OTM friend Jason Evans and his faith community The Ecclesia Collective posted this report about their experiences as they work to assist people affected by the San Diego fires.
Posted in Racial Justice | No Comments »As many of you know, many of us in our community have been feeding the volunteers collecting donations at the Chicano Park donation drop point.
Yesterday, our group of primarily gringos experienced some resistance to serving the primarily Latino volunteers. We came to find out that earlier in the day, they were harassed by the Minutemen and some people came to take away donations, which the volunteers at this station allowed. Why did this happen? Because this drop point is trying help undocumented, non-English speaking people as well as others directly effected by the fires. more
My lovely mum posted this on her blog recently. For some context, Papaw and Mamaw were the pastor and pastor’s wife of what was basically the first ever Christian church that my family was involved with, when I was 10, 11, and 12 years old, ‘84 through ‘87.
Papaw told us an encouraging story when we visited him and Mamaw. He said that the church he fellowships with — I think it was called Cornerstone Baptist Church — began to fly not only the American flag and the Texas flag but also the Israeli flag. Since the Bible does speak a lot about Israel and the Jewish people being God’s chosen nation/people — they wanted to identify with/promote that Biblical idea. One day, though, someone burned their Israeli flag. This prompted all kinds of national and international media attention and the church was thus able to explain/expand on their position to an ever-widening circle of people. One person called and told them he would love to send them another Israeli flag, and yet another if the first one he sends gets burned.
According to the church’s pastor, the Rev. Bobby Herrel, Cornerstone Baptist began flying the Israeli flag last July to support the Israeli people during its conflict with Lebanon
How best to communicate to my lovely mum that the international community was outraged, in that particular Israel/Lebanon conflict, by Israel’s use of U.S. made cluster weapons, the use of which amounts to wide scale land mining of your enemies’ land, leading to large numbers of civilian casualties, especially of children, long after the hot conflict is over (40 years!!)? Yes, of course Hezbollah *also* failed to follow international law in that conflict. That hardly seems like a good reason to come out as pro Israel during the conflict. Most of the civilian casualties even during the hot conflict were Lebanese ~1000 dead Lebanese civilians, ~43 dead Israeli civlians. Wow this is a gruesome math. How can a Christian church be in favor of any of this? And if they must take sides, how is it that they take the side of the nation which was apparently far less careful about civilian deaths, both during and after the conflict? I’m guessing that the people in this church are … relatively normal, compassionate, people. How could they take such a position? How does the Muslim community in their town (Fort Worth, Texas) feel about them flying that Israeli flag, especially as it was in response to that particular Lebanese/Israeli conflict? I’m guessing that as a minority in a predominately white, Christian, American community, the Muslim community feels marginalized and put down in really painful ways all the time. Don’t the people of Cornerstone Baptist care about this? Do they know?
I really love my mum. And she represents some really big chunk of the American populace. Can they see this stuff? Can you see it? How to share it without automatically raising a wall? Maybe it’s impossible. Maybe I lack the social intelligence to accomplish it. Your thoughts, answers, questions, comments?
Posted in Nationalism, Racial Justice, United States, War | 6 Comments »Guest columnist Matt EchoHawk-Hayashi and his wife Colleen come from the 49th and 50th states. Colleen is a Pawnee tribal member and Matt is 4th generation Okinawan/Japanese from Hawaii. They are part of a new church in Seattle called the Ohana Project.
I’ve been slow to catch on to the blog phenomenon. However, the candor and honesty that seems to be produced by sites such as this one is, for me, fascinating and hopeful. That’s why I began looking for discussion on the current state of race relations in America in the wake of wedge points like the Jena 6, Don Imus, Michael Vick, OJ Simpson and the exposure of American perspective on race two generations after the civil rights movement began. The issue for me is a personal one and I’m very interested in what the post-modern, socially conscious, spiritual-but-not-dogmatic, justice-minded folk of the blogger community thought.
I won’t try to report on the incidents such as the Jena 6 and OJ, anyone with cable probably feels overloaded with reporting already. What strikes me, and what I’d be interested in hearing feedback on is on the divide between how different members of this country perceive the issue. I’ve found that when the issue is race and justice, we often are not talking about the same thing at all. Read the rest of this news item »