A Black Rose Goes to Washington

 

Sometimes Florida Man gets it right.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to see the new sculpture that will be Florida’s gift to the National Statuary Hall early next year. The Daytona Beach News-Journal Center is currently providing an opportunity for Floridians to see this favorite daughter sculpture that will be Florida’s second statue in the hall. It is well worth the time and effort to visit. But more importantly, it is worth knowing the story behind it.

 

The Father of the Air Conditioner and a Traitor

 

Since 1864 our nation’s Capitol has provided each state a space for two sculptures which would represent the people and history of that state. The statues stand in the National Statuary Hall in the heart of the capital building.

Florida’s first contribution was a statue of John Gorrie. He was a scientist who spent his life seeking means to deal with the deadly diseases such as malaria which were rife in warmer climates in the early 19th CE.

Gorrie came to Apalachicola in Florida’s panhandle to conduct his research. Eventually he was able to create a mechanical means of creating ice used to keep patient rooms cool. His machine gave rise to what would become refrigerators and eventually served as the birth of the air conditioner. Many see the advent of air conditioning as the threshold of modern Florida which after widespread air conditioning of homes  became available in the 1950s grew from a small Southern backwater to the nation’s third largest state.

Little wonder Florida would want to remember this famous citizen. Florida’s first contribution to the National Statuary Hall was a marble sculpture of John Gorrie installed in 1914.

The second contribution to the Hall came in 1922 when Florida installed a bronze sculpture of Confederate General Kirby Smith. While Smith had been born in St. Augustine, he had spent most of his life outside of the state making him a nominal Floridian at best. Ironically, a statue of Smith would have been ineligible to be placed in the Statuary Hall when it first opened since he was busy leading a war against the country at the time. Whatever else Kirby Smith might have been, he was a traitor to the United States.

Smith’s placement in the Hall reflected the Jim Crow culture of the early 20th CE with its “Lost Cause” myth which prompted the placement of Confederate sculptures in cities and towns across the South in the 1920s. While ostensibly seeking to remember the righteous cause of a South defeated by “Northern aggression” (as some mythologizers still refer to the Civil War), in fact the subtext of these placements was decidedly political and economic.

 

Confederate soldier statue, Eola Park, Orlando

Jim Crow culture was determined to reverse any gains formerly enslaved people had made during the all-too-brief Reconstruction era following their emancipation at the end of the Civil War. Part of that agenda was accomplished by sculptures such as Smith’s that reminded everyone in not so subtle terms “We are in control. Don’t get out of line.” And where subtle reminders failed, a wave of lynchings and the destruction of African-American communities from Ocoee and Rosewood in Florida to the Black Wall Street of Tulsa, Oklahoma, would make that point in deadly terms.

Long a source of contention among many Floridians, efforts to remove Smith’s sculpture  from the Hall took shape in 2015 when the first bills to replace that sculpture were filed. The following year in response to the shooting deaths of nine African-American parishioners by a white supremacist in a Charleston, SC church, the state legislature voted to remove Smith and then-governor Ric Scott signed the bill.

It would take another five years to remove the sculpture which only left the Hall this past September. Where it will go is unclear. Initial efforts to place the sculpture in a Lake County history museum in Tavares failed when the county commission there, under pressure from local community activists, rejected the move there.

 
Orlando Confederate statute removed, placed in cemetery with CSA dead, 2017

In 2018, the state legislature voted to replace Smith’s sculpture with that of Mary McLeod Bethune. The vote was unanimous in the Senate after Ocala legislator Dennis Baxley, a descendant of Confederate soldiers, was successful in adding an amendment that would allow the Smith sculpture which was then still in the Statuary Hall to be placed somewhere in Florida. In the House, the vote was nearly unanimous with the one nay vote cast by Jacksonville Representative Jay Fant opposing the bill saying

“Messing with statues is a fool's errand for the Legislature…I don't think we should even remove any of the statues that we have, including the one's that they're moving to replace here. … It's one of those issues that I think truly creates division within communities, this whole statue-removal business, and I don't want to be part of all that.”

The irony of an argument cast in terms of preventing “division” marshalled in support of retaining a statue of a Confederate general in the capitol of the country he sought to destroy in order to preserve slavery cannot be lost on anyone capable of even a modicum of critical thinking. Fortunately, this Florida Man did not prevail.

The Godmother of the Civil Rights Movement

The display the News-Journal Center has created is superb in providing an opportunity to see the beautiful sculpture of Bethune before it is shipped off to Washington. Once in place in the Hall it may not be possible to get the full round view of the sculpture available in its current display.

But more importantly, the display provides a very thorough discussion of the life of Mary McLeod Bethune. As a young black woman who had struggled out of an impoverished household to first educate herself and then to educate others, Bethune came to Daytona Beach determined to make a difference for African-Americans. Among her many accomplishments she would found the National Council of Negro Women, advise five U.S. presidents and create a boarding school for Black children that would later become Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach.

 

In many ways, Bethune would prove to be the Godmother of the Civil Rights Movement. Her groundwork in advising Franklin Roosevelt’s administration on racial issues would create a fertile place for the justice movements that would arise beginning in the 1950s.

A poignant illustration of that behind-the-scenes role would come in 1946 when Jackie Robinson would break the color barrier in professional baseball. Refused a place to stay or a park in which to play during spring training in nearby Florida cities, Bethune invited Robinson to stay with her and encouraged the city to invite his Kansas City Monarchs team, an AAA International League farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to play the Dodgers in a spring training game at Daytona.

On March 17, 1946 Robinson would break the color barrier in professional baseball in City Park in Daytona Beach. That park, just down the waterfront from the News-Journal Center in Daytona, is now named Jackie Robinson Park.

Kirby Smith had only tangential ties at best to Florida. Bethune, a native South Carolinian who came to Florida at age 24 and spent the remainder of her life seeking to make it a better place, is a true native daughter. It is a great honor to have her represent the people of Florida in the National Statuary Hall.

A Number of Firsts

 

The other aspect of the Center’s display that makes it worth a visit is the extensive history of the artist and the process of creating the sculpture. There are a number of firsts in this exquisite work.

Nilda Comas, a Puerto Rican sculpture with a long history of works in marble, is the first Hispanic artist to have work displayed in the Statuary Hall. Her portrayal of Bethune will become the first African-American sculpture from any state and the first African-American woman to take her place in the Hall. She will also be the first sculpture bearing academic regalia among the 100 state sculptures.

  The marble used to create the sculpture came from the same quarry as Michelangelo used to created his immortal depiction of David. Comas was fortunate to get the last block of white marble to be taken from this pit which is now closed. The black rose, which Bethune loved, would come from a separate quarry in Spain. The marble from which it would be sculpted is incredibly fragile and required a great deal of care in its creation.

Comas would depict Bethune in academic regalia, perched on a pile of books representing her long role in educating Florida’s youth, holding the black rose. The rose reflects Bethune’s experience of a black velvet rose she encountered at a conference in Switzerland. Taken by the unexpected beauty of the rose, Bethune would say

I never saw a garden so beautiful, roses of all colors. And in the midst of the garden I saw a giant Black Velvet Rose. I never saw a Black Velvet Rose before and I said to myself ‘Oh, this is the great interracial garden! This is the garden where we have people of all colors, all classes, all creeds…

 

The pile of books on which Bethune’s figure is perched provides the third of the three points needed to insure a standing sculpture’s stability. On each of the books is written a word from Bethune’s final essay, “I Leave You,” completed just before her death. The titles are telling: Hope, Faith, Honor.

This sculpture is clearly a labor of love. Chosen from among 1600 applicants for the commission, Comas would travel to Bethune’s childhood home in South Carolina and assemble hundreds of photographs to get a sense of who Bethune was. She then traveled to Italy and Spain to locate the marble for her creation.

Three years of hard work went into this depiction which will be the first of two sculptures of Bethune Comas will produce. The second, a bronze replica of the marble version headed for Washington will soon grace the Riverfront Esplanade Park on the Halifax River in downtown Daytona Beach, just yards away from Jackie Robinson Park and Museum.

 My Sister brought her students from Pace Center Ocala and                 arranged to have the sculptor speak to us at the Center.

A Small Step Toward Redemption

This display was deeply moving. The work itself is breathtaking and the display that provided the history of the woman depicted and the artist’s loving process of production made that encounter even more meaningful. That was particularly true given my own life trajectory for the past few years.

Since 2016, I have worked with a group in Orlando, the Alliance for Truth and Justice, which has sought to commemorate the rash of lynchings that occurred in the early to mid-20th CE and the massacre of the African-American community in Ocoee, the same time frame in which Kirby Smith’s sculpture was sent to the Capitol. Our work has taken me from overgrown scrubland where an African-American community once stood near Ocoee to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.

 

It was there I would represent Willie Vincent, an African-American agricultural laborer who had been tossed from a moving car onto the asphalt of US 441 near Oakland. He had died alone and no record of his death, much less his burial, exists. With no descendants or family of record to represent him, I attended the dedication of his memorial in Montgomery on his behalf and on behalf of our organization.

That dedication came only days after I had been leafing through family documents my Dad’s genealogy work had left behind only to discover for the first time that I was the descendant of a family who had enslaved other human beings. It was a great shock to me. And at that moment, the white privilege I had become aware of on an academic level suddenly became very real to me on a personal level.

I believe that it is the obligation of all Americans to know all of our history, warts and all. Loving our country requires knowing all of its story. That’s a lot more demanding than merely admiring its bright and shiny persona. It is only when we are able to hold our actual history together with our finest ideals that we can even begin truly loving our country.

The grave of Election Day 1920 Orlando lynching victim, July Perry, on Election Day 2020. Look closely. The "I Voted" sticker is attached to the upper left portion of the inscription.

Such knowledge is essential to the soul work of repentance - the rethinking of our understandings including the willingness to own the harm they have caused - and redemption. The work that our local organization engages in Orlando seeks to transform the evil that has occurred in our past and insure that its legacies will not continue to impact our lives in the future. As Franciscan Richard Rohr often observes, that brokenness which we do not transform, we transmit.

 Removing a Confederate soldier’s statue from the National Statuary Hall that has brought shame to our state for nearly a century is a long overdue act of repentance. It is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual recognition of a history of wrongdoing and an expression of contrition that is appropriate in light of that recognition.

Replacing the statue of a traitor with an exquisite marble rendition of one of Florida’s finest citizens, an African-American woman who called people live into their best and highest potentials, brings honor to this state I love. But perhaps more importantly, it is a first, small step in the long road to redemption.

Sometimes even the Florida Man gets it right.

 

[N.B., Many thanks to Dr. Connie E. Rivers-Mitchell for her expert guided tour. The official site for the display can be accessed below. Admission is free and available through Eventbrite]

https://viewer.joomag.com/the-pride-of-florida-a-special-commemorative-edition-of-evolve/0023209001632408107?short&

 

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

© Harry Coverston, 2021

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Chasing Butterflies, Feeding the Soul

My Mother always loved butterflies. They always seemed to capture her spirit – Light hearted, beautiful, fragile. 

Years ago at my Mother’s graveside service at the National Cemetery at Bushnell, we had just finished reciting the prayers of committal when seemingly from nowhere an entire flock of butterflies suddenly appeared among the graves just outside the outdoor chapel where we stood. Some of us saw it as a sign from beyond the veil – “I’m OK and I’ll always  be near you.” 

Like my Dad, I have always grown pollinator attractant plants in my yard. He grew them to draw the butterflies Mother loved. I grow them to do my part in confronting the challenge that bees and butterflies are facing in their struggle to avoid extinction. I also grow them out of love for the colorful eruptions of life that flutter across my yard as the butterflies visit the plants I’ve grown for them.

At a basic level, these plants and the butterflies they draw serve a sacramental role in my life, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. When I see the butterflies, I feel my Mother’s loving presence. And I always say, “Hello, Momma” when I see them.

 

Bearing the Souls of the Dead

I’m hardly the first to make this connection. The Aztecs believed that butterflies bore the souls of the dead. Around the time the monarchs have completed their continental migration each fall bringing them to overwinter in Mexico, the descendants of the Aztecs celebrate the souls of their ancestors with a colorful ritual that has come to be called Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead.

Depth psychologist Carl Jung often spoke of the archetypal energies which rose to consciousness out of a collective unconscious which all humanity shared. Reverencing the dead is a very human behavior. Thus, not surprisingly, observances commemorating the dead are seen in cultures around the world.

My Celtic ancestors celebrated Samhain marking the day that the veil between the living and the dead became thin enough for the dead to cross back over to visit those they had left behind. Our modern Halloween, literally the eve of All Saints and All Souls Days, owes its origin to that festival which, like Christmas and Easter, became Christianized feast days.

My Sister heard that the annual fall monarch migration was nearing its passage over the Panhandle of Florida. So when she asked if I wanted to spend Halloween butterfly watching with her and her husband, I was ready to go. A day when the dead are commemorated was the perfect day to go chasing butterflies. They even dressed in costume, Carole as the butterfly and Jim with the Panama hat and net of the catcher.

It’s a long ride from Orlando to St. Mark’s Lighthouse on the Gulf in the swampy, sparsely populated region of the state called the Big Bend. At some level, it’s like a journey back in time.

As we left the urban sprawl of Central Florida behind we drove through small towns with names like Cross City and Fannin Springs with their aging hotels, shuttered strip malls, gun shops and fast food joints. These islands of human habitation punctuate miles of pine forests and marshy wilderness. The “developers” have not yet arrived here. As we drove along we talked about the Florida we had grown up knowing, a Florida rapidly disappearing under the blade of the bulldozer and the bucket of the dragline. Increasingly the Florida we knew growing up no longer exists.

Undulating Waves of Orange

There has been a lighthouse at St. Marks mere feet away from Gulf coast waters since 1830. Long recognized as the best place to observe the monarch migration in Florida, it is located at the end of a 10 mile drive south of U.S. 98, the main highway which runs along the length of Florida’s Panhandle. 

It was here that I had seen the monarch migration 15 years ago while a graduate student at Florida State.Jung speaks of coincidences that prove to be meaningful as “synchronicity.” At some level that’s what I sense happened that day.

On a Sunday in late October I had left the Chapel of the Resurrection at FSU where I had preached and celebrated that morning. As I headed back to my apartment, I realized that I could not possibly stuff one more word from dense German social theorists into my head that day. Changing out of my dog collar into my civies, I climbed into my car whom I had named Imogenie and said, “Take me where I’m going.”

The next thing I knew I was nearing St. Marks.

As I came around a curve in the winding road to the lighthouse, the entire horizon suddenly turned orange. There were millions of monarchs there, feeding on the goldenrod then blooming. They formed undulating waves crossing the fields as far as the horizon. A cold front had passed through the region the night before providing a chilly day and a cobalt blue sky with a brilliant sun overhead. The sight was so staggering I lost my breath. I felt compelled to stop my car, get out and watch in awe as this amazing event transpired right in front of me.

Jung also speaks of experiences that prove incapable of being understood or explained in ordinary rational terms. He spoke of the “thrilling power” such experiences evoke in those who have them.

 

I think I understand what he was talking about. This encounter with the monarch migration absolutely blew me away. It is without a doubt one of the most deeply spiritual moments of my life. I have rarely felt as connected to creation and its Creator as I was in that moment. It is impossible to stand in the face of something so magnificent, so much larger than oneself, and not be moved to one’s core.

 

Beauty on the Brink of Extinction

I had hoped for a repeat of that incredible experience on this partly cloudy Halloween Sunday. But as we neared the lighthouse we had seen only a handful of butterflies. Nothing massive, no orange undulating waves. My heart sank.

At some level it was confirmation of my worst fears. The research I had done prior to our trip located a site from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service which estimates that the monarch population in the US has declined by 90% over the past two decades. Not surprisingly, the decline is due to abuses by the human animal who rarely shares the biosphere with them in a thoughtful manner. The USFWS studies found that monarch declines can be attributed to loss of habitat, the use of pesticides in industrial agriculture and anthropogenic climate change.

 

Butterflies are only a portion of the pollinator population endangered by human behaviors. Bees, who play a vital role in the production of fruits and vegetables, are also endangered. We human animals have some hard decisions to make whose consequences are almost entirely in our hands as we stand on the brink of the ecological disaster.

Within a few minutes of arriving at the lighthouse, the clouds overhead broke. With the sunshine, the butterflies that had made the migration began to emerge. At first there were only random butterflies fluttering by. Then we began to encounter bushes covered with butterflies. Their frenetic movement began to slow in the warmer air provided by the sunlight.

 

We were able to approach several individuals close enough to get decent photos. And at that moment I realized that even without the spectacular show I had anticipated, it had definitely been worth the time and trouble to have come all this way to be present here for a couple of hours in this beautiful spot along the Gulf Coast.

 

 

As we walked along the nature trail paralleling the coast, we could hear the fishermen who had waded into those muddy waters seeking their daily catch. Across the salt flats, the sun sparkled on brackish waters in which long legged herons sought their dinner. A soft, cool breeze blew in off the water as we walked along the shoreline.

Whatever else this might have been, it was what the doctor had ordered this day, much like my previous encounter.

 

Good for the Soul

I have discovered that it is crucial to my mental health to periodically come to the coast, to see what is left of the Florida I once loved, particularly those places where the developers have not yet arrived. “It’s good for the soul,” I said to my Brother-in-Law. He quickly agreed. 

So where will we go to touch base with our souls when the last inch of coastline is cleared to build condominiums for the wealthy preventing access to the sea on lands that hurricanes and sea level rise may soon make uninhabitable? Again, we have some very difficult choices ahead of us. 

We would cap off the afternoon with a wonderful early supper at the century old Lodge on Wakulla Springs. It, too, is a treasure of old Florida now run by the state park service. The Springs have been used for a number of film shoots including some of the Tarzan movies and the 1954 classic The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Glass bottom boats still take tourists out into the crystal clear waters of the Spring and its run to see alligators, manatees and snapping turtles. It is a beautiful spot largely left in its natural state in the midst of a region that is rapidly growing. 

After a wonderful dinner of local seafood that began with a serving of fried green tomatoes, it was time for the long drive home. I am grateful to my Sister for having put this trip together. It was a wonderful day away from the duties of daily life. And even as I mourn the decline of the monarchs and the degradation of this state I love, it is always a privilege to be able to be present in this last remnant of a once magnificent stretch of the good Creation.

It really is good for the soul.

 

 

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Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

© Harry Coverston, 2021

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Heroes Alongside the Monsters

 

In Nicholas Kristof’s final essay in the New York Times last week he announced that he is leaving the Times to run for governor in his home state of Oregon. I’ve always appreciated Kristof’s writing and at a very selfish level I am sad to see him leave. The link to his essay is provided below. It is well worth your time to read and consider.

I suspect Kristof would make a good governor. He is bright, insightful and highly articulate. More than that, he knows suffering when he sees it because he seen a lot of it in his lifetime. In a time when many Americans are unemployed, dying from a preventable disease and numbing their pain with one of many possible addictive behaviors, we need public servants who are attuned to human suffering. 

But I also suspect that he will be furiously opposed by moneyed ideologues who will make his election doubtful. Should be prevail at the polls, a term as governor will prove challenging on a good day. And that’s in Oregon, a state that I would call relatively progressive. I can’t even imagine him running here in Florida, a state in which the lives of one out of every 350 residents have been leveraged so far to serve the political ambitions of its adolescent governor.

 These are the realities of political of life in 2021 America.

 

A Willingness to Engage Suffering

 

What struck me about Kristof’s goodbye essay was his discussion of how his encounter with suffering had impacted his life. He writes:

The genocide in Darfur seared me and terrified me. To cover the slaughter there, I sneaked across borders, slipped through checkpoints, ingratiated myself with mass murderers. In Darfur, it was hard to keep from weeping as I interviewed shellshocked children who had been shot, raped or orphaned. No one could report in Darfur and not smell the evil in the air.

I strongly resonate with that. Though I have not had the lengthy deep immersion in suffering that Kristof experienced in Africa and China, suffering is a constant in human existence and I have had more than my share of opportunities to engage it first-hand.

 

My village family at Las Guabitas, Panama 1994

I have no idea what drew me to Central America for all those many visits or what called me to teach in ghetto schools or represent juveniles and mentally ill clients as a public defender. What I do know is that when those callings came, I was only certain of two things. The first was that I I needed to answer them. The second was that I was sure what I experienced in those situations would change me for life.

I simply had no idea how deeply.

I hear a lot of those themes in Kristof’s column. I also hear some of my own responses to the evil that we have both encountered. To wit:

             In particular, I want to make clear that while I’ve spent my career on the front lines of                 human suffering and depravity, covering genocide, war, poverty and injustice, I’ve                     emerged firmly believing that we can make real progress by summoning the political                 will.

 We are an amazing species, and we can do better….

 We largely know how to improve well-being at home and abroad. 

What we lack is the political will.

Sculpture, Mary McLeod Bethune, Godmother of the U.S. Civil Rights movement, Florida’s new offering to the Hall of Statuary in the U.S. Capitol

It is a common refrain in my sermons, blog entries and social media postings that I think we can do better as a people and that it can make all the difference in the world for all of us. And, like Kristof, I am clear that the problem is never our capacities or even our resources to do so, it is our political will that stands in the way.

But that is what I fear most as I watch the current slow motion civil war unfolding around me.

Clearly the glazed over zealots like those who invaded our Capitol January 6 make me very uneasy. They are unpredictable and volatile. Increasingly they articulate far-fetched rationalizations for their resort to violence which they see as their first option. And many of them strike me as desperate.

I accept that they are a given at this point in our history. And they arose in a particular context. In retrospect, it is not terribly surprising to see these angry, violent responses. Between an economic system that squeezes the life out of virtually all it touches – including one’s sense of self-respect - and a culture that encourages constant distraction to avoid feeling the pain, it’s hardly surprising that the loss of the soul that inevitably results from such a context would generate no small amount of anger. Indeed, it is an expectable response. And violence is an expectable expression of that anger.

But what I fear more is the many loving and caring people in this country who are unwilling to recognize the existential threat which we face and unwilling to meet it head on. At a very basic level, denial is the greatest enemy of any hopes for a peaceful resolution of the challenges besetting us.

Unlike the volatile minority who gleefully talk about acting out their angst with weaponry, most of our countrymen and women are not driven by malevolence and inveterate misanthropy. Instead, what I see is psychic couch potatoes, those who long ago traded in their responsible citizenship for being well-trained consumers, addicted to comfort and narcoticized by agents of mass distraction. Some come in bottles, some come in pills and some come in streaming media. But all have the intended effect of preventing any effective resistance to the evil that is increasingly coming to a head in our country and the world around us.

Hannah Arendt was much criticized for her observations on the banality of evil that she saw as permitting the rise of an authoritarianism in Germany that ultimately proved genocidal. But she is hardly alone in that observation. And it is not hard to see the same kind of banality in service of forces of evil in our own country teetering on the edge of authoritarianism today. When good people do nothing, as Burke observed, evil will have its way.

Kristof’s reference to the missing ingredient, the political will, in the face of a challenge with enormous potential for harm is hardly original. I hear echoes of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in these words. The recent alarms from the world’s climatologists about the accelerating arrival of pending climate disasters confirms the concerns that Gore was articulating a decade ago – if we don’t act now and act decisively, we face existential peril. Even now, it is almost too late. 

Gore observed a decade and a half ago that it was not our capacity or our resources that were missing, it was the political will.

 He was right. And so is Kristof.

 Alongside the Monsters Were Heroes

 That’s why Kristof’s dogged refusal to become cynical or engage in a grim determinism is refreshing. He says:

Yet alongside the monsters, I invariably found heroes….Even in a landscape of evil, the most memorable people aren’t the Himmlers and Eichmanns but the Anne Franks and Raoul Wallenbergs — and Suad Ahmeds — capable of exhilarating goodness in the face of nauseating evil. They are why I left the front lines not depressed but inspired.

 

A sizeable chunk of my graduate study was focused on the Holocaust and I have since had the privilege of studying at the Holocaust Center in D.C. The examples that Kristof cited were people unwilling to be determined by that evil they were encountering, the Holocaust in the first two examples and the ongoing wave of terrorism that is Islamism in the other. And in all three cases, they were courageous human beings determined to share their stories of the suffering they had witnessed.

I am clear that all of us who have been entrusted with visions of human suffering have the obligation to share them with the world if for no other reason than to give a voice to those too often silenced by violence. If Burke is right that the only thing needed for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing, witnesses of suffering who remain silent in the wake of the deeply disturbing revelations they have been given inevitably become complicit in the evil they fail to recount.

In that light, I offer my thanks to Nicholas Kristoff for his willingness to write the stories of suffering that none of us wanted to read but which all of us needed to hear. I wish him well in his new venture. May his example of public service and resilience in the face of evil serve as a lesson for us all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/opinion/sunday/nick-kristof-farewell.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20211028&instance_id=44002&nl=opinion-today&regi_id=26963009&segment_id=72885&te=1&user_id=b3003522e3ef48b0f7a7ab37c17369c1

 

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Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 

frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

© Harry Coverston, 2021

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Unity Is NOT an End in Itself

Like many of you, I am weary of the tidal wave of solicitations that daily jams my email inbox, my U.S. Mailbox and the voice mail on my telephone. It takes more and more time that I increasingly see as precious to wade through these unsolicited and largely unwanted attempts to separate me from my limited supply of money. And to make matters worse, more than half of these solicitations are scams. 

 A man’s house may be his castle, under English common law, but the right to privacy that traditional understanding points toward clearly no longer applies when it comes to a consumerist culture. Here all bets are off, apparently. When the market dominates all aspect of our lives, our homes are merely opportunities for ever more profit making. There is nothing sacred about them. And these solicitations for political campaigns will undoubtably increase as we approach next year’s elections.

 I can hardly wait. And I will not just get over it. This practice irritates me on two fronts.

 This is no way to run a republic

One, the constant stream of solicitations, inevitably labeled as “urgent,” is a constant reminder that our electoral system has devolved into an auction where offices are sold to the highest bidder rather than awarded to the winners whose better ideas and character have ultimately persuaded voters to elect them.

 In a world where even local offices can cost up to a million dollars to win, my meager retirement income is simply incapable of making even a small dent in such elections. And I say that with the knowledge that our household income is greater than perhaps a majority of American households today. But even if we had funds to spare to allow us to vote with our dollars, we could never match the dark money available from PACs whose contributors’ names we will never know even as we they represent the interests of corporations and the wealthy.

 This is no way to run a democratic republic. But it is the practice we Americans have acquiesced to.

 

The fact I am pummeled by these solicitations daily reminds me that even though the power to change this toxic arrangement has always been in our hands, my countrywomen and men have proven more than willing to avoid the discomfort of dealing with this festering wound on the body politic. They’re opted to escape social responsibility through binge watching streaming programming or engaging in addictive social media. As Erich Fromm so presciently foresaw 70 years ago, they have chosen to escape from freedom.

 The second aspect that irritates me about our current context is that this ongoing invasion of my private life is a constant reminder that the governments who should be protecting that privacy have completely abdicated their duties. As the saying social realist author Upton Sinclair popularized a century ago so succinctly observes, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

 And yet, government is all that stands between its people and a market fundamentalism that chooses profit over people every time.

 Given the changes in our campaign funding laws and the stacking of court systems increasingly beholden to corporate interests (e.g., Our SCOTUS has tried to sell us a bill of goods that the legal fictions we call corporations are actually people), our government has been almost completely coopted by the business sector. Thus its capacity to protect us has been nearly completely neutralized. As a result the burden has shifted to the individual resident to guard his/her privacy, blocking unwanted callers call after call, email after email, against voracious marketing that respects no boundaries.

 The individual American stands no chance in that matchup. It is a sad commentary on the country and the people we have devolved into.

 Appeals to Values in a Cynical Political World

 Occasionally I encounter people who give me reason to hope that this dismal status quo can change. Yesterday amidst the ton of emails I spend a half hour deleting each morning I came across a remarkable ad for a candidate for a state house of representatives seat in Kentucky. His ad never mentions his last name. Instead, he chooses to make his pitch to ideals, values and critical reflection on the country and the people we have become.

 I have to say, this really caught me off guard. It’s hardly what I’ve come to expect from electoral politics in a nation that auctions its offices of power off to the highest bidders. It was incredibly refreshing even as I recognize that part of its appeal is the fact it is an anomaly, the striking exception to the rule of today’s political world.

I did a little research to uncover who this enigmatic Derek might be. What I found surprised me. He’s hardly your typical politico.

Derek Penwell is a Christian Church pastor in Louisville, KY. He is a published author and earned two theological degrees, a Masters of Divinity and a Doctorate of Divinity from regional seminaries as well as a Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Louisville.  He has also been a part-time lecturer in humanities and theology at two local  colleges.

All of that shows up in his ad. I am struck by both the nobility of his thinking here as well as how jarring it will sound in the ordinary political discourse of our time driven by cynicism and soundbites. And yet, we badly need critical thinking visionaries like Penwell, Even so, I would guess the probabilities of his electoral success are at best limited.

 That said, his ideas are worth serious consideration.

 Unity Is Never an End in Itself

 

Norman Rockwell, Four Freedoms (1943) 

 Penwell makes this salient point worth your consideration. To wit:

            Unity isn’t an end in itself. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were largely unified.  

The southern states were unified in defying the federal government and in fighting for the enslavement of other human beings—and again for the next 100 years of Jim Crow in working to keep the ancestors of those same human beings out of power and “in their place.” Our country was mostly unified in thinking that pursuing a war in Iraq was in our national interest…. Any unity based only on the felt need to get along is merely a cease-fire. It doesn't address the underlying causes of division; it just promises to act as if there were no division

 A superficial unity which is ultimately nothing less than the  absence of immediate conflict is nothing more than a fragile façade overlying the conflicts that lurk below the surface awaiting their opportunity to surface and be heard.

 Demanding unity in the face of injustice is not virtue; it is an attempt to avoid the issues at hand. It is at heart a demand for the constant comfort to which the beneficiaries of our consumerist culture have been persuaded they are entitled. And in the end, it compounds injustice with a coerced dishonesty.

 

Hank Willis Thomas, Four Freedoms ( 2019)

Penwell is hardly the first to observe this. In 1972 Pope Paul VI told the world: “If you want peace, work for justice.” More recently, the Black Lives Matter movement has put it even more succinctly: “No justice, no peace.”

An obsession with imposing a superficial unity at all costs seeks to preserve the comfort of those who are the beneficiaries of the status quo by stifling the dissent of those who bear the costs of that benefit. No one likes conflict. But living under a patina of “unity” when you are the target of injustice quickly becomes an unbearable burden. And in the end, no real unity exists in such a situations. It is merely conformity to the demands of those demanding comfort.

A Political Ad Actually Worth Reading

 Penwelll’s entire ad is worth considering and I offer it below. It will take about four minutes to read. I also provide his Facebook account link at the end of the ad.

I offer it with the awareness that this man is running as a Democrat in a state election in a very red state of Kentucky (represented by Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell). Thus his willingness to paint the Democratic Party in noble terms is hardly surprising. And it is not particularly difficult given the alternative the Republican Party increasingly manifests today.

I also readily admit that I am less sanguine these days about that Democratic Party in which I am still registered given its inclinations to be beholden to large corporate interests. (Yes, Joe Manchen, I am talking about you) When Democrats sell out to fundamentalist market forces, that only offers voters the choice of two corporate parties -  a Hobson’s Choice on a good day.  

I applaud Penwell’s idealism in pointing us in a new direction. If nothing else, it is a refreshing change from the tsunami of money driven campaigning we currently endure as we spend our mornings deleting these ads from our emails, phone mails and recycling them from our postal service.

As I always say, we can do better. But to do so we must end our willingness to acquiesce to a toxic status quo and dare to think differently. Derek Penwell offers us a good example of how that can happen. But let him tell you himself: 

The Unity We Really Need (Derek Penwell KY House ad)

 

 

If we know anything from our cultural and political experience over the past 5 years, it’s that our country, our state, our neighborhoods are divided. In fact—and despite the irony—if we could unite on anything, it would probably be that there is no unity.  That kind of division leaves us all feeling embattled. Even a trip to Kroger or the doctor’s office holds the prospect of an unpleasant encounter with people who see the world all wrong—at least from our perspective. It feels like the longterm prospect of disunity is something that we have to solve—perhaps at any cost.  But I want to raise with you the potentially frightening possibility that unity isn’t the first thing that we ought to worry about.  What do I mean?  Unity isn’t an end in itself.  Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were largely unified. The southern states were unified in defying the federal government and in fighting for the enslavement of other human beings—and again for the next 100 years of Jim Crow in working to keep the ancestors of those same human beings out of power and “in their place.” Our country was mostly unified in thinking that pursuing a war in Iraq was in our national interest.  If enough people are wrong together, that’s unity. But I think we can all agree unity in that case isn’t a good thing.  I don’t want you to misunderstand me: unity is something we should aspire to, something we should want. But for unity to be moral, it has to be accomplished in the service of some larger good. In other words, positive unity—unity based on our moral values—comes not from agreeing to agree, but from agreeing to do the right thing.  Any unity based only on the felt need to get along is merely a cease-fire. It doesn't address the underlying causes of division; it just promises to act as if there were no division.  After all, what is the common ground upon which we might build a unity between People of Color and White Supremacists? How do we successfully bridge the chasm between LGBTQ people and homophobes and transphobes? To which bar of adjudication may we retire to settle the matter of whether it is morally permissible to throw little kids in cages?  When faced with injustice, oppression, and exploitation, sometimes the best thing is to refuse to settle for an easy unity that papers over profound moral differences.  Americans, Kentuckians, have no stake in unity for its own sake. We should invest our passion in unity for the sake of protecting the weak and the vulnerable, in unity that allows us to exercise empathy and compassion for those different from us, in unity that reminds of us our responsibility to one another, in unity that empowers people to live equitably in a just society.  Empathy, protecting the vulnerable, responsibility toward our neighbors, and empowerment for everyone—these are “Big D” and “small d” democratic values. These are the kinds of values we ought to be uniting around.  Politics always begins with the question: What is the moral thing to do? And that question is driven by an even bigger question: What kind of world do we want to live in, to pass along to our children and their children?  We begin with a picture of the world we want—and work backward from there. Generally speaking, Democrats unite around a vision of the world where we look out for one another, not just for ourselves.  ·         A world where everyone has enough, not just those who have the wealth and power to take what they want and leave the scraps for the rest of us to fight over. ·         A world where everyone is welcome, not just those born White, middle class, and straight. ·         Democrats find unity in a world where women don’t have to wait around for a bunch of men to tell them what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. ·         A world where people don’t have to declare bankruptcy because they can’t afford the treatments that save their lives. ·         A world where labor is recognized as wealth creators, instead of always defaulting to management as job creators. ·         A world where immigrants and refugees are celebrated for the gifts their presence brings us, rather than as alien invaders who drain our resources. You know, this is a free country. People can do what they want .I mean, people have the right to invite whomever they want to invite, and work to keep out whomever they want to keep out. People can turn the other way as our Black and Brown siblings live in fear for their lives and the lives of their children from the very people who are supposed to protect and serve them.  People can look at the world and think that freedom is a constitutionally protected license to be selfish—to do only what they want to do, with no responsibility for anyone else.  Folks can help to make a world where some eat and some do not, where some are welcome, and others are rejected—a world where “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” wind up having to huddle somewhere else … where your wretched refuse have to teem on some other shore—across the cafeteria, on the other side of town, next to the garbage dump, in the closet ... out of sight.   People can do all that—but, let’s not kid ourselves, it’s not an America Democrats have any stake in, not a world Democrats can unite around. We have to hold out for something better, even when—perhaps especially when—it hurts us to do so.  Our unity is a sign of our persistent commitment to doing the right thing when so many other people are determined to do the wrong thing.  That’s what sets us apart. That’s what makes us Democrats. That’s what makes us Americans.    https://www.facebook.com/drderekpenwell/

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Harry Scott Coverston

 

Orlando, Florida

 

frharry@cfl.rr.com

 

hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

 

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

 

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

 

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

 

© Harry Coverston, 2021

 

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