Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (June 24, 2015)
Opinion Emanuel AME and the Buoyancy of Hope “Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now” B ernie F oster Founder/Publisher B oBBie D ore F oster Executive Editor J erry F oster Advertising Manager C hristen M C C urDy News Editor P atriCia i rvin Graphic Designer a rashi y oung D onovan M. s Mith Reporters M oniCa J. F oster Seattle Office Coordinator J ulie K eeFe s usan F rieD Photographers The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published each Wednesday by IMM Publications Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 E-mail: info@theskanner.com www.TheSkanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicit- ed. © 2015 The Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE- SERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED. To view The Skanner website on your mobile device, scan this QR code • Local news • Opinions • Jobs, Bids • Sports • Entertainment • Music reviews • Bulletin board • RSS feeds R ev. Clementa Pinckney and his fellow congregants of Charleston’s Emanuel Af- rican Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. gathered as usual in the historic edifice June 17 for their Wednesday evening prayer service. They came, as al- ways, to refresh their religious faith, to testify and bear witness to the importance of living a life of righteousness and to extend to all including the stranger in their midst their welcome and their trust. How could they know that he represented a monstrous evil that would consume them? So, once again, American so- ciety has been wounded by the dangerous forces of hatred and violence that have always shad- owed the gleaming idealism of the American Creed. As usual, when the mask of American innocence slips, the crowd that loves to glibly boast of “American exceptionalism” ran for cover. Fox News propagan- dists led the way in desperately fleeing from the clear evidence of Dylann Roof’s racism. Instead, they claimed he was striking against Christianity and “religious freedom.” Revealingly, the same pose was adopted by the Internet’s overtly white-supremacist web- sites and the trolls of the right- wing Twitter mob. But Dylann Roof’s own words and Facebook posts leave no doubt of his motivation—and leave no room for the cowardice of not confronting them. President Obama gave voice to “the heartache and the sadness and the anger” the massacre provoked Lee A. Daniels NNPA Columnist in decent people when he said, “we as a country will have to reck- on with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries … with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it … the politics in [Washington] hope,” said the President, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One truth lies in our learning something of the very people – a cross-section of the American people – who were gunned down. Their being lost to the whirlwind of evil shouldn’t be allowed to obscure their fundamental good- ness and commitment to Christi- anity’s most cherished precepts – as shown in their families’ heart-rending declarations of for- giveness toward Roof. “We are the family that love built,” said Bethane Middleton-Brown, sister of DePayne Middleton-Doctor, during the June 19 court hearing Dylann Roof’s own words and Facebook posts leave no doubt of his motivation — and leave no room for the cowardice of not confronting them foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it. At some point, it’s going to be im- portant for the American people to come to grips with it, and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively.” In those words the president spoke, substitute for “gun vio- lence” the words “slavery” or “rac- ism” and you have why, for many Black Americans, the terrorist at- tack at Emanuel AME scourged a profound historically-rooted pain. Yet even in this moment of grief, we ought to recognize the several truths that offer “the buoyancy of on the charges against Roof. Mid- dleton-Brown said her family has no room for hate in their hearts, before adding, “I also thank God I won’t be around when your judg- ment days comes with him.” The tragedy has also under- scored the real and symbolic meaning to Black Americans of the Black Church. It was and re- mains our piece of the rock: A refuge against the storm of rac- ism and malicious indifference that has swirled about us outside its walls. A vault that has held the treasures of fellowship and the space to practice communal leadership as well as religious faith. And an armory where Black Americans forged and buffed to a luminous shine both their civic faith in the American Ideal and the weapon — nonviolent protest — they would use to demand the full measure of their American citizen- ship. Another insight is that Emanuel AME is “historic” not just because of its early 19th-century founding, but because it met again and again the challenge of being a full-ser- vice Black communal institution. In that regard, Mother Emanuel is, thankfully, far from unique. Innumerable Black communities across the country have a “Moth- er Church” of this or that Protes- tant denomination whose roots go back to at least the late 1800s. Another bright light the tragedy cannot extinguish was the imme- diate rush of people of all back- grounds to stand in solidarity with the congregants of Mother Eman- uel. That was most dramatically il- lustrated by the actions of Debbie Dills and Todd Frady, two white North Carolinians whose call to a local police officer in the morning of June 18 directly led to Dylann Roof’s capture. Dills, who spot- ted Roof in his car while she was driving to her job at Frady’s florist shop, said, “I saw the news cov- erage last night. … Since it hap- pened I was praying for them and the church. I was in the right place at the right time that the Lord puts you.” That shining compassion, sense of kinship and determination to redeem a terrible wrong justifies “the buoyancy of hope” that has always fueled Black Americans’ faith in America and in their march toward the future. Left and Right Converge on Justice Reform W hile social change for some may appear to be inevitable, it does not happen by osmosis, and it does not occur without a focused effort led by those who are not restrained by the fears of social transformation. An effective reform of the system of laws, courts, policies and in- stitutions defined as the criminal justice system in the United States of America requires more than a principled public debate. What is needed today with a re- newed sense of urgency, beyond the all-too-frequent expressions of justifiable outrage and protest in response to videotaped incidents of police brutality, is a commit- ted, bipartisan, well-resourced na- tionwide criminal justice reform movement. Black lives do matter. In fact, all lives matter. As President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), the nation’s oldest and largest trade associa- tion of African American-owned newspapers, we reach more than 20 million readers per week through 205 affiliated local and regional print and digital media companies. The issues of mass incarcera- tion, overcriminalization, prose- cutorial and police misconduct, equal justice, alternative sentenc- ing, recidivism and judicial dys- function are all serious problems that are having a severe negative Page 2 June 24, 2015 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. NNPA President and CEO impact, in particular, on the qual- ity of life of African Americans. What is required today, however, is a multiracial coalition to ensure that a successful reform move- ment is representative of the inter- ests of all Americans. state and federal levels toward equal justice for all. Now we need to rebuild and expand the move- ment to reform criminal justice. I also know what it is like to be unjustly sentenced and incarcer- ated in a prison system that dehu- manizes both the imprisoned and those in charge of vastly deterio- rating overcrowded penal institu- tions. I was a member of the Wilming- ton 10, a group of civil rights ac- tivists who were unjustly impris- oned for a combined sentenced of 282 years for standing up for the rights of equal education for Af- rican American students in Wilm- ‘An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’ —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I know something about the movement-building process, dat- ing back to my early days in the 1960s as a youth coordinator in my home state of North Carolina for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. (SCLC). Dr. King, Jr. was a master move- ment builder. I learned firsthand from witnessing how Dr. King fused together a diverse coalition of intergenerational leaders to bring about change at the local, ington, N.C. in the 1970s. Today, there are millions of people who not only want to see changes in the criminal justice system, but also are willing to join and support the emergence of a national “Crim- inal Justice Reform Movement” (CJRM). My columns for the NNPA have always been about speaking truth to power in the vein of Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois, two pioneering editors who knew the power of words. Yet today, we must also dare to speak the truth to ourselves. We must participate in helping to build this important reform movement. Thus, it is why without any hes- itation that I am hereby publicly stating my endorsement of the coalition-building efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), Charles Koch Insti- tute and Koch Industries, Coali- tion for Public Safety, Center for American Progress, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and other national and regional orga- nizations that have committed to support various criminal justice reform efforts. I believe it is now a propitious time to work together to establish a national bipartisan reform movement. I was very interested and encour- aged to learn that the controversial Koch Industries has been involved in the issues of overcriminaliza- tion and criminal justice reform for years. Reforming the criminal justice system is not a concern to be constrained to the left or to the right on the political spectrum. The respect for the moral digni- ty and wellbeing of every person, without the filter of race, class, re- ligion or any other discriminating factor, is a paramount principle that has to be maintained in a so- ciety that strives to strengthen the inclusiveness of its democracy.
