WITNESS FOR JUSTICE #235
September 26, 2005
ODE TO NEW ORLEANS
By Bernice Powell Jackson
There are many emotions in the hearts of African Americans these days. Polls indicating the great divide in opinions of African Americans and white Americans show almost diametrically opposite responses. Seventy percent of African Americans believe that race was a factor in the slow response of the government to the storms and nearly 70 percent of white Americans believe that it was not a factor. Thus, there is still the feeling named a century ago by W.E.B. DuBois of the "twoness" felt by African Americans, a feeling of apartness and separateness and a deep and troubling wondering if we will ever be truly considered fully human and fully American.
Then there is also a deep sense of mourning. As the stories unfold of our elders forgotten by government officials at all levels, left to die in hospitals and nursing homes, in their attics or on the highways or sidewalks by the Superdome and Convention Center, there is profound sadness. As the stories of babies dying of dehydration and of mothers being separated from their children are shared, long-ago memories of slavery and the separation of families are brought back to life. Hundreds of families have yet to be re-united.
But there is also mourning for the city of New Orleans itself. Many Americans see only Bourbon Street when they think of New Orleans, or only of Mardi Gras and all-night parties. But New Orleans is much, much more.
If Harlem is key to understanding the mind of black America, then New Orleans is key to understanding its soul. It was from the searching for God in the music of black churches across the deep South and in the rich stew of African and French and Cajun and Indian cultures that jazz was born in New Orleans. New Orleans, the city itself, provided a sense of identity and welcome and sophistication and allowed for the nurture of the music. But underneath the joy heard in jazz there was always the pain of slavery and a sense of that apartness and separation from family and culture.
Yes, New Orleans has always been a place that understood paradoxes. It has always celebrated life, with the understanding that death was a part of the Creator’s great cycle. Thus, there is the so-called "Second Line" at New Orleans funerals – the jazz band playing slowly at first and then with great joy on the way to the cemetery. Part of the wild celebration of joy found in Mardi Gras is the knowledge that a part of life is death.
Then there has been the Cajun and Creole food of New Orleans. You can’t go to New Orleans and get a bad meal. The mingling of the cultures also inspired the food. The spiciness of the sausage and the saltiness of the gifts of the sea are anchored by the rice and meat. New Orleans gumbo might be seen as a symbol of the coming together of the people and their tastes into one divine dish.
But if New Orleans is seen as a party town, it has also been a place of culture and history. In the African American community that includes the historically black colleges, Dillard, Xavier and, where many leaders in the African American community have been prepared for leadership. There has also been the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.
There is one thing I agree with President Bush on – I can’t see the U.S. without New Orleans. It’s a great city with great people, a great history, and, I pray, a great future.
Only church leaders stood firm on war dangers
By DAVID WATERS
Scripps Howard News Service
30-NOV-05
So who's to blame for misleading us to war?
Who isn't?
"The problem is that no politician, Republican or Democrat, had the courage to stand up and speak the truth about Iraq," Scott Ritter, chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998, told reporters recently.
"Everybody fell right in line and said, 'Yes, Saddam is a threat,' when they knew there was no information out there to sustain this information."
Truth is, the White House failed us. So did Congress, Republicans and Democrats. So did the press.
The only American institution that had the courage to stand up and speak the truth about Iraq was the church.
In early 2003, nearly every major Christian denomination spoke out against a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, and not one spoke in favor of it.
"A pre-emptive war by the United States against a nation like Iraq goes against the very grain of our understanding of the Gospel, our church's teachings, and our conscience," said leaders of the United Methodist Church.
"We believe a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, with the overwhelming force such a strike may require to attain an expedient victory, may have many unintended consequences. ... We do not support a decision to go to war without clear and convincing evidence of the need for us to defend ourselves against an imminent attack," wrote leaders of the Episcopal Church.
"We do not find any moral justification for a pre-emptive strike in the absence of an attack, or real threat of an attack, upon the United States. A military strike of this nature puts the United States in the posture of aggressive warfare, not defense, which is precisely the behavior we, and your administration, deplore in the Iraqi regime," wrote leaders of the Church of God in Christ.
"Based on the facts that are known, it is difficult to justify resort to war against Iraq, lacking clear and adequate evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature or Iraq's involvement in the terrorist attacks of September 11," wrote leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Concurring were leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Orthodox Church in America, the Christian Church (The Disciples of Christ), the United Church of Christ, the American Baptist Churches in the USA, the National Baptist Convention, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Quakers, Mennonites, Brethren and Unitarians.
The church's nearly unanimous position on the war wasn't based on faulty, one-sided, politically expedient, misleading "intelligence."
It was based on centuries of collective wisdom.
We paid little attention.
Now, the church is beginning to stand up and speak out again about Iraq.
Last summer, the National Council of Churches of Christ, a collection of 36 Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox and African-American churches, called for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
"We acknowledge that the freedom promised in the toppling of a dictator has been replaced by the humiliation of occupation and the violence of civil war," the statement read. "The sacrifice of brave men and women has been used to serve policies that have diminished our nation's prestige and our capacity to be agents of justice in the world."
Earlier this month, 96 United Methodist bishops signed a statement calling on the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq.
"As followers of Jesus Christ, who named peacemakers as blessed children of God, we call upon The United Methodist Church to join us in repentance and renewed commitment to Christ's reign of compassion, justice, reconciliation, and peace," they wrote.
"As elected and consecrated bishops of the church, we repent of our complicity in what we believe to be the unjust and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. In the face of the United States Administration's rush toward military action based on misleading information, too many of us were silent.
"We confess our preoccupation with institutional enhancement and limited agendas while American men and women are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die, while poverty increases and preventable diseases go untreated.
"Although we value the sacrifices of the men and women who serve in the military, we confess our betrayal of the scriptural and prophetic authority to warn the nations that true security lies not in weapons of war, but in enabling the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized to flourish as beloved daughters and sons of God."
Consider us warned again.
(Memphis columnist David Waters may be reached by e-mail at waters(at)gomemphis.com or by mail at The Commercial Appeal, P.O. Box 334, Memphis, TN 38101.)
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