Of course, Black lives matter

I was on a Mohonason panel, talking with students about the Civil Rights Movement. The panel included Reggie Jackson, an African-American folk singer who sang on the front lines of the iconic demonstrations, his friend, Greg Greenaway, a southern-born white deeply committed to civil rights, and Nell Stokes, an activist raised in the segregated South before moving here and spending her life fighting for freedom. I have enormous respect for all of them. I was invited because I walked over from my apartment to the March on Washington where Dr. King delivered his I Have a Dream speech, and because I worked on civil rights in several legal offices.

We concluded by talking about what to say when people disparage African-Americans. I responded that I talk about Frank.

Frank died a few years ago. Before I knew him or even that he was Black, I listened to West Virginia DAs trading stories about how good a lawyer Frank was. A few days later I met Frank, a colleague at the West Virginia College of Law, respected statewide, eventually on the state Supreme Court, whose books on West Virginia law were the bible for state lawyers. The Cleckleys and Gottliebs got together many times. When the Department of Justice recommended him to President Carter for appointment to the Fourth Circuit, Frank didn’t want me to tell anyone that he believed his ancestors were slaves on the plantation of Rosalind Cleckley Carter’s ancestors – he wanted the job on his merits. Carter made a more political choice.

Though respected throughout West Virginia, Frank never felt safe traveling around the state to defend people. And Frank told me his brother had been shot in the back by a policeman in Cleveland. But Frank couldn’t protect his brother. For a Black man, a flashing light in his rear window raises the question whether he will survive the encounter or die on the street. You and I don’t feel that. But every hair triggering fear, every assumption of bad intentions, is stacked against a man with Black skin.

In dealing with prejudice, it doesn’t help to say that kind, capable, hard-working, people come in all colors. So, I talked about Frank, trying to make a dent.

I can talk about kind people, capable people, hard-working people. I don’t know what it takes to make a dent. Barbara Morris was a fighter when necessary. She ran the legal staff of the NAACP in New York City and threw me some of the toughest legal questions around. The organization was facing very serious challenges. It took the profession, not just me, another decade to figure out answers to what she was concerned about. She also gave me excellent advice about planning my legal career. But she had to fight just to get a decent apartment. She was Black and a woman. Not good enough for an apartment.

Marttie Thompson grew up in Mississippi, started law school but, lacking the money to finish, clerked for the bar, which meant he worked in a lawyer’s office and learned on the job. I often represented Marttie at meetings and saw the respect people had for him. But Marttie refused to join the Board of the bar association dominated by New York’s major firms because it was so recent when they finally admitted African-American lawyers as members. Later, Marttie became Regional Director of the federal office supervising many legal services programs. He tried his best to make his life matter.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor agreed to keynote a conference I was organizing here when John Baker became dean. Every Albany lawyer wanted to be at the dinner with her, overwhelming original plans. The Board wanted John to let everyone come and I wanted to keep it for the participants. John and I immediately did battle but emerged close friends. He introduced the first course at the law school on not-for-profit corporations – dealing with the world of museums, theatres, and organizations trying to provide for all the things government refuses to take care of. And he himself volunteered regularly. John tried to make his life matter.

All of them were kind, decent people. What else does it take before one’s life matters? Of course, Black Lives Matter. And because they are so often targeted by bigots, it’s important to say that.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on September 22, 2020.

 

What about those demonstrations?

The Black Lives Matter movement is being waylaid by provocateurs and others who want to use the opportunity to loot stores or, as one hoodlum did, shoot people on camera and then, apparently craving notoriety, tried to give himself up to police who ignored him because he’s white and they were convinced all bad things are black.[1]

That’s part of the reason Martin Luther King was so determined that his people be completely nonviolent. People like John Lewis had their heads cracked. Four little Black girls were blown up in their church. Emmet Til and lots of others were murdered, including white people working in solidarity with the African-American population struggling for freedom. How many murders, how many lynchings does it take to convince people that the African-Americans were innocent victims, not perpetrators.

Thousands of people were killed and lynched. Do we have to go through that again. We’re taught the police are brave. How brave do you have to be to shoot people in the back? How brave do you have to be to shoot a woman asleep in her bed, or a man putting his key in his door, or keep a knee on a man’s throat as he dies? None of them were armed. But seven shots paralyzed Jacob Blake. 41 shots killed Amadou Diallo – who never had a chance or a weapon. Abner Louima was attacked and sexually brutalized by police. When will it be enough? When will it ever stop?

We’re told there are good cops, that most cops are good cops. I’d be delighted if they’d act the part, if they’d stop the bad ones from committing murder, if they’d participate in drumming people like that out of the force. One former policeman in our area came here to live because he had exposed massive corruption in the New York City Police Department and, regardless of those supposedly good cops, cops drove him out of town, initially by attempted murder. Where are those good cops when we need them?

Where people aren’t allowed to protest in peace, they may have to find a different way to protect themselves while making their point. Perhaps they’d do better putting Black Lives Matter t-shirts on everyone and circulating on busy streets without congregating or waving signs. Perhaps they’d do better using the time working on the election. Do Trump, and other bigots, with and without guns, have to be driven out of power, before it’s possible to deal with the real violence? There’s what’s called a ground game to be fought to win this election – letters, calls, information, rides – lots of organizations are working on it and lots of people are trying to help out. People of color need friends in high places to get what they deserve. Martin Luther King was in league with President Johnson – King was the greater man but Johnson had the power. Perhaps the demonstrators would do better to skip the streets and take the White House. Perhaps that would deny Trump and the hoodlums who support him anything to scare people with. Perhaps going for votes would outfox them and put the truly violent elements in our society in their cages.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on September 1, 2020.

[1] CBSN, Chicago, reported: “As for Rittenhouse showing up with his hands in the air, appearing to turn himself in, the sheriff said officers did not realize what he was trying to do.”

The Violence of Bigots; the Devil’s Pox on the Skin of America

October ended painfully: an anti-semitic attack in a Pittsburgh temple killed eleven; a racist attack at a Kentucky grocery store killed elderly African-Americans. Though hundreds of miles from here, friends and colleagues had losses. Close friends were married at that Pittsburgh Temple.

We missed the Sunday interfaith memorial in Albany but joined the Monday gathering at Temple Gates of Heaven in Schenectady. Approaching it, I saw friends who’d been Peace Corps Volunteers. Our job had been to extend this country’s hand of friendship to peoples abroad. Now we shared the pain from prejudice at home.

Schenectady Clergy Against Hate organized the memorial for a standing room only crowd, to share our grief for the dead, the injured, their families, and our country. The Clergy Against Hate consists of many denominations of Christian, Jewish, Islamic and eastern faiths, all of whom mourned the losses and stood for a world of love and concern. Minister Jonathan Vanderbeck, of Trinity Reform Church, told us “We stand against hate and oppression,” adding “that really carries throughout all our religious traditions.”

Our country included people of multiple faiths, origins, and languages from its founding. America’s revolutionary armies included free and enslaved Blacks, as well as Jews who had first settled in the colonies under the Dutch.

The Founders described America as a beacon shining a path from wicked, murderous hate elsewhere to an enlightened place of brother- and sisterhood. A “hundred years war” had scourged Europe in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. Thirty years of religious war devastated it in the seventeenth century. A global seven years’ war reached us as the French and Indian War. America’s Founders struggled to protect us from the killing, unifying us into one enlightened country, where we could learn to live with and benefit from each other.

Even before the First Amendment prohibited any establishment of religion or interference with each other’s freedom of religion, the Constitution made three references to religion, reading “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States”[1] and providing for a secular affirmation as an alternative to each provision for an oath.[2]

The Founders welcomed and encouraged immigration in order to people the continent. Most understood freedom and human rights as universal. Prominent members of the Constitutional Convention led anti-slavery societies. Southern insistence on slavery postponed the extension of freedom to all until the Civil War, after which the opening words of the Fourteenth Amendment were “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Think about the importance to America of that commitment to universal human rights. By coming here, immigrants from all over the world not only shared the effort and ingenuity that built our country, they showed by their presence that others could see themselves in America. Feeling that bond, civilized countries repeatedly allied with us to protect their freedom and ours. America helped create the European Union in order to bury centuries of warfare among European countries, uniting historic adversaries lest they fight again, and pull us into yet another World War. America led in developing international institutions and alliances which project the power of American ideals to protect us and much of humanity.

Racists claiming to represent the real America, are instead ripping out the veins and arteries that power our country. They’re doing the devil’s work to destroy all that has been great about America.

So don’t forget to vote – we’ve got work to do.

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, November 6, 2018.

[1] Par. 3 of Article VI.

[2] Art. I, §3; Art. II, §1; Art. VI, §3; and the 4^th Amendment.

Cultural Revolution and Human Understanding

I encountered two images last night worth talking about.

Our daughter called us after leaving a Hillary rally and she commented that Democratic rallies are love fests where everyone feels welcome. Yes, that’s a large part of my own positive reaction to Hillary. People reflect the candidates – warmth at Hillary rallies, anger at Trump’s.

And in an article on an on-line forum, Neil Siegel wrote “The consequentialist concern that traditionalists will be branded as bigots is sufficiently serious for Justice Alito that it counts as a reason for the Court to reject” constitutional claims.

I identify with our daughter’s reaction. But Siegel’s comment makes clear one of the reasons my former student, now vice president of a major news organization, wrote me that he understands the feelings of many good people who have been drawn to Trump’s banner. Part of that is the economic struggle of America’s working class, a subject I’ve repeatedly tried to address. But part is the culture war which I’d like to address today.

It’s often hard to win without gloating. And conservatives have been no better at it than liberals. But it’s important. That’s not to say the victories we liberals are fighting for are for sale. We want to welcome, protect, show warmth and respect toward all kinds of people who were once despised. We’ve shared many victories with our African-American friends without managing to get them the fair shake in this life that they deserve. But that circle of friendship needs to reach all those who are struggling in this challenging world.

Living as a minority of one in a distinct community reveals the warmth, welcome and dignity of sharing each other’s lives. Born in a predominantly Jewish part of Brooklyn, if I can be permitted to address it from my personal experience, I spent summers in Christian Chautauqua and felt the love and welcome. Born a few years before the best universities in the country decided to drop their quotas, I took my high school college advisor’s suggestion to apply to Princeton and was surprised when I went for an interview by their encouragement to come. By the time I applied to law school, the welcome this Brooklyn kid got was less surprising. When I left Yale, I enjoyed another welcome by the legal staff of the NAACP and then in the Peace Corps by the people I came to know in Iran. I discovered a long time ago that the fears of others’ reactions were my fears. I went south to meet my future wife’s Baptist family and got one of the most important welcomes of my life. I hope they felt the same from me.

So opening up to others now comes easily to me. But I too understand the depth of the cultural revolution. I hope we can extend that welcome so that everyone can enjoy the camaraderie and mutual respect that comes from really opening up. When Hillary says she wants to be the president for all the people, she strikes the right note. But I hope that the people who will vote against her will prove able to see her care and concern better than people were able to appreciate those qualities in Barack Obama.

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, Nov. 1, 2016.