Panel exams police violence as elections approach
8th June 2020 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
A webinar viewing and resulting discussion of a potent new sermon about the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, an African American in Georgia who was shot and killed by two white men, elicited strong emotions and passionate commentary from a panel of religious leaders from different faith communities on May 31.
The webinar and workshop discussion concerned the 22-minute sermon, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree: A Requiem for Ahmaud Arbery,” by the Rev. Otis Moss III, the senior pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
The event was sponsored by Justice and Local Church Ministries of the United Church of Christ and was hosted by the Rev. Traci Blackmon, the organization’s associate general minister. Blackmon built on a theme of Moss’ sermon that outlined how America in general, and Americans of color specifically, are now fighting two viruses — COVID-19 and racism, “a virus that infects the spirit.”
Perhaps the most powerful commentary of the panel came from Linda Sarsour, a leader of both the recurring Women’s March and the Arab American Association of New York, who had just returned from Minneapolis, where several mass protests have erupted in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by white police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was immediately fired from his job and subsequently charged with murder.
Sarsour, who was choking back tears after seeing Moss’ sermon while she recalled witnessing first-hand the searing events in Minneapolis. Sarsour, a Muslim of Palestinian descent, relayed a conversation she witnessed in a Minneapolis parking lot, where several young local residents pondered what their funerals would look like if they died.
“My tears are not ones calling for empathy,” she told the panel, “they are tears of shame that we can’t protect our children who are standing up because they want to live, because they want to thrive. They want to be treated with dignity and respect.”
In response to the question, “Are you OK,” posed by Blackmon to all of the panelists, Sarsour responded with frustration toward America, “a country that doesn’t know how to put value on Black life.”
Another panelist, the Rev. Julian DeShazier, senior pastor at the University Church of the UCC in Chicago, told the panelists that Moss’ sermon reminded him of the Book of Galatians 6:9, which states, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
DeShazier answered the question asked by Blackmon by saying that he was not OK, but that he was “inspired deeply” by the other panelists and the roughly 4,400 people watching the webinar online.
“I am not OK, but I am hopeful,” he added, “and feel that hope deep within my body, a hope that wakes me up and drives me on a day-to-day basis and not only to serve in the community, by to continue to be creative and to continue to show up fully in this world.”
DeShazier is also a hip-hop artist and rapper under the name J. Kwest who has received an Emmy for his music. As part of his panel response, he gave a new rhyme written in the wake of this year’s troubling news.
The Rev. Naomi Washington Leapheart, another panelist and the director of Faith-Based and Interfaith Affairs for the City of Philadelphia, said one of the most striking aspects of Moss’ sermon was the concept of Black resistance leading to white resentment throughout American history and the lingering question facing Black activists: “How does it feel to be a problem.”
Leapheart commented on the part of Moss’ sermon that outlined how the white power structure, including the U.S. governmental system and many white Christian leaders, has continually wrapped its rhetoric in untruths and propaganda about American freedom and faith.
“It’s a lie that America ever was a democracy,” she said. “This mythology has got to go.”
She described a system in which you are made “the target of resistance by those who are disgusted and offended by your very existence and what it represents. …Black people were not supposed to survive, and that, too, breeds resentment.”
Moss’ sermon as well as the panel discussion that followed its showing involved the deconstruction of several fundamental aspects of American society that encoded a racial caste system based on the mythical notion of white superiority.
Moss’ sermon posited the murder of Arbery as emblematic of the fears of white America and the resulting instituting of the falsity of Black criminality and the threat that Blacks allegedly present on a constant basis. Moss proffered that Blackness was weaponized by white America, which used this weaponization as a way to stoke fear and hate but at the same time exploited Black labor, creativity and intelligence to build an American society made wealthy because of avarice and self-enrichment and the co-opting of Christianity as a vehicle of and excuse for capitalistic greed.
“I believe freedom resides in our reach,” he said, “when we face our fears and come to grips with the truth that the death of Ahmaud and other bright stars kissed by nature’s sun who were robbed of the opportunity to shine in the light of this unfinished democracy is rooted in a history we fail to acknowledge.”
Moss positioned the crucifixion of Christ as itself a lynching of a prophet of color whose authentic historical ethnicity has been rejected by many white Christian leaders.
“We saw Jesus not as a figure not given to us by missionaries,” he said, “but as a dark-skinned Palestinian Jew who stood on the side of the oppressed.”
Moss asserted that Jesus “knew all of our troubles” and who viewed all action as sacred, even going for a run, bringing the sermon back to the death of Arbery. Moss also crucially addressed the notion that Black Christianity represents acquiescence to white authority by warning listeners to reject “the false or foolish quasi-academics that our faith caused us to accept oppression. Our faith has never made us docile. This is a lie.”
Moss said positive action involves not only voting but also financially supporting forward-looking political campaigns and by nominating candidates of color on the local level who endorse justice, equality and the uplift of the disadvantaged and less fortunate.
“We must reinterpret our faith so it is returned back to the source,” he said. “Our faith in Christ means we are to forever advocate for the disinherited.” He said America will be saved by people who are able to forgive while suffering and to bless while bleeding.
“Our faith carries the scars of Calvary,” he said, referring to the site of Jesus’ crucifixion. “Our faith is not about avoiding pain and self-help but being transformed and becoming the hands and feet of Christ.
“The cross was a lynching event,” he added, “and if we identify the cross as a moment of lynching, we deepen our compassion and our call for the most vulnerable of society.”
The credits for the video were packed by a new musical composition and performance of Moss’ sermon and the panel stressed that white Americans and their beliefs are the key developments needed to move society forward. They said white citizens face a large workload in the struggle because they have to both confront their own prejudices and the preconceived notions of white supremacy, but also bring that revelation and message into their own families, their churches and their communities.
“It really is about white people doing their own work and not leaving it on their desk or on the backs of Black people or with people of color,” Blackmon said.
Sarsour, having seen first-hand the troubles in Minneapolis, told the panel that on her way to Minneapolis, she also stopped in Louisville to meet with the family of Breonna Taylor, an African-American woman who was shot and killed by Louisville Metro Police Department officers in March.
Sarsour and her peers then traveled to Indianapolis, a city itself reeling from the recent deaths of three local residents as a result of police actions, which spurred heated protests in that city.
Sarsour’s comments underscored the universality of the fate suffered by Arbery in Georgia and how such deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers have been suffered all over the country for a long time.
Sarsour, who also noted that Jesus is also a beloved and revered figure in the Muslim faith, said that the impact of her subsequent experiences in Minneapolis was highlighted by how the protests in the Twin Cities were driven by young people, a fact that greatly encouraged her about the possibilities for the future.
“There’s no going back from here, folks,” she said plainly but emphatically. “This is a moment that is going to move us forward, this is a moment that we’re going to be able to talk about 30 or 40 years from now and say we witnessed history. We witnessed young people rise up in this country … young people with a spirit that says, ‘We are valuable, we are worthy, and we are going to fight with everything that we have.’ The courage I saw there inspired me …
“I’m blessed to be here with you,” she added, “and to say that I’m not OK, but I want to make it OK for our Black families, for our Black communities, because when you’re OK, everybody is going to be OK.”
This article originally published in the June 8, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
