The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2022     In recent days we have witnessed unprecedented evidence of bigotry and violence. Bear with me while I mention some of the more obvious examples. Start with the abuse and disrespect Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson experienced this week from Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. She was called vile names. Her professional and personal integrity was demeaned. Her character and intelligence were questioned. What Judge Jackson experienced was intentional bigotry. She was the target of premeditated violence from Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn, and Charles Grassley. Remember their names. Remember how they treated Judge Jackson. Do not believe them if they eventually make predictably fake excuses, assertions of good faith, and other efforts to downplay their bigotry and violence. Those vicious politicians could not crack Judge Jackson. They could not break her spirit. Through it all, Judge Jacks...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2022   I am one of the more than thirty million (30,000,000) descendants of American slavery in this country. Our enslaved ancestors were shipped, sold, robbed, maimed, raped, murdered, and otherwise wronged from 1619, when a Dutch ship named the White Lion arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, until slavery was supposedly ended at the end of the civil war in 1865. That entire pattern of behavior happened openly. It happened officially. It was sacralized by preachers and congregations, carried on as part of daily business, and continued across successive generations. This society has done nothing to compensate the descendants of enslaved persons for 250 years of unpaid labor. This society has done nothing to compensate the descendants of enslaved persons for 250 years of life theft. This society has done nothing to compensate the descendants of enslaved persons for 250 years of rapes, castrations, mutilations, beatings, and murders. This society h...

  © Wendell Griffen, 2022   What should your neighbors do if a bully broke into your home in broad daylight, began killing members of your family, and publicly announced that the killing would continue until you surrendered or abandoned your home? Should the neighbors send thoughts and prayers? Should they wear the favorite colors of your family? Should they stop doing business with the bully? Should they seize property and bank accounts owned by the bully? If neighbors welcomed you and your family into their homes, would that alter the reality that they refused to help you and your family fight the bully?   How would those responses make your neighborhood safer?  How are they consistent with the moral duty to value the lives and peace of neighbors as highly as we value our own lives and peace?   These questions have troubled me since Russian military forces invaded Ukraine on orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Thoughts, prayers, econo...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2022     After Russian President Vladimir Putin directed Russian military forces to attack Ukraine, US President Joe Biden condemned the Russian attack as an act of “premeditated war.” Biden’s condemnation seems hollow when one recalls the history of "premeditated" US support for aggression and violence. Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arberry, Daunte Wright, Philando Castille, Alton Sterling, Rekia Boyd, and many other Black people were slaughtered by government agents in the United States. No US president – including former president Barack Obama – condemned that systemic pattern of “premeditated war.” The United States invaded Iraq on March 3, 2003. For the next nine (9) years, over a million US military personnel occupied that nation. More than 4500 US military personnel were killed. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. The war in Iraq was “premeditated.” The United States invaded Vietnam to support French colonizer...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2022     On Monday (February 14), Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson announced that he wants Arkansas legislators to appropriate up to $100 million to build another prison that can house 498 people. Divide $100 million by 498. The number you will see on your calculator is $200,803.21. That is how much Hutchinson wants Arkansans to spend to build more cages to house people. According to an online report issued by the Prison Policy Initiative, Arkansas has an incarceration rate of  942 per 100,000 people  (including prisons, jails, immigration detention, and juvenile justice facilities), meaning that it locks up a higher percentage of its people than any democracy on earth ( https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/AR.html ). When people opposed to his plan shouted “No more cages” from the gallery of the Arkansas House Chamber during his speech to legislators, Governor Hutchinson said, “ Let me emphasize that this need for a new facility...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2022   Perhaps you have read that Dr. Jim Ross wrote an opinion column published by the Arkansas Times that supports a proposal by the Little Rock School District to close four elementary schools.   If not, here is a link to his column. https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2022/02/09/in-support-of-lrsds-school-closure-plan-even-though-it-hurts I agree with Ross that the plan to close Baseline, Booker, Meadowcliff, and Western Hill Elementary Schools “hurts.”   I disagree with his premise that the LRSD must impose that hurt.   I also reject the idea that it is fair to do so. Closing schools where children from low and modest wealth Black and Latinx families live and have been historically dis-served most and longest is an unfair way to address declining student enrollment in those areas, charter schools, and LRSD budgetary concerns. Closing those schools is merely a convenient bureaucratic way to shift the “pain” of addressing racial i...

  REJECT  "RULE OF LAW" HYPOCRISY - DEMAND REPARATORY JUSTICE ©Wendell Griffen, 2022     On January 8, 2022, the Mail & Guardian (whose masthead asserts that it is “Africa’s Best Read” newspaper) published an opinion column by Lindiwe Sisulu titled “Whose law is it anyway” that has sparked a deep conversation in South Africa ( https://mg.co.za/opinion/2022-01-08-lindiwe-sisulu-whose-law-is-it-anyway/ ).   I learned of it from my friend Allan Boesak during one of our weekly conversations about faith and justice. After I read her piece, I shared it with other justice-minded public theologians in the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference with this statement: “This is a must read!” Lindiwe Sisulu’s parents, Walter and Albertina Sisulu, were leading figures with Nelson Mandela in the African National Congress (ANC) movement that resisted the racist apartheid regime of South Africa. Their daughter’s opinion column shows that she inherited her parents’ zeal fo...