now in Sacramento. When there’s a big national event, more people will come out here. He said that if I go to Facebook and look up Occupy Sacramento, I can keep informed and then come to the park for special events. Before heading home, I said, “Thank you for being here.”
I can feel the temptation to focus my wrath on particular politicians, or cops or security guards, but when I give into this temptation, I take energy and focus away from the systemic changes we need: changes in our campaign financing systems and changes on a Supreme Court whose majority has ruled that corporations are people, with the same rights to making campaign contributions as real people.
As I watched videos of the police pepper-spraying on the Davis campus, I couldn’t imagine myself sitting there, staying seated as the assault began. After the spraying, an officer tried to lift a student by the arms. The boy went limp. In that same situation, I feel, I would have struck out at the officer—out of anger and pain. This student didn’t move. Surely in agony, those protestors displayed the kind of discipline—and the kind of dignity—that I have seen in news footage from the American Civil Rights movement, the freedom struggle in India, the cause to end Apartheid laws in segregated South Africa, and recent scenes from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, and places all over the globe.
Another video takes place after the assault, with students confronting the officers. You can see confusion in the faces and movements of the officers. I have a tense fear that one will fire his rifle at the yelling crowd. One man—a Unitarian Universalist young adult and Religious Education volunteer in his church and in our district– calls for a “mike check.” This term refers to a practice of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In lieu of using amplification, the crowd repeats each phrase after the speaker says it.
He calls for a mike check, and the crowd quiets. He shouts, and they repeat: “We are willing to give you… a brief moment of peace…, so you may take your weapons… and our friends… and turn and leave… You can go. Please do not come back.” The rows of campus officers begin to back away, holding their rifles across their chests. A few students walk toward them, some yelling with glee. I worry that the police will react with more violence. They keep going. Students cheer at their moral victory. They chant: “Whose University? Our university! Whose quad? Our quad!” This is a tension-filled 10-minute video.
It remains to be seen what kinds of changes Occupy Wall Street will initiate or deliver. It is a self-proclaimed “leaderless movement.” It’s not another political campaign or progressive organization—there are plenty of those already. It is a populist movement that deliberates, makes demands, and engenders new conversations all over the land.
It gives me hope. I’m glad people are talking about economic democracy again, finally. I am inspired at the courage of the protestors. They may be leaderless, but they are disciplined and committed to the principles of democracy and non-violence. And with such discipline, everyone can be a leader.
Another Davis video was taken the next day, after dark. It follows campus Chancellor Linda Katehi as she walks from her office to her SUV, with an escort by her side. Seated on both sides of the walkway are students, all the way down. You can see them from scattered flashlights, and from press photographers’ flashes. For three long minutes you hear only the click of the chancellor’s shoes on the concrete, and the snap of cameras. The students stay silent in their witness of her departure. A few reporters ask her questions, and she responds, but the students remain silent. Are you afraid of the students, one asks. “No,” she says quietly, “no.”
None of those protestors is dangerous. They have no weapons. Well, they are a danger to the way things are, to the status quo and to our complacency about the decline of the common good in this country. Their courage speaks volumes. As this kind of courage becomes more common, change becomes visible. Change becomes visible, and it becomes real.
For me, the message of Occupy Wall Street is that we are all in this together. We have more in common than we used to think we do. We have each other in common. Your wellbeing is tied up in mine. My wellbeing is tied up in yours. You are my common good, and I am yours. The 99 percent is my common good, and the 1 percent as well. 100 percent of us.
We the people are the common good. That’s how the U. S. Constitution begins: “We the people….” We are all in this together. Amen.
[iii] John M. Buchanan, “Gross Inequity,” in Christian Century, November 15, 2011, p. 3.
[iv] Amos 2.6-8. Contemporary English Version. Biblegateway.com.
