If it’s all about winning elections, it ain’t moral

· 1 Comment ·

Davis filibuster took place in an near empty Senate floor. The bill she was fighting would have banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and force many clinics to upgrade their facilities and be classified as ambulatory surgical centers.By Alan Bean

Regardless of your political persuasion, these are the best of times and the worst of times.  The Supreme Court cuts the heart out of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and then nixes the oddly-styled Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.   Meanwhile, in Texas, Senator Wendy Davis and a gallery crammed with abortion-rights activists kept the Republican majority from passing a law that would have shut down the majority of abortion clinics in the Lone Star State.

Liberals are celebrating in Texas, but Rick Perry has already announced that he call another special legislative session with the specific purpose of undoing what was done last night.

Although the majority decision in the DOMA case turned on arcane legal arguments, the Supreme Court is yielding to a massive shift in public opinion on the gay marriage issue.  Upholding DOMA is a nonstarter in today’s America, so the justices were forced to cobble together a legal justification for a pragmatic decision.

The same cannot be said for the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.  Gay rights has recently gained in popularity in virtually every demographic group–including white evangelicals.   Opposition to the Voting Rights Act is limited to the conservative white voters who control political reality in much of the American South and a fairly large slice of the Midwest.  Support for the Voting Rights Act is rock solid among African American and Latino voters.

Southern states may be insulted by the suggestion that their legislatures continue to discriminate against minority voters, but there can be little doubt that they do.  It is ironic, for instance, that Wendy Davis would have been unable to filibuster the Republicans’ abortion bill in the Texas Senate if proposed electoral maps that deleted thousands of minority voters from her district had not been declared unconstitutional.  Moments after the Supreme Court demolished the significant parts of the Voting Rights Act, Texas Republicans moved to revive a voter ID bill that was patently intended to eliminate as many minority voters as possible.  Election laws that create long lines in minority precincts but not in conservative white precincts can now move forward without opposition.

If reaction to the Voting Rights Act decision split along largely racial lines; the abortion debate breaks across the no-mans-land created by the culture war.  Personally, I am too conflicted on the abortion issue to support Texas Republicans or to hoot and holler for choice in the Senate gallery.  I am reluctantly pro-choice.  There are profound moral issues involved in the abortion debate.  When a woman decides to terminate a pregnancy it is almost always with a heavy heart.  This is appropriate.   Pro-life politics work really well precisely because many progressive people of faith are morally conflicted on the issue.  We understand and feel the arguments on both sides of the debate.

But conservatives cannot protect the unborn without creating major health problems for poor women who, denied access to safe abortions will turn to back alley butchers.  It should also be noted that conservative states like Texas refuse to adequately fund public education and have far more uninsured poor families than the balance of the country.  If Texas Republicans were genuinely concerned about the unborn they would give more thought to the post-birth plight of poor children.

Abortion has become a prized political issue because it allows politicians who oppose gay rights and voting rights to regain the high moral ground.  “We may be doing everything in our power to neutralize minority voters and discriminate against gay Americans,” the logic goes, “but at least we’re fighting to save the unborn.”

But it’s a lie.  They aren’t trying to save the unborn; they’re trying to win elections.  Banging the pro-life drum and minimizing the impact of minority voters are two equally effective strategies for maintaining political control.   If the abortion issue became a political detriment, most conservative politicians would abandon it in a heart beat.  I’m not saying the stalwarts on the front lines of the prolife fight aren’t sincere (they are) but the same cannot be said for their political supporters.

You’re invited!

·

Nancy and Alan Bean will be hosting the third meeting of the Common Peace Community at our new home, 2706 Meadow Hill Lane, Arlington 76006, this Saturday at 4pm.  (Please RSVP by replying to this email).   If you have any questions or need help with directions, call me at 817-688-6765.

As usual, there will be singing, fascinating speakers, and plenty of time for sharing and plotting.

We will hear from Pierre Berastain, a Harvard Divinity School student and native of Peru who recently announced that he is a “dreamer”, an undocumented resident of the United States brought to this country as a child by his parents.

We will also be hearing from our own Julie Griffin, a member of Broadway Baptist Church who has long been active in ministries of compassion.  Julie worked as an attorney for fourteen years before becoming a school teacher, and both careers inform her passionate commitment to ministry.  (more…)

Terror vs. Surveillance

· 1 Comment ·

 

Edward Snowden is a hero or heal depending on your political orientation.  Centrists, both liberal and conservative, see him as either a traitor or a misguided idealist who is putting American lives in danger.  Civil Libertarians, liberal and conservative, are sufficiently afraid of a Big Brother government to appreciate Snowden’s bold gesture.  Journalism professor Robert Jensen takes the second view, but reframes the issue in a helpful way.  Avoiding the false alternatives of transparency or death-by-terrorism, Jensen looks for a way to preserve American liberties while saving American lives.  Here’s his take.

Terror vs. Surveillance

By Robert Jensen

In the frenzy over Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information about government data-mining surveillance, public officials and pundits have tried to lock us into a narrowly defined and diversionary discussion that ignores the most important question we face about terrorism.

Their argument goes something like this: No one wants to die in a terrorist attack. This kind of spying is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks. So, stop whining about how information is being collected, used, and potentially misused—it’s better than dying.

Let me be clear: I do not want to die in a terrorist attack. But before I am bullied into accepting intrusive government surveillance that is open to politicized abuse, I have another question: Are there other ways we could reduce the risk of U.S. citizens, at home or abroad, being targeted by terrorists? Two possibilities come to mind.

First, stop creating new terrorists. Critics of the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have long argued that those destructive conflicts have deepened resentment against the United States. People in those countries who previously had no reason to attack U.S. military personnel or civilians are understandably unhappy with aggressive wars that destroy their homes and kill their people.

For example, in the new book and film “Dirty Wars,” reporter Jeremy Scahill and director Rick Rowley have documented how the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command—our so-called secret warriors—have indeed been killing terrorists, along with pregnant women, children, and lots of other non-combatants, deepening many people’s resentment of the United States. Much of the criticism has focused on the use of drones, not only in Afghanistan but also “secretly” in Pakistan, but Scahill and Rowley show how the whole strategy is misguided.

Second, let’s recognize that it is unlikely that the terrorism of Al Qaeda and others would have happened if not for nearly seven decades of a failed U.S. policy in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Muslim world more generally. Since the United States filled the imperial void left by the weakening of Great Britain and France after World War II, our Middle East policy has been primarily aimed at maintaining a flow of oil and—just as important—a flow of oil profits that is advantageous to U.S. economic interests, especially as defined by elites.

That doesn’t mean that every single U.S. action in those regions has been evil, or that there has been a single clear policy in every moment. But we have routinely ignored the aspirations of the people of the Middle East in favor of “stability,” which doesn’t translate into stability for people but instead for the interests of those elites. Saddam Hussein was an ally or a monster depending not on the crimes he committed against his own people or threats he posed to other states, but on whether he was in line with U.S. policy. When he killed Iraqi Kurds (about whom U.S. policymakers don’t care much) and Iranians (an official U.S. enemy), that was okay. When he threatened Saudi Arabia (an official U.S. ally, despite that country’s history of human right abuses), we had to destroy him.

People in the Arab and Muslim world pay attention. I may disagree with the politics and theology of many of those who critique U.S. policy, but I can’t argue when they point out U.S. mendacity and hypocrisy.

Imagine that the United States had pursued a different policy in the last half of the 20th century, aiding the struggling movements in the Arab and Muslim world that wanted to expand the scope and freedom and democracy. If we had chosen that path, would we be the targets of terrorists today?

More than a decade after 9/11, the United States political culture still is asking the wrong question (“why do they hate us,” as if our opponents are fueled only by irrational anger) and coming up with the wrong answer (“because we stand for freedom,” as if that has actually been our policy). It’s time for us to grow up, buck up, and face reality. If we want to be safe in the world, we should end the economic, diplomatic, and military policies that give people around the world ample reasons to resent our misuse of power.

When we have done that—when we have narrowed the gap between our self-righteous proclamations of inherent benevolence and the self-serving policies that ignore the aspirations of others—I’ll be happy to talk about how much of my privacy and political freedom I am willing to sacrifice to be safe. But if we were to face our mistakes and change our policies, I’m not sure that conversation will be necessary.

Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. His latest books are Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue and We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out.

– See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/terror-vs-surveillance-keeping-americans-safe-two-simple-steps#sthash.mPdTEJbC.dpuf

The Serpent-and-dove thing

· 2 Comments ·

This post originally appeared on the Associated Baptist Press blog.  AGB

By Alan Bean

There is such a thing as principled moderation, but real-world moderates are more prone to fudge, ignore and obfuscate when there appears to be no constituency for the truth.

Here’s an uncomfortable reality. Moderates will ignore an issue, no matter how pressing, if a clear majority stands in opposition, or there is considerable support on both sides. If a proposal can’t generate at least an 85 percent approval rating, the thinking goes, it’s a bad idea.

Real-world moderates occupy an uncomfortable patch of social ground inhabited by a sizable conservative minority, a small but influential contingent of liberals, and a whole lot of people who are too concerned about paying the mortgage and negotiating domestic minefields to give much attention to social issues.

Real-world moderates try to keep conservatives and liberals in separate rooms whenever possible while directing the bulk of their attention to helping a harried majority cope with the trauma of middle-class existence.

Moderate pastors are big on Matthew 10:16, a comforting passage where Jesus admonishes his disciples to be “as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.” The trick, we say, is to stand for the gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God without doing irreparable damage to your career or inflicting unnecessary harm on your congregation.

But that isn’t what Jesus was getting at. We must be wise as serpents, Jesus tells us, because we are surrounded by wolves. The truth Jesus gives us has no natural constituency in a wolf-infested world. That’s why there is always work for prophets.

Most leaders, be they conservative, liberal or moderate, are pragmatists. In unambiguously conservative or liberal circles there are certain ideas and issues that must either be celebrated or deplored — there is no middle ground.

Conservative preachers have no choice but to oppose abortion, while their liberal counterparts must defend “a woman’s right to choose.” It doesn’t matter what the preacher believes deep down, the issue can’t be dodged and there is only one acceptable position.

The same relentless logic applies to the issue of gay marriage. Conservatives must oppose it as unbiblical while liberals must teach that all forms of human love flow from the heart of God.

Moderates rarely enjoy this luxury. Our preachers have precisely nothing to say about abortion or homosexuality for the simple reason that neither of the conventional positions have sufficient support within our tribe to prevail if push should come to shove. Moderate pastors manifest serpentine wisdom by falling silent or changing the subject.

Some issues are ignored because they almost never impinge upon middle-class white Protestants like us. Immigration may be an important issue, but since we are all native-born citizens it doesn’t touch us.

The criminal-justice system may be largely designed to control poor people in minority neighborhoods, but since we all live in pleasant neighborhoods, it isn’t our concern.

There may be a host of factors that drive poor people to the streets and it may be frightfully difficult for these folks to make their way back home. But since no one we know is in danger of becoming homeless, we have more pressing matters to contend with.

In the unlikely event that issues like immigration, criminal justice or homelessness are broached in affluent, predominantly white churches, the preacher will be met with blank stares. “Why are we talking about that?” the congregation asks. “Christians are all about the gospel and the kingdom; secular issues like immigration, homelessness, and prisons are literally none of our business.”

Moderate preachers, like their white conservative and liberal counterparts, rarely broach these issues. Being wise as serpents, we say, means restricting yourself to an agenda that people will support while avoiding issues that will sew division or confusion.

That’s not what Jesus had in mind, either. There is a proper sequence to this serpent-dove thing. The gospel of the kingdom belongs to dove-like innocents. Serpentine wisdom is out of place when we’re discussing the contours of the Christian mission. When sons and daughters of God suffer, we must care because God cares.

Every section of the Bible drives us to the same simple conclusion. The undocumented, the homeless and the incarcerated live at the heart of gospel concern. Only when we have that straight are we free to be as wise as serpents. Prophets must speak even when the truth has no constituency; but we should select our words with great care.

First, we must speak the truth. There is no justification for self-serving nonsense.

Second, we must speak the truth with all the grace we can muster. We must approach the bias, ignorance and fear of our audience with compassion.

Third, we must speak the truth strategically. We aren’t trying to start a riot or win a vote; we’re tilling soil so kingdom seeds can take root in the world.

True moderates are willing to enter into broad alliances that move us far beyond our comfort zone while encompassing only a single issue. While moderates nurture a pious silence, prophetic voices on the religious right are embracing causes like immigration reform, homelessness and what they call “over-criminalization.”

There is a time for all Christians of all ideological persuasions to be wise as serpents. But first, God must bring us to that painful place where, broken and humbled by the perplexities of life, we find ourselves praying with the innocence of doves.

Larry James: “Man Down”

· 1 Comment ·

This post on Larry James’ Urban Daily blog caught my attention and stirred my blood.  Larry is an extremely busy man, but he hangs out on a corner on the poor side of Dallas every week talking to the residents of the community.  If he hadn’t made that commitment he wouldn’t have been able to intercede in the situation described below.  Makes you wonder how many horror stories like this unfold everyday in our cities.  AGB

Man Down

I’m boiling.

Yesterday out at “the Corner” I witnessed another example of the daily plight of the powerless who live on our very unforgiving streets.

As I sat in my car taking a phone call that lasted several minutes, an ambulance pulled up at the service station next door.  I noticed the ambulance, but could see no one to whom the crew was attending. By the time I finished my phone call, the ambulance was gone, but I noticed that the patient remained.

A very ill Hispanic gentleman sat leaned up against the outside wall of the service station building next door to the old house where I sit on Thursday afternoons.  He appeared to be semi-conscious and unresponsive.  His friend and protector, Joe, informed me that he had just been discharged from the hospital, but was clearly in trouble.  The ambulance had refused to transport him back to the hospital for reasons I couldn’t understand.

I called 911 and requested that an ambulance return.

In a few moments, the ambulance with the same crew returned.

I insisted that they pick him up and take him back to the hospital.  The man was diabetic and now lying down flat on his back on the concrete pavement.

The crew went to work, placed the man on a stretcher and loaded him into the ambulance and drove away.

As they left, my homeless friends were relieved and hurt.

Why hadn’t the ambulance crew responded to their pleas on behalf of their friend?

Why did I get the needed action and not them?

Why had the man been discharged from the hospital?

Was his fate all about money?

Was he “uninsured,” not even receiving Medicaid?

Was he undocumented and thus, fair game for being left to die on our streets?

The situation left us with so many unanswered questions.

God help us!

Are we to conclude that there actually are expendable people today in our community?

Is power concentrated in almost exclusively in the hands and voices of people like me, but not my friends who are simply poor even though experts on the subject of poverty?

I need answers.

I’m steamed.

Alan Chambers stops trying to pray the gay away

· 2 Comments ·

Alan Chambers

By Alan Bean

Alan Chambers became an evangelical superstar by telling people what they wanted to hear.  White evangelicals can’t maintain the moral high ground in the great American debate over sexual orientation unless people make a conscious choice to be gay or straight.  If that’s true, folks in the LGBT community can go straight if they want to.  Homosexuality, in this view, is a chosen “lifestyle” that can be sloughed off at will.  Alan Chambers claimed to be a gay man who had been prayed straight.  If it happened to him, it could logically happen to anyone.  Exodus International, the ministry he founded, was dedicated to doing precisely that.

White evangelicals celebrated Chambers’ work because it saved them from a moral impasse.   Conservative Christians (and until recently liberal Christians as well) have taught that homosexual behavior is a sin and that it is God’s nature to hate sin.  Westboro Baptist Church’s “God hates fags” battle cry was a tad crude for most evangelicals, but deep down they agreed with the sentiment.  Their theology left them no choice.

But what if homosexuals don’t choose their orientation?  What if they come of age sexually desiring members of their own sex?  Wouldn’t that mean that sexual orientation, gay or straight, expresses the creative will of God? And if that’s the case, how can God condemn a condition for which he (and/or she) is ultimately responsible?

There are just two ways of resolving this conundrum.  Either God doesn’t consider homosexual behavior to be inherently sinful after all, or God makes everybody straight and some people, for some perverse reason, choose to defy the creative intentions of the Almighty.

Evangelicals opted for the second solution.

This didn’t create too many problems in a day when homosexuality was considered too shameful for public discussion.  Since western culture disapproved of homosexuality it only seemed natural that God would concur–we can’t be more moral than the Creator, after all.  Even though the Bible has remarkably little to say about sexual orientation (and, so far as we know, Jesus uttered nary a syllable on the subject) a few texts in Leviticus and the letters of Paul the Apostle have been used to prove that God is just as intolerant of homosexuality as we are–maybe more so.

This line of argument never jibed with the facts, but so long as open public discussion of human sexuality was considered verboten the facts didn’t matter.  But objective study of human sexuality has gradually demolished the theory that sexual orientation is chosen.  True, some people appear to be sexually ambidextrous (Alan Chambers may fit into this category–see the article below); but none of us can alter the fundamental shape of our sexual desires.

In recent decades, biblical scholars have examined the biblical teaching on sexuality more objectively.  As a result, there is no longer any scholarly consensus on what the Good Book does and doesn’t say on the subject.  But one assertion can be made with confidence:  the God who burns with hatred for the LGBT community cannot be reconciled with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  You can believe in one God or the other; but you can’t believe in both.

Just this week, Alan Chambers, the founder and President of Exodus International, admitted to the world that 99.9% of the human population can’t change their sexual orientation and that thirty years of trying to do the undoable have created immense human pain.

Where does this leave evangelical Christians?

It leaves us with the grace of God; which is exactly where we need to be.  God doesn’t hate people for who they are.  In fact, God doesn’t “hate” vices like anger, sadism, exploitation, cruelty, faithlessness, and lying.  God doesn’t hate!  It ain’t in his nature.  God loves sinners just as much as saints; in fact, it could be argued that God has a particular affection for broken people (see, for instance, Jesus’ parable of “the ninety-and-nine” in Luke 15:4)).

This doesn’t make God a radical relativist.  Most of the old vices and virtues that Christians have embraced from the beginning remain in full effect.  But God loves us all, forgives us all, and welcomes us all to the kingdom banquet regardless of all the things we cannot change about ourselves (gender, race, religion or sexual orientation).  In fact, God loves us in spite of all the not-okay things we could change, if we weren’t so messed up.  God is love. God is grace.

We can be glad that Alan Chambers finally admitted the obvious and had the guts to close down a “ministry” that, however well-intentioned, has damaged countless lives.

Now we’ll see how American evangelicals respond to the news.

‘Gay cure’ ministry Exodus International to close

Exodus International will close after 37 years. Its leader, who last year renounced the idea that homosexuality could be ‘cured,’ apologizes for the ‘shame’ and ‘trauma’ the group had inflicted.

By Anh Do, Kate Mather and Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles TimesJune 20, 2013, 7:17 p.m.

Exodus International started in Anaheim 37 years ago as a small ministry to help those struggling to reconcile their homosexuality with the Bible’s teachings. It grew into the leading practitioner of the controversial “gay cure” movement, with 260 ministries around North America.

While Exodus claimed to have purged thousands of people of sexual urges that tormented them, its leaders recently began expressing doubts about the mission. Last year, its president, Alan Chambers, renounced the idea that homosexuality could be “cured.”

This week, the organization abruptly announced it was closing down. Chambers offered a dramatic, public mea culpa, refuting decades of Exodus’ teaching and apologizing for the “shame” and “trauma” the group had inflicted.

FOR THE RECORD:
Exodus International: In the June 21 Section A, an article about the closing of Exodus International, a ministry in the “gay cure” movement, mistakenly attributed a quote, “In more and more communities, churches are grappling with homosexuality in more open terms. These are the cultural realities around us.” The words should have been attributed to Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, not Ross Murray, director of news and faith initiatives at gay rights group GLAAD. Also, the headline indicated that Exodus International was based in Anaheim; the group was founded in Anaheim but later moved to Florida.

The demise of the gay cure movement underscores the growing acceptance of homosexuality in society, even in the evangelical Christian community. Polls show increasing support for gay marriage, and leading conservatives, including Dick Cheney and Rob Portman, have expressed support for gay rights. A May Gallup poll showed that 59% of American adults said gay and lesbian relationships are morally acceptable, up 19 percentage points since 2001.

“Evangelicals are not immune to this,” said Randall Balmer, chairman of the religion department at Dartmouth College. “They get swept along with the cultural currents as well.”

Chambers’ statement won praise from gay-rights groups, who long criticized his views. But some were quick to point out that Exodus had been losing influence among evangelicals in recent years as gay conversion became increasingly out of the mainstream.

“I think there’s a tendency to see Exodus folding as a parable of Christian capitulation and ethic,” said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. “That is not what’s happening. Instead what you have is an organization that has some confusion about its mission and purpose…. What is not happening here, is an evangelical revision of a biblical sexual ethic.”

Chambers discussed his change of heart in an interview with the Los Angeles Times on Thursday as well as in a lengthy statement and speech to a religious convention in Irvine.

“We need to change the way we do things,” he said.

Chambers said that gays had been wrongly made to feel rejected by God, and that Christians should accept them even if they believe homosexuality — like pride and gluttony — is a sin.

“I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change,” Chambers wrote in a statement on his website. “I am sorry that I … failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine.”

Chambers, who is married to a woman and has two adopted children, told The Times he is still attracted to men and comfortably lives with that tension, but that others may be unable to do so. He said that 99% of people who went through gay-conversion therapy did not lose their same-sex desires.

Chambers’ apology was welcomed by gay rights activists, who called it a “big surprise.”

“I think it is demonstrative of the major shift that we as a society have gone through in terms of our understanding of who gay and lesbian people are and how they live,” said Ross Murray, director of news and faith initiatives at gay rights group GLAAD.

“At one time, it was pretty mainstream to have those thoughts and feelings about gay and lesbian people. Over time, Exodus and people who have promoted change programs have been more and more marginal or fringe.

“In more and more communities, churches are grappling with homosexuality in more open terms. These are the cultural realities around us.”

Chambers first made his apology Wednesday night at Exodus’ annual conference in Irvine and in advance of a show that aired Thursday night with journalist Lisa Ling in which he is confronted by “ex-gay survivors.”

“It was excruciating,” he said. “They told their true stories in a way that I will never forget. They told stories of abuse and pain, missed opportunities, awful words that were spoken to them. Stories of abuse and pain from the church and even from Exodus.”

Linda and Rob Robertson came from Redmond, Wash., to speak at the conference. Strict evangelicals with four children, they shared their own torment with the Bible’s teachings and their son, Ryan, who came out to them when he was 12.

She said she and her husband forced him to choose between God and being a gay man, and for the next six years he tried everything possible. He went to reparative therapy with Exodus, but nothing worked.

At 18, with no answers, he became addicted to drugs, his mother said.

“We didn’t intentionally, but we taught Ryan to hate himself,” Linda Robertson said.

Although they later tried to form a more accepting relationship, he ultimately died of a drug overdose in 2009.

Since then, the Robertsons have become advocates for gay and lesbian young adults who feel shut out by the church.

“We have to stop warring,” Rob Robertson said. “We’ve got to stop fighting.”

anh.do@latimes.com

kate.mather@latimes.com

joe.mozingo@latimes.com

Times staff writers Joseph Serna and Paul Pringle contributed to this report.

Tulia, Texas ten years on

· 1 Comment ·

By Alan Bean

It is hard to believe that ten years have passed since thirteen people were released from prison at the Swisher County courthouse after Judge Ron Chapman declared that undercover agent Tom Coleman was not credible under oath.  I address the amazing events leading up to this dramatic scene in my book, Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas.

This brief account from the AP appeared in Sunday’s Dallas Morning News (subscription required):

Ten years ago
Twelve people sent to prison as the result of a Tulia, Texas, drug bust were released on bail by a judge who said they’d been railroaded by an undercover agent. (A total of 35 people were later pardoned by Texas Gov. Rick Perry; 45 of the 46 who were arrested shared a $6 million settlement in a civil rights lawsuit.)

The price of a miracle: Medgar Evers remembered

· 1 Comment ·
File:Medgar Evers.jpg
Medgar Evers

Fifty years ago today, Medgar Evers was gunned down in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.

This was hardly an isolated incident.

The Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, AL had reached a victorious conclusion a few weeks earlier.

Mass sit-ins had unfolded in Jackson, MS in the weeks leading up to Evers’ slaying.

Days earlier, Fannie Lou Hamer, Annelle Ponder and several other civil rights leaders were brutally beaten in the County Jail in Winona, Mississippi.

Hours before Evers died, George Wallace made his defiant doorway stand at the University of Alabama.

Later that night, in response to events in Birmingham, the Wallace grandstanding, and the Winona outrage, John F. Kennedy went on national television to deliver the most stirring endorsement of civil rights ever voiced by a sitting American president.

The tide was turning and Byron de la Beckwith, a white supremacist from nearby Greenwood, Mississippi, knew it.  That’s why he tossed a rifle into his car and headed for Jackson.

P1000882Whenever I lead civil rights tours in Mississippi, we always drop by Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where Evers was a salesman for T. R. M. Howard‘s Insurance Company.  Evers got his start in business selling poor Black people cheap insurance that would pay for a decent funeral and, most importantly, medical care dispensed by the Knights of Tabor hospital in the all-black town of Mound Bayou.  Fannie Lou Hamer died in that hospital in 1977.

Mound Bayou is only a pale shadow of its former glory.  Black business leaders had good reason to establish and maintain the economic and physical infrastructure of the community in the Jim Crow days.  Ironically, as soon as they were free to pursue opportunities in the wider world, Mound Bayou was abandoned by the people who once made it run.

I briefly thought of taking the sign–it didn’t seem to mean much to the people of Mound Bayou–but I decided to let it sit where it is; a sad and fading reminder of the town that gave Medgar Evers and many other civil rights leaders a start in business as well as activism.  Mound Bayou was one of the few places in the Mississippi Delta where African Americans could freely associate and organize in the 1950s, and thousands regularly descended on the vibrant little town to plot, pray and prepare.

We forget that the bold activism of the early 1960s had its roots in forgotten little towns like Mound Bayou a decade earlier.  When Bob Moses, Diane Nash and James Bevel arrived in the Mississippi Delta, they enjoyed the counsel and enthusiastic support of older men and women who were native to the region and had been in the civil rights fight a long time.  It was this intersection of youthful vision and native wisdom that paved the way for the Freedom Summer of 1964.

Medgar Evers had a foot in both these camps.  He was old enough to  be trusted by the old guard in the Mississippi civil rights movement, but young enough to relate to the brave young souls entering the Delta from exotic places like Nashville, Birmingham and New York City.

The only weapon the likes of Byron de la Beckwith had at their disposal was fear, and they wielded it effectively.  People like Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ed King and Diane Nash refused to be intimidated.  They all paid a dreadful price for their audacity; but they prevailed.

The civil rights movement depended on larger-than-life figures like Martin Luther King Jr and Medgar Evers and couldn’t have succeeded without them.  But the contributions of a holy host of saints, most of them unknown to history, was just as crucial.  In the early summer of 1963, the combined impact of thousands of brave people across the South reached critical mass and the nation turned a corner.

Byron de la Beckwith knew he and his ilk were beaten and Medgar Evers felt the sting of his idiot rage.  But Evers didn’t die a meaningless death.  Fifty years later he is being remembered across the nation, an impressive airport in Jackson bears his name, and a civil rights leader is mayor elect of Mississippi’s leading city.

Miracles happen, but they don’t come quickly and they don’t come cheap.

Noted author tackles the Curtis Flowers story

· 1 Comment ·

Alan Bean

Paul Alexander is the accomplished author of eight books, numerous eBooks, and over 100 major articles written for publications ranging from Rolling Stone to the New York Times.  When he stumbled across my blogging on the Curtis Flowers story, he was immediately interested.  A native of Birmingham, AL, Alexander knows how racial bias is infused into every facet of social life, including the criminal justice system.

Still, my conclusions were too damning to be taken at face value.  Alexander visited Winona, Mississippi, re-interviewed the folks I talked to several years ago, and dug up some fascinating (and disturbing) new information.

The result is Mistried, a gripping eBook released yesterday by RosettaBooks.  You can get the Kindle version for free at Amazon if you act quickly, (or pay $2.99 if you dawdle).  Most readers can digest the contents in less than two hours; the book is of very modest length because Alexander doesn’t waste a word.

If you like the book, please leave a comment and a five-star rating on the Amazon site.

Mistried

By Paul Alexander
Paul Alexander
Paul Alexander

Can a person be tried more than once for the same crime in the United States? Under usual circumstances, no. But in Mississippi, one man was tried six times for the same brutal crime-and his ordeal still hasn’t ended. (more…)

Aging Behind Bars

·

By Alan Bean

The American prison population is rapidly aging.  You can find a helpful infographic on the subject here (I have copied the basic information below if you’re in a hurry).

The most shocking statistic is that “between 1981 and 2010, the number of state and federal prisoners age 55 and over increased from 8,853 to 124,900.”  And consider this, if present trends continue “that number is projected to grow to 400,000 by 2030, an increase of 4,400 percent from 1981.”

When I think of prisoners aging behind bars I visualize Ramsey Muniz.  Ramsey was implicated in a marijuana importation conspiracy in the late 1970s.  He wasn’t charged with actively participating in the scheme; but since Ramsey was an attorney who represented many of the people on the suspect list, the feds concluded that he knew what his clients were up to, was indirectly benefiting from their activities, and didn’t turn them in.  Ramsey accepted a plea deal that put him in federal prison for five years.

Then, in 1994, Ramsey was victimized by a bizarre federal scam.  A major Mexican drug dealer was given a get-out-of-jail-free card in exchange for setting Muniz up.

After Ramsey was found guilty by a jury that was intentionally shielded from all the significant facts of the case, the government argued that his conviction in the 1970s should really count as two “strikes” because identical charges accusing the same people of the same crime had been filed in Corpus Christi in San Antonio.  Thus was Ramsey sentenced to life in prison under an old three-strikes provision.

After 20 years behind bars, Ramsey Muniz is an aging inmate who can no longer walk without assistance.  As the infographic makes clear, there are few provisions for compassionate release at either the state or federal level, and those that exist are rarely invoked.  Timorous politicians fear being labeled soft-on-crime.

I have argued that Ramsey Muniz is innocent of the charges filed against him in 1994.  He is an attorney and a civil rights leader who has never profited from the sale of illegal drugs.  But suppose I am wrong.  What it the purpose of keeping a man like Muniz behind bars?  He represents as much of a threat to the community as I do.  A deeply spiritual man with a strong sense of mission, he is capable of doing much good in the free world.

There are tens of thousands of untold stories like this across the nation.  Please give the infographic on aging behind bars your careful attention.

Aging Behind Bars

The elderly population in prison is rising at staggering rate. The consequence of mass incarceration and strict sentencing policies at the federal and state level, older prisoners require more expensive care at a time when their danger to society at large is waning. Most are likely to die in prison, as programs designed to release such prisoners on compassionate grounds are rarely invoked, and don’t have much potential to reduce the population of elderly prisoners. Continued high rates of long-term incarceration of the elderly are likely to add billions to state and federal criminal justice budgets. (more…)