Month: May 2020

He Burned Down the House

A social worker friend of mine was asked to visit a 14-year-old boy who was in jail for burning down his family’s home. The interview revealed the boy was being sexually abused by a relative and that he had reported the abuse on three occasions to three different adults with nothing being done by any of them. He had concluded no one was going to help him and it was up to him to find a way out. He did. He burned down the house. Was it destructive? Yes. Did he damage his own future? Yes. Was it effective in getting him out the abusive situation he was in? Yes, his abuser was arrested. He, of course, had already been damaged; first by the abuse. then by those who ignored it, and then by his own desperate efforts to escape that abuse. The lesson I learned from this story is this: If those with authority fail to protect the abused, the abused will sooner or later find a way to make themselves heard and it will be in an angry voice a lot of people won’t like.  

In recent days riots have broken out in cities across America because African-Americans as a group feel abused by the police. Yes, I know, #notallpolice and most are likely professionals who do their job well. But the pattern is clear and persistent. In the presence of the police, unarmed black people die at an incredibly higher rate than armed white people. People who are wringing their hands and complaining about the riots should hear the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “A riot is the language of the unheard.”

 I’m an old white guy. In many states, I could strap on an AR-15 and stroll into a store with small concern for my safety. I know this because multiple white men have done so with no consequences. If anyone even bothered to call the police, history suggests the odds of my getting shot are minimal even if I’m angry and shouting. The police might think I’m a jerk, but they wouldn’t shoot me for it. But tell that to  the parents of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American boy, killed by police for holding a toy gun, moments after they arrived on the scene. The police officer who fired the killing shot, in a previous police application, had been deemed “an emotionally unstable recruit and unfit for duty.” Or tell it to unarmed social worker Charles Kinsey who was helping an autistic young man who had wandered from a group home carrying a toy truck. Someone called the police because they saw his young Latinx client with what they thought was a gun.  Police arrived and found Charles Kinsey attempting to persuade his client to return to the group home. The police ordered Kinsey to lie down—which he did—and raise his hands—which he did—while begging police not to shoot his client seated nearby because there was no weapon, only a toy truck. And, by golly, it worked; the police did not shoot his client. Instead, they shot Kinsey.

Social worker Charles Kinsey seconds before being shot.
Screengrap from video by Hilton Napolean, courtesy of Miami Herald.

Another officer there with binoculars had confirmed to everyone present that no weapon was in sight, but inexplicably, another police officer then shot the unarmed and supine Kinsey in the leg. He was flipped over, handcuffed and arrested.  When Kinsey asked the policeman why he shot him, the policeman answered, “I don’t know.” The policeman was later acquitted of attempted manslaughter but convicted of misdemeanor culpable negligence.

Charles Kinsey was fortunate in that he survived. Among unarmed African American citizens who did not survive their encounter with the police are Breonna Taylor, Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Tanisha Anderson, Akai Gurley, Rumain Brisbon, Jerame Reid, Tony Robinson, Phillip White, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and of course, George Floyd. Ahmaud Aubrey was killed by a retired policeman acting as a vigilante. It required two months and a public protest to get the former policeman and his son charged and arrested.

Let’s be clear. Violent protests, looting, torching businesses, and harassing otherwise innocent police are not acceptable, but neither is this pattern of abuse. If the rioting outrages us, we best carry the outrage back to the source of the rioting – injustice. Until that is addressed, we should hear again the words of Dr. King: “And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.” I point out that these words were spoken nearly 60 years ago, and yet here we still are today.

If we want peace, we must want and demand justice, with better police training, and more legal consequences for police who fail in their duties to protect and defend. If the abuse—and the ignoring of it—continue unaddressed, the house will continue to be set on fire until someone listens. I’m not saying that is the right response, but it is the inevitable one.

In the hope for justice and peace – AB

Living as a Healer

While in Amsterdam last year I visited a Jewish museum set in an old synagogue. There was a placard noting the role of Judaism is Tikkun Olam: “repairing the world.” Being relatively new to Jewish thought, I had never heard Judaism described this way and it moved and called to me. There is so much healing our world needs. Returning home, I made an appointment with a rabbi to ask about it. She agreed that this was indeed why Judaism exists. Indeed, it’s why all of humanity exists. It led me to believe humanity is the culmination of an imperfect process and we are called upon to work in healing and perfecting it. We are in school and the curriculum is: How do we each live so that all the world may thrive with us?  

I am not Jewish either by family or persuasion and although I once identified as Christian, I no longer do so. This means I do not follow the religion about Jesus. I do however have a deep respect for Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish rabbi with deep compassion for the needy. When spiritual, psychological, or physical need arose, he did what was in him to meet that need. He taught people to look deeply into their spiritual traditions. He worked to provide comfort and healing, he fed those who were hungry, he wept with those who grieved. He dined and possibly partied with friends (more wine!) He broke the law of the sabbath to feed his disciples because he understood that sabbath law was intended to serve as a restful blessing, not a constraint on compassion. “The sabbath,” Jesus said, “was made for people, not people for the sabbath.” He understood and forgave the human condition, like the adulterous woman who was hauled to him by the authorities for judgment as a theological trap. He simultaneously forgave her and called her to become her better self. As he did so, he subtly confronted her accusers who cared nothing for the woman or even her sin, he turned their focus toward their own flaws. His anger always seemed reserved for those who abused others. The moneychangers who cheated people of their hard-won income he lashed from the Temple. He confronted religious leaders who used their authority or knowledge to burden rather than help. He invited all of us into what a friend of mine calls “the beloved community,” a delightful concept; a gathering for mutual support, where the needs of the many—whatever they may be—are met by the resources of the many. It’s a group holding compassion for others in their time of need, appreciation for the gifts each brings to all, a deep gratitude for when we are the ones called upon to share from our plenty, and a place for those with the humility to recognize that sometimes the need for aid is our own. This is what the rebbe Jesus taught and practiced. This is, to me, Tikkun Olam. So, while I don’t practice the religion about Jesus Christ, I embrace and imperfectly stumble toward the teachings of the rabbi Jesus.

It’s also why I’m perplexed and appalled at Jews or Christians who endorse and support Donald Trump, a man who is the antithesis of everything Tikkun Olam means.  He punches down only at the weaker with shaming and sneers. He gives nothing with his right hand he doesn’t take back double in his left. He courts and kowtows to violent, authoritarian men like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, while appearing incapable of sympathy, let alone empathy, for the injured, the decimated, the ill, or even the grieving. Time and again he has left in his wake financial ruin of his own businesses and those of others. Everything he touches dies–businesses, relationships, systems, and now America. Our economy lies in shambles and as of today nearly 80,000 additional U.S. citizens are dead while he blames everything except his own leadership. Heedless of more deaths, he wants to “restart the economy” because it serves his re-election interests. This paragraph may seem a shocking pivot from the one before, and that is the point. It is shocking. And I am unable to explain why so many people find him so attractive while also saying they intend to be a mensch or a devout follower of Jesus. I stand baffled and I plan to explore in future articles how it seems to me we came here.

 Shalom.   -AB