The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope

Good morning from Chicago, where I am attending a family reunion. My family arrived yesterday evening and enjoyed greeting other relatives, so I did not view last night's televised "debate" between Joe Biden and Donald Trump as it happened. Based on all media analysts and political pundits I have considered since then, Biden and Trump performed as I expected. Biden was hoarse and halting. Trump was rambling and untruthful. Both candidates performed miserably. If the future of the nation and world is to be decided by a debate performance, reasonable political observers should be concerned. Media and political pundits will point to the debate and use it as the lens through which Biden and Trump should be compared. That's what they are paid to do. But that is always the wrong standard for judging public policy.  The true, correct, and proper question is whether the U.S. will be more just, stable, and functional nation if led by Biden or Trump, not how either candidate ...

  © Wendell Griffen, 2024 June 21, 2024 Little Rock, Arkansas     A New York state court jury found Donald Trump guilty of committing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal check’s signed by Trump to repay his former attorney (Michael Cohen) in 2017 for suppressing unfavorable information about Trump’s alleged sexual encounter years earlier before the November 2016 presidential election. Trump could be sentenced by Judge Juan Merchan by fine, up to four years imprisonment, or probation on each of the 34 counts. Because I had the same sentencing responsibilities for the last 12 of my 25-year tenure as state court judge in Arkansas (I retired at the end of 2022), I am familiar with the issues Judge Merchan faces as he contemplates sentencing Donald Trump on July 11, 2024. There are four theories of punishment judges weigh once persons have been convicted of crimes. They are retribution, deterrence, prevention, and rehabilitation. Each theory ha...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024 June 7, 2024 Little Rock, Arkansas   Dear Neighbors, I write you in the aftermath of the May 30 New York state court jury verdict that found Donald Trump guilty of committing 34 felony offenses of falsifying business records in order to conceal a conspiracy to interfere with the 2020 U.S. presidential election. I write as a fellow citizen of the United States, native of the American South, African American pastor in the religion of Jesus, honorably discharged former U.S. Army officer, retired state court trial and appellate judge, husband, father, and grandfather. Above all, I am your neighbor. We hold differing views about the role of government. However, I hope we agree that falsifying business records is wrong. I hope we agree that people should not lie, cheat, or entice others to do so. I doubt that you routinely entrust your personal affairs to people who lie, cheat, and steal. I doubt that you encourage your children to chea...

  ©Wendell Griffen 2024 Little Rock, Arkansas   On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. called on the United States to lead the world in what he termed “a radical revolution of values” during a speech at Riverside Church in New York City when he urged the United States to end its war in Vietnam. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling…homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending [people] home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024 May 17, 2024 Little Rock, Arkansas   In recent days we have witnessed several public displays of hypocrisy by white politicians from Arkansas involving social justice. A statue of Mrs. Daisy Bates, a civil rights activist and journalist, was unveiled in Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. White politicians extolled her courage, tenacity, and leadership that led to nine Black teenagers breaking the racial barrier and enrolling in Little Rock Central High School in September 1957. The same politicians are undermining everything Mrs. Bates stood for. They are actively looting public education funds to benefit private schools. They are falsely claiming that accurate instruction about the history of systemic racial injustice in this society is “indoctrination.” That’s a two-sentence summary of the political hoax called the LEARNS Act that Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Republican super-majority of the Arkansas...

  © Wendell Griffen, 2024 April 26, 2024 Little Rock, Arkansas     Yesterday a lawyer stood in the well of the Supreme Court of the United States and boldly declared that a President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution if he/she commits murder, bribery, sedition, conspiracy to overthrow the government, or any other crimes as an “official act.” The lawyer argued to Justices who refused to focus on the allegations in the indictment issued by a federal grand jury against Donald Trump for attempting to overthrow the 2020 presidential election result, including allegedly suborning false sworn statements about baseless claims that the election was fraudulent. And he made that argument as the senior Justice, Clarence Thomas, looked down from the bench despite the fact that Virginia “Ginny” Thomas, his wife, was allied with the movement that tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of office in January 2021. He made that argument before several Justices w...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024 Little Rock, Arkansas   We can go online and read the Project 2025 report published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation to learn what to expect if Donald Trump becomes the next President of the United States after the 2024 general election. It is beyond disquieting. It is horrible to expect an executive branch run by demagogues determined to gut federal agencies responsible for health, human services, education, environmental protection, and respect for federal lands. If elected in 2024, Donald Trump will usher in an era of fascism unlike anything imagined in U.S. history. But we need look no further than Palestine and Haiti to know what to expect if Joe Biden is re-elected. Joe Biden has been counseling, cheering, financing, and outfitting the Israeli apartheid regime. That regime has used U.S. funding to terrorize Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel has used U.S. weapons, munitions, and diplomatic cover to commit what...