Category Archives: Resistance

The Red Hen vs the Lunch Counter: Which Values Apply?

On the one hand, the report of it sets off alarms and bring back vivid memories from my young activist years. Then  most restaurants, especially in the South, were racially segregated. And it took long hard months of protests (that had really started on a small scale years earlier) to begin to break through and open up this part of public space to nonwhite Americans.

Soon after, when a major Civil Rights bill was moving through Congress, one of the toughest, longest fights over it focused on the provision that would make “public accommodations:”(especially restaurants, lunch counters, stores and hotels) open to all regardless of race, religion, gender, etc. And those of us who supported it were thrilled when this provision was voted in.
Rising comedian Dick Gregory managed to wring rueful jokes out of all this:
“We tried to integrate a restaurant, and they said, `We don’t serve colored folk here,’ and I said, `Well, I don’t eat colored folk nowhere. Bring me some pork chops.'”
And: “I sat in at a lunch counter for nine months. When they finally integrated, they didn’t have what I wanted.”
So when the great Civil Rights Act was finally passed in the summer of 1965,  one of its first and most visible impacts was the opening up of “public accommodations” to hungry customers of all shades and denominations.

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Culling a Clue about Kids from our Carolina Crackpots

Wouldn’t somebody in that batsh*t crazy crowd around the White House have realized –ahead of time– that this plan would blow up on them? That it would produce thousands of heart-rending images of kids under threat? That it could even upset some evangelicals?

Evidently not. In fact, their anti-immigrant inside guru, Stephen Miller bragged to the Atlantic just the other day that this plan was a guaranteed political winner.

Maybe he knows something I don’t know. After all, Miller’s in the White (supremacy) House, and I’m just a geezer in — well, I AM in North Carolina.

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A Visit to the Border

I’m a long way from the Mexican border. But like many others, I can’t tear my eyes away from it, via  the media. Many journalists are doing fine work this week, bringing the rending of families there into sharp focus. Here’s a sampling; hope the images and text make some impact. From the Jackson, Mississippi … Continue reading A Visit to the Border →

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Is 45 Making Jesus Great Again?

For a long time I’ve felt that much of the deepest internal struggles in American culture have religious roots.
Sure, there’s also politics, class, race, gender and empire involved as well. But take off your Bubble-colored glasses and look closer, and religion pops up in most of these contexts too.
Further, one passage, Romans 13:1-7, has long been close to the center of these conflicts. It equates worldly rulers, and  their use of “the sword”, with God’s divine order. and has long been used to support whichever ruler a preacher most favors.
Blogger Doug Muder, who on most Mondays puts out “The Weekly Sift,” reviewing the past week, has an excellent brief summary of the current version of this larger struggle, summed up in the question: “Is Trumpism Becoming a New Religion?”
In technical terms, my  initial answer to Muder’s query has to be “No.” That’s because whatever it is, this new cult is definitely not “new.”
But on Muder’s main point, if there’s a religious character to what we face, and a struggle between gods, or at least idols, my answer is not just “Yes,” but “Hell, yes.”

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The Talk They Did NOT Hear at Friends Central School . . .

On May 25, Sa’ed Atshan was chosen by the Swarthmore College Class of 2018 to be the speaker at their “Last Collection,” an opening ceremony of their Commencement exercises.

Here are some excerpts from his talk. . . . I’m posting them as a sample of Atshan as a speaker, and as a man sharing his identity and evolution with younger peers. I believe much of this would have been in the talk he was planning for Friends Central School last year.

But this was an experience denied to the students at Friends Central School. To prevent Atshan from speaking there, two teachers at Friends Central were fired, and a high administrative official left.  This shameful incident is now the subject of a federal lawsuit.

Atshan’s Swarthmore talk was intriguing to me for several reasons, but one was a question I’m still seeking the answer to: 

What is it about this talk, and about this person, that was worth destroying the jobs of three loyal faculty at Friends Central School to keep  both off their campus?

Many readers will know that the Friends Central administration has refused comment on this matter.  So we’re on our own to sort it out. This talk is not a final answer; but is worth reading and pondering as the seeking continues. 

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