Living in coronavirusworld 167: A living wage

 

9/14

A bird house on 115th Street 

Our International Sanctuary work group gathers. After an assault by 4 Blackhawk helicopters, an armored personnel carrier and 50-60 agents rushing in, 30 asylum seekers detained and expelled and 7 pacifist medical volunteers taken into custody at the No Mas Muertos emergency  medical facility just north of the US-Mexico border, the volunteers are back at work, the work of saving lives continues.  These days, anyone crossing the border is immediately deported. Returned to Mexico only to cross back again.  A deadly game cat and moue continues. Never allowed to apply for the internationally recognized right to asylum. A “civil initiative” has begun recording testimonies of asylum seekers at the Holocaust Museum and the United Nations Human Rights Commission. The aim is “safe asylum”, an international right , on both sides of the border. 

On our northern border, Canada still has no interest in opening  up to crossing from the US. Attempted border crossings slow to a trickle. 

This is the  month for the US to set its annual immigration caps. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, so valuable for its work in Juarez, and so many other places, has filed suit to open doors.

German protestants  have succeeded in getting four boats onto the Mediterranean but are still blocked on the EU borders like Italy. Our German  colleagues are working to gain welcome for the stranded refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos, but still without success.

Trinidad, a short 40 miles  from Venezuela, has become a new locos of refugee seekers. The Pope has honored the Catholic workers in Trinidad. Rohinga refugees from Myanmar have begun arriving there as well as Myanamar soldiers defect and report orders to kill all, women and children included.

The International Fellowship of Reconciliation has testified in Geneva before the Inernational Human Rights Commission regarding systematic violation of Black Americans’ rights in the US. 

It’s easy to get so caught up in our daily madness in the US and miss what’s going on in the the world around  us, a world in crisis. 

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Tonight we are studying Matthew 20: 1-16, the parable of the  laborers in the field. You know the one where the manager keeps going back and hiring  people all day long and everybody gets paid the same regardless what time they started and some workers who worked all day  are upset at the  perceived unfairness  of it all and the message ends with the  last shall be first. It follows the story of the rich young ruler. (Master, what  must I do…..?) Leila reacts to the unfairness, Marsha hears echoes of “from each according to their ability to each according to their need…” We discover that the denarius paid as a wage was equivalent to what it would take to feed a peasant family for one day, in other words, a living wage. For everyone. None left out one street. There is simply no denying the social policy implications of Jesus’ parable. He is ultimately proclaiming for his  kindom, a relational ethic, not a transactional ethic. 

The parable has a sense of familiarity to me. I saw in Santiago, Chile the  Venezuelans gathering in the plaza early in the morning for day labor jobs. In Tulsa, I  remember the Mexican farm laborers gathering downtown hiring for a day’s work, waiting for the farm trucks to stop by to pick workers. Prior  to the virus, our Micah Faith Table had been  working  in building support for a real living wage, as in $20 an hour instead of $15. It strikes me that we can pay a football player, Patrick Mahomes,  $50 million dollars per year for 10 years and complain that $20 an  hour will somehow wreck the economy. Money has no  meaning and means everything. (Mahomes hourly wage? Approximately $26000.)

It seems we are called on to create community that practice relational ethics within the community, an as if kindom community, while working for public polices that allow people to simply live. And with dignity.

Its the first football game for my hem town Steelers. I go to the grocery store fully prepared. A guy passes, Stops. Says "I like  your hat. And shirt, Oh, and shopping bag. Damn, even socks! Good luck tonight!”

..

Living in coronavirusworld 74: when will you say my name

6/5

Remembering Breonna Taylor

One of the actions today was a birthday commemoration for 26 year old Breonna Taylor of Louisville, Kentucky who died as a result of Kentucky’s  controversial “no-knock” warrant law..Police entered her home with no warning.

On the  way to 125th street, I notice one of the city’s ubiquitous   information kiosk stands.  Since Black Out Tuesday, these screens continue to show the names of those killed by police. Silent, graphic, 24 hours a day the names keep scrolling through. I find something very moving  by this, like a piece of contemporary street installation art.  

Her day

The action takes place at the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr State Office Building. The ceremony takes place on the statue of former Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. which is engraved with a record of  his legislative achievements. Another side carries this quote: Press forward at all times, climbing forward toward that higher ground of the harmonious society that shapes the laws of man to the laws of God."

Adm Clayton Powell, Jr. quote

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr

A crowd of several hundred has gathered. In the shadows of the office building two squads of police  stand  by, looking bored. Across 125th street,  police in riot gear stand at the ready.

memorial

But the event itself is the model of quiet and solemn. It seems to  have  been planned and mostly  executed by young black women who want to have the particularities of that experience, those  who want   to have their stories, heard. The leader cedars the plaza to make it holy.

holy ground

These words from her opening spoken word performance stayed with me :  “When we say their names, I wonder when you all will be saying mine…’ That’s what our neighbors live with…knowing that every day their very lives could be snatched away from  them. 

Say their names

                                                                                                                                                                                  

Along the periphery are volunteers with masks, sanitizers, wipes, snacks, water…and a numbers to call if arrested.

Walking along 125th,

good time for yuor merchandose

I am shocked to see all the boarded up buildings in preparation for expected vandalism and looting. Most covered with graffitti.  (It never comes.).

On the boards

bImmediately in my head I go back to being in Santiago Chile last October. That felt a bit more pervasive and there was central gathering locale.  I wonder how along these portrait can last. But the boarded up buildings and shop windows take me back.      

                                         a memorial                                               

****

If the NFL was serious in its apology to the players for not hearing them in their peaceful protest, if i.   was  serious it would have mentioned Colin Kaepernick by name and called him to come home at last.  Otherwise it’s  just an empty posture. 

****

Trying to get home, I run into barricades set up by the NYPD.  They've created a two block perimeter around the precinct house in every direction. I've got to walk a total of 4 avenues and 2 blocks to get back to my path. When I ask the officer guarding the perimeter why? he says, We can't be having people coming and throwing molotov cocktails at us..."

Guarding the precinct from us

****

Our open mic again is a comfort,  place to gather and share music. And conversation, Tonight I welcome everyone to another concert in the :Grateful Distancing Stay at Home Tour 2020.

welcome ot the tour

****

My Yemeni friends at the corner closes the store at 8 to avoid harrasment by the police over curfew breaking. This has created created problems.  Only two nights left .

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My neighbors are talking outside. Eddie, part of the post world War II Southern migration to Harlem,  recalls growing up in North Carolina being forced to ride in the back of the  bus.  And recalls  14 cousins perished in a house, burned to death in a fire.. fire set by the Ku Klux Klan. 

Living in coronavirusworld 68: Is it just me or are things getting crazier out there?

5/31

Black lives (still) matter

“Black lives matter. I can’t breathe.” Working at my dining room table, sun streaming in on a beautiful day, I heard the chants from the streets. I went outside but the marchers had already passed my block on Adam Clayton Powell. It was the first of the day's actions in the neighborhood.  Later before  our walk I got her text that a large group of marchers were heading  down 125th street.  By the time I got the messages, we had already met in Morningside and so decided to walk to Central Park.  I learned that both my sons in  Brooklyn would be heading out to demonstrations. Here in midst of the still continuing pandemic, a new crisis is taking place while all over the nation people react to this latest trilogy of murders of black people by police. The protest is spreading as fast as a virus.

Our walk is not so long today.  As we cross 110th, there’s whole string of flashing light  police cars. Speeding past.  After a short time in the Park, we’re done. Maybe it’s the added weight of tension, of sadness. The ongoing sense of unraveling even as we stumble towards reopening.

Some musician friends of mine gather in a private residence and live stream a "social bubble"concert.  Must be at least 6 musicians. I love the music, but with mixed feelings them. I envied them enjoying each other and a place I know.  Ad is it okay? I mean  they all wore masks, except when playing a horn or singing.  I feel confused. Like I feel we've left the "don't   go out unless it is absolutely necessary" phase.  A friend meets her partner for rehearsals,. Another friend gathers 4-5 others to record a church service . Could I meet someone  for a performance? For recording? Are we all making up our own rules?

The next  shock comes by  reports from Minnesota, for the governor and mayors of St Paul and Minneapolis, that most of those arrested are white people from out of the state, many with cars without license plates or other identification. What???? Seem to be right wing groups trying to foment more intense conflict. Accelerationists, they are called. 

Late in the day, more police cars. 

...and again...

A buzz on the street .  Seems they’ve come to enforce social distancing. Broke up the line between the deli and the liquor store. I’ve been expecting that. But that  wasn’t enough. 

on the street 

They say the liquor store was closed and that they and laid a $5K citation on the deli. Unnecessary. It’s almost as if when they count do decent crowd control elsewhere, soothes come to Harlem to push people around until they have agency again. They cold do this all afternoon Central Park if thy wanted.  The mood on the street  is not good.Somewhere between anger and resignation.  I feel like I’m lost my grip on things. 

Is it just me or are things getting crazier out there?

The Joker

Living in coronavirusworld 68: Of black lives. Central America. Shavout. (#wewillgetby #wewillsurvive)

5/29

                                                             We will get by.  We will survive.

It feels like we’re in another open season on black lives.   First the jogger, Ahmand Arbery, and then with a chilling sense of deja vu, Floyd George dies gasping the words, I can’t breathe. This in a context where black and brown people are dying at a rate twice that of the general population in  coronavirusworld. And predictably, the explosion of rage at a reality that alway comes back. These stories are so familiar, we struggle to remember the names and keep them order. Each one seems definitive as if they should be the last, but there they are again. And with the explosion of rage, the clucking of tongues and wagging of fingers saying this is not the way. Until a president says Where there is looting, there will be shooting…. One can be by principle against violence and at the same time understand that in the face of this rage, silence is the most appropriate response. As long as there is no owning of the problem of continued white privilege, no confession of its deadly oppression, no acts of amends let alone reparations, no engaged commitment to deconstruct the institutional architecture of white privilege, we have nothing to say. Absolutely nothing. 

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Our Presbyterian national work group on Central America meets to discuss what next. We worked for two years on a report to be made at this summer’s General Assembly and now that report …as well as all other social justice  actions…are put off until 2022.  At one level, we’re okay with this. Our report was BC, before corona. The tendencies, dynamics, social trends have been  exacerbated and brought to painful new levels in the pandemic. In similar, but also unique ways in each setting. Where do we stand today?

* Honduras has had approaching 5000 cases and 250 deaths. They have had lockdown.  Increasing authoritarianism on the part of the government.

* Guatemala. The government has declared total weekend lockdowns. The first time they did this with only 3 hours notice. Some had no time to get home. Most badly hurt are those working in the informal market of food and goods. Believing the the virus in Guatemala was largely fueled by infected persons deported back to Guatemala from the US, there are no longer flights to or from the US with the exception of continuing deportation flights. Communities are so frightened of returning persons that there are  “literally lynchings”.  The country that so honored migrants and the importance of their remisas that statue was erected in Salcalja in the highlands now violently rejects the returnees.

el migrante

The US embassy arranges ways for US citizens to get out. And Guatemalans with papers  are stranded in the US. 

* El Salvador is a mixed bag of increased authoritarian control, “for the good of the people.”  Numbers and data seem accurate and transparent but the government wields greater control.

* Costa Rica had a spike last week, but has had only 1000 cases, 10 deaths and 12 hospitalized. The biggest issue is being a neighbor to an out of control Nicaragua. A ban has been placed on transportistas, trucks going through the country with goods from or to Nicaragua, There are also several hundred Nicaraguans stranded in Costa Rica. The government has worked very hard to quell anti-nicaraguan emotions on the part of the public and Nicas organized a Gracias demonstration.  Costa Rica has also detained Salvadorans. Working very hard to control its borders. Honduras too has closed  its border to Nicaragua making it a pariah country. 

* Our workers from Nicaragua say that it is too painful to talk about. No protocols in place. In cities like Masaya, the public hospitals are a disaster. Two Baptist pastors have died. Numbers are non-existent. Death certificates do not identify cover casualties. Nothing in place. The well off are sequestered and people try to improvise, but there is simply no real response. Long time Moravian pastor and activist Norman Bent has died. 

W e struggle to understand Ortega’s behavior. His closest ally Cuba has engaged strenuously in treatment, prevention and research. Even Venezuela has a plan in place.  It seems historically bizarre that Ortega’s closest models seem to be Brazil’s Bolsonaro and Donald Trump.  The newly born again Christian Daniel’s wife and co-President Rosario at first proclaimed “God will protect us.” Some believe she actually believed that. Then there was the claim that because Nicaragua was a young country and covid19 affected the old, there was nothing to worry about. Then the economic argument that Ortega’s base worked in the informal economy and could not afford to be quarantined.  Then claim Golpistas set the virus loose. And some believe there is a cynical plan here to “cull” the population of weak and vulnerable people who only drain society. (Ortega's base?) There has been a recent papel blanco claiming that they are pursuing a Swedish model seeking herd immunity. So all over the map. And bodies continue to pile up, removed in the middle of the night, taken to mass graves. Not yet like Guayaquil, where corpses filled the streets, but getting there. 

Our friend Dennis gives us a quick overview of South America. Brazil is a total “shitstorm.” Sao Paolo has 500 deaths a day. Twenty thousand now dead. Chile is spinning out of control because of the complete private nature of the health care system. In Peru, people are fleeing Lima and heading back to el campo bringing the virus with them.

Meanwhile, due to falling income, the PCUSA is cutting its budget by 20% and the future of mission partners is uncertain. 

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My friend Steve asked me to preach for his Shavout service. Here’s what I had to say:

It’s exciting to be with you on Shavuos. This weekend the Christian community celebrates Pentecost. Shavuos is 50 days after Passover. Pentecost is 50 days after Easter.  (That’s what the Greek word means …counting 50…)Shavous celebrates the receiving of the 10 Commandments.  Pentecost celebrates the receiving of the Holy Spirit. I always have got to remind my folks that the Holy Spirit didn't just show up fo sth first time 50 days after Easter. That it had been there since day one when the breath of God, ruah, blew across the waters and separated the dry from the seas. And when the breath of God blew into clay and made earth man, Adam. It’s always been there. But the point is, whoever wrote the Pentecost story in the Christian scriptures clearly believe there was a direct connecton between the 10 commandments and the Holy Spirit. 

Now about those 10 commandments.  What I would give for leaders who took them as principles  to live by. Not a list of things to do. They are lo, that is no, don’t. Not do….And here’s the thing. I have come to think that the first commandment - no other gods- is central. Definitive.That every other commandment is a variation of, illustration of the first.   They are all about making something else, something not God, into an idol the takes our attention and takes us off the path. Coveting, envy, adultery lying, theft, even murder….are putting something else above God. Making  something else your God. Maybe keeping focus on these basic principles becomes all the more important during a time like this where we are truly responsible  for one another. So happy Shavuot, And shabbat Shalom.

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The day ends with West Park Open Mic. I confess a month into this, I still find ZOOM a bit elusive. (They did just add an update…). I sing I shall be released to honor Dylan's 79th birthday and Ripple for the Grateful Dead . I’m wearing a Grateful Dead Steal Your Face t-shirt with a mask on the skull. The legend reads # wewillgetby.  #wewillsurvive.