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rights justice
Love From Violence and the Beloved Community
The point I’m struggling to make in this moment is that love— in the deepest possible meaning of the word—is more powerful than growling dogs and firehoses and jail cells.
May 26, 2024
We will not evolve into the future with closed minds.
And nothing closes the human mind—either individually or collectively—like the weapons of war . . . and the freedom to use them. Step one: Dehumanize those you’re about to kill (i.e., accuse them of being who you are, as exemplified by, among so many others, our old pal George W. Bush, who declared that America’s enemies “view the entire world as a battlefield” and proceed to turn the entire world into a battlefield).
But there’s a far deeper irony here as well—a positive irony, according to Martin Luther King. Consider the fourth of his six principles of nonviolence:
“Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform. Nonviolence accepts suffering without retaliation. Unearned suffering is redemptive and has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities.”
This is not yet a principle that has entered the collective human consciousness. It is not a principle at the core of mainstream news coverage of conflict, which remains linear in its scope: who’s winning, who’s losing. This is the case even though King’s nonviolent civil rights movement structurally transformed racist America. It defeated Jim Crow not by killing the segregationists but by . . . caution: this is going to sound crazy . . . not by fighting back but by loving back.
“While abhorring segregation, we shall love the segregationist,” he said in a 1963 sermon. “This is the only way to create the beloved community.”
Oh my God, the “Beloved Community”? No one talks about this – certainly not at the level of politics and national or global power. The point I’m struggling to make in this moment is that love—in the deepest possible meaning of the word—is more powerful than growling dogs and firehoses and jail cells. It is more powerful than burning crosses. It is more powerful than 2,000-pound bombs. It is the force that is able to embrace conflict and transcend it—and it should be at the core of how we envision the human future.
There are three kinds of love, according to MLK. There’s romantic love (eros) and affectionate or friendship love (philia), and then there’s agape love, which he has described as “understanding, redeeming goodwill for all, an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative . . . the love of God operating in the human heart.”
Why is love generally reduced to a geopolitical sneer word? In war reporting, it’s flicked away like an annoying mosquito. But perhaps it’s the most powerful force on the planet—and we have access to it!
In King’s words: “Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people. . . . It begins by loving others for their sakes” and “makes no distinction between a friend and enemy; it is directed toward both. . . . Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community.”
This is a world with a $2.4 trillion collective military budget. It’s a world with some 12,000 nuclear bombs (implements of mutually assured destruction). It’s a world obsessed with what it hates, what it fears and what it wants to control. Yet what makes life possible is community, which is an organic structure. Why are we much more interested in the destruction of communities than their creation?
“The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption,” King noted. “The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness.”
And yes, the Beloved Community is an endless, ever-evolving, organic creation. It is not declared by fiat. We all play roles large and small in creating and sustaining it. And suddenly I’m thinking about an incident that happened to me about a dozen years ago, one night after I’d gone bowling with some friends. My driveway was inaccessible because an accident a few days earlier had damaged my next-door neighbor’s garage, so I had parked a few blocks from my house and was walking home.
What happened was that three, or maybe four, boys came running at me out of nowhere—out of a “hole in the night,” as I later called it. One of them punched me, knocked me down. All the while, they were having a helluva good time. They wouldn’t let me get up. I called for help, braying like a goat (so it seemed). They ran away. I was left with a bruised cheekbone but hadn’t been robbed. That was it. I walked home.
Beloved Community? Yes, yes, it was, and is, present in my imperfect, Chicago life. I was very much involved in the concept known as Restorative Justice—a unique way of connecting with people, which I have written about numerous times over the years. We sit in a circle; everyone has a chance to talk: to tell their stories. It can be, simply, a means of getting to know people, but primarily it’s used in the aftermath of harm or wrongdoing, as a means of healing.
A few days after the attack, some of my friends in the Restorative Justice community held a healing circle for me. We sat in loving connectedness and everyone talked about times they had been afraid, times they had been harmed, how they had transcended the moment. Oh my God! I was not alone. We sat for two sacred hours. I was almost in tears.
As I wrote in my journal the next day: “This feels so much bigger than the occasion that brought us here.” I later thought of the circle as a form of alchemy, a means of creating gold out of harm. If my attackers had been caught, oh, I would have loved to hear their stories and understand why they did what they did (and know they learned the affect it had on me).
“Real power occurs in silence,” I wrote, “the silence of reaching out, listening, understanding. And as I talk to people about my encounter, as the flow of love begins to heal the emotional rift, I feel a silent determination grow inside me to stay the course of peace.”
As I say, this was over a dozen years ago. That sense of determination, the belief in agape love and the ongoing creation of a Beloved Community, both locally and internationally, is still fully alive in my soul.Keep ReadingShow Less
Brazilian Supreme Court Delivers 'Historic Victory' to Indigenous Peoples
The court ruled against the Big Ag-backed "time limit trick," which would have only recognized Indigenous land claims if the group could prove they were living in a given territory on October 5, 1988.
Sep 22, 2023
In a major victory for Indigenous rights, Brazil's Supreme Federal Court rejected an argument Thursday that could have forced hundreds of thousands from their ancestral lands.
The so-called "time limit trick," backed by the nation's powerful agricultural interests, would have only recognized Indigenous land claims if the group could prove they were living in a given territory on October 5, 1988, the day the current Brazilian constitution was signed, as Survival International explained. The proposed rule ignored the fact that Brazil's military dictatorship displaced many Indigenous groups before it finally ended in 1985, The Guardianpointed out.
"I'm shaking," Jéssica Nghe Mum Priprá of the Xokleng-Laklano Indigenous group toldThe Associated Press while celebrating the news. "It took a while, but we did it. It's a very beautiful and strong feeling. Our ancestors are present—no doubt about it."
"The Supreme Court has shown that it cares about our lives and that it's against genocide."
The particular case the nation's highest court heard Thursday involved a land dispute in the state of Santa Catarina, Reuters reported. The Xokleng people were driven from much of their traditional lands in the state during the 1950s, when Brazil sold the land to tobacco farmers, the outlet explained in 2021. Santa Catarina then used the 1988 time limit to push more members of the Xokleng group out of a national park, prompting the current dispute.
"Before they killed us with guns, now they kill us with the stroke of a pen," former chief João Paté told Reuters in 2021.
However, the court on Thursday ruled 9-2 in favor of the Xokleng.
"Areas occupied by Indigenous people and areas that are linked to the ancestry and tradition of Indigenous peoples have constitutional protection, even if they are not demarcated," Justice Luiz Fux said.
The only two dissenting judges were appointed by right-wing former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who supported extractive industries at the expense of Indigenous rights.
The court also said that the decision had "general repercussion" status, meaning it would apply to other rulings involving Indigenous land claims.
"This is a momentous, historic victory for Brazil's Indigenous peoples, and a massive defeat for the agribusiness lobby," Survival International research and advocacy director Fiona Watson said in a statement, adding that a broad application of the time limit trick would have threatened many Indigenous groups in the country, among them the uncontacted Kawahiva.
"It was all part of a devastating assault on Brazil's Indigenous peoples and the Amazon rainforest, so this rejection of it is hugely important, not only for Indigenous peoples, but for the global fight against climate change too," she said.
Indigenous peoples gathered in Brasilia celebrated the news with dancing and weeping, The Guardian reported, as did those following the case from their homes in the Amazon region.
"We're crying with joy," Aty Guasu, an organization representing the Guarani group, said in a statement translated by Survival International. "Today we're going to sing the song of life and dance the dance of joy. The Supreme Court has shown that it cares about our lives and that it's against genocide. It has listened to the cry of the Indigenous peoples of Brazil."
National Indigenous rights group APIB also welcomed the decision, but said that there were other pending threats to Indigenous rights.
"We have indeed emerged victorious from the time frame thesis, but there is still much to be done," the group's executive coordinator Dinamam Tuxá said in a statement.
Tuxá pointed to a bill currently in the Senate that would only allow new reservations in land occupied by Indigenous groups as of 1988, as Reuters described it. While the court decision may make this provision harder to pass, the bill would also ease the way for mining, farming, dams, and transportation projects in Indigenous territory, AP explained.
"We remain mobilized," Tuxá said. "We continue to fight because we need to ensure and protect the rights of Indigenous peoples."
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Is Supreme Court's Latest Voting Rights Ruling Really That Good? Read the Fine Print
Jun 19, 2023
It’s always important to read the fine print. This sage adage applies not only to credit card applications, auto loans, and mortgages, but also to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court.
At first glance, the Court’s ruling in Allen v. Milligan, released on June 8, appears to be a far-reaching victory for voting rights. In a 5-to-4 majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court struck down Alabama’s racist new Congressional map for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965.
Numerous commentators have praised the decision. Upon close inspection, however, the ruling is narrow in scope, preserving a vital part of our most basic national voting law only by the slimmest of margins. Worse, the decision may turn out to be short-lived.
The blocked Alabama map was drawn up by the state’s legislature in November 2021 based on data derived from the 2020 U.S. Census. Although Black residents comprise roughly 27 percent of the total population, the map created only one Congressional voting district out of seven in which they would hold a majority.
Advocacy groups represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU sued to block the map, arguing that it contravened Section 2 of the VRA, which bans any “standard, practice, or procedure” that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen . . . to vote on account of race or color.”
The groups also contended the new map ran afoul of the Supreme Court’s past precedent decisions that date back to the 1980s and outlaw “racial gerrymanders.” Such gerrymanders occur when a state uses race as the primary factor in redistricting to dilute the voting power of minority populations by either “packing” them into super-majority districts or “cracking” them into several white-majority districts. The Alabama map is a classic instance of packing.
Joined by the Court’s three Democratic appointees and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Roberts issued a statutory decision in Milligan, agreeing that the Alabama map violated the Court’s past decisions on Section 2. But he did not write approvingly of those decisions.
More importantly—and here is where the fine print comes in—Roberts added a gratuitous observation at the end of his opinion that all but invites future Constitutional challenges to Section 2, writing: “The Court’s opinion today does not diminish or disregard the concern that [Section] 2 may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power within the States. Instead, the Court simply holds that a faithful application of precedent and a fair reading of the record do not bear those concerns out here.”
In his concurring opinion, Kavanaugh also issued a warning to voting rights advocates, asserting that the protections against racial gerrymandering under Section 2 “cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”
The crimped nature of the Milligan decision is consistent with Roberts’ track record. It is not a departure.
In truth, John Roberts has never been a friend of voting rights. As a young lawyer working in the Reagan Administration, he authored several memos criticizing the VRA.
In 2013, as head of the nation’s most powerful judicial body, he composed the majority opinion in Shelby County v. Alabama (2013), which gutted provisions of the VRA that required state and local jurisdictions, mostly in the South, with histories of egregious voter discrimination to obtain advance federal approval—known as “preclearance”—before making changes to their election procedures. Roberts declared in Shelby that racial discrimination in voting practices was essentially over, writing that “things have changed dramatically” since the 1965 passage of the VRA.
In 2019, he continued his anti-voting-rights crusade, writing the majority opinion Rucho v. Common Cause, which removed the issue of political gerrymandering (the practice of designing voting maps to benefit the party in power) from the jurisdiction of federal courts. And in 2021, he joined a 5-to-4 majority ruling penned by Justice Samuel Alito that upheld Arizona laws prohibiting out-of-precinct voting, and criminalizing the collection of mail-in ballots by third parties.
Don’t get carried away thinking that Roberts has changed his political stripes, or that his widely touted commitment to institutionalism means that he is prepared to stand up long-term to the Court’s hardcore rightwing bloc led by Justice Clarence Thomas.
Still, any liberal victory in today’s Supreme Court is noteworthy, and for that, we can breathe a sigh of relief. As a result of Milligan, the Alabama legislature will have to redraw the state’s voting map to include either an additional majority African American district or create new districts in which African American voters are more evenly distributed. The ruling could also bolster racial gerrymandering litigation underway in other states, although each contested voting map will have to be adjudicated on its own merits.
But don’t get carried away thinking that Roberts has changed his political stripes, or that his widely touted commitment to institutionalism means that he is prepared to stand up long-term to the Court’s hardcore rightwing bloc led by Justice Clarence Thomas. Roberts is also an ultra-conservative. He just favors a slower, more gradual approach to the erosion of fundamental rights. Death by a thousand cuts, if you will, rather than a bullet to the back of the head.
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