Cover Photo: A woman declares “No Hate” at a protest in Los Angeles, California in 2017. | File photo by T. Chick McClure/Unsplash
I have witnessed with great concern the disturbing social unrest in your nation in these past days, following the tragic death of Mr. George Floyd. We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life. At the same time, we have to recognize that ‘the violence of recent nights is self-destructive and self-defeating. Nothing is gained by violence and so much is lost’.
Pope Francis, June 3, 2020
But what we know and what we have seen — is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
Former President Barack Obama
Ever, a 5-year-old, joined her mom and dad at rally on Sunday, June 7. She was joined by her uncle, his partner, and another friend; yet to her, all are uncles whom she gives hugs to, including an auntie, a white woman sister. The three who joined her family are young whites concerned about #BlackLivesMatter.
“Grandma I wanted to say to the police: Take care of people, don’t kill them.” She watched the news about George Floyd and was restless the day after, that we talked about what happened at Sunday’s rally.
She held a poster: “Respect the Existence or Expect Resistance.”
“My mom made that, Grandma, what does it mean?” she asked. “It means if I am not listened to and respected for who I am, I can fight back.”
Moments later, when one of her grandparents was half listening, she said, “Lolo, you are talking over me.” I was surprised by her statement, but both of us paused and listened.
“You know I love you so much,” I told her. “Grandma, I love everyone in my family,” she responded.
Her mom and her dad have an extended circle, knitted together by her dad’s multicultural social skills that easily make everyone feel as if family, while her mom’s openness to all cultures are friends who are part of their adventures.
On Instagram, @coriput wrote on June 7, “Today felt powerful. We’re affecting change faster than I ever thought possible. I know I will never know and fully understand the plight of my black brothers and sisters. But they are my family and always, through thick and thin, I am here to fight as hard as I can to make sure that they and we never have to feel the pain of another life lost unjustly.”
Unrequited revolutionary love Bishop Frank Nubuasah of Botswana described George Floyd as perhaps teaching the coronavirus how to infect people.
“One of the things I cherish most about you was your very infectious smile. It was as if the coronavirus learnt from you how to infect people. Your heart was very big and accommodated people. It was always, okay with you to reach out to one more person. Yes, you would run a mile for anyone. Run you did for me on a number of occasions, but that is a story I will tell some other time. My heart is heavy as I sit in my prayer corner to write you this missive knowing well that others will read it but you will not. We humans through a representative of ours made sure that your eyes were closed and would not open again. That is however not true, your eyes will remain forever seeing the fire you started at death. The revolution that your sacrificial death inspired and the new movements and alliances against racism, classism, and discrimination are growing. You lit a fire that is burning for peace and change. So, my friend, when you hear the chant, ‘yes, we can’ know that we are doing it in your name and for you. Gone, but very much here! On the mother continent we would call you, the living dead,” Nubuasah said as reported by Vatican News on June 9.
Eight minutes and forty-six seconds — that is how long Derek Chauvin, a uniformed policeman in blue, had knelt on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who allegedly paid cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. A convenience store staffer called 911 and police responded.
Chauvin had knelt on Floyd’s neck, stopping his ability to breathe. Floyd kept saying 16 times: “I can’t breathe,” the Seattle Times described on June 9, a statement from “an outsized man who dreamed equally big, unswayed by the setbacks of his life.”
This was slow murder by suffocation using the force of kneeling down on someone’s neck.
Racism has always equaled death, lynchings using a rope, now death using a knee, and before that, bullets. Much like Joseph Santos Ileto who was murdered by a self-described white supremacist, Buford Furrow, Jr., who mistook him for a Latino and shot him on the back not once, not twice, not thrice, but nine times. The family did not respond with vengeance, but instead, they went to different schools to share the story of their brother and to teach high school students about hate crimes’ prevention.
Virulence of hatred from white supremacists has had such intensity leading to loss of lives yet, blacks still rise, with optimism and hope that America can change. It is such a revolutionary love that blacks do not seek vengeance but over and over again, offer white America an opportunity to listen and to really change for four centuries now.
“Seventeen minutes after the first squad car arrived at the scene, Mr. Floyd was unconscious and pinned beneath three police officers, showing no signs of life,” a report said. The officers even misled the firefighters after checking with them as to the location and it took another five minutes to give George Floyd first aid. By that time, he had died.
We often wondered when will white folks un numb themselves from being complicit with racism?
“What would cross your mind,” Fr. John Cordero asked, who delivered a powerful homily at the Mass for Peace and Justice on June 9, viewed by nearly two thousand, challenged us: “What are the reflexes of our minds, where does our mind go when we hear #BlackLivesMatter – difficult conversations [that] we must have? Especially with ourselves. Are we always going to make it about ourselves? Let’s have an open-minded discussion with our own conscience.” He made us remember how the shepherd stops to look for that one lost sheep and abandons the ninety-nine to look for the stray one. What about the prodigal son, he said, when that prodigal son came back, the family rejoiced? But the other son was resentful.
“Are we resentful when the country cares for the living, vital, Black children? Why does it have to be about ourselves, our resentments?”
“Why not look at eight minutes forty-six seconds, and realize, “I saw a man die before my eyes,” Fr. John Cordero asked.
This is the first time I have heard a convergence of my views on racism as a social construct from the Catholic Church but also a moral stance on the value of a living, human life, not just a fetus. I truly believe this is a leap forward, influenced by Pope Francis and also by St. John Paul II, who once said: “Racism is one of the most persistent and destructive evils in the United States.”
Fr. James Martin wrote, “As a Jesuit priest, I stand in solidarity with the people lost to armed violence this year, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many others. I stand with those who stood with them in life and with those who now stand with them in death.”
I virtually attended the first memorial held for George Floyd with a eulogy by Rev. Al Sharpton. He asked folks to consider silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, but I couldn’t. I kept sobbing.
Rev. Sharpton also examined all the series of injustices that befall on black Americans: education inequities and for Whites to get their knees off their necks; for job discriminatory practices and for whites to get their knees off their necks, and for rundown housing and lack of affordable ones and for whites to get their knees off their necks. Yet, the current appointee for the Secretary of Housing is Ben Carson, a black man. Though black, he has not removed the structural barriers to HUD’s housing to make federal housing units affordable to Blacks nor build more housing units to curb homelessness.
Fifteen minutes Imagine being beaten up, like Rodney King. It was March 7, 1991, when Rodney King was brutally hit by the baton and boots of four police officers a total of 56 times. Three of them were white. Imagine the savagery of beating another human being recorded by a grainy video 29 years ago. How long did this savagery last?
Even with that ocular proof, two white policemen were pronounced guilty and sentenced to a mere 30 months in prison and two were acquitted. It touched off riots in LA claiming fifty-two lives and estimated multimillions in structural damages of vandalism and looting.
Rodney King lived with broken bones, neurological and psychological damage. LA City admitted liability and paid the civil damages of $3,800,000 but, not a single cent was paid by the uniformed guilty policemen.
One must ask: Is there hope for America to transform its racist culture?
America has created economic structures based on slavery. Even a move away from slavery to freedom was corrected by a Civil War with thousands of lives lost.
Today, 14 Confederate statues remain and many states are now taking steps to take them down.
Former Pres. Harry Truman believed in 1948, “The people have often made mistakes, but given time and the facts, they will make the corrections.” Truman must be referring to himself for in 1911, he used racial slurs in private, as attested to by Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Better Angels, Truman wrote to his future wife, Bess: “I am strong of the opinion that negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.”
Yet, when “he [Truman] saw the police beating to the face of a newly discharged black soldier had blinded the man, “My God,” Truman said, “I had no idea it was as terrible as that! We’ve got to do something!”
On July 26, 1948, he issued Executive Order 9981 and ordered the desegregation of the armed forces and another for fair employment practices in civil service. From 1911 to 2020, what has America done for Black families? Even the most articulate President Barack Obama wrote: “A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pickup, and building code enforcement – all helped to create a cycle of violence, blight, and neglect that continues to haunt us.”
He wrote that in 2008, it is now 2020 and still, these issues persist, added to that, this cold-blooded murder of blacks at the hands of uniformed policemen. Are you numb to all that is happening? Are you examining your conscience? Are you still conditioning your support based on broken glass shards, that had they not broken those windows, you might support the loss of black life? Are you still stuck in figuring out how to defend the indefensible actions of four policemen who stood by, one of whom is Asian, and Derek Chauvin who murdered George Floyd, using the force of his knee on his neck?
Putting ourselves in Derek’s shoes, is there room for us to justify his actions by saying perhaps he was not trained by the Police Academy to have empathy towards others and has not freed himself from his biases?
I say not, as he, Chauvin coldly took out a vital human life, without a threat to his own.
I end with: “Grandma, I wanted to say to the police, take care of people, don’t kill them,” as my five-year-old granddaughter said.
But it is not enough to simply say that.
We must upend the policy actions that have spawned these inhumane actions for centuries now. What was even more terrifying was the cold attitude of Chauvin staring down at George Floyd, as if he was a hunted prey.
Black Americans have long been hunted down as prey by racist white policemen, not all policemen, and to our collective shame, in this instance, includes an Asian American.
We, folks of color, have also been tainted by a racist culture in America especially the Filipinos who voted for Trump, ignoring his racist slurs, tweets, and treatments of folks of colors, and it is up to us, family by family, to rigorously examine how our actions, thoughts, and beliefs have contributed to solidifying the racist culture in America.
Do we care more about black lives to create a better future for all of their children and our children and grandchildren?
Come November, we must say, next, moving forward to new anti-racist federal policies under a new president.
Riots and Protests are happening nationwide in all 50 states of the US, abroad as well, in 20+ countries, where millions gathered in Amsterdam, millions protested in France, as thousands in London, Canada, Brazil, Spain, Italy and more.
Other countries are laughing at America, as in the height of the protests over George Floyd, murdered in cold blood by 4 policemen in uniform, the 45th US President sheltered himself in the bunkers, located in the White House basement.
Trump has ordered the construction of walls around the White House, once known as the people’s house by the Obamas, who were visited by millions in 8 years, to towering 13 foot high walls surrounding its perimeter, similar to the walls of Jerusalem surrounding Palestine.
Trump was deemed to have constructively resigned and rightly so, from the right, George Will and from the left, Robert Reich. He was unable to provide responsible leadership to the Coronavirus pandemic – US has 107, 468 deaths since Jan.22, 2020, as the nationwide multicultural protests demanding justice for #GeorgeFloyd, has lasted for several days.
He reappeared the next day, followed by the Secret Service who unleashed violence on the nonviolent citizens, assembled in Lafayette Park.
Without provocation, these armed Secret Service personnel illegally used their batons hurled tear gas bombs, including the use of Black Hawk helicopters to disperse folks gathered inside the park, including those who identified themselves as members of the media.
It was naked brute force and frivolous and gratuitous use of violence to clear the park, so that the President can have his photo taken, holding up the bible as his props. Brazen and unconscionable!
As a Jesuit priest, I stand in solidarity with the people lost to armed violence this year, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many others. I stand with those who stood with them in life and with those who now stand with them in death.
Fr. James Martin
Racism as St. John Paul II said, is one of the most “persistent and destructive evils” in the United States. And I have to acknowledge my own participation in it.
Racism is, as, the Rev. Bryan Massingale, a Catholic theologian, says, a sickness of the soul. This sickness has been spread since the first Africans were forcibly brought to America and sold as slaves 400 years ago. Our nation is one founded and continuously shaped by white supremacy.“White supremacy,” writes Father Massingale, “fundamentally is the assumption that this country, its political institutions, its cultural heritage, its social policies and its public spaces belong to white people in a way that they do not belong to others. It is the basic assumption that some naturally belong in our public and cultural space and others have to justify being there. Further, it is the suspicion that those ‘others’ are in ‘our’ space only because someone has made special allowances for them.”- Fr. James Martin
By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.
Chief Justice John Roberts
We are all in this together — in this country, USA, and even if we pretend we are far removed from what is happening in the White House, we are all affected by what our President does.
Imagine how he is now threatening a major pillar to our social safety net — throw out medical services for the aged, the seniors, the disabled, the children, and more and let them suffer. In the meantime, after enabling internal suffering in the millions, after furloughing 800,000 federal workers, he wants to do millions more by building the border walls. This time his obsession with his manly “wall” is really an aggressive statement that “I am king” regardless of what US Constitution says that all three branches of government (executive, judicial, legislative) are co-equal and are in parity, the way the founders intended it to be.
The U.S. republic is only 243 years old, if we count that the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. We now have 21st century’s imperialistic president who wants to overreach his executive powers to cover even the legislative authority to appropriate funding, provide oversight and to make laws. He has been thwarted in his efforts by the US Senate of late, when they voted 59-41 to rebuke and reverse his declaration of “national emergency” on the border with 12 Republicans joining a solid Democratic bloc. This time, these Republicans are prioritizing the country over their party.
But a lot of this national emergency is a man-made crisis by this 45th U.S. President. The Daily Podcast of the New York Times on Nov. 21 reported 700,000 pending asylum cases in the U.S. So why would Pres. Trump send over 5,000 military troops when he could have sent analysts and lawyers that would have reduced the backlog?
Instead, Trump introduced metering where only 30 asylum applicants can apply daily. Crowds that are in the thousands have resorted to arbitrary encampments at the border, essentially waiting for their turn to apply for asylum and that waiting can be for months, if not years, as only 30 are allowed to apply each day.
These mothers were fleeing persecution at the hands of gang members, facing the certainty of death if they do not comply so they have opted to protect their children and are simply seeking safety and a new future.
So if these potential refugees are following the procedures of applying for asylum, why are these families being demonized as if they are criminals and part of gangs that they are fleeing from? Do you sense a blatant institutional racist policy from the President?
Is it any wonder why Michael Cohen characterized him as a racist, a con man and a cheat and elaborated on some of his “expansive pattern of lies and criminality,” according to the New York Times?
In his testimony before U.S. Congress’ oversight committee headed by U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, he provided copies of checks made out from Donald Trump’s charitable foundation signed by Donald Trump, Jr. and the Trump organization’s lawyer, Allan Weisselberg and another check signed by Donald Trump himself to silence two women with sordid past affairs with him, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal just before the 2016 Presidential elections. Stormy Daniels was reported to have had an affair with the U.S. President and was paid $130,000 to be quiet about the affair and Karen McDougal’s story was paid by National Enquirer who squashed the story.
We ask — why would reasonably minded folks submit to a pattern of deception for access to power? Why would anyone lose their soul and ignore the pangs of their conscience?
116th U.S. Congress oversight
We rejoice that U.S. Congress is presiding over hearings questioning Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen on the family separation policy that separated children from their parents and were held in cages. She kept parsing the definition of cages and instead referred to them as “detention spaces.” She finally agreed to the “larger than dog spaces,” and defined it as chain linked spaces placed on concrete floors, where folks can stand, move around and sit, essentially cages where non-criminals and potential refugees are housed in. As if that sanitized definition will diminish the cruelty and barbaric border policies of this administration.
What makes folks in power submit to insanity and irrational lies? What causes them to forego their own conscience and even their own humanity? When we are this inhumane to others, we too are defined by that inhumanity and we become morally misaligned.
To date, there are thousands separated from their families and when questioned, the Secretary of Homeland Security remarked “there is a list but the list is in Mexico.”
What do all these flagrant abuses of power mean to us?
It is happening not just in the US, but in other countries as well. We have in the Philippines a head of state who calls on bishops and priests as dispensable leaders with death threats shadowing those who oppose arbitrary killings and murders.
We also have flagrant abuses of power even amongst the rich, the famous and the privileged. They are now being exposed by the FBI in a $ 25 million scam of paying proctors and test takers of SAT tests to improve these rich kids’ chances at admission into college.
Two Hollywood celebrity figures, Felicity Huffmann who is involved in a non-profit promoting the inspiring lives of pioneering women in America and Lori Loughlin, posted bail after the ring leader of the scam, William Ring Singer, pled guilty last Tuesday, March 12.
Why do we find even Hollywood celebrities, sports coaches, and even academic proctors losing their consciences in promoting these scams? Have we lost our sense of propriety and decency as a nation? Are we all mired in a swamp of lies, falsehoods, and schemes to evade the truth?
We are now publicly witnessing even Pope Francis apologizing for decades and decades of abusive sexual crimes committed against the Catholic laity. We recently read about Cardinal George Pell being sentenced to six years in jail. Read that sentence again – can we reconcile Cardinal with the word jail? What happened to even our moral leaders?
Public trust and consequences of human failures
One can theorize the absence of humility, a clear case of spiritual arrogance and abuse of power. When one is a Cardinal, Bishop and even a priest, a president, a celebrity, rap singer, a musician, a television executive, a film producer, a theater director, actors, we seem to endow these public figures with public trust. That relegated higher status presumes they have “higher than normal” morals, decency and an impeccable code of conduct that respects all people. Instead, when we find them abusing our children and our women and boys, we resort to lawsuits to get justice.
But truly, the failures emanate from the home and the parents. What were the parents thinking while these children were growing up to become teenagers? Did they morally exercise their guidance and leadership? Did they tell these children – it is not okay to help yourselves to someone’s body or to someone’s wealth and feel privileged about not considering any consequences?
For example, do you feel entitled as an employee to use the company credit card for your personal expenses? Do you feel entitled to have someone pay for your travel expenses just because?
What are we supposed to gather as lessons on these flagrant abuses of power that we seem to read daily coming from the White House, the churches, the entertainment industry and now academic institutions? Are we weeding out weeds of abuses to clean up and refresh our institutions? Or are we elevating folks with hollowed out cores with no consciences and regard for consequences for their wrongdoings? Are we electing morally bankrupt folks into office because we align with them? Or not?
Spring and Lent come together to give us all opportunities for changes. I myself would need to reexamine where I have hidden cobwebs that enabled dust and dirt to accumulate inside my heart. It is time to renew and for justice to bloom once more in America and in many parts of the world.
As I write this, my heart aches for the 49 dead and 41 injured inside two mosques in New Zealand, who were killed by an Australian terrorist, as reported by NBC News March 14. It is time we root out hatred and not propagate violent words in our 21st century spaces in homes, state houses, public squares and more importantly churches and mosques. May this spring time present an opportunity for all to move away from all these barbaric animalistic actions of abuse and violence and for the rest of us to stand for truth and justice!
This ‘one nation, indivisible’ is deeply divided along political, economic, racial and religious lines. And despite our historic dream of being “a light unto the nations,” the gaps between us and our global neighbors continue to grow more deadly. The conflicts and contradictions of twenty–first century life are breaking the American heart and threatening to compromise our democratic values.
Parker Palmer
The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up—ever—trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?
Terry Tempest Williams, “Engagement,” as quoted by Parker J. Palmer, “Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit.”
You have the 45th U.S. President Donald Trump at rallies injecting himself in the midterms elections and says to his base: “These two maniacs stopped our momentum.”
Yet, he failed to inform his base that one of these maniacs, Robert Bowers, is now accused of killing 11 folks in a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, while another maniac he refers to is Cesar Sayoc, a Filipino-Italian who sent 15 pipe bombs to the leaders of the Democratic Party. These were attempted assassinations of two past U.S. presidents, a former secretary of state, a former vice president and more.
While these unhinged presidential actions are occurring during the midterm elections, actions unprecedented in America and known to be prevalent in developing countries, we know something is so wrong about America.
We know something is unhinged when the most powerful man in the world acts beneath his presidential position and foments hatred at the rallies by calling the press the “enemy of the people,” the only profession whose practice of freedom of expression is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, you wonder why he keeps doing it?
In Pittsburgh, he insisted on visiting the city in spite of the request of the mayor and local officials not to, as resources will be diverted for his protection. Instead, the president still came with the First Lady and local officials shunned him while thousands protested his presence, held a block away from the synagogue.
We wonder why all folks of color are labeled rapists and murderers and now a caravan of refugees from Central America are being labeled as harboring gangs and Middle Easterns by this U.S. president when in fact these are families fleeing violence?
The Pittsburgh massacre suspect said that he had to do it because America is being invaded by these diseased migrants that will lead to the dilution of the white race and he needed to act to stop this compelling emergency by going to the Pittsburgh synagogue and fired upon these Jewish synagogue worshippers.
What has happened to America’s democracy? Can its heart be healed? Can women coming of age give us examples of how to be decent Americans and how to move forward with truth?
Can the U.S. Supreme Court’s past decision about press freedom enlighten us today that this current president’s media reference as “the enemy of the people” is unconstitutional and wrong?
Women coming of age
I watched the 2017 film, “The Post,” could not quite adjust my feelings towards how indecisive Katharine Graham, the former owner and publisher of The Washington Post, was portrayed.
She was meticulously adept in asking questions of her inner circle, but somehow clueless in recognizing she has the authority to make the final decision. She was depicted as ambivalent and conflict-evasive, which she admits in her personal memoirs.
That was until portions of the Pentagon Papers were delivered to the Washington Post’s assignment editor and thousands of pages were given by Daniel Ellsberg.
That marked her turning point, a qualitative leap for the common good, what I call one of her moral cornerstones marked by uplifting and exposing the truth!
She made a crucial strategic decision, of publishing the Pentagon Papers, which catapulted the Washington Post into a credible source of news, facts, evidence and true to its mission as a newspaper. The Washington Post became a key resource for national news.
Russ Wiggins wrote a personal note to the staff: “Philip L. Graham has left in our daily care and custody an honest and a conscientious newspaper which I know that all of you are eager to maintain as a daily memorial to his own genius and integrity. And now we must take up the duties he laid upon us, with a heavy heart, but nonetheless with a high hope that we may succeed in doing what he would have us do.”
I just finished reading Katharine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirs and how she evolved from being supportive of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson’s actions in Vietnam and later, developed her personal opposition towards the war, given her eldest son’s personal letters to her, while deployed as a soldier in Vietnam.
He wrote about the senseless violence towards an ill-defined cause and for which did not quite advance the national security interests of the United States.
The Post continued to report on the Vietnam War, and the 500,000 U.S. soldiers deployed there. It then grew its editorial department in 1966-1969, when Post added 50 positions and its budget grew from $2.25 million to $7 million in 1969.
Katharine is depicted in the film, “The Post,” as nervously taking a stand to publish the Pentagon Papers and closely monitoring the backlash while at the same time, she experienced the solidarity of the newspapers around the U.S., who followed The Washington Post’s lead to publish the “verboten” Pentagon Papers.
Katharine rationalized her decision in keeping with the newspaper’s mission and putting the nation’s interests before the papers.
It piqued my curiosity to keep reading about Katharine and her resolve, her convictions, and even her own stance, amidst being surrounded, influenced, criticized meanly, and strongly pressured by strong men around her, including Pres. Johnson.
The impact of a woman’s decision: The Washington Post and New York Times’ US Supreme Court decision
It is a life that she allowed other folks to guide her, but also her inner convictions to stand by her decisions.
For example, it took tremendous courage for her to set a precedent of publishing the Pentagon Papers, then, joined in a lawsuit with the New York Times, and then, to wait nervously for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, 6-3. The decision, written by Justice Black, excerpted here in part:
“In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.
“And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.
“The Government’s case here is based on premises entirely different from those that guided the Framers of the First Amendment. The Solicitor General has carefully and emphatically stated:
“Now, Mr. Justice [BLACK], your construction of . . . [the First Amendment] is well known, and I certainly respect it. You say that no law means no law, and that should be obvious. I can only [p718] say, Mr. Justice, that to me it is equally obvious that “no law” does not mean “no law,” and I would seek to persuade the Court that that is true. . . . [T]here are other parts of the Constitution that grant powers and responsibilities to the Executive, and . . . the First Amendment was not intended to make it impossible for the Executive to function or to protect the security of the United States.
“And the Government argues in its brief that, in spite of the First Amendment,[t]he authority of the Executive Department to protect the nation against publication of information whose disclosure would endanger the national security stems from two interrelated sources: the constitutional power of the President over the conduct of foreign affairs and his authority as Commander-in-Chief.
“In other words, we are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment’s emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging freedom of the press in the name of “national security.” The Government does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts should take it upon themselves to “make” a law abridging freedom of the press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security, even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law.
“To find that the president has ‘inherent power’ to halt the publication of news by resort to the courts would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make ‘secure.’
“No one can read the history of the adoption of the First Amendment without being convinced beyond any doubt that it was injunctions like those sought here that Madison and his collaborators intended to outlaw in this Nation for all time.
“The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic. The Framers of the First Amendment, fully aware of both the need to defend a new nation and the abuses of the English and Colonial governments, sought to give this new society strength and security by providing that freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly should not be abridged. This thought was eloquently expressed in 1937 by Mr. Chief Justice Hughes—great man and great Chief Justice that he was—when the Court held a man could not be punished for attending a meeting run by Communists.”
“The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government.”
Would you, as sworn U.S. citizens make your voices known to our elected leaders that you want the truth, and nothing but the truth and that means uncensored news publications, and the responsible use of power at any levels (executive, legislative, judicial)?
Or would you blindly protect your perceived economic station in life and by indifference enable more lies to be told?
How would you act as guardians of American democracy? Would you pursue integrity as one of America’s foremost values by insisting on the truth?
Katharine Graham was not trained to be a CEO nor trained to be a publisher. She watched from the sidelines and did not have an opportunity to hold a full-time job until her husband died.
Yet she made the most visible, credibility-sustaining decisions for her newspaper, The Washington Post, displaying her personal courage, “the scope of her wisdom and power of compassion,” love for this country’s democratic freedoms.
From that national exposé, it initiated a national debate to purge our nation from its involvement in an unjust war in Vietnam, which to the end, had 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties, between 200,000 to 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers dead and 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong casualties. By far, the most casualties were incurred in World War II, battle deaths and civilians of all countries to have been 56.4 million. (Source: Britannica.com)
In examining your own lives, have you faced choices where you placed truth above lies, love of country first over your pocketbook, harmony over personal grudges and deep anger?
What legacy are we building by our personal actions for our children and grandchildren?
To this day, Katharine Graham’s personal decision of courage and commitment to the mission of truthful news information are inspiring.
If enough women of conviction and those coming into positions of power are leaders promoting truth, justice and fairness wherever they are, I dare say many more can follow their examples of integrity to create a new America where integrity is the currency of our national politics, culture and discussion.
Integrity allows the human heart to flourish which enriches any democracy. It is time to curse the darkness by telling the truth and becoming moral leaders of integrity in America.
Geena Davis, March 19, 2015 at Mount St. Mary’s University.
To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America.
Patricia Arquette, acceptance speech for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (2015).
All three women converged in aspirations that the time has come for women to lead. For far too long, we have been relegated to the background, in support of, and behind men in many organizations.
The time is now for women to be in parity with men. For far too long we have toiled and worked hard, and contributed to growing businesses, non-profits, foundations, and even government institutions, including tending to a home and children, while for every dollar that the man gets paid, a fraction of 84 cents goes to a woman.
The Report on the Status of Women and Girls, unveiled before a crowd of 1,000 at Skirball Museum, valued lost wages and unrealized gains at $450 billion.
Close to half a trillion dollars that women are not paid, even as they work hard and perform, in the workplace.
The Los Angeles Times’ Feb. 22, 2015 business front page headlined “Not a woman’s place: Many are leaving tech, citing a hostile environment.”
It is a world where women are made to prove themselves over and over again, “The continuous pattern of all these people treating me like I didn’t know what was going on, or excluding me from conversations and not trusting my assertions, all these things added up and it felt like there was an undercurrent of sexism,“ according to Tracy Chou, 27, a Pinterest engineer.
It is a world where Code.org claims that computing jobs will more than double to 1.2 million in 2020. So in the high tech world of Facebook, Instagram, Yahoo, Google, Snapchat, Pinterest and more, the LA Times reports that men outnumber women by 4 to 1.
What can be done towards gender parity and women empowerment?
In California, the state legislature has the fewest number of women since 1998 and ranks 17th in women’s representations in state legislatures (The Report on Status of Women and Girls by Mount St. Mary’s University, March 19, 2015).
In the 2014 election, the report found that women won 5 out of 20 Senate and 19 out of 80 Assembly races.
In California’s 58 counties, women represent just about 255 of all county board supervisors and 28 percent of the all city council seats in the state’s 482 cities.
When I worked at a state public health agency, I was the only female of color out of three regional administrators, two of whom were white males. That was in 1992.
Since Mayor Eric Garcetti was elected to serve LA in 2013, 54 percent of his appointees to boards and commissions have been women. That mayoral action transformed gender inequality into making LA a model city where gender parity exists in executive positions.
No longer the media-profiled city of gangbangers and drive-by shootings, Los Angeles City is coming into a healthy bloom, symbolized by the revitalized Echo Park, where lotuses are again alive and will be blooming in the summer.
We just wish that bloom and new life is reflected in all areas of the city, not so much in new buildings, but in neighborhoods with less trash, more parks, and better-paved sidewalks and streets.
LA’s First Lady, Amy Elaine Wakeland, reported that 3 out of 4 deputies to the mayor are women, and that of the 12 department general managers, six are women. The first lady asserts that if inequality of women’s status is not being monitored, then the problem of women’s inequality is not being addressed.
Yet, she is the first to admit that the two critical and significant departments, fire and police, have yet to address gender parity in their hiring practices.
Perhaps that lack of gender parity is also contributing to the surge of $18 million in settlements, from lawsuits filed by LAPD officers against the department.
The LA Times reported that from 2005 to 2010, officers sued the department more than 250 times over workplace issues, exposing crude behavior and retaliatory mindsets of supervisors.
Just recently, the LA Times reported a captain being retired from his position when sexual harassment allegations came up during his watch. When I read that he was allowed to retire on a five-figure pension, one must ask — was he rewarded with early retirement for his rogue, demeaning behaviors? No wonder men keep doing it, because they lose nothing of value.
To change that culture in the LAPD will require a mindset change where officers at the top are trained to provide good leadership practices, contributing to a professional workplace culture and a consciousness of sexual harassment prevention.
Back to the film industry: Two easy ways to address sexism in the film industry, according to Geena Davis, is first, when crowds are cast, 50 percent go to women and before casting is done for the actors, consider half of the roles written to be for women and change the character names to that of women.
By doing so, you will find women doing non-traditional roles in film and television and we can start seeing women in positions of visibility, echoing what she said, “If they see it, they can be it.”
Recall the television program where Geena Davis played Commander-in-Chief Mackenzie Allen, created by Rod Lurie? That show ranked #1 in ratings in 2005, until its contender, “American Idol” outranked it. Had the network, ABC, supported it beyond its first season of 18 episodes, who knows how far we would have been prepared to watch and to visualize a woman president in the White House?
Consider for example CBS’ “Madam Secretary” and we now expect foreign policy decisions can be done by a woman and more so, we can expect her to qualify as a future president.
Have you seen Netflix’s “The Bodyguard” where the secretary of state is cast as a woman, though still portrayed as a devious, manipulative, ambitious one until she is assassinated? Not a good scenario for a woman in a high position of power — to be a victim of a murderous coup by males who conspire to have her position — good thing that is fiction!
Davis spoke of how in the 129 top-grossing films in 2006 -2011, the ratio of females to males is 2:5.
“California is one of the largest producers of film,” according to the report, yet women in the film industry occupy fewer than 20 percent of the critical behind-the-scenes occupations, serving primarily as producers.
Moving forward to gender parity and empowerment
In California, 61 percent of the female population are women of color: Latinos, Asians, African Americans, who can determine the outcome of its elections, if all of these women of color voted.
In 2018, I am optimistic as I see women candidates running in every level of public position, which we hope after the midterm elections in November would create a tsunami of potential substantive change for America.
“Latinas make up the state’s youngest and second-largest ethnic group under the age of 25,” according to “The Report on the Status of Women and Girls in California” in 2015.
Which means, elections upon elections, if Latina women under age 25 registered, voted and informed themselves to vote as a group, Latina women might determine the outcome of elections in California.
For the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the candidate who communicated her vision persuasively to these Latina women, and addressed their concerns towards reunification of their families through immigration reform, did not become the next White House resident.
Yet, even if the demographics changed to reflect more of these young Latinas, their voting rights have been restricted in 22 states.
American Prospect reported “of the 22 states with new restrictions, 18 passed them through Republican-controlled bodies. After Republicans took over state houses and governorships in 2010, voting restrictions typically followed party lines.”
But, hope is always alive. As young women are now earning 170,000 more bachelor’s degrees each year than men, according to the Millennial Legacy’s website, “today, women represent roughly half of the nation’s law and medical students and 55 percent of the nation’s professionals overall.”
Education will empower these women to design their own lives and to take charge of their communities and later, even leading their own city council districts and legislative assembly positions, Senate races, business establishments, foundations and non-profit leadership positions.
Carlos Bulosan wrote, “…history has determined our lives, and we must…work hard for what we believe to be the right thing…life is something we borrow and must give back richer when the time comes.”
In time, and hopefully in our lifetimes, we can witness not just gender parity in the city of LA’s executive part of the municipal government, but also in the LAPD, in the LAFD, and see that realized as well in California, in Washington, DC and throughout the U.S.
If Iceland, Finland, Philippines, Belgium, Germany and United Kingdom have all been led by women presidents, we too can elect a woman to be U.S. president, a woman to lead us from the Oval Office and to be our Commander-in-Chief.
As Amy Wakeland said, “Talent is universally distributed, but opportunities are not.”
Love is who you are. When you don’t live according to love, you are outside of being. You’re not being real. When you love, you are acting according to your deepest being, your deepest truth. You are operating according to your dignity.
Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Contemplation and Action in New Mexico, 2018
Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented
Elie Wiesel
Stop pretending your racism is white nationalism. “It is un-American and grossly inhumane, brutal and unconscionable.” “It is unspeakable, gratuitous cruelty, that even animals in the wild or domesticated are not capable of doing.” “Take a look at young birds, do you see them nurtured?” “As part of a pack, cared for by God?” These were some of the broadcasted messages from news programs’ coverages of rallies to resist the family separation of over 2,300 children.
On Saturday, June 30, over 700 rallies were held in 50 states, and photos were shared on social media and publicized by major newspapers.
Take a look at “Unaccompanied: Alone in America” by Linda Freedman, a short video clip of four minutes and 20 seconds that depicts young children appearing before an immigration judge.
When asked if they know a lawyer, they simply say no. Even the face of the judge changes, formal to empathetic and seemingly teary.
And why not? These are very young children whose important work is to play and who in their right mind would compel them to court hearings? They have no mental capacity to understand the court proceedings. How absurd can our present federal government be to require unrepresented, young children to appear in courts?
These children’s experiences would forever be marked by gratuitous cruelty and trauma, permanently scarring them for life.
It is even made more difficult as some of these children speak in indigenous languages, and not the mainstream version of the Spanish language, spoken by most.
NBC broadcasted a border supervisor, in conversation with a reporter on June 30, that there is a policy to separate the children from their parents when they get to Southern Border. He said, “It is to make the parents afraid and not to cross the border to America.”
A reactive move, isn’t it? When in fact, he also said that border crossings have decreased, whereas, during President Bill Clinton’s time, NBC reported 500,000 crossed this border a year to now, 26,000. It has been decreasing since Pres. Barack Obama’s tenure that the crossings have averted, but a new humanitarian crisis of separating children was created by Trump’s zero tolerance policy towards migrants at the border seeking asylum.
A U.S. president with no moral center
The New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot wrote: “The policy of separating children from their parents at the Southern Border was the purest distillation yet of what it means to be governed by a President with no moral center.”
On June 19, over 600 Methodists accused Attorney General Jeff Sessions of child abuse, racial discrimination and dissemination of doctrines contrary to the United Methodist Church and filed a canon law complaint.
Talk to relatives, neighbors, community friends, and the reported news of toddlers and small children in foil blankets inside cages will likely raise their blood pressures, as yours. “God please take care of this president. His evil actions exceed our human capacities,” a friend said.
She is not alone; four living former first ladies have the same outcry.
On June 19, the New York Times reported that four living former first ladies condemned the Trump border policy.
Laura Bush wrote, “Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tents cities. These images are reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of WW II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.”
“Every parent who has ever held a child in their arms, every human being with a sense of compassion and decency, should be outraged,” Hillary Clinton wrote. “We should be a better country than one that tears families apart, turns a blind eye to women fleeing domestic violence, and treats frightened children as a means to a political end.”
What makes this unprecedented is we have had four living former first ladies join their voices as one, to speak against separating children from their families. Even Melania Trump tweeted that she believes that the rule of law should be followed, but governance must be done with the heart.
Yet, Sarah Huckabee Sanders continued to lie in her official capacity, and claimed falsely: “Frankly, this law was actually signed into effect in 2008,” to which the New York Times reported: ”No law actually requires that families be separated at the border. Pres. Trump ordered the stiffer effort last month.”
Still unconvinced that there is a White House policy of family separation?
A community member shared that parents are at fault, kidnapping their children to travel to the borders. Can you imagine what mentality and heartlessness one has to believe these lies? He was not joking.
Sessions claimed it is biblical to take actions to protect the American borders, prompting this response from Fr. James Martin, “It is not biblical to treat migrant and refugees like animals. It is not biblical to take children away from their parents. It is not biblical to ignore the needs of the strangers. It is not biblical to enforce unjust laws. Do not use the bible to justify sin.”
Nearly 750 resistance rallies in 50 states
USA Today on June 30 had reported: “Hundreds of thousands of people turned out from coast-to-coast Saturday in ‘Families Belong Together’ rallies to protest the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy and implore their fellow citizens to turn out to vote in November’s midterm elections. While the thrust of the near 750 marches and rallies was to defend the 2,000 children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, the tone was decidedly political.”
An estimated 70,000 people gathered in Downtown LA on Saturday, June 30 as part of the nationwide immigration protests. Photo courtesy of LA Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Facebook page
David Bacon, a photographer posted on Facebook: “A demonstration of 3,000 people outside the Richmond Detention Center, where immigrants are incarcerated before being deported. Part of a national day of protest, called Families Belong Together – Let Our People Go, people called for ending the separation of immigrant mothers and children, and the detention of immigrants in centers like that in Richmond.”
Mom and daughter hold up signs at an immigration rally
I asked his permission to publish the photo for this column, as it captures the national sentiments of non-separation of families. He agreed.
Separation of families, intentionally done with callousness and mercilessly, have created these visceral reactions.
The New Yorker wrote on June 30, “Protests, like Saturday’s against Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, allow a person’s individual croak to melt into a collective scream.”
In that collective scream, we reclaim our human dignities and we hear our spirits alive and understand the yearning for the same freedoms as those refugees who come to the U.S. borders.
They simply want to feel safe, as gangs have made it impossible to live their daily lives. One Honduran friend of mine, whose mom and sister still live in the country, described that the gangs pester folks daily: “You are in a bus, they take your watch, or if you own a small store, they impose a $5 fee on you, and that is your whole day’s earnings. Life in the land has become dangerous, that anything outside of the land presents a hopeful, brighter future for families.”
Their lives on land have become dangerous that they dare to cross the borders, the waters, ride the trains, and go to the U.S.-Mexico border, as in Texas, so they can apply for asylum.
Instead, their children are taken from them, many of whom are under 6 years old. After they are separated from their parents, the latter are detained or deported back to countries like Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
Parents and children travel using human coyotes (smugglers) to whom they pay their life savings to be transferred through a series of transports, taking three weeks and when they reach the Southern Border, they apply for legal asylum.
But instead of processing their asylum claims, they are apprehended, the kids are deemed unaccompanied minors, as their parents have not yet attained legal status.
Kids are then taken from their parents, on the pretext of giving these children a bath, but the children are shipped to places, 2,000 miles away from their parents like New York. Do you sense double or triple doses of cruelty here?
We are not this America: We are better than this
Nana, a 95½-year-old woman who has seen U.S. presidents change 15 times to this current one, wondered when will “The Law of Karmic Debt kick in for this 45th U.S. President?
She has seen Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt become presidents in her lifetime, since she was 10 years old.
She added two Kennedys have been assassinated in her lifetime. I wanted to add Martin Luther King and even Malcolm X, but she switched the conversation on how her heart bleeds for these children.
“We are not this America,” she added. She describes that her heart is for the migrants, as she and her family had to wait for their resettlement into America, when no countries would accept Jews as immigrants in the late 1920’s.
How did we get here, America?
In his interview with Chris Matthews, University of Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins said, “Families are fundamental blocks to a society, when the state intervenes, it strikes at our values. The rhetoric about these people is demeaning and treats them as animals. You can think what you want about immigration reform but you have to start at decency, you have to treat them with decency!”
But, who stands to benefit from detaining these children? Are foster parents who are paid handsomely per month when these children are placed in their homes by the government? The immigration lawyers? The federal government in imposing hefty bond fees to claim their children?
The New York Times reported on June 19 that $458,000,000 would be spent to detain these children.
“Currently Southwest Key has nearly 5,100 children in 26 shelters in Texas, Arizona and California, accounting for nearly half the unaccompanied minors being held in facilities all over the country. Most of them are older children who weren’t taken from their parents but instead tried to cross the border on their own,” The Associated Press reported on June 27.
The report added, “The nonprofit organization has booked $458 million in federal contracts during the current budget year — half of what is being handed out by HHS for placing immigrant children who came to the U.S. unaccompanied or were separated from their families after arriving.”
Humanitarian initiatives
The American people responded swiftly with mercy and compassion.
On June 28, a 6-year-old Atlanta boy sold lemonade and made $13,000 to benefit these separated children, CBS.com reported.
Here in Los Angeles, Keep Families Together Rally & Toy Drive was organized on June 23 at the Federal Bldg. in Westwood; Christine Oshima agreed to share a photo she took. Thousands attended.
As of 7:15 p.m. on July 1, a fundraiser initiated by Charlotte Willner and Dave Willner on Facebook weeks ago has raised $20, 578,199 from 533,587 folks to reunite an immigrant parent with their child, which included nearly a hundred Filipino-Americans donating.
As of 7:36pm, it grew to $20,578,724 from 533,594 folks, an increase of $525 from seven new donors in 21 minutes. The funds raised would benefit RAICES, which “will directly fund bonds to allow parents to reclaim their detained children. This group will ensure legal representation for every separated family and every unaccompanied child in Texas’ immigration courts.” Their current goal is $25,000,000.
Janne Martin-Godinez, a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl was reunited with her mother after nearly a two-month separation.
“She and her father were detained at the Arizona border in mid-May, a week after her mother had arrived with her baby brother. The family fled their home in western Guatemala because they were threatened by gang members demanding money from them. Martin-Godinez, 29, a nurse, said she was also threatened by a supervisor at the clinic where she worked,” The Washington Post wrote on July 2.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration changed its zero tolerance policy to the indefinite detention of families while their asylum claims are processed.
The 45th president’s administration has yet to demonstrate its respect to human beings regardless of national origins. After all, he took an oath,with his hand over a Bible, to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which provides equal protection to citizens, resid ents and immigrants, as all are deemed “persons,” entitled to a full measure of human rights and should not be presumed to be criminals.
Perhaps, Mr. Trump needs to learn lessons from 8-year-old Diego, “who came up with his own signs for his first public protest:
Don’t separate families
Don’t make kids cry, make kids happy
Broken Families = Broken World
We all need = rights
Free children and the world will be happy and
Help free kids
Thanks to Cheryl, his mom, who allowed his messages to be shared.
