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On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the shofar, a horn made from a ram’s horn, is blown in synagogues around the world. It calls people to attention and wakes them up to the spiritual work that needs to be done to greet the new year.
What is the spiritual work you have to do? How can you wake yourself up to it?
The Daily Compass offers words and images to inspire spiritual reflection and encourage the creation of a more loving, inclusive and just world. Produced by The Church of the Larger Fellowship, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation with no geographical boundary. Please support the publishing of The Daily Compass by making a $10 or $25 contribution (more if you can, less if you can't)! Thank you for your support!
It’s almost impossible to get your mind around how much is currently being sacrificed in favor of a Senate procedural rule that appears nowhere in the Constitution and emerged to buttress segregation.
This week’s featured post is “A Dozen Observations about Texas, Abortion, and the Supreme Court“.
That’s the subject of the featured post.
The Texas abortion law could be undone if Congress passed the Women’s Health Protection Act. But it won’t, of course, because the WHPA can’t muster 60 votes to get past a Republican filibuster.
So we can add one more item to the bill America pays to maintain the filibuster. Similarly, all the hoops and hurdles Republican legislatures have put in the way of voting could be reversed if Congress passed the For the People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, or some watered-down version of either bill. Even Joe Manchin claims to want to pass something to protect voting rights, but again, unified Republican opposition makes the filibuster an insuperable roadblock.
Similarly, the filibuster dooms the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a $15 minimum wage, and statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico. It’s the reason January 6 is being investigated by a House committee rather than a bipartisan commission.
Historically, the filibuster protected segregation in the South, preserving Jim Crow for decades.
Filibuster defenders need to be challenged to answer: What victories balance all these losses? At what moment in American history was the Republic saved from a catastrophic mistake because some prescient minority filibustered? I don’t know of one.
Thursday, CNN reported that the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection had asked telecommunication companies to preserve the phone records of a number of Republican congresspeople, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Notice: preserve, not turn over. If the committee eventually decides that it needs some of those records, it will presumably subpoena them. At that point, McCarthy et al might challenge the subpoenas in court, and I assume the companies will do whatever the courts tell them. All perfectly normal.
Kevin McCarthy responded like a Mafia don.
If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States. If companies still choose to violate a federal law, a Republican majority will not forget and will stand with Americans to hold them fully accountable under the law.
An appropriate response to this tweet might be: WTF? Or more specifically, WFL: what federal law?
McCarthy’s office has not responded to CNN’s request for clarification on what law McCarthy believes the telecommunication companies would be violating.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was more explicit about the threat, if not the law:
These cell phone companies, they better not play with these Democrats, because Republicans are coming back into the majority in 2022, and we will take this very serious.
When you warn people not to cooperate with investigators, or else — that’s pretty much the definition of obstruction. But for congressional Republicans, it’s just Tuesday.
A week ago yesterday, North Carolina Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn issued this threat:
If our election systems continue to be rigged, and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place, and it’s bloodshed.
He went on to say that he dreads “having to pick up arms against a fellow American.” Not that he wouldn’t do it, but that he doesn’t look forward to it. You don’t “dread” things that you know you aren’t going to do.
Cawthorn’s spokesman claimed he was opposing violence. But when a conditional threat is based on a lie, the result is just a naked threat. Democrats can’t stop rigging and stealing elections, because they haven’t done that in the first place. If I tell you I’m going to burn your house down unless your dog stops peeing on my lawn, and you don’t have a dog, then the bottom line is that I’m threatening to burn your house down.
As we’ve seen again and again, Trump claims fraud whenever he loses. He claimed that fraud prevented him from winning the popular vote against Hillary Clinton in 2016, and he also claimed Ted Cruz committed fraud when he beat Trump in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, tweeting: “Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.”
Given that history and Cawthorn’s devoted Trumpism, the only conclusion to draw is that Cawthorn is regretting in advance all the Americans he will kill if his side loses again. If they lose, they will claim fraud again and get violent again, but with more bloodshed this time.
A Republican candidate for county executive in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, explained how he plans to handle schools boards that impose mask mandates.
Forget going into these school boards with frigging data. You go into school boards to remove ’em! That’s what you do! They don’t follow the law! You go in and you remove ’em. I’m going in there with 20 strong men, I’m going to speak to the school board and I’m going to give them an option. They can leave or they can be removed.
No attempt to convince, no organizing for the next election, no petitions or marches or sit-ins. Just “20 strong men”. Increasingly, that’s how the GOP wants to handle things.
All across the country, there are reports of the Proud Boys joining anti-mask protests outside of schools and school board meetings. Explicit threats are often part of these demonstrations.
I’m not sure I trust this week’s numbers. On the one hand, they follow the recent trend of slowing growth: New cases are up only 8% over the last two weeks, compared to last week’s 20%, preceded by 36% and 60%. On the other hand, the biggest drop is 51% in Louisiana, with even bigger drops in the coastal counties where Ida hit. It could just be that the hurricane interrupted testing and reporting of new cases. But if these numbers are accurate, we could hit a peak this week.
It’s weirdly ironic that Covid-related unemployment benefits are expiring on Labor Day.
My part of the northeast got some rain, but no serious flooding when the remnants of Ida blew through Wednesday night and Thursday morning. South of here, though, particularly in Philadelphia and New York, things got ugly, and more than 40 people died.
Meanwhile, Louisiana is still recovering from when Ida hit there eight days ago.
In addition to the abortion ban, Texas now has open carry of firearms, without permits or training. So if you want to shoot up a Texas school or shopping mall, you aren’t breaking any laws until you pull the trigger.
The anti-voting law that Texas Democrats delayed by leaving the state? It passed. Harris County is suing to keep it from being enforced.
You’ll be pleased to know that Rudy Giuliani reports that he is “not an alcoholic” and functions “more effectively than 90% of the population”.
Trump Tower is having trouble finding tenants, but it has one really reliable, deep-pocketed one: the Make America Great Again PAC that Trump runs himself. It rents a space that could accommodate 30 employees, but it only lists three, and they’re not there most days. The high-priced lease appears to be a simple way to turn donors’ money into personal income for Trump, but it’s all perfectly legal.
I’ve previously closed with videos of elaborate domino constructions that fall in amazing and beautiful ways. An even more kinetic version of the same basic idea is the stick bomb. The elasticity of tongue depressors is used to store potential energy, which can be released in a chain reaction.
If you want to build your own, here’s a tutorial.
As you undoubtedly already know, the Supreme Court refused to interfere with the new Texas abortion ban, which took effect Wednesday. In brief, the law bans abortion after a “heartbeat” is detectable in the embryo, which happens (not really, but sort of, more below) at around six weeks. That’s usually before a woman knows she’s pregnant, so most pregnant Texas women will not, at any point in the process, have legal options other than carrying their fetus to term.
What makes this law different from dozens of other anti-abortion laws (that routinely get voided by the federal courts) is its method of enforcement: Abortion is illegal, but not criminal. No one is arrested or sent to jail. But private citizens can sue people (other than the pregnant woman herself) who perform or “abet” a post-heartbeat abortion. If they win, they get attorneys fees plus $10,000.
That enforcement method makes it tricky for a federal court to block the law. Ordinarily, a court would enjoin state officials not to enforce a law that violates established constitutional standards, but here Texas can say: “We don’t enforce it. Private citizens and the state courts enforce it.” Five conservative judges (three of them appointed by Trump) decided to take advantage of that loophole. So the law stands and abortion is effectively banned in Texas.
Much has been written about this situation in the last week, so rather than add another article to the stack, I want to organize what’s already out there. That’s why this post is a list of short observations rather than a single essay. In each case, I’ll point you to other sources that do the elaboration.
Let’s start with some basic references.
The law itself (Senate Bill 8) is here. It’s written for lawyers, and I don’t recommend reading it unless you’re really getting down into the weeds.
The Supreme Court’s rejection of the request to intervene is only 12 pages, and is much more readable. The majority’s statement is barely more than a page. Chief Justice Roberts wrote a three-page dissent. Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan also wrote dissents, each of which was co-signed by the other two. So the Court published roughly ten times as much material explaining why it shouldn’t have done this than justifying why it did.
Slate has a good FAQ about what the law covers and how it might be interpreted. Some of the issues will depend on what judges do, and even if the law is technically on your side, you still will have to respond if someone sues you.
The bill is named the Texas Heartbeat Act, but a six-week embryo doesn’t have a heart.
Rather, at six weeks of pregnancy, an ultrasound can detect “a little flutter in the area that will become the future heart of the baby,” said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future “pacemaker” of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals, she said.
NPR goes into more detail:
“When I use a stethoscope to listen to an [adult] patient’s heart, the sound that I’m hearing is caused by the opening and closing of the cardiac valves,” says Dr. Nisha Verma, an OB-GYN who specializes in abortion care and works at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The sound generated by an ultrasound in very early pregnancy is quite different, she says.
“At six weeks of gestation, those valves don’t exist,” she explains. “The flickering that we’re seeing on the ultrasound that early in the development of the pregnancy is actually electrical activity, and the sound that you ‘hear’ is actually manufactured by the ultrasound machine.”
Healthline.com says that at six weeks, an embryo is “about the size of a grain of rice”.
You might be wondering why anti-abortion activists lie so blatantly about this rather obscure point of biology (or perhaps how they can call themselves Christians while they do). Similarly, they make bogus claims about a fetus’ ability to feel pain at 20 weeks. Neither of these thresholds have any legal significance. (After all, farm animals have heartbeats and feel pain, but they are killed by the millions without any political backlash.)
What activists are trying to suggest with heartbeats and suffering is the presence of a human soul, which many of them say enters the embryo at conception. (In National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters writes: “That heartbeat should strike the consciences of anyone with an open mind about the morality of the issue.” Sorry, but that shot just goes right past me; I am neither engaged nor shamed by it.)
They may describe this theological speculation as “Biblical”, but in fact it is not, as I’ve explained before. In Catholic circles, this teaching was virtually unknown before the 1600s, and it didn’t become orthodox among conservative Protestants until after Roe. For Evangelicals, the politics motivated the theology, not the other way around.
In any case, one American’s theology does not bind other Americans, because the Founders very explicitly did not set up a theocracy.
Complete bans on abortion are not popular now, and never have been.
Gallup has been asking about abortion for nearly half a century, and the numbers have been remarkably stable. Less than 1-in-5 Americans believe abortion should be “illegal in all circumstances”, and that’s been true consistently since 1975. The split between those who want abortion legal in “any circumstances” or “certain circumstances” bounces around a bit more. Even that may not represent an actual change of opinion, but could correspond to a change in the circumstances that came to mind when the question was raised.
On the specific question of overturning Roe v Wade, public opinion has long supported leaving Roe alone. In 1989 the public was against overturning Roe 58%-31%, and the most recent survey was 58%-32%.
I sum up my reading of public opinion with a quip. Most Americans, whether we are conservative or liberal, have exactly the same opinion about both abortion and guns: “I am appalled by the sheer number of them in this country, and wish there were fewer. But if my family gets into some extraordinary situation and decides that we need one, I don’t want the government to stand in our way.”
The court majority is acting in bad faith.
The majority purports to be stymied by the complexity of the situation: No one knows exactly who will decide to enforce the Texas law, so how can they craft an injunction?
it is unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to enforce the Texas law against the applicants in a manner that might permit our intervention.
Will Wilkinson points out the obvious:
you know that the conservative majority would not affirm this principle in general. There is zero chance that Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Thomas would offer the same deferential treatment to a formally identical California law designed to frustrate citizens’ 2nd Amendment rights by incentivizing civil lawsuits against anyone who gives away or sells or in any way aids or abets the possession or ownership of a firearm.
Justice Sotomayor’s dissent is blunt and direct:
It cannot be the case that a State can evade federal judicial scrutiny by outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry.
But of course, it’s not the case in general. This is a one-time-only principle that applies solely to abortion.
A decision this consequential shouldn’t happen through the shadow docket.
Essentially, the Court has reversed Roe v Wade: Texas has made nearly all abortions illegal; the Court has refused to protect a woman’s previously recognized constitutional right; and now other red states are scrambling to pass their own bounty-hunter law.
It is certainly within the Court’s power to reverse previous precedents and thereby reinterpret the Constitution. But the typical way for a reversal to happen is through the regular docket (known to lawyers as the “merits” docket): A case challenging the precedent works its way up through the federal courts. Through that process, the lower courts develop a body of publicly available evidence and reasoning. Then the Supreme Court hears lawyers for both sides argue the case, and interested third parties submit briefs supporting one side or the other. The justices withdraw for weeks or months to consider it all, and then a decision is announced, supported by a written majority opinion (which may be critiqued by dissents from judges outside the majority). When Brown v Board of Education reversed Plessey v Ferguson in 1954, that was the lengthy process it went through. (The original lawsuit was filed in 1951.)
A case challenging Roe is already on the Court’s calendar for this term. We should get a decision by June at the latest. If a majority wants to reverse Roe — and apparently it does — that is the proper way to do so.
One key virtue of the regular process is transparency: The Court’s power may be mostly unchecked, but when it does something, we at least know what it did and why. Five justices can’t just say “Do this” and go home; they have to spell out the new interpretation in enough detail that lower courts and the various levels of state and federal government know what the law is now. The Court’s reasoning is available for legal scholars to examine and criticize, and Congress knows exactly what it must do if it wants to achieve a different outcome.
But the Court also has what is called the “shadow docket”. Wikipedia explains:
Shadow docket decisions are made when the Court believes an applicant will suffer “irreparable harm” if the request is not immediately granted. These decisions are generally terse (often only a few sentences), unsigned, and are preceded by little to no oral arguments. Historically, the shadow docket was used only rarely for rulings of serious legal or political significance, but since 2017 it has been increasingly utilized for consequential rulings, especially for requests by the Department of Justice for emergency stays of lower-court rulings.
So, for example, you might ask the Court to intervene if a law was about to go into effect that would remove one of your previously recognized constitutional rights. If, say, you had to give birth to your rapist’s baby because all the abortion providers in your state had to turn you away, you might reasonably claim to face irreparable harm. The no-longer-viable clinics might also reasonably claim irreparable harm.
By not acting, the Court is basically announcing: “Not so fast about thinking you have a constitutional right.” It has made women’s rights evaporate without any kind of transparent process. Or maybe that’s not the Court’s intention at all. Who can say, when the majority barely wrote a page of explanation?
Chief Justice Roberts, who is usually thought of as one of the conservative justices, complained about this lack of process:
I would grant preliminary relief to preserve the status quo ante—before the law went into effect—so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner. … We are at this point asked to resolve these novel questions—at least preliminarily—in the first instance, in the course of two days, without the benefit of consideration by the District Court or Court of Appeals. We are also asked to do so without ordinary merits briefing and without oral argument. … I would accordingly preclude enforcement of S. B. 8 by the respondents to afford the District Court and the Court of Appeals the opportunity to consider the propriety of judicial action and preliminary relief pending consideration of the plaintiffs’ claims
Translating from the legalese: If we don’t know what to do, we should freeze the situation as best we can until we have time to figure it out. But the other five conservative justices rejected that reasoning.
The Senate’s hearings on recent Supreme Court nominees have been a charade. The nominees lied, and the senators who credited those lies were either naive or complicit.
Numerous examples are possible, but the most ridiculous one was the 45-minute speech Susan Collins gave defending her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. For eight paragraphs she addressed “the concern that Judge Kavanaugh would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade”, assuring the country that the constitutional right established in Roe “is important to me”, and extolling Kavanaugh’s reverence for long-established precedents.
Naive? Complicit? Hard to say.
The 6-3 conservative majority is the result of a system rigged to over-represent White rural voters. The Court’s current conservatism does not and never has represented the will of the American people.
Supreme Court justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Both of these institutions are rigged in favor of White rural voters.
Three of the current justices (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) were nominated by Donald Trump, who was chosen by the Electoral College in defiance of the American people. (Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million votes, but won a 304-227 victory in the Electoral College.)
Sometimes Roberts and Alito are included on this list of minority justices, because George W. Bush also lost the popular vote in 2000. However, they were nominated in Bush’s second term, after he won re-election democratically.
Recent Republican majorities in the Senate have also not represented the American people. The principle that each state has two senators means that blue (and racially diverse) California’s 39 million residents have the same power as red (and almost entirely White) Wyoming’s 581 thousand. Combined with the successful attempt to stack the Senate by admitting tiny Northwestern states in 1889-1890, Republicans have a consistent structural advantage: For the last quarter-century, Republican senators have neither represented a majority of voters nor received a majority of votes, and yet they have held the majority of Senate seats about half the time.
This includes the term when Mitch McConnell refused to consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, as well as the next term when McConnell and popular-vote-loser Donald Trump awarded that Court seat to Neil Gorsuch.
Senate Republicans use their artificially inflated numbers, together with the filibuster, to make sure the system stays rigged in their favor by denying statehood to (largely Black and urban) District of Columbia and (Hispanic) Puerto Rico.
Now that abortion rights have actually been lost, the Republican dog has caught the car.
Somewhere in Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway describes a bridge that is much desired but (precisely for that reason) can never be completed: As long as the bridge is in the future, corrupt politicians can raise funds to build it. But if it is ever finished, the money will dry up.
For decades, anti-abortion politics has been a similar scam, as David Frum explains:
Pre-Texas, opposition to abortion offered Republican politicians a lucrative, no-risk political option. They could use pro-life rhetoric to win support from socially conservative voters who disliked Republican economic policy, and pay little price for it with less socially conservative voters who counted on the courts to protect abortion rights for them.
That dynamic played out most clearly in 2016, when Trump dominated the anti-abortion vote, while pro-choice people assured each other that they could stay home or vote for Jill Stein.
But now, after years and years of warnings and an ever-increasing set of hoops women have had to jump through, abortion rights really are vanishing, even for women who are privileged in every way other than gender. If you live in a professional-class suburb of Dallas, and if your U of T freshman daughter gets roofied at a frat party and comes home pregnant, she either carries the baby to term or your family has to break the law — and maybe get sued.
If this possible impact on their lives means that the complacent majority will get riled now, the jig is up. That’s why national Republicans haven’t been spiking the football to celebrate an achievement they’ve been promising for decades.
Congress could fix this, if Democrats thought women’s rights were more important than the filibuster.
The Texas abortion law would be undone if Congress passed the Women’s Health Protection Act, which reinstates the protections of Roe v Wade nationally. Speaker Pelosi believes she can get the bill through the House. It’s unclear whether all 50 Democrats in the Senate would vote for it. But a handful of Republicans also claim to be pro-choice — here’s a chance to redeem yourself, Senator Collins — so the bill should get a majority, if it comes to a vote.
But it won’t come to a vote, because of the filibuster. A woman’s right to choose is yet another price the country must pay for Senator Manchin’s and Senator Sinema’s attachment to this time-dishonored Senate tradition, because the WHPA clearly can’t muster a 60-vote supermajority.
The Department of Justice could also do something.
Law professor Lawrence Tribe explains: It turns out the country has previously faced the problem of states turning a blind eye to (or even encouraging) vigilantes trying to intimidate Americans out of exercising their constitutional rights. In that previous era, Congress responded by passing the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which is still on the books.
Section 242 of the federal criminal code makes it a crime for those who, “under color of law,” willfully deprive individuals “of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” … In addition, Section 241 of the federal criminal code makes it an even more serious crime for “two or more persons” to agree to “oppress, threaten, or intimidate” anyone “in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same.” This crime may be committed even by individuals not found to be acting “under color of law” but as purely private vigilantes, as long as they’re acting in concert with others.
Tribe believes that using the KKK Act to protect abortion rights in Texas would be “in tune not just with the letter but the spirit the law”. He asserts that we have now reached the point where “the need to disarm those who cynically undermine constitutional rights while ducking all normal avenues for challenging their assault on the rule of law becomes paramount.”
Ordinary people can monkey-wrench the enforcement process.
A campaign to spam websites asking for tips on Texas abortions is taking off. We’ll see if this is just a snap reaction or if it has staying power.
If any pro-life folks think women’s-rights defenders are playing dirty, let me point out that so far no one is using the kinds of tactics the pro-life movement has long used against abortion clinics. No one is bombing their offices or threatening their workers with violence, because (unlike the pro-life movement) the pro-choice movement doesn’t have a terrorist wing.
As satisfying as monkey-wrenching might be, though, it probably won’t make much difference. Even if monkey-wrenchers make vigilante lawsuits harder to assemble, abortion clinics and other support services are already being shut down by the threat of such lawsuits, even if suits have not yet been filed.
Texas has made rape a viable reproduction strategy.
If you are a man who is unable or unwilling to convince any woman to bear your children voluntarily, you can still win the evolutionary battle to pass on your genes by committing enough rapes. Eventually you may wind up in jail, but your descendants will thank you. They will also thank the Evangelical Christians who paved the way for you.
The big news this week was the Supreme Court’s refusal to block Texas’ abortion-banning law. This was a backhanded way to subvert Roe v Wade, and other red states are already moving to copy Texas. There’s a lot to say about this situation — legally, politically, and socially — and there is no shortage of people already writing about it.
With that in mind, I have decided to take this blog’s name literally and do some sifting. Rather than write a long essay of my own, I’m pulling together what other people are saying as concisely as I can. So the featured post will be “[N] Observations about Abortion, Texas, and the Supreme Court”. N is currently up to 12, and I think I may stop there. The post should be out shortly.
Restoring the Roe rights is now another thing Democrats could do, if not for the filibuster. The weekly summary will make a list of these costs of the filibuster.
The summary will also examine the growing number of examples of Republican leaders embracing gangsterism and violence, including Kevin McCarthy threatening telecommunication companies with vague consequences if they cooperate with the investigation of January 6, and Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s threat of “bloodshed” if elections “continue to be stolen”. (Since no elections have been stolen, Democrats can’t avoid this bloodshed by not stealing them. But they could avoid it by not winning, which seems to be Cawthorn’s point.)
Hurricane Ida ravaging the Gulf coast makes this week’s Covid numbers hard to interpret. (Reported infections on the coast are down, but what does that mean?) The summary will include a few other odds and ends, before closing with a more kinetic variation on the domino principle: stick bomb explosions. That should be out before noon.
What was a decision you’ve had to make which was one-of-a-kind? Marriage, job, relocation, retirement, divorce, major vacation - etc. Did you actually think it through, weighing the pros and cons of all sorts ? Did you ask the advice/opinion of friends and family? Did you just go with the flow and take the first job, proposal, house, or whatever?
Becky
Note: It was my privilege to be asked to speak—and to host one year—from 2015 to 2019 at the annual Labor Day Event on Woodstock Square sponsored by McHenry County Progressives. Today we will look back at the meat of my talk in 2016—a Presidential election year that turned out to have disastrous results. Specifics about that race are now dated, but the themes they represent are all back this year, as you can read. My remarks on the working class virtue of solidarity were adapted from earlier material, including one of my Labor Day sermons at the old Congregational Unitarian Church in Woodstock.
We gathered here last year [2015] for the first time, a small band of folks called together by some local fans of Bernie Sanders who wanted to celebrate his hero Eugene V. Debs and his connection to Woodstock. As a fan of both, an old Wobbly, and a soapboxer, I was thrilled to be asked to participate.
A lot has happened in the last year and here we are again. Bernie Sanders, thanks to folks like those who organized the Labor Day event, went from being an obscure longshot, to the leader of a wide and deep political revolution, and came tantalizingly close to winning the Democratic Party nomination. When he didn’t some folks were heartbroken, other mad. Some picked up their toys and went home in a sulk and huff. Some picked up Bernie’s challenge to keep the Revolution going by going deep and wide—running for local office and trying to recapture Congress from troglodyte Republicans. That’s what the folks here in McHenry County have done.
Some folks swore that no matter what they would never vote for Hillary Clinton, who apparently has horns and is the spawn of Satan, no matter what, no way, no how. Others have either swallowed hard and followed Bernie’s appeal and decided to vote for Hillary, or with more enthusiasm vowed to actively work for her election along with the rest of the Democratic ticket.
People who were comrades in the campaign struggle a couple of months ago but are on opposite sides of the Hillary divide, are hurling invectives at one another, denouncing each other as traitors or saboteurs. Relationships have been shattered. That longed for political revolution is crippled by dissention.
Meanwhile genuine naked fascism has arisen as a mass movement and swallowed the traditional conservative party. Ordinary Americans who have seen their lives and futures sacrificed time and again to corporate greed have been taught to blame their woes on a rotating cast of others—Mexicans and emigrants this week, Muslims and refugees next, women, gays, Black lives Matter protesters, scientists, the sick and the elderly. Violence is in the air like the whiff of gunpowder.
Considering all this, on this Labor Day I want to commend to you the working class virtue of solidarity even if you have never considered yourself a worker.
First we need to consider what solidarity is not….
Solidarity is not sympathy. Sympathy is a passive emotion. It also implies a separation from the object of sympathy and can teeter on pity, which is just sympathy tinged with revulsion. Empathy might be closer to the meaning in that it implies a common understanding of the distress. But empathy is also passive. Solidarity demands action.
Solidarity is not charity. Charity implies a power and privilege differential. The more powerful and more privileged deign to give to the less fortunate who are expected to respond with appropriate gratitude and humility. Solidarity is mutual aid among equals.
Solidarity is not altruism. Altruism is supposedly selfless giving requiring sacrifice but expecting no reward—except perhaps praise for being saint-like. Solidarity recognizes the commonality of our conditions and expects to receive support by right as well as give it.
Solidarity is not family. Families—and by extension surrogate families like clans, nations, religions, races and others—are expected to support their members out of blood obligation. Solidarity demands respect for commonality with the other. Solidarity with the stranger dismantles walls and promotes peace instead of a mad scramble over scarce resources.
Solidarity is not utopian. Utopians conjure up sweet dreams of the perfect. Utopians may simply drift on in the opium cloud of that dream. More dangerously, some utopians construct rigid ideologies around their vision which eventually require the ruthless suppression of anything and anyone not in conformity to that ideology. Solidarity is rooted in the common realities we face together and is interested in addressing the roots of the problems as well as ameliorating the immediate effects.
Solidarity is not all warm and fuzzy. Warm and fuzzy denies oppression. Solidarity recognizes that there are those whose own narrow self-interest causes them to exploit, subjugate, and abuse others. And solidarity demands common action to defend against such depredations and—yes—boldly to ultimately defeat the oppressors.
Solidarity is a recognition of our place in humanity, an ethic, and an active response to our common interests.
Solidarity enlarges our communities, builds bridges of respect that can span differences. It does not demand lock-step conformity to some ideological purity to act together in mutual support. It requires listening, really listening and not just waiting our turn to deliver a lecture. When generations of feminists support Hillary Clinton passionately it means not sneering that they are voting their vaginas, but understanding why and ultimately standing with them just as we hope that they will stand with us for the dismantlement of corporate power.
Solidarity requires humility and taking the risk of having our fragile identities challenged. We cannot give more than lip service to Black Lives Matter unless we understand and take ownership of the White privilege understanding it is not a moral flaw but a condition we are born to. By breaking down our defenses we can collaborate in our mutual liberation with respect and understanding.
Most of all, solidarity requires commitment and action. There are no sidelines, no room for mere cheerleaders. Each and every one of us are called to put our bodies and our lives on the line again and again in some meaningful ways. And we are buoyed by the knowledge that others are prepared to do the same for us.
Can we make a promise this Labor Day to commit to the working class virtue of solidarity? Can we face the challenges not just of the coming elections, but in defending women’s bodies and choice, dismantlement the new slavery of mass incarceration, and standing in the Spirit Camp of the Standing Rock Sioux as they defend all of our water. There is a lot to do. No individual can do it all. But we can all do something.
In the words of Ralph Chaplin in the great anthem of the Working Class:
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold;
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old,
For the Union makes us strong!
We invite all who worship remotely to join us the second Saturday of the month. We will enjoy the fellowship of All Souls while we break virtual bread, renew old acquaintances, and make new friends.
The post Join & Enjoy the All Souls Virtual Supper Club appeared first on BeyondBelief.
Another story for liberal religious kids. I think I originally wrote this story for the First Parish in Watertown, Mass., back in the mid 1990s. I rewrote it in 2004 when I was at the UU Society of Geneva, Ill., and then forgot about it. Here’s the 2004 version:
Once upon a time, about a hundred and fifty years ago in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, a family lived in a house they called “Apple Slump.” There were four children in the family, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, along with their father, Mr. March, and Marmee, their mother. At the time this story takes place, Mr. March was far away, serving in the army during the Civil War.
Jo had long, chestnut-colored hair. She was a tall tomboy who didn’t really like being a girl. Jo also had a terrible temper; she had a hard time controlling their anger. But Jo figured out a way to keep her temper under control. She had what I think of as a “mood pillow.”
“Apple Slump,” the house that the March family lived in, was a big, old, rambling New England farmhouse. Jo thought the best room in the house was the garret, a room up in the attic that had a nice, sunny window. Next to the window stood an old sofa.
The sofa was long, and broad, and low. It had been the perfect thing for the girls to play on when they were little. They had slept on it, ridden on the arms as if they were horses, and crawled under it pretending they were animals. As they got older, they had long, serious talks sitting on it, they lay down and dreamed daydreams on it.
Jo liked the sofa more than the other girls. It was her favorite place to read. She would curl up in one corner with a good book, and half a dozen russet apples to eat. As she sat reading and eating her apples, a tame little rat would stick its head out and enjoy her quiet company.
But sometimes Jo went up into the garret for a different reason. She had a terrible temper, and sometimes she would get in a horrible nasty mood. Sometimes, when she was in a particularly bad mood, she just needed to be alone.
She would run up into the garret, and pick up the pillow that was on the sofa. This was an old, hard, round pillow shaped liked a sausage. This repulsive-looking old thing was her special property. If she stood it on its end, that was a sign that any one of her sisters, or her best friend Laurence, or her mother, was allowed to come and sit down next to her on the sofa and chat; but if it lay flat across the sofa, “woe to the man, woman, or child who dared disturb it!” When they were younger, her sisters and Laurence had been pummeled mercilessly by this pillow, and now they knew better than to try to sit next to Jo when it lay flat.
I call this her “mood pillow,” and I think it’s a great idea. When Jo was in a bad mood, or angry about something, or when she just needed to be alone, she could use the pillow to let her family and friends know that they should leave her alone for a while. That way, she wouldn’t hurt those around her when she was in a bad mood.
When you’re in a bad mood, what do you do to keep from hurting those around you?
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111040855/http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2021-09-05_Right_Livelihood.mp3
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111040833/https://whitebearunitarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/9-05-21-audio.mp3
"In Our Hands Is Placed a Power" (September 5, 2021) Worship Service
Welcome to our annual Labor Day service, where we celebrate the contributions to social justice by the labor movement both currently and historically. As has been true for several years now, we will be joined by members of San Francisco's labor union choir Rockin' Solidarity. Hard times have always been here for the vast majority of the world's population, but now all of us are at critical crossroads, and which roads we take over the next decade or two may determine the very survival of humanity. As we make these life-or-death choices, what can we learn from both the victories and defeats of organized labor?
Rev. Millie Phillips, Guest Minister; Wonder Dave, Worship Associate; The Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus, Pat Wynne, Director; Mark Sumner, songleader; Bill Ganz, pianist
Eric Shackelford, camera; Shulee Ong, camera; Jonathan Silk, OOS Design & sound; Joe Chapot, live chat moderator; Carrie Steere-Salazar, flowers; Alex Darr, Les James, Tom Brookshire, Zoom Coffee Hour
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111040811/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20210905MPSermon.mp3
“Now, anything that exists in history must have form. And the creation of a form requires power … not only the power of thought, but the power of organization and the organization of power.” Thus liberal religion rejects “the immaculate conception of virtue and affirms the necessity of social incarnation.” These words of James Luther Adams, the great 20th century Unitarian Universalist ethicist, describe one of his “five smooth stones” – basic principles of liberal religion that stand in place of elaborate theological doctrine. Labor Day weekend is the perfect time to celebrate in story and song the achievements of the U.S. Labor Movement – a powerful example of “social incarnation.”
The Rev. Dr. Suzanne Redfern-Campbell retired from active ministry in July 2018, having served Unitarian Universalist congregations since 1985. Her most recent full-time ministry was at the UU Church of Las Cruces, where she served five years as Developmental Minister. This past year, she did a two-month sabbatical ministry for the UU Fellowship of Fairbanks, Alaska. Sue came to ministry from the practice of law, and has served congregations in six states and one Canadian province. During her ministries, Sue discovered a passion for helping congregations in transition and is an Accredited Interim Minister. She landed in New Mexico after marrying her late husband, Chuck Campbell, on New Year’s Day 2012, and now lives in Albuquerque with a hyperactive rescue cat named Phoenix.
SERVICE NOTES
WELCOME!
New to our church community? Sign our guestbook and let us know if you’d like to get more connected.
If you would like to submit a joy or sorrow to be read during next week’s service, we invite you to write it in our Virtual Prayer Book.
For more information on our church community, visit us on the web at http://www.uulosalamos.org or call at 505-662-2346.
Connect with us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/uulosalamos
Have questions? While our minister, the Rev. John Cullinan, is on sabbatical, contact our office administrator at: office@uulosalamos.org.
MUSIC CREDITS
Permission to stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-730948. All rights reserved.
Permission to stream music in this service obtained from CHRISTIAN COPYRIGHT SOLUTIONS with license #10770
OTHER NOTES
* “Opening Words for Labor Day,” by the Rev. Megan Visser (used with permission)
* Meditation: “We Need One Another,” by George E. Odell (used with permission)
Photograph of Frances Perkins used with permission of the Frances Perkins Center.
* “Be a Pain” music and lyrics by Alastair Moock. Produced by Anand Nayak Recorded & Mixed by Andrew Oedel. From the album, “Be a Pain: An Album for Young (and Old) Leaders.” Video produced and directed by Wishbone Zoe, based on album artwork by Tom Pappalardo. Song Credits: Alastair Moock: lead vocals, acoustic guitar; Anand Nayak: electric guitar, background vocals; Paul Kochanski: electric bass; Scott Kessel: drums; Eric Royer: banjo; Jamie Walker: electric guitar; Sean Staples: background vocals; Kris Delmhorst: background vocals; Rani Arbo: background vocals; Mark Erelli: background vocals; Boston City Singers: background vocals.
Reading: “Guiding Principles for a Free Faith: The Five Smooth Stones of Liberalism,” from On Being Human Religiously, by James Luther Adams (Beacon Press, 1976) (fair use)
* Benediction: “Commitment,” by Dorothy Day (used with permission)
*permission granted through the UUA (Unitarian Universalist Association)
OFFERTORY
Our Share the Plate partner for September is Lutheran Family Services.
100% of all offered this month will be given to our partner.
We are now using Givelify.com to process the weekly offering: https://giv.li/5jtcps
SERVICE PARTICIPANTS
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111040750/https://www.uulosalamos.org/ucla/pulpit/2021/20210905-The_Power_of_Organization.mp3
Affirming and promoting truth about public health
The mission of Unitarian Universalism is to nurture the true, the good, and the beautiful in the lives of its adherents and its collaborative partners around the planet. How has UU encouraged the seeking of truth in the time of Covid-19? To what extent have congregations been a source of information and the implementation of practices to contain and mitigate the spread of the virus?
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Has the implementation of this fourth principle had a beneficial influence on the decision making of its members and the communities within which the congregation resides? There seems to be little evidence of the impact of truth especially in red states where governmental policies and the media is filled with misinformation leading people astray. It seems strange that UU leaders have not spoken out more visibly about ways of discerning the truth in the midst of increased community polarization.
Reasonable voices are needed to lead communities to beneficial public health practices based on the scientific knowledge that is available. Could the church be a community leader who informs people and helps them develop the skills to interact with their neighbors and community institutions so that practices based on truth and reason be implemented?
Unfortunately, too many UU churches and the Association have been preoccupied with social justice issues rather than more immediate health challenges affecting the bodies of their members and the people with whom their members interact.
The opportunity to highlight the search for truth in the public health sector has by and large been missed and it is time, with the third wave of Covid infections by the Delta and Lambda variants, for UU congregations to assess, plan, and implement public health activities which impact the physical health of their members and the communities they serve.
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111040728/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/210905.mp3
Today I let Christ’s vision look upon all things for me and judge them not, but give each one a miracle of love instead.
There is a recurring theme in these daily lessons. The point is being driven home as we come upon the last two weeks of the year of lessons. The point is that God is love and if we see anything else we could choose a better way of seeing which would be the miracle of love.
In Alcoholic Anonymous it is suggested, in step eleven, that we share what we have learned from working the ten previous steps and that is that our ego is not in charge, and turning our willfulness over to our Higher Power is the path to serenity.
In Unitarian Universalism it has been taught for a couple of centuries that God loves us unconditionally and would not condemn any of God’s creations to hell.
Today, it is suggested that we look upon the world with Christ’s vision of love instead of the ego and this form of vision is miraculous.
This sermon was preached at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Huntington on 9/5/21 as part of a service of meditation and contemplation following a historic week.
Happy Rosh Hashanah all. Shana Tova! A good and sweet year to us all. In the Jewish calendar, we begin a new year; returning once again to a time of reflection, a time of atonement, a time of seeking out those we have wronged, and seeking to make amends, face to face. It’s a ritual that we return to year after year. Sacred ritual has a power to it that transcends human generations. I marvel at the rituals we have been enacting millennia after millennia. That which the human community does in concert, again and again, takes on a sense of eternity. It seeks to encounter the moment between the moments that the poet T.S. Eliot famously penned. The world will continue its spin, our days and lives will grow long and short, from coffee spoon to coffee spoon, but these moments of ritual, punctuate the routine. The rote becomes pierced, and one moment stands outs, amongst all the rest. When I hear the shofar be blown each year, it quickens my spirit. Time seems to shorten and stretch, to pause before eternity, knowing it will pass in a breath or two. We can return to this still point, again and again, but we can’t linger. It’s ever before us, but never any less urgent.
And it is in these still points, in the return to the Shofar, the return to rituals and community, that we innervate, or re-energize our spirits after times of hardship. And as we heard Tomo Hillbo’s wisdom earlier in the service– the thorns, whether we want them there or not, sometimes give cover for something new to grow. What will grow in this new year?
Today’s message will be more of a longer spoken piece broken up with song and meditation. We have all witnessed so much this week in our communal story. The hurricanes and tropical storms, the end to a 20 years war with little clarity on what’s next, and the stretching of Christian Theocratic Fascism in Texas as a springboard for too many other states. This is a service of contemplation and song, of the sweetness of the possibility of a new year found in this Holiest of Days in the Jewish calendar, and a time of witness for the labors of this week.
We begin with the storms. I have no answers now. But I do know we need to address where are hearts and spirits are after yet another historic hurricane. We can pray for all the people impacted, and there still needs to be a word for us as well. Many of us here lived through our own storms. Hurricane Sandy was devastating. Neighborhoods were destroyed, people lost their lives. Several of our own members lost their homes, or waited years for them to be fully repaired. Every massive hurricane that comes, can bring us back to that place again where we saw horror. I remember living by the power station that blew on the East River in NYC at the time. We wouldn’t know it for 4 days, when we could finally leave our Ave B apartment, but one of the piers on the East river had floated across a wide park and 4 avenues to rest near us. I stop watching the news when I learn of massive hurricanes in other parts of the world, until it’s over and there’s something we might be able to do to help those in need. It’s just too retraumatizing. If this applies to you, try to just turn off the weather channel if it’s not an immediate need for your own safety; it could be doing you harm. And I know some of us were hunkering down in our basements a few days ago, due to Tornado warnings. Every few hours, we were getting the emergency alerts for flash flooding. With all the thousand things that are going on in the world, that high pitched sound seems to be wearing all in its own, and cuts through to be just too much.
All of that is very real. It can be physically dangerous, and assuredly is, and it is also spiritually enervating. And for those that hear this message now, or read it later, we are through it. If your home took damages or you are in need, and you need help, please reach out. Our community will partner with you to figure out how to help.
The song we are about to hear, and we’ll return to it again one more time, has been written onto the tablet of my heart when it comes to the after math of storms. Those 4 days later, after Sandy, when we could finally descend 11 stories from our apartment, because the East River had finally receded enough to go outside; we walked around our neighborhood and there was massive destruction in the East Village. But we managed to find a patch of rose bushes in our public garden that were unscathed and fully in bloom. Join with us at home in singing, or sit back and meditate into the song.
… (queue I know this Rose will Open)…
We have a shared pain in two historic moments this past week. The last of our soldiers have left Afghanistan – a war that has seen 4 different presidential administrations – and images of Afghani’s desperately trying to flee the country before the arrival of the Taliban. 46,000 civilians have been killed by all sides over these past 20 years.
And in Texas, we see again, the dangerous practices of Christian Theocracy. Women (and all those with a uterus) are being denied their constitutional rights, and their religious rights, to have control over their own bodies. I call it Christian in name only, for it does not resemble the teachings of Jesus in any fashion whatsoever. Jesus was on the side of the immigrant, the refugee, peace, healing, the most vulnerable. None of his core teaching are honored by American Christian Theocracy. As the old quote goes, fascism will come draped in a flag and bearing the cross. And this new Texas law, is about power, pure and simple – not about ethics or morality.
I put these two historic moments together now because they resonate in painful ways. It’s hard to know what will come next. I know in the States, it will mean for us to organize, organize, organize. I recently read of Rev. Daniel Kanter, the senior minister of our large church in Dallas, Texas, say to the effect (and I’m only slightly paraphrasing here), that ‘Unitarian Universalism needs to be a firewall against harmful religion here.’ (end paraphrase.) And this blending of partisan politics and religion is dangerously harmful for medical reasons, for emotional reasons, for reasons of abuse, and personal agency, and on and on.
I also am seeing a disturbing trend of soundbytes, and pundits, and memes suggesting that Texas is our Taliban. That’s Islamophobic, although I get what the point is meant to mean. Yet, it lets us off the hook for our own White Supremacist Christian Theocracy. We need to name the problem for what it is, or we won’t solve the problem. Pretending it’s something that it’s not weakens are effectiveness. And we are going into a time, or continuing into a time, where we need to be very, very effective – before this spreads to other states.
And we know how to be effective; we saw it in our last UU the Vote. The Rev. Daniel Kanter, who I just paraphrased, serves the very UU church that helped sponsor the plaintiff in Roe v Wade. We know how to be effective.
Join with us at home in singing, or sit back and meditate into the song.
… (queue I know this Rose will Open)…
I’ll close with the words of my colleague, Rev. Joanna Fontaine Crawford who also serves in Texas:
Spirit of Life, God of Many Names, Source of Love,
As Summer slowly comes to close, and the air turns toward crisp,
help us to find a breath before the crush of the year of work and learning returns anew.
Teach us to pace ourselves;
to remember to find times of quiet and stillness;
to appreciate one another,
returning to the places that nourish our souls
so that when we reach out,
when strive for family and home,
we do so knowing who we are,
with kindness and care.
In the life of our nation, we remember this Labor Day weekend,
all the activists and organizers who helped lift our country up to be its higher self;
through offering more fair work,
both in time and in safety.
May we find new ways to build an economy that treats us all with equity and compassion.
We especially hold in our hearts this hour the refugees from Afghanistan who are fleeing the return of the Taliban to power, after our 20 years war.
Mother of Grace, teach the nations new ways to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable with speed and diligence. We ceaselessly pray for this.
May our hearts not be hardened to the plight of those far from our gaze.
And we pray that our own nation, built upon the dreams and struggles of generations of immigrants and refugees,
find the spirit to renew our former pledge to all the tired,
and all the wretched in need – with a sense of humbleness;
For we have forgotten where we came from,
when we ignore another who is lost and far from home.
We hold in our hearts all those impacted by Hurricane Ida, which ravaged New Orleans and the surrounding regions, on the 16th anniversary of Katrina. We hear this is the worst storm to hit the area since the 1800’s. May we stay present to the immediate needs of our neighbors hit hardest, and may our nation commit to addressing the root causes of global climate change. It’s impacts spread so far north even into our corners where our region experienced numerous tornadoes – far from normal to us.
And we grieve for the state of Texas, which through partisan chicanery, has undermined a core democratic principle of our nation, taking away the rights of women to have full agency over their own bodies. Inspire us to channel our rage into organizing, to stoke hope and commitment, and connection.
And through this all – let us remember Tomo Hillbo’s widom from moments ago – that the thorns, whether we want them there or not, sometimes give cover for something new to grow. In the spirit of Rosh Hashana, and this sweet new year, amidst such a fraught time, may we find sweetness in how we grow among these many thorns so that new life can thrive after a rough year has passed.
One of the things that has helped me to continue push my limits with exercising is my Apple watch. I used to have a Fitbit but it died. I like the Apple watch much better, although you need an iPhone to go with it and as it ages there is never enough memory for the updates. What I like most (except for the “Dick Tracy” style phone calls which I love) is that the incentive goals change over time, depending on what exercise levels you are currently meeting. I have met all the mostly challenge goals this year, except for November. I can’t remember why I didn’t meet that one or what it was. This month, my watch wants me to walk or hike a total of 149.8 miles. In May (the last time the challenge was in miles), I only needed 145.8 miles to meet the challenge. I also try to close all 3 activity rings each day. My current streak for doing so is 158 days.
None of this does the complete trick to maintain my weight, of course. I also have to watch what and how much I eat. And that is a struggle, a harder one than walking 150 miles in a month. Particularly after a long hike, I feel entitled to a calorie heavy meal. We did 11 miles on Friday so I had steak frites, two martinis, and split a dessert for dinner. It was wonderful, but my weight is up again this week. I am still bouncing around 150, however, so no panic, just some continuing concern. Maybe there is a different balance I need to find. Maybe slightly less exercise? When I exercise more than usual I get hungrier than usual and can too easily eat more than I actually need. So maybe the steak frites were OK, but also maybe I should have had only one martini. Or maybe, instead, next time I can just skip the olives. Or only have one olive in each martini. Every little bit helps – AND a sense of humor is ALWAYS important!
L’Chaim!
My average weight this week is up 1.2 pounds for a total loss of 171.4
Tomorrow is officially Labor Day in the United States, a Federal Holidaycelebrated on the first Monday of September since 1894. For most people it is just the last hurrah of summer, an occasion for one last cookout and the gateway to fall and football season. In most cities and towns, the labor movement is not even perfunctorily acknowledged. The press uses the occasion to annually either write the obituary of unions or to denounce them as powerful and greedy bullies, depending on the political inclination of the outlet.
While most of us working schlumps are grateful for the day off (if we get one), I for one, wish I could officially celebrate Labor Day with virtually the whole rest of the world on May 1. International Labor Day was proclaimed by the Second International in honor of the memory of Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs at the suggestion of none other than American Federation of Labor (AFL) chief Samuel Gompers himself and which quickly spread around the world. American unions celebrated it too.
But within just a few years Gompers was at the heart of a deal that substituted the September observance for May Day, a few crumbs from the Boss’s table, and a pat on the head by the Civic Federation in exchange for a promise to oppose labor radicalism and the growth of industrial style unionism in rapidly expanding basic heavy and the extractive industries—mining, forestry, agriculture, etc.
It is true that a September Labor Day observance pre-dated the 1886 Haymarket Affair. In 1882 the New York Central Labor Union, made up of skilled craft unions belonging to a prototype of the AFL and lodgesof the rival Knights of Laborcooperated in a call for a giant parade followed by picnics, games and amusements, and educational talks. It was designed to showcase the prideand power of the labor movement and also to press for the chief demand of labor reformers—the Eight Hour Day—the same causethat would be marked by an attempted nationwide General Strike on May 1, 1886, an event that led up the attackby police on a worker’s rally in Chicago’s Haymarket on May 4 and the bomb blast blamed on the mostly German and anarchist leaders of the local labor movement.
New York City officials, eager to appeaseworkers after a number of local strikes were suppressed with violence, gave their official approval to the parade. On September 5, 1882 an estimated 30,000 workers marched in military order behind elaborate banners representing local unions of all of the trades, job shops, and Knights of Labor lodges. It was an impressive display, but despite later claims by the AFL that observance of Labor Day spread quickly, only a few other cities, mostly in New York, began holding September celebrations.
In the meantime, huge May Day parades and rallies spread across the country. But the late 1880s and early 1890s were the beginning of a nearly 40 year period of virtual open class warfare with worker’s strikes being violently suppressed by local, state, and federal authoritiesand armies of private goonsand strikebreakers. And workers often fought back with equal violence. Episodes like the Homestead Steel Strike with its running gun battles between Pinkertons and workers, the nationwide Pullman Strike of 1882, and virtually continuous battles in the coal fields and hard rock mines nationwide, made many fear for revolution or civil war.
Democratic President Grover Cleveland, who ordered out the Army to crush the Pullman Strike, wanted a symbolic peace offering to Labor without actually granting the movement any of its demands.
Republican king pin Ohio Senator Marc Hanna, soon to anoint William McKinley as the next President, was even more ambitious—he proposed a pact of cooperation between capital and “responsible labor.” He offered Gompers, the Cigar Roller’s Union chief who headed the AFL, a seat in his new Civic Federationalongside the robber barons and captains of industry. Hanna did not make the same offer to Grand Master Workman Terrance V. Powderlyof the Knights of Labor, who personally opposed strikes and advocated arbitration of disputes, because the members of Knights lodges included unskilled workers clamoring for recognition in heavy industry. Gompers AFL would be allowed to pursue organizing skilled workers strictly by trade but not organize the great mass of unskilled, largely immigrantworkers. Gompers would also be called on to use his unions to oppose labor radicalism, and even to break strikes led by unions outside the grand agreement.
With Gompers in his pocket, Hanna engineered enough Republican support in Congress to get Cleveland’s official Labor Day proposal passed. Cleveland signed it in to law just six days after Eugene V. Debs’s industrial union of railroad workers was smashed in the end of the Pullman Strike.
Within a few years all states either aligned their existing Labor celebrations with the Federal holiday or enacted state proclamations echoing the U.S. call.
Meanwhile authorities everywhere tried to suppress May Day observances, which continued to be supported by militant unionists and radicals of every sort—social democrats, anarchists, and Marxists. The Knights of Labor withered away, but aggressive industrial unions, especially in the mining industry, continued to fight both the bosses and the AFL’s attempt to divide the aristocracy oflabor from the mass rank and file. In little more than a decade the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) would be formed to intensify that battle.
During the Depression and the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrats became the party of labor. Labor Day became the official kick-offof Democratic election campaigns. Labor Day parades and rallies often seemed more of a platform to launch candidacies than a labor union celebration.
Even that has faded as the percentage of Americans in unions continued to shrink year after year after a high tide in the early ‘60’s. By the Clinton era, Democrats continued to get support from labor, but seemed to try to disassociatethemselves from it, shunning identification as the party for of labor in favor of being seen as the champion of the Middle Class.
As half-assed a holiday as Labor Day is, I hope we all will take a moment to thank the American Labor movement for largely creating that Middle Class.
What is the role for the wise elder in our contemporary, digital age?
Thanks for your consideration and attention,
Jerimiah
Dear Jerimiah
The question you ask has always been important for societies, but it is especially important in our contemporary age when the world faces such challenging circumstances.
There is a model of epistemology that teaches there are three kinds of knowledge: knowing what, knowing how to, and knowing what is wanted for people. Knowing what is ontology. Knowing how to is technology or some call it pragmatics, and knowing what is wanted for people is values. It is this third area where the role for the wise elder is the most beneficial. It is the wisdom accumulated over the years of experience in being able to discern bullshit from what really matters.
As Osho taught, there is a difference between growing old and growing up. Ken Wilber teaches the same idea. Unitarian Universalists affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Where is this search to take place, and when, and how? It is the role of the wise elder to inform, guide, mentor, encourage, and point to resources.
Does Unitarian Universalism have anything unique to offer?
It does. What UU offers is its encouragement to turn to the six sources for perennial wisdom. Unitarian Universalism is unique in its worldcentric view which is moving currently to integral.
However, only a very small percentage of UUs and the earth’s population have yet to develop an integral view. But there are a few. Look for them. They are around. A good place to start is right here on UU A Way Of Life. Other sources are the work of Ken Wilber, Steve McIntosh, Charles M. Johnston, and a few others. Currently, there are a few wise elders in UU, but they are few and far between and don’t seem to be playing significant roles in the UUA.
Are there wise elders that you look to for education, inspiration, encouragement, and guidance?
Keep the faith moving forward.
Sincerely,
David Markham
Please join us on Sunday (5 September 2021) at 9:00 AM for our adult religious education class via Zoom.
We have completed our White Fragility book study group using the book by Robin DiAngelo.
This week we continue our exploration of the 8th principle and anti-racism as we look at environmental racism in the US.
Rev. William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign calls on us to end the silos that have so often been characteristic of the movement to remediate climate change and other social justice movements.
If we Unitarian Universalists truly believe in the interdependent web of all existence, we need to take a hard and honest look at how climate change along with all the related threats to our environment affect us all but affect most severely those who are already most marginalized among us.
All Souls Director of Religious Education Susan Caldwell will be setting up parent meetings at various times next week with the goal of offering convenient times for everyone to participate.
We want to hear what works best for your family as we start the year in religious education.
Watch our website and the All Souls Religious Education Facebook Group for updates.
Our September 2021 Give-Away-the-Plate recipient is North Louisiana Interfaith.
North Louisiana Interfaith is a non-partisan political organization made up of religious congregations, non-profits, and other institutions throughout Northwest Louisiana.
All Souls has been a member congregation since 2005.
Interfaith leaders work together on issues that most concern the people in our institutions which arise out of house meetings where we listen to each other’s stories.
We work on issues at the local level and statewide level through our affiliate organization Together Louisiana.
Two ways to donate:
Online — Go to our donation site using this link. If you are paying your pledge, select “2021 Pledges” and enter that amount for your pledge contribution. Then select “Collection Plate” to give the amount you would like to give to North Louisiana Interfaith. All online collection plate contributions for the month of September 2021 will go to North Louisiana Interfaith.
Offline — Please send your give away the plate contribution checks to All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, 9449 Ellerbe Road, Shreveport LA 71106. Please put “North Louisiana Interfaith” on the memo line of the check if you want to have 100% of this check go to North Louisiana Interfaith. If you want less than 100% of the check to go to North Louisiana Interfaith, please put the amount you want going to North Louisiana Interfaith on the memo line.
Melissa Lewis will be at the church parking lot this Sunday afternoon (5 September 2021) from 2:00 to 4:00 PM to collect food and other items for the Noel United Methodist Church Food Pantry.
Items requested this month are Jiffy cornbread mix, canned fruit (any kind), and cereal (both large boxes and single-serving assortments are welcome).
Please join us next Wednesday (8 September 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.
Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.
Due to the impact of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, we have begun to broadcast a livestream video of our Sunday morning worship services.
This worship video will be available live and in recorded formats.
For our livestream video of our worship services, we are using Facebook Live. One does not have to log into Facebook or have a Facebook account to view this video.
You can find the 29 August 2021 worship video here.
UUA President Susan Frederick-Gray made a speech on 09/02/21 about something she calls "Ingathering". She reviews the obvious impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on congregations. There is no question that the experience of "church" has changed for most people from all religions and denominations around the world.
And where does this experience of the social disruption leave us UUs as a matter of faith? There was not much described. The statement seems to be more about cheerleading and maintaining organizational morale than about carrying out the mission of nurturing spiritual development in individuals, groups, communities and the world.
Unitarian Universalism is more than membership in a social club. It can be a lived faith which is actualized in our daily lives. How has our UU faith helped people manage themselves given the various stressors that the pandemic has contributed to the lives of individuals and communities?
Let me count the ways.
To be continued
I have no cause for anger of fear, for You surround me. And in every need that I perceive, Your grace suffices me.
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Whose will is to be done: mine or my Transcendent Source? That is the question. Today’s lesson is that the question has been answered as I decide that “Your grace suffices me.”
In Alcoholic Anonymous it is suggested, in step three, that we decide to turn our willfulness over to the care of God as we understand God.
In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the search for truth and meaning that will finally take us to understanding and choosing God’s will for us.
Today we remind ourselves that we have no cause for anger and fear because we are in God’s hands and God’s grace suffices us.
In 1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus went toe to toe in what Eisenhower feared could be the nation’s second Fort Sumner moment—a spark that could ignite a second Civil War. All the ingredients were there including long building and bitter Southern resentment of Federal meddling in the cherished traditions of segregationand White supremacy,a defiant governor and inflamed White population, equally intransigent neighboring states that might leap at the opportunity to join a rebellion, and both executives had armed military forces under their command.
Under the circumstances it was understandable that the Republican President had significant qualms about taking confrontational action. But the old general was deeply steeped in ideas of Constitutional responsibility, a chain of command, and adherence to the rule of law. He might not have been wildly supportive of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that mandated and end to “separate but equal” public schools. He might even have had qualms about its sweeping reach and effect on civil tranquility—Ike was never entirely clear on the depth of his personal commitment to Civil Rights. But he was absolutely clear on the rule of law and considered it his sworn duty at President to uphold established law no matter the hazard.
Faubus bet everything on the chance that a man born in Texas to a Virginia bred mother would not act against White people. He would regret that gamble.
On September 4, 1957 Faubus mobilized the state National Guard to block 9Black students from beginning classes at Little Rock Central High School. The nine students, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Pattillo, were all legally registered at the school after the local Board of Education had voted unanimously to follow the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision and desegregate the school.
The local chapter of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) had carefully recruited the students, picking only outstanding students with excellent attendance records and “respectable” families. The Mothers’ League of Central High, a thinly disguised front for the White Capital Citizen’s Council, had appealed to Faubus in August to block the Board’s decision to integrate the school. The Governor supported the group’s appeal for an emergency injunction to block integration to “prevent violence.” Federal Judge Ronald Davies denied the request and ordered that school open with the students.
Faubus went on television on September 2, the eve of the scheduled opening of classes, to announce his call upof the Guard, again supposedly to prevent violence. The School Board asked the nine students not to attend the first day of school, but Judge Davis ordered the Board to proceed on September 4.
Guardsmen circled the building, and a mob of hundreds of white protestors clogged the surrounding area. Guardsmen turned back one group of students. Fifteen year old Elizabeth Eckford, approaching alone toward a different entrance was also turned away. As she turned to walk to a bus stop, she was surrounded by the mob. “They moved closer and closer,” she later recalled, “...Somebody started yelling ... I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd—someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.” She finally made her way to the bus stop and escaped, but her ordeal was captured by national television cameras and still photographers.
The Board again appealed to Judge Davies for a relief injunction. He again refused and directed U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. to file a petition for an injunction against Faubus and officers of the Arkansas National Guard to prevent them from obstructing his court order to desegregate the school.
As legal maneuvering continued, tension in the city mounted. On September 9 the Black students did get some supportfrom the Council of Church Women who asked the Governor to remove the troops and allow desegregation to proceed. They announced a city-wide prayer service for September 12. Members of the council were threatened with violence.
Meanwhile Democratic Congressman Brook Hays arranged a meeting between the Governor and President Dwight D. Eisenhowerat his vacation home in Newport, Rhode Island. Faubus refused to back down.
On September 20 Judge Davies issued a direct order to cease interfering with the enrolment of the Black students. Faubus recalled the Guard and left the state for a Southern Governor’s Conferencewhere he hoped to rally support.
On Monday, September 23 Little Rock Police were left to contend with a snarling mob of over 1000 people. The Black students slipped into the building by a side entrance while the crowd was distracted bybeating four black reporters covering developments. When the mob discovered that they were inside they threatened to storm the school. Once again the nine students were sent home for “their own safety” with police protection.
Eisenhower had enough. When Little Rock Mayor Woodrow Mann appealed for Federal support for his overwhelmed police, the President was ready to act. He nationalized the Arkansas National Guard to take it out from under the command of the Governor although he was not entirely sure that senior Guard officers would obey the order or that the Guard troops might not mutiny and declare allegiance to their state.
In a move unprecedented since Reconstruction, Eisenhower ordered the elite 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock.
His decision to use those troops was highly significant. The 101st was based in Fort Campbell, Kentucky but several other units were nearer. The bloated Army was near it peak of peace time manpower with the height of the Cold War and near universal service via the draft. But only a handful of elite divisions were fully combat ready and more important highly disciplined under the most trusted officers. And most of those were deployed with NATO in Germany or in Korea. Other units were what might be called the Beetle Bailey Army, barely trained beyond basic and mired in the boredom of camp life. They were viewed as an on-duty reserve that could be mobilized and trained in the event of a war crisis. Some of those units might have been regarded as lax if deployed. No one would think that of the Screaming Eagles.
The next day, September 27, troops took up positions and escorted the students into the building.
Federal troops continued to escort the students daily for a week. The majority of the troops were withdrawn and duty transferred to the Guard under close supervision of Regular Army officers on October 1. Students first attended school incivilian rather than military vehicles on October 25 and all Federal troops were finally withdrawn in November.
The students were enrolled, but their ordeal was far from over. All were harassedand threatened by white students in the school. Melba Petillo had acid thrown in her eyes. Minnijean Brown was assaulted several timesand eventually suspended and expelled for dropping a bowl of chili on an assailant in the lunchroom. All students were completely ostracized by their white classmates. School authorities eventually also suspended more than 100 white students and expelled four.
Despite the distraction, at the end of the school year Ernest Green became the first Black student tograduate from Central High.
But it was not over. Faubus closed not only Central High but all four Little Rock high schools for the 1958-’59 term. When courts ordered them re-opened in September of 1959 only two of the original Little Rock 9, Carlotta Walls and Jefferson Thomas, came back. They both graduated in 1961.
Other Southern Governors, notably Alabama’s George Wallace would continue defy Federal school desegregation orders, but the knowledge that the government was willing to call out the Army to enforce the desegregation undoubtedly prevented much future violence.
The confrontation between Eisenhower and Faubus was portrayed in the 2012 film Lee Daniels’ The Butlerwith Robin Williams as Ike. Faubus was never seen.
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