The Justice We Demand for Others Is the Justice We Demand for Ourselves

Since the murder of George Floyd on May 25, I have been reminded again and again that if we want to understand something at more than a surface level, we must feel, not just think. Or imagine and feel our self into the experience we are hoping to grasp. Not that we can always get it by using empathy, but we can grasp that we don’t get it. In the past, I kept myself at an emotional distance from the reality of racism. But we pay a price when we don’t let the fact of another’s pain touch us.

 

Pain is uncomfortable, but it is something we all share. We know this. We each have our own memories, our own experiences, our own type and weight of pain. Too many have way too much of it. But the actuality is something we share.

 

Sometimes, pain is too much to face and we put it aside in fear it will overwhelm us. Sometimes, the moment is not right.  And as a white person I can enjoy a sense of safety that others are denied.

 

But sometimes witnessing pain can crack us open. Our own wounds cry out: we, too, could be feeling this. One person’s suffering touches our own and reminds us who we are⎼ reminds us maybe we’re all not siblings, but we are all human beings. And we deny this at our peril.

 

I’m not sure of much right now but I feel this very strongly: this time, right now, is our best hope to address hundreds of years of racism, of pain and injustice. And by doing so, by taking action, we save this nation from becoming something even more awful, of becoming a full dictatorship or a white nationalist state. We save the possibility of what Martin Luther King called the “real promises of democracy.” Racism is at the heart of what has undermined democracy and the rule of law in this country since it was first conceived. How can we have a rule of law when violence against some is built into the system supposedly for all?

 

The murder of George Floyd and the protests are making clear to so many how much racist violence is built into our society. On Friday, Rayshard Brooks, a 27 year old African American, was shot by police in Atlanta. There have been 11 other murders of Black people during the protests. There’s Marvin McAtee, who was cooking for people in his restaurant and went out his front door to see what was happening with the protests when he was shot by either police or the National Guard. Dave Patrick Underwood, a security guard at a federal courthouse, was killed by a drive by. Italia Kelly was shot as she was leaving a protest. And on and on. African Americans are killed by police at a rate far disproportionate to their numbers.

 

Even during the protests against racism, armed black men were arrested recently while armed white men avoided charges. Earlier, armed white nationalists were emboldened by the President. Last week, in mostly African American counties in Georgia, lines at polling places were up to 7 hours long, machines didn’t work, absentee ballots showed up late, etc. The GOP in Georgia have long been accused of purposefully working to make it difficult for African Americans to vote.  And that is just one example of GOP voter suppression. Afterall, for DT, voting is not a right guaranteed by law and the constitution, but an “honor”.

 

And there’s COVID-19, which has not only exposed the racism, inequities and failures of our health system, but the malevolence and incompetence of the DT administration. African Americans have died from the virus at 3 times the rate of whites. The White House claims this is due to underlying health conditions common in Black people, like diabetes. But the statistics show another underlying condition- racial inequities, like lack of access for testing and treatment. There are even inequities in data from the DT administration, which until this past week failed to keep statistics on the relation between race and deaths. The data we do have comes mostly from independent investigators and states. African Americans have also been hit extremely hard by the economic consequences of the pandemic.

 

We have seen DT use racism, along with sexism and other forms of hate and division, to capture and keep power⎼ and keep his face and voice in the front of the news cycle. His comments about Charlottesville, attacks on women of color in Congress, reporters, judges, etc. have filled headlines. To DT and his administration, we, those not rich and white, are merely chattel, “stock”. He has worked continuously to transfer wealth and power from the lower and middle classes to a small group of those rich and white.

 

Only over the last few weeks has he been pushed back to second or third place in the news. But he is trying to recapture attention. For example, he scheduled a campaign rally on June 19th, Juneteenth, the day celebrating the end of slavery in this country, in Tulsa, home of the Tulsa massacre. Then he decided to reschedule it. The very idea of the rally was so outrageous that it captured much attention. He is, for many of us, the face of awful. But this makes him, for others, their savior.  As reported in the New York Times, Omar Wasow, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton, said that there’s little reason, considering his history, that DT planned to go to Tulsa of all places “to try to ease intercommunal hostility rather than exacerbate it.”

 

Likewise, he outrageously scheduled a discussion (and fund raiser) in Dallas to talk about policing, but did not invite the African American Chief of Police, Sheriff, and District Attorney.

 

He first tried to destroy the protests with the military, then tried to steal their power with an executive order banning choke holds except when an officer’s life is at risk, and establishing a data base to track police misconduct. It is amazing that he took this step. But Business Insider and others noted, his order was “more about optics than making major changes.”

 

The pressure of protests in the streets is working and have spread worldwide. They have forced the people in power to recognize Black Lives Matter and they have reminded the rest of us our voices matter. Minneapolis is now planning to replace its police department with a community-led model. Many states, like New York, are reforming policing. Iowa passed reform legislation in just one day. Choke holds are being outlawed and the legal prohibitions for prosecuting police are being questioned and, in some places, dismantled. The House has introduced legislation to overhaul police policy and add accountability.

 

Racism has undermined the humanity and promise of this nation since its inception. But right now so much is on the table. The officers who murdered George Floyd are one face (amongst too many others) of racism. DT is another. Besides going after African Americans, Latino, Asian and Native Americans, DT has gone after Muslims and Jews. He has gone after women, seniors, transgender people, etc. Who is next?

 

So all of us, including those of us who are white, would benefit morally, emotionally and politically by ending racism. We benefit by actively supporting and joining the protests against the murder of George Floyd, against police brutality of people of color, and against the murder of justice.

 

Some of us might have to learn how to get better at tolerating discomfort and fear. But the justice we demand for others is also the justice we demand for ourselves.

 

Syndicated by The Good Men Project.

**Photo: thanks to Gary Bercow.

The Central Importance of A United Resistance and Decreasing the Concentration of Wealth and Inequity

Opposing the Republican minority-elected President cannot be simply a Democratic version of “the party of No.” It cannot be concerned just with revealing lies and resisting racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and all sorts of phobias like homophobia, Islamaphobia or xenophobia, etc. To fight racism, etc., we must first unite to resist the destruction of what’s left of democracy, free speech and the freedom of the press. We need more political equity. But to accomplish that, we must also work to improve economic equity and a sense of shared humanity. In a functioning democracy, these three work together.

 

Last week, the Republican administration took things to a new level. The President spoke to Congress about “a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.” He spoke about Black History Month and ending threats to Jewish Community Centers. He spoke as if he cared about supporting “the torch of truth, liberty, and justice.” This was scary because even I wanted to hear such words from his mouth, words calling for real unity and caring. He is seemingly getting coached on how to sound reasonable while his choices and history scream otherwise. This is the same person who appointed Jeff Sessions to be his Attorney General, and Steve Bannon, former head of the alt-right Breitbart News, to be his general adviser. According to an NPR program during the campaign:

 

“The views of the alt-right are widely seen as anti-Semitic and white supremacist…. They see political correctness really as the greatest threat to their liberty,” Nicole Hemmer, University of Virginia professor and author of a forthcoming book Messengers of the Right, explained on Morning Edition. “So, they believe saying racist or anti-Semitic things — it’s not an act of hate, but an act of freedom.”

 

This is a President who called the media “the enemy of the people.” Who said protestors were not in genuine disagreement with his policies but were being paid to disrupt town hall meetings. Republican governors and legislators have followed this lead by calling for severe punishments for protestors. This administration is not about protecting America or securing jobs for people. It is about ending democracy and increasing their personal wealth. The DNC, as well as those who hate the DNC and are still fighting the Hillary vs Bernie fight, need to remember this or risk being irrelevant or worse. If we don’t unite, our very right to disagree without dire consequences will be taken from us. In fact, the very air that sustains our life might be taken from us.

 

Yet, to resist this administration successfully will mean insisting on increasing economic equity. This is the second concern. We must learn from the Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders movements, as well as others of the more distant past, which spoke to a great majority of Americans, even to some of those who supported Mr. T. (Listen to Bernie Sander’s response to Mr. T’s address to Congress.) Most Americans desire an economy that works for all and provides jobs for the unemployed and the not satisfactorily employed. Mr. T did speak of jobs. But he did not address working conditions, guaranteed health care, and a pension, as part of a good job. He did not acknowledge the crucial role public schools can play in “leveling the playing field” and in preparing children not only for work but for all of life. All these issues are related. It is not just a job people want, but to be treated as a valuable being, with a right to meaningful work. This I think speaks to most everyone. And we need to add the right to give our children a habitable planet with a climate that readily sustains life, human, animal and insect.

 

The US, according to a report cited in Fortune Magazine in 2015, is the richest nation in the world but the most inequitable of the 55 nations studied (including European nations, China, Japan, South Korea, Columbia and Russia, etc.). If you didn’t know this, read on. If you look at the US economy, the richest 1% own 40% of the wealth. (I will be using many figures from Mathieu Ricard’s book, Altruism, published in 2015. Ricard is a Ph.d. in genetics and Buddhist teacher. His figures are well documented and seem in line with other reliable sources.) Twenty-five years ago, the top 1% owned 13% of the nation’s wealth. In 2015, Oxfam said that by the following year, 1% of the richest people worldwide will control over 50% of the world’s wealth.

 

Ricard points out that in 1880-90, J. P. Morgan said “he would never agree to invest in a company where the directors were paid over 6 times the average wage.” In 2011, the bosses were paid 253 times more. Over the last 30 years, 90% of Americans saw their incomes increase by only 15%. For the wealthiest 1%, the increase was 150%. Between 2002 and 2007, the top 1% scored over “65% of national income gains.”

 

What are the consequences of such inequality and concentration of wealth? According to Ricard and the International Monetary Fund, income inequality “slows growth and triggers financial crises.” Quoting directly from the IMF summary report (See IMF, 2015): “We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down…” as opposed to what many Republicans claim. Instead, concentrating wealth undermines the economy. For example, one million people with a decent income will buy more products and stimulate the economy more than one person with a billion dollars—unless he or she gives it all away to public schools or spends it on improving mass transit or such, or starts a worker managed business, for example, where the workers get a fair share of the income created and the climate isn’t undermined by its products.

 

The Citizens United decision, the worsening political situation in the US, as illustrated by 8 years of Republican Congressional refusal to compromise during the Obama administration, and the election by less than 26% of eligible voters of this Republican President (only 52% voted and Mr. T. received less than half of those), are all direct results of increasing the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Mr. T is trying even now to reduce even further the input of Democrats and any who oppose him. When was the last moment in American history that the vast majority of citizens were so excluded from the formal political process? Was it before the 19th amendment was passed granting women’s suffrage? Or was it before the civil war, before the 13th amendment was passed ending slavery? Or was it before the revolution, when the colonies were ruled by a monarch? Is this the time of greatness the Republicans say they yearn for?

 

The price the US pays for this inequality is immense. Ricard provides data from scientific research and several international organizations, including the UN, which show that “for each health care or social indicator (physical health, mental health, school success rates, …obesity, drug addiction…infant mortality, and the well-being of children in general) the results are significantly worse in countries where inequality is highest.”

 

Is it any wonder that there can’t be a democracy if 1% of the people own so much of the wealth? The rich can buy power, occupy the media, and intervene in the judiciary. Just look at Betsy DeVos, who contributed thousands to the coffers of Republican Senators—but did those Senators who were paid by DeVos recuse themselves, or were even asked by fellow Senators to recuse themselves, from voting for her nomination to Education Secretary? Conservatives argue that the rich have the freedom to use their wealth. But what happens when one person’s freedom prohibits that of another, or of many, many others?

 

For too many people, the acquisition of wealth is fast becoming the primary value of life. Other people are no longer thought of as fellow breathing, feeling beings; other species and the world itself⏤all are thusly reduced to being valued only in terms of the wealth they can be used to produce. Compassion, respect—these just interfere with what’s “truly important.” Long term or big picture issues—not important except to the degree they guarantee increased wealth. This is the third area of concern, our sense of a shared humanity and a judiciary that could preserve equity and justice in the law.

 

It is mainly for this reason people feel threatened, Democrat or Republican, Leftist or Conservative. So many of us value family, love, companionship, compassion, fairness, the beauty of the earth, a sense of meaning in life, maybe a sense of a spiritual or religious dimension. The importance of all these values is now threatened. The acquisition of immense wealth is becoming the religion of the rich, turning the rich into a great threat to the lives of the vast majority of Americans, and to the overwhelming majority of people worldwide.

 

**Photo by Kathy Morris.