"THE END OF NEO-SLAVERY"

 “THE END OF NEO-SLAVERY”

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the end of neo-slavery in the United States.  On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act, which effectively ended neo-slavery in the USA.  This law ratified the right to vote expressed in the 14th and 15th amendments, and it provided for federal oversight of all elections, and required federal preclearance for all changes in voting rights laws, especially in the South.  The political gymnastics being performed currently in the Texas legislature gerrymandering would have been greatly slowed down by the original wording of the Voting Rights Act, but some of its provisions were struck down by the current SCOTUS in 2012 and 2021 (more on that next week).

And, yes, the most litigated amendment to the Constitution is the 14th Amendment, which basically does four things:  guarantees citizenship to anyone born or naturalized in the US (Trump is litigating that now); forbids states from interfering with the citizenship rights guaranteed by the Constitution; provides for due process under the law; and provides for equal protection of all citizens under the law.  With all of this work accomplished in the 14th Amendment, it is easy to see why it is the most litigated amendment of all in the Constitution. In one of those July blessings that I mentioned last week, it was ratified on July 9, 1868.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 grew out of the 14th Amendment, and it sought to protect the voting rights of all citizens.  In that sense, it ended neo-slavery in the USA, especially in the South.  I say “neo-slavery” because that it is a much more accurate description of life in the South from 1875-1965 than “Jim Crow.”  The term “Jim Crow” mitigates the horror that Black people experienced growing up in the white-dominated South, and “neo-slavery” should replace it in the history books as a description of race history in that period. To use the term “Jim Crow” as a description of this period is to diminish the reality of the horrible repression and oppression of those years.

     I learned this term from Doug Blackmon’s fine book “Slavery by Another Name,” (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009), in which he argues that neo-slavery ended in 1946 at the end of World War II.  I remember Doug coming to Oakhurst to talk with our Supper Club about his book, and he made a very powerful presentation about his thesis that the years 1875-1945 were just “slavery by another name,” hence the title of his book. Although I learned a lot from his book, I do have one disagreement with his timetable on “neo-slavery.” From my experience growing up in the neo-slavery South from 1946-1964, the power of neo-slavery was still so strong in those years that “neo-slavery” should remain as the description for the years up to 1965, not 1946.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had a profound effect on life in the South, as evidenced by the rapid increase of Black people elected to office.  It had a long and difficult history, and its importance was shown in the deep resistance of Southern white Democrats leading up to its passage.  Perhaps only a skilled white Southern politician like President Lyndon Johnson could get it passed, and even he was reluctant to bring it to the floor of the Senate, where it originated.  The civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery changed the directory of that arc bending towards justice.  The march on March 7, 1965, that ended in police violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge exploded into the national consciousness (see Ava Duvernay’s movie “Selma” for more background on this).  A second march on March 21 drew great participation, and President Johnson scheduled it for a vote in the Senate, where his arm-twisting overcame a filibuster. There is a great photo of Johnson corralling his longtime friend Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, seeking to get his vote for the bill. Johnson was not successful with Russell, but he was successful with enough Senators that the bill passed and was sent to the House, where it passed overwhelmingly.  As Johnson noted, his embrace of the Voting Rights Act meant one other great change in the South – a switch of Southern white voters moving from the Democratic party to the Republican party.

The Voting Rights Act was one of the signal achievements of the Civil Rights movement and of American history.  Its effect was so deep and powerful that the resistance has been great since its passage, and indeed, SCOTUS has significantly weakened it over the last decade, seeking to allow white people to limit voting rights by people of color as severely as possible.  The Trumpster movement is built on this white resistance to the idea that “all people are created equal,” and his push to get Texas to gerrymander even further before the 2026 midterm elections is an indication that he wants to hold the white majority in the House in order to further return us to a time of white supremacy and maybe even neo-slavery.  As the history on the Voting Rights Act shows us, this repressive and oppressive stream runs deeply in us and through us.  We’ll look more closely at this history and its present status next week, but in the meantime, please re-train yourself to talk about “neo-slavery” rather than “Jim Crow.” And, take it out into the streets.

"THE STRUGGLE OF THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE"

 “THE STRUGGLE OF THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE”

As July comes to an end, it is emblematic of the struggle that is at the heart of the American experience.  The month begins with the July 4th celebrations, with the idea of independence lifted up.  But in the second paragraph is the emphasis on equality: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people {men} are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Most of American history is the story of the struggle over this idea of  equality:  do we really mean “all people,” or just white men?  Two lynchings in my adopted home state of Georgia in 1946 (my birth year) remind all of us of this continuing struggle over the idea of equality.  I’m grateful to the Equal Justice Institute in Alabama for their daily reminders of this kind of history.

          On July 18, 1946, a white mob shot a 37-year-old Black veteran named Maceo Snipes at his home in Taylor County in southwest Georgia in Butler. A day earlier, Mr. Snipes had exercised his constitutional right to vote in the Georgia Democratic Primary, becoming the only Black man to vote in the election in Taylor County. For this he was targeted and lynched.  Mr. Snipes had served in the U.S. Army for two and a half years during World War II and, after receiving an honorable discharge, had returned home to Taylor County, Georgia, to work as a sharecropper with his mother. He had received threats from the Ku Klux Klan in the days leading up to the election, but he still bravely went to vote in the gubernatorial primary on July 17, 1946.

        White gubernatorial candidate Eugene Talmadge had campaigned on a promise to restore white primaries in the state. A staunch white supremacist, Mr. Talmadge had been previously elected governor of Georgia on three occasions with a segregationist platform and the open support of white terrorism groups, including the Ku Klux Klan. “The South loves the Negro in his place,” Mr. Talmadge had said in a 1942 campaign speech, “but his place is at the back door.”

        When the primary concluded, Mr. Talmadge had won the party’s nomination and received the most support in rural areas. When Taylor County votes were tallied, Mr. Talmadge had won all but one vote—and white community members believed that Mr. Snipes, known to be the only Black voter in the county, had cast that lone vote of opposition.  A day after the primary, a mob of white men, including a white veteran named Edward Williamson, arrived at Mr. Snipes’s grandfather’s house in a pickup truck and called out Mr. Snipes’s, who got up from the table where he was eating dinner with his mother and went outside to see who was there, only to be shot multiple times at his own front door. The truck of men then drove away. Two days later, on July 20, 1946, Mr. Snipes died.

     When local authorities investigated Mr. Snipes’s shooting, Edward Williamson admitted to killing him but claimed Mr. Snipes had pulled a knife on him when he went to the Snipes home to collect a debt. The coroner's jury ultimately ruled that the shooting had been in “self-defense,” and no one was ever held accountable for Mr. Snipes’s death.  I am grateful to my longtime friend John Cole Vodicka for his hard work in helping to revisit this case and helping to develop a memorial for Maceo Snipes.

A week later - after Maceo Snipes was shot down - on July 25, 1946, 100 miles northeast (near Athens), a white mob lynched two Black couples near Moore’s Ford Bridge in Walton County. The couples killed were George W. and Mae Murray Dorsey and Dorothy and Roger Malcolm. Mrs. Malcolm was seven months pregnant. Mr. Dorsey, a World War II veteran who had served in the Pacific for five years, had been home for only nine months.

     On July 11, Roger Malcom was arrested after allegedly stabbing a white farmer named Barnette Hester during a fight. Two weeks later, J. Loy Harrison, the white landowner for whom the Malcoms and the Dorseys sharecropped, drove Mrs. Malcom and the Dorseys to the jail to post a $600 bond. On their way back to the farm, the car was stopped by a mob of 30 armed, unmasked white men who seized Mr. Malcom and Mr. Dorsey and tied them to a large oak tree. Mrs. Malcom recognized members of the mob, and when she called on them by name to spare her husband, the mob seized her and Mrs. Dorsey. Mr. Harrison watched as the white men shot all four people 60 times at close range. He later claimed he could not identify any members of the mob.  The Moore’s Ford Bridge lynchings drew national attention, leading President Harry Truman to order a federal investigation and offer $12,500 for information leading to a conviction. A grand jury returned no indictments, and the perpetrators have never held accountable. 

These two stories remind us of the continuing struggle in American history over the idea of equality for all people.  These two lynchings in Georgia almost 80 years ago have never been legally solved – their intent was to intimidate Black people and to make them get back into their place “at the back door.” We are grateful to all those people who have fought and suffered and been witnesses to the truth of the July 4th ideal that all people are created equal, and to bring all people to the front door.  We are, of course, now engaged in another struggle with white supremacy as perpetrated by the Trump administration, and it is up to all of us who believe in the idea of equality to speak up and act out.  Next week, we’ll look at the anniversary of one of the constitutional amendments that is at the heart of this struggle.  It is the most litigated amendment in American history – if you know which amendment it is, let me know.

 

"YOUNG JOHN LEWIS"

 “YOUNG JOHN LEWIS”  

Last week marked the 5th anniversary of the death of John Lewis, and this is a time when we need his witness so much.  Caroline and I (and Al and Janet Solomon and Jennifer Kimball) saw the world premiere of the play “Young John Lewis” one and one-half times a couple of weeks ago at The Theatrical Outfit in downtown Atlanta.  I say “one and a half” because the first production was interrupted midway through the second act by what initially sounded like sirens.  The space in the play made us think at first that it was police sirens in the play, coming for the protestors.  Then the actors all left the stage, and again we thought that they were running from the police in the play.  I was struck, however, that the sirens were coming through the theater’s emergency exit system, and I thought to myself that was a confusing way to do it.   Then, there was silence and waiting for all of us.  At about the same time, all of us in the audience decided that the sirens were actually an emergency warning, telling us all to exit.  No one from the theater ever announced anything, which was very odd, but we all exited in an orderly fashion to the street outside.

As we waited there, a theater rep finally came out to tell us that there was a malfunction and that they were working to correct it, so that we could go back into the theater to finish the play.  We waited and waited, and as we waited, Jennifer Kimball (who is an excellent theater stage manager herself), told us: “They’re about to run into the ‘Broadway break rule’ soon, so I don’t know that we will get back into the theater for this performance.”  When we asked her about that, she indicated that since this was a matinee, the performers were guaranteed two hours between performances by union rules.  And sure enough, just a few minutes later, the theater rep came out to indicate that they would not be finishing the matinee performance.  They offered tickets to another performance, and we found one that we all could attend for a second time.

We returned in about a week for a fine performance of the story of the early part of John Lewis’ life, from his humble beginnings on a farm in Alabama, where he preached to the chickens, to his failed attempt to desegregate Troy State, to his entry into Fisk University in Nashville.  One of the driving forces in the play is the character of Emmett Till, who returns often to Lewis’ consciousness, asking for revenge.  Lewis is both scared and angered by the lynching of Till in 1955, and it motivates him to seek justice for all those who are oppressed. Another driving force was his hearing Martin Luther King, Jr., speak on the radio about the possibilities for freedom, justice, and equity, and he began to see a new vision for himself and for the entire nation.  The book and lyrics for the play were written by Psalmayene 24 and the music by Eugene H. Russell IV.

In Nashville he encountered Diane Nash in a class on non-violence taught by the Rev. Dr. James Lawson.  One of the positives of the play was the prominent place that the playwright gave to Diane Nash and Ella Baker, women who made a powerful difference in the Movement.  Indeed, when I was telling our group about Diane Nash’s prowess in the Movement, an influence so strong that Attorney General Robert Kennedy once blurted out “Who in the hell is Diane Nash?”, we all decided that a play needed to be written about her – I hope that someone is working on that now!  Our group decided that I should do it, but that is beyond my pay grade.

    Because of his involvement in the Nashville movement, Lewis began to see disciplined non-violence as a possibility for him and for the entire movement, while at the same time being a passionate fighter for justice.  He endured violence and persecution on his journey, from being beaten up on the Freedom Rides to being beaten up on the March from Selma.  The play took him up until 1968, when the terrible violence of that year almost killed the movement.  Yet, throughout his career, Lewis was a witness for justice, equity, and compassion.  We trust that his kind will be rising again among us, and the final song in the play was both a warning a clarion call to all of us in the audience – it is happening to us as it happened to Lewis – where will we find our place?  How will we find our voice?  How will we use our voice?  

“IDA B. WELLS – JUSTICE, EQUITY, AND LIFE-GIVNG COMMUNITY”

 “IDA B. WELLS – JUSTICE, EQUITY, AND LIFE-GIVNG COMMUNITY”

In 2019, Dr. Catherine Meeks and I co-authored a book about Ida Wells and her influence on our time.  It was entitled “Passionate for Justice:  Ida B. Wells as Prophet For Our Time.”  It won several awards, and I am thinking about it this week as Ida Wells’ 163rd birthday approaches on July 16.  It would be fascinating to hear Wells’ perspective on our time, and Catherine and I tried to speculate on some of that in our book.  If you haven’t read it, find it in your library or buy it somewhere (churchpublishing.org or bookshop.org are my suggestions).  Wells lived through a time similar to ours – when rights for Black people were being scaled back, and white supremacy was on the rise.

Stacey Abrams wrote the Foreword for our book, and in honor of the 163rd birthday of Ida Wells in Holly Springs, Mississippi, I want to share part of Stacey’s Foreword with you:

“The story of America has no finer an example of perseverance, brilliance, and accomplishment than Ida B. Wells.  She valiantly navigated a path of courage and strength and trumpeted the call to justice and equality, setting an example that continues to resonate for me and for millions of others.  Born into slavery in Mississippi, the state where I was raised, she saw the promise of Reconstruction and survived the scourge of white supremacy that followed.  Despite a nation that shunned her humanity and ignored her potential, she understood that her capacity stretched deeper and wider than the definitions of white supremacy and patriarchy.  Like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, she crafted her own narrative, and in so doing became a clarion for our soul’s deepest ambitions – justice.

A journalist, scholar, and activist, she wove together the ability to investigate and animate issues that robbed Blacks of full participation in the citizenship guaranteed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.  In 1892, when white men lynched her good friend Tom Moss in Memphis, she confronted the racism that sought to legitimize murder by vigilantes.  She decried lynching and, moreover, demanded action from leaders who failed to protect their citizens.  So affecting were her calls to action, her newspaper offices in Memphis were blown up.  Though exiled from the South for more than twenty years, Wells became emboldened rather than silenced by the attack.  The tenacity, ferocity, and dedication to justice of this former slave girl from rural Mississippi challenged the moral core of America, and her strategic vision for change transformed the lives of millions.

From co-founding the NAACP to producing a compendium of investigations that shocked the conscience of leaders, she redefined what leadership could and should look like.  In particular, she furthered the role of women in the fight for justice, and she led without apology in an era when the words of women were not expected to be heard, and where Black women were summarily dismissed.  Ida B. Wells refused to be dismissed.”

If you don’t know much about Wells, go find the book that Catherine and I wrote.  Or look her up online – you will be amazed at her work and wisdom.  And, you will see how much we need her witness now, when we find the stream of white supremacy in our collective history seeking to become a tidal wave that overwhelms all of us.  Stacey closed her Foreword with these words, and I’ll close this way too:

“They honor the life of Ida B. Wells, a life carved out of the hardscrabble ground of slavery, white supremacy and oppression of women, especially Black women.  In Passionate for Justice, we find a compass that points us to the future, where we can each give voice and action to justice, equity, and life-giving community.  Ida B. Wells would have had it no other way.”  

So, on Wednesday, raise a glass to Ida Wells, give thanks for her witness and plan to find your place in her stunning and life-giving call for justice, equity, and life-giving community.  

"A BIT OF GOOD NEWS IN A DEPRESSING TIME"

 “A BIT OF GOOD NEWS IN A DEPRESSING TIME”

It felt sad and ironic to celebrate the 4th of July when Donald Trump is president, a man who cares little for the country and who cares only for himself and enriching himself at our expense.  I must admit, however, that the has had a disturbing run the last few weeks – the bombing of Iran and the passage of the “Big, Bad, Awful” (BBA) bill.  I will hold Lisa Murkowski responsible for the latter – though I was never a big fan of John McCain, I admired his courage in Trump’s first term when Trump tried to gut Obamacare.  McCain walked down to the well of the Senate floor and turned his thumb down to defeat the proposal.  Now that Trump is beginning the unraveling of Obamacare in the BBA, how I wish that Senator Murkowski had done the same as John McCain did.  It was not to be, however, and she and all the rest of us will be the worst for it.

In the midst of this depressing time, I want to acknowledge a note of hope on the local level.  On June 18, Caroline and I attended the ribbon cutting for new affordable housing located in Decatur’s Legacy Park.  Sixty-six units were dedicated for housing for people who make 30-80% of a living wage.  It is a partnership between the city of Decatur, the Decatur Housing Authority, Dekalb County, and the federal government.  At the same time, there was a ground-breaking ceremony for 66 more units, making a total of 132 units of affordable housing.  A bit of background is needed to understand this good news.

Legacy Park is the new name of what used to be the United Methodist Children’s Home, located on 77 acres of land on Columbia Drive across from Columbia Seminary.  The Home was started by the Methodists in 1877 as an orphanage for children after the Civil War, and it remained a home for orphans and children from broken or troubled families until 2017.  At that point, the Methodists decided to shift their focus from younger children to young adults who had aged out of the various public and private systems.  They did this with good reason – our state representative Mary Margaret Oliver noted at the ceremony that more than 40% of the young people who age out of foster care at age 18 will be homeless within 18 months.  The Methodists put the land up for sale, hoping to finance their new ventures with the money from the sale.  And, valuable land it is – 77 acres of undeveloped prime land.  When we heard that the land was up for sale, we knew that the developers were licking their lips in anticipation.

Many of us went to the Decatur City Council, urging them to consider a purchase of this land for public use and benefit, rather than allowing it to once again be gobbled up by private developers.  The city of Decatur has not always been receptive to the need for affordable housing, but this time the leadership, as well as numerous residents, felt the need to seek to keep this property as a good for public use.  Partnering with several governmental entities that I named above, they developed a $40 million package to offer the United Methodists for the property.  This was undoubtedly below the market value, but it also appealed to the goodwill of the Methodists.  It was an amount that would adequately fund the new ventures of the Methodists, and they accepted the offer.  The city of Decatur now owns those 77 acres and has developed a plan for its use to benefit the citizens of Decatur.

The next struggle came over what would be housed on the property.  While that is still a work in progress, many people, including our friend Mary Gould, attended many meetings to help the city of Decatur see the need and the possibility of using part of the property for affordable housing.  By this time, the city was open to the message, but it did not hurt that so many people turned out to support it.  There was also significant opposition, but the idea of affordable housing prevailed, and we give thanks for that.  

The opposition did not roll over, however.  After the environmental study indicated that the building of affordable housing would not be a further detriment to the environment, several residents asked for a second study in order to delay the beginning of construction of the affordable housing.  We attended the city council meeting last November and spoke our piece about the need for beginning the project.  One of the residents who opposed the project spoke and indicated that they had filed an ethics complaint against the council for what they took to be dishonesty and a lack of integrity on this process.  African-American Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem Tony Powers responded with an unusually frank answer, something like this:  “I hear your complaint, and I can guarantee you that we have approached this project with integrity, honesty, and transparency.  I will also add that I believe that your opposition to this project is not about trees or transparency but rather about your dis-ease with the possibility that Black people will be living in some of these housing units. I’m tired of hearing that, and I’m tired of white people masking their racial concerns by using other reasons.  So, we have been transparent about the need to use some of this land for affordable housing, and we intend to do just that.”  The city council then proceeded to vote unanimously to approve the environmental report and to authorize the construction of the first set of housing units.

It was noted at the June 18 ribbon-cutting that this project is just a drop in the bucket, but that it was a beginning.  Congressman Hank Johnson spoke, and other speakers included Housing Authority Director Larry Padilla, state senator Elena Parent, Columbia Seminary President Victor Aloyo, state rep Mary Margaret Oliver, and many others.  In a time of a torrent of bad news, it was good to be together and to celebrate a bit of good news.  Let us build on that and see if we can revitalize this sense of civic duty and responsibility for the common good.

"CAROLINE LEACH!!!"

 “CAROLINE LEACH!!!”

Trump has had quite a week – bombing of Iran and the SCOTUS partial victory on the nationwide injunctions.  Yet, I’m currently tired of Trump and will write about him another time (unfortunately, more than once, I’m afraid).  So, I’m going to write on a much more pleasant subject – Caroline’s birthday is July 3 of this week.

I first met Caroline at a political rally for George McGovern in Atlanta in 1972.  I was visiting my friend Ed Loring, and I went with him to the rally, and Caroline was there.  She struck me as very interesting, but I was in a committed relationship with a woman in Nashville, where I was doing my alternative service as a conscientious objector (CO) to the Vietnam War.  I paid more attention when I met her the second time, at Robin and Linda Williams’ wedding in Nashville in early summer 1973.  Caroline had come up to the wedding with her housemate Murphy Davis, who was Robin’s cousin.  I was now living at the house where Robin and Linda got married.  I had broken off the romantic relationship with my fiancé; I had finished my CO; and I was seeking discernment for the future.  Ed, who was on the faculty of Columbia Seminary in Atlanta, was urging me to pick up my seminary career there – I had dropped out of Vanderbilt Divinity School to apply for the CO.  

By the time that we re-met in 1973, I was much more interested in getting to know Caroline better.  She was now a Columbia Seminary grad and was Associate Campus Minister at Georgia tech.  We spent a considerable amount of time together at the wedding. After that, Atlanta (and Columbia Seminary) began to look a whole lot better.  I moved to the Decatur part of Atlanta in August of 1973, and Caroline and I began to date almost immediately.  We were young adults in our mid-20’s, but we had seen enough of the world to know what we wanted.  By the end of 1973, we were in a relationship and had decided to get married.

This groundedness of Caroline was instantly appealing to me.  I’m a man, so I also noticed her looks, which were and are fine.  An article about her as a woman minister in the Knoxville Sentinel in 1973 put it this way: “The locks are long, brown, and wavy.   The figure curvy.  Marital status, single.  Sex FEMALE.  The name, Caroline Leach. “If you are a woman,” says Ms. Leach, who was in Knoxville recently for a visit, “you cannot fill the bill.  No matter how dynamic your sermons may be, how well you did in divinity school, how willing you are to work long, hard hours, how close you stand to God…..You don’t fit!”  

Caroline was describing her struggle to find her way as a woman in seminary in 1969-1972.  Her home church in Chattanooga would not sponsor her as a ministerial candidate because she was a woman – even though she had grown up in the church, taught Sunday school, played piano and organ in worship.  She just was FEMALE as the Knoxville Sentinel put it.  She was one of five women students when she went to Columbia, and she remembers how many men students came up to her, reading from the Bible, telling her that she could not be a minister because she was FEMALE, that God would not permit it.  We were talking about this terrible experience this past week, and we were laughing at God’s sense of humor and God’s working in mysterious ways.  When she came to Columbia, Caroline’s intention was to become a Christian educator, but all the “NO’S” and “CAN’TS” convinced her that God was calling her to become an ordained minister.  So, all these negative men helped her to become a minister, as well some of the faculty who had been very supportive of her.

It was an arduous journey – she had to find a new home church who would sponsor her as a candidate (yay for Rev. Randy Taylor and the Session of Central Presbyterian in Atlanta).  Atlanta Presbytery did not want to ordain her or any other women, but the competence and calling of Caroline and other women dragged the Presbytery kicking and screaming into the late 20th century.  No churches would interview her for a pastoral position, but God led her to Rev. Woody McKay, who was Campus Minister at Georgia Tech.  He had reserved a small salary, and the number of women students at Georgia Tech was growing.  So, he offered the position to Caroline, and she was able to get ordained at Georgia Tech and become the 21st woman minister in the former Southern Presbyterian Church.

When we went to get our marriage license from Dekalb County in early spring of 1974, Caroline indicated that she was not going to change her name when we got married.  The female clerk was highly offended and refused to issue a marriage license. We had to threaten to sue in order to get it.  We got married in May, 1974, and after I finished my classes at Columbia in December, 1975, we accepted a call to be co-pastors at St. Columba Presbyterian Church.  Caroline continued her pioneering ministry – we were the first clergy couple in a local church in the PCUS.  We’ve been partners in ministry and marriage ever since.  Indeed, we are working on a book now on our trailblazing ministry – if you have stories or thoughts, please let us know!

Caroline has been a pioneer most of her life, and though she would not say this, I will.  She is one of the giants upon whose shoulders the church and especially women pastors now stand.  When I’ve asked Caroline how she came to have the courage and determination to push through all the barriers and obstacles that she faced in the patriarchal structures of the church and the world, she cites her parents, her youth leaders in her church (the same church who denied her care), and most of all, the Girl Scouts.  She was a Girl Scout through high school, and there she learned that she was competent and even skilled as a woman, that she would need to be determined and resolute in a male world, and that SHE COULD DO IT.  I’m glad that she did – glad that she got the message, glad that she pushed on through all the barriers, of course, personally, glad that she graced me with love and marriage and David and Susan for these 51 years.  So, lift a glass to Caroline this week – contact her too and wish her a happy birthday!

"TRUMP MAKES HIS MOVE"

 “TRUMP MAKES HIS MOVE”

When Trump made the decision to bomb Iran on Saturday evening, he told only Republican legislators, leaving the Democrats out of the process until after the bombing was done.  We don’t yet know the extent of the damage, and we don’t yet know what Iran’s response will be, though I am guessing that the Iranians had contingency plans in place, which are likely being put into action as I write.  We all tremble as this step for US involvement in attacking yet another Middle East country is underway. We also await the response of Russia and China.

I watched Trump’s short press statement on Saturday night, with his lackeys Vance, Hegseth and Rubio close at hand.  He worked hard to project an image as the almighty leader, the one who is in control not only of the United States, but of the world as well.  It is the image that he has always cultivated, the image that drove him to seek the presidency in the first place.  And now, thanks to Israel’s Nazi-like approach to the Palestinians, Trump has been given the opportunity to make his mark as the leader of the world.  For the time being, he has control of the United States, with the Supreme Court virtually turning him loose with its presidential immunity rulings.  The Congress is exceedingly weak, with the slim Republican majority currently holding together, though Thomas Harris and even Marjorie Taylor Greene withholding support on this latest foray.  

Trump has been driven to prove that his father was wrong about him, that he is not a weakling who must be sent to military school to be toughened up.  I wonder if Trump has a shrine to his father in his White House bedroom, a shrine in which he counts up the evidence daily to demonstrate to his father that he is indeed the strong son.  He has now made his move to show that he is invincible, that he is indeed the most powerful man in the world – the Supreme Court cannot stop him, the Congress cannot stop him, the American people cannot stop him.  And now, the bad, old Iranians have felt his wrath.  Meanwhile, his ICE officers now wear masks to demonstrate the powerful, unstoppable, unknowable force that can arrest U.S. Senators, City of New York Comptrollers, and whoever else might dare to get in his way.

It is a daunting situation for us in the USA who believe in peace, justice, and equity.  Yet, the “No Kings” marches revealed a deeper truth:  millions upon millions marched against Trump in over 1500 towns and cities across the country on June 14, while only a few thousand showed up for Trump’s birthday parade in DC.  The opposition is deep and powerful to Trump and his policies, and we must be vigilant and active in expressing that opposition, pointing toward a Democratic takeover of Congress in the 2026 elections.

I’m also remembering another Republican president who attacked a country in the Middle East – the invasion of Iraq by George Bush and the “coalition of the willing” in March, 2002, because Sadaam Hussein and his buddies in Iraq had WMD’s, the weapons of mass destruction.  I remember seeing President Bush land on the USS Abraham Lincoln in his aviator jacket, declaring “mission accomplished.” And, of course, no WMD’s ever found in Iraq.  The war in Iraq would prove long and costly, with Barack Obama pulling most US troops out of Iraq in 2011, with no regime change, no real changes made.  Iraq is now mainly controlled by militias, including some loyal to Iran.  

We should note that Iran in 2025 is not Iraq in 2002, but the similarities in American arrogance in both cases is striking.  None of us knows where the Saturday night massacre will lead, but right now it is both scary and sobering.  The dictatorship of Donald Trump has begun – he has made his move.  Currently there seem to be no forces capable of checking him, but his foray into the Middle East will prove more difficult than he or his puppets can imagine.  In that unpredictability may lie our greatest hope for restoration at home.  Bush was immensely popular when he invaded Iraq, but by the time that he left office, he and his Republican party were so unpopular that white people in America were willing to vote for a Black man for president.  Trump is currently underwater in popularity, and I don’t think that will change any time soon.  The Joker has made his move, and it is now up to us to counter that move with force, dedication, love, justice, and actions in the street.  As Bob Dylan put it in the ending to his famous apocalyptic song “All Along the Watchtower”:

Outside, in the distance

A wildcat did growl

Two riders were approaching

The wind began to howl