Black Lives Matter - STAND UP!

Willie Spence, Stand UP

American Idol, April 19, 2021

STAND UP

by Jame17

November 7, 2018

Stand Up

and let your voice be heard 

Stand Up

for the rights you believe in 

Stand Up 

having a strong voice you will surely win

Stand Up

whites blacks all colors of the world 

Stand Up 

all of our people should come together 

Stand Up

break the cycle of division 

Stand Up

unity is what we strive for 

Stand Up

one clear mind we need it more and more 

Stand Up

don’t shut me out 

Stand Up

i’ll scream and shout

Stand Up

until you see that we are one 

STAND UP

In a country that has systematised the oppression of black lives from the institution of slavery to peonage, lynching, Jim Crow, segregation, mass incarceration and police brutality, #BLM provides the church an opportunity to proclaim the gospel that announces the end of oppression. | Image: Scott Olson / Getty Images

https://jessicazannini.com/2016/01/06/stand-up-a-poem-for-black-history-month/

Poem About Standing Up For What Is Right

https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/united

Hi, I am a thirteen-year-old girl who has been secretly writing poetry since fourth grade, and I'm really glad you came to read my poem! This poem that I wrote is called "United" because I wanted to write a poem that was inspiring and could mean something to everybody out there. Stand up for what you love and what you know is right because in the end that is what will matter. I hope "United" can inspire you, and I really hope you like it. Remember to follow your dreams! 

United

© Erica More By Erica

December 2017

Do we stay silent

Or raise our voices?

Do we give in

Or make our choices?

This is our chance.

This is our threat.

This is our choice.

And we're not finished yet.

We stand together

And await the light.

This is our chance,

This is our fight.

Here we're standing,

United and strong.

We're not giving this up.

We're not moving on.

This is our voice;

This is what we came to show.

This is our choice,

And we're not letting go.

This is our word.

You give what you get.

This is our world,

And we're not finished yet.

We stand beside you,

Ready to pay our debt

We stand united

Because we're not finished yet.

Children are born every day,

Waiting for someone to trust.

Dreams are dreamed every day

But left alone to rust.

Raise your voices; stand up tall.

You know this is unjust.

Make your choices; stand from the fall,

Because dreams are counting on us.

I know that you are scared to be strong.

You have every right to be.

Show the dreamers that you care.

Come and stand with me.

Think of our future; think of the truth.

Think of the lives we share.

Think of our beginnings; think of our youth.

We're all just a kid from somewhere.

Standing together, holding hands,

We all came from the same place.

Joined, we are forever;

We are running the same race.

Stand with me; we're not through yet.

We are getting what we gave.

Hand in hand with me, strongest together.

This can all be saved.

This is like our lifetimes;

This is more than just a game.

This is more than just the money,

More than ourselves, more than fame.

Speak up for what matters,

Because now it does; this love is caving.

Speak up before we shatter.

Think of all the dreams we're saving.

There are kids like us in Texas,

Out in Utah, up in Maine.

There are kids that are the future Crosby,

Skinner, Matthews, Kane.

From the mountains, valleys, cities,

Suburbs, hamlets and countryside,

There are the children of this future.

All around us they reside.

On the Pittsburgh Penguins, Boston Bruins,

The Canes and Minnesota Wild.

We often forget that before they were champions,

Each one was just a child

They once stood watching,

Dreaming with this light inside their eyes.

Together we can save that light,

And return it to more lives.

Here we're standing, grasping hands;

Here we're standing strong.

This time we're not giving in,

And we're not moving on.

THIS is our voice;

This is what we came to show.

This is our choice,

And we're not letting go.

This is the world we live in.

You must give what you get.

This is our word we're giving.             

We're not finished yet.

We stand together, united.

This is our chance to repay this debt.

We stand beside you all, united.

We're not finished yet.

 

Poem of the Week for: 2018-02-27

This week's Poem of the Week, "United", is particularly poignant as we respond to yet another mass shooting. Because, this time, something long thought impossible is happening. Young people across the country by joining together United are breaking cultural and political barriers and making their world a better place. Wishing all of us the inspiration to join together United to make positive change in our own worlds!

 

Stand Up by Cynthia Erivo

Lyrics

I been walkin'
With my face turned to the sun
Weight on my shoulders
A bullet in my gun
Oh, I got eyes in the back of my head
Just in case I have to run
I do what I can when I can while I can for my people
While the clouds roll back and the stars fill the night

That's when I'm gonna stand up

Take my people with me

Together we are going
To a brand new home
Far across the river
Can you hear freedom calling?
Calling me to answer
Gonna keep on keepin' on
I can feel it in my bones

Early in the mornin'
Before the sun begins to shine
We're gonna start movin'
Towards that separating line
I'm wadin' through muddy waters
You know I got a made up mind
And I don't mind if I lose any blood on the way to salvation
And I'll fight with the strength that I got until I die

So I'm gonna stand up
Take my people with me
Together we are going
To a brand new home
Far across the river
Can you hear freedom calling?
Calling me to answer
Gonna keep on keepin' on

And I know what's around the bend
Might be hard to face 'cause I'm alone
And I just might fail
But Lord knows I tried
Sure as stars fill up the sky

Stand up
Take my people with me
Together we are going
To a brand new home
Far across the river
Can you hear freedom calling?
Calling me to answer
Gonna keep on keepin' on

I'm gonna stand up
Take my people with me
Together we are going
To a brand new home
Far across the river
Do you hear freedom calling?
Calling me to answer
Gonna keep on keepin' on

I'm gonna stand up
Take my people with me
Together we are going
To a brand new home
Far across the river
I hear freedom calling
Calling me to answer
Gonna keep on keepin' on
I can feel it in my bones

I go to prepare a place for you
I go to prepare a place for you
I go to prepare a place for you
I go to prepare a place for you

Harriet Tubman

Eloise Greenfield

Harriet Tubman didn't take no stuff

Wasn't scared of nothing neither

Didn't come in this world to be no slave

And wasn't going to stay one either

"Farewell!" she sang to her friends one night

She was mighty sad to leave 'em

But she ran away that dark, hot night

Ran looking for her freedom

She ran to the woods and she ran through the woods

With the slave catchers right behind her

And she kept on going till she got to the North

Where those mean men couldn't find her

Nineteen times she went back South

To get three hundred others

She ran for her freedom nineteen times

To save Black sisters and brothers

Harriet Tubman didn't take no stuff

Wasn't scared of nothing neither

Didn't come in this world to be no slave

And didn't stay one either

And didn't stay one either

Catherine Keller - "I Can't Breathe"

Police and court officers stand guard in front of Manhattan Criminal Court as
protesters demonstrate against the the death of George Floyd. | Source: AP

“I can’t breathe”: The whole Earth

echoes the cry for justice

ABC Link

by Catherine Keller

June 8, 2020

Sometimes a metaphor turns into a metaforce. “I can’t breathe” — the cruelly literal words of Eric Garner turned into a metaphor for the condition of black lives in 2014. When those words were repeated by George Floyd, the repetition of the same pattern of police brutality unleashed an immediate and unrelenting national uprising, unprecedented in its global solidarity for racial justice. Its metaforce will not be contained.

Look at what the very phrase contains, working subliminally, with an eerie depth resonance: “I can’t breathe” writes itself across mass demonstrations at a moment of mass death by a disease that kills by asphyxiation. We’ve known for weeks that COVID-19 kills with an obscene discrimination — African Americans are dying from the virus at three times the rate of white Americans.

The fact that George Floyd tested positive for coronavirus does not alter the charge of murder. But the coincidence is rife with epochal meaning. It amplifies the mounting cry for a justice that would not just check police violence, but transform an economic system in which black and brown people disproportionately lack adequate medical care and live in asthma-producing neighbourhoods with polluted air, zones of greater industrial pollution and fewer trees to absorb the excess carbon.

In its specific American manifestation, but also at its origins, the virus presents not just as a medical but as an ecological crisis. Of course, at this moment the pandemic has fallen into the background of the demonstrations. The masked marchers are taking a knowing risk. But they are not being reckless; theirs is the courage of a priority. If the virus spreads from these mass gatherings, the tragedy of this epoch will be intensified. But the virus will not quell the metaforce of a race, a people, a world, running out of breath.

Do the discriminatory brutality of the police and the racial impact of the pandemic together warn of the suffocation of our very world? A global eco-asphyxia? It turns out that breathlessness is no mere metaphor for the dangers of global warming. Many of us do not realise that there is a profoundly discomfiting materialisation of breathlessness on the horizon. We may not know that phytoplankton — microscopic organisms forming the oceanic base of the food chain — produce at least half, and possibly 85 per cent, of the oxygen we breathe. The phytoplankton seem to be steadily succumbing to ocean acidification driven by climate warming. “I can’t breathe” could be the cry of the entire human species by the end of the century.

My point here is precisely not, “Never mind the issues of one race; save the human race.” It is rather that the metaforce of breath will not go away. And neither will the resistance to the systemic mechanisms of suffocation, symbolic and material, that control much of what we call civilisation. That resistance is becoming insistent. The more mindfully it can carry the intersections of race with ecologies human and nonhuman, the more powerfully the metaforce can materialise.

This does not mean watering down the message of black lives mattering. It means supporting it on all sides — in its particularity. Political changes need the clarity of this particular crisis. They do not need us to get trapped in a zero-sum game of competing issues. But the choices of priority get devastatingly difficult. As a biologist and climate expert recently wrote, in view of the fact that already disproportionately more black and brown consider climate change a crisis than white people do: “Look, I would love to ignore racism and focus all my attention on climate. But I can’t. Because I am human. And I’m black. And ignoring racism won’t make it go away.”

Being human right now will mean embracing the mattering of black lives along with the living matter of our planet. A growing mass of us must be — may already be — learning to hold the intersections, the planetary connections, in consciousness, the knowing-together that fosters a broad enough coalition, and therefore a deep enough transformation.

At this point, another register of breath appears. Call it spiritual. A lot of us practice yoga, or some sort of mindfulness meditation. We know that breath is not some airy metaphor, but the rhythm of life itself. The aching force of “I can’t breathe” can be felt in the pores of your body right now, with each inhalation, each exhalation. Slow them down. Take them deep. You may practice a yoga of world-solidarity with every breath. And in the Western traditions, there lingers still the Hebrew ruach, the Greek pneuma — both ancient words for “spirit,” which mean first of all “breath.” The old Holy Ghost comes haunting our politics.

It just so happens that the President’s posing with the Bible to sanctify policies of police brutality took place on the day after Pentecost. Pentecost commemorates the moment when, as the Book of Acts tells it, the Holy Spirit as wind blew the disciples out of hiding and into the public to demonstrate. The pneuma, instigating planetary solidarity, breathed into them every known language.

The metaforce of breath inspires and conspires. It can also expire. Is it the “Breath of Life” itself — the very life of the manifold, mattering lives of the Earth — that now echoes the cry, “I can’t breathe”?

*Catherine Keller is George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. She is the author of Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World, Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public and the forthcoming book, Apocalypse After All?

A Christian Eschatological Ethos of Love

Cornell West Speaks to the Meaning

of George Floyd's Death

George Floyd protests: America is at a 'turning point',

philosopher Cornel West says

Jun 4, 2020

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Harvard University professor Cornel West said the protest movement unleashed by the killing of George Floyd had brought America to a "turning point". He said he was elated by the quantity, the intensity and the diversity of the protests, noting that it had brought people together from every ethnic and religious background. West said the choice was now either the ushering in of "non-violent revolution" to address systemic racism, or the "American fascism" championed by Donald Trump, warning that Trump was playing the race card in order to ignite strife.

The Christian eschatological ethos is to love.

To stand with those who are oppressed.

To stand against those who are oppressing.

- re slater 

What is the meaning of the Kingdom of God?

It is a Kingdom of Love come to humanity.

Reclaiming this earth. Reclaiming by love.

- re slater

A Christian Eschatological Ethos of Love

 by R.E. Slater

June 11, 2020

As the US Congress gathers today to consider creating new laws to promote fairness and equality to the people of America who have endured too long the racism and brutality of their police forces I am reminded of the story of outsiders taking over the passionate vision and hope of the insider.

Too often have I had the experience of forming and promoting an idea to the betterment of an organization I was serving only to see that passion taken over by the leaders, directors, or managers and reduced to skin and bones as a shell of what it could've been.

We've had on display for the past two weeks protest demonstrations against America's police forces which have not served their communities equally or fairly by institutionalizing racism and inequality against the black citizens of America. With the racist deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd the fuse was lit and policing injustice was served on a hot plate of anger around the world.

The protesting voices are the people with a vision and hope for equality and justice. It is their own vision and hope that the outsider, such as the US Congress among many others, who will now pretend to take over and try to fix. Whose organizations will create a few laws, implement a few policies, and say "There, you are free now. There, your equality has come."

But I'm sorry to say passion cannot come by establishing more laws or more "to do items" on the whiteboard of societal ethos. No. All the actions created by the outsider has only dulled the real needs of societies by making a law, or creating a committing, or reforming this-or-that. What it will fail to do is to instill that inner drive within the human breast to live and act out equality and justice in everyday lives of bitterness and racism.

I know of no law on racism that can truly stop the human heart from expressing it. There can be no law, no ruling, no acts by committee, which can ever replace the passion in the hearts of those who cry out for social justice and equitable relationships between one another. It must be a "law" written on the human heart. A law to love. This Jesus has given to us through His atonement and by His indwelling Spirit. That of the love of God which conforms our racists hearts to that of God's love of healing and goodness to one another.

As such, I submit now, that by whatever an organization does or doesn't do - whether by enacting congressional laws, or disbanding and reforming police precincts; whether by business or organisational endeavors of any sort, that it will never be enough. Outsider laws, rules, and common orders of juris prudence is only the beginning of vision and hope but never the end of learning to love one another of all colors, creeds, genders, cultures, ethnicities, and things that make people, people. We must see the person if we are to see them truly.

Call me crazy but if the Lord does not write His love upon our hearts and souls, minds and body, we simply are living outward lies to the inner souls of our being, wishing to act right without being right. It's this societal fakery and lip service we've given to our "good works" which demeans, and insults, the very purpose of our living. And yes, the white church of America has promoted racism as much as anybody else when overlooking that Jesus spoke to the religious who can be the greatest hypocrite of all.

We are to love God, each other, and creation. To live lives larger than ourselves, larger than our Constitution, larger than our Bill of Rights. To live fully devoted beyond any concept we can imagine or think which might liberate and heal another to become greater than they are when receiving an attitude of love all the time, in every place we go, and in every word and action we commit.

Jesus called out the Scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy. He understood the corruption of the soul of humanity's many empires it lives out. He saw the common as the uncommon and named everything a study of God's love needing release through us, His people, as the bearers of God's command to love. 

We cannot legalize it, script it, create creeds and doctrines about it; nor can we live pretend lives mouthing words to it. God's love is what energizes societies to unbearable release and outcome because it must breathe lest it dies.

The message of BLM is that we breathe together as a society that we might live beyond those who would hold hostage our hearts pretending mere words and laws will help us live out what is unwritable, inscribable, uncodeable.

The word love means nothing without extending across our societies in every direction possible even as global protests have expanded this message of equality and justice across the world in vision and hope to live well with one another.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

June 10, 2020

White Evangelicalism At The Protest

Article Link

by Tim Gombis
June 2, 2020

The protest against the brutal police treatment of black people in Grand Rapids Saturday night was a profoundly Christian moment. People came together and walked shoulder to shoulder from across ethnic, racial, and gender lines, and from every social class. They peacefully and passionately advocated on behalf of the powerless to the powerful.

It was the social performance of Jesus’s action in the temple.

As we neared police headquarters, we saw that a street evangelist had set up shop. He stood apart from the crowd by a few feet and had a banner behind him. He was white, maybe 60.

When chants died down near him, he raised his hands to make his pitch. People ignored him and routinely drowned him out with cries of “No justice, no peace!” and “George Floyd, say his name!”

I’d never seen the man before but I know him well. I was raised in the same white conservative evangelical culture that produced him.

He perfectly embodied that culture Saturday night. It’s a culture that encounters Jesus and does not recognize him. It sees the social embodiment of Christian faith and wants to save it. It witnesses the gospel in action and stands off to the side. It waits for the cries for justice to die down so it can make its sales pitch.

Sarah leaned over to me and said she wanted to tell the man that if Jesus were here he would say George Floyd’s name.

Indeed, Jesus was there and that’s exactly what he was doing.

*Tim Gombis. Observations on biblical studies, books, movies, music, sports, culture, and anything and everything having to do with creatively and faithfully reflecting on and embodying Christian identity.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Christian humanism is not a new doctrine but an old observance from time immemorial found in the ancients, the major creeds of religions, the teachings of Jesus, and even today in BLM. It is an attitude, a behavior, a significant and important form of communication with one another. It is built around the word Love.

Too many think of humanism as replacing God. But what if it stood with God in exemplifying divine love and forgiveness? This is what is meant by "Christian" humanism. If religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism were to stay to their roots of grace and peace in God one could imagine a far better world of equality and fairness.

- re slater

Christian humanism sees people for who they are, serving where it can to help and aid. Jesus didn't say to hate the world but not to be corrupted by the world, including the corruption which comes with Christian secularity. A corruption which is silent in the face of racism and supremacy. If I was to chose between the world and the church I'd rather go it alone in God's creation than fellowship with false attitudes and doctrines. The church of God welcomes and embraces all. It does not seek to brainwash, strong-arm, place guilt upon, or shout down all who differ from its inhumane silence seeking power over God's love and weakness.

- re slater

Christian humanism regards humanist principles like universal human dignity, individual freedom and the importance of happiness as essential and principal components of the teachings of Jesus. It emerged during the Renaissance with strong roots in the patristic period.

- Wikipedia

Equitable justice is the right of every man, woman and child.

If this cornerstone of civilization is removed

there will be nothing left save anarchy.

- re slater

US Supreme Court: "Equal Justice Under Law"

Mark 12:30-31 [New American Standard Bible (NASB)]

30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all

your heart, and with all your soul, and with all

your mind, and with all your strength.’ 

31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor

as yourself.’ There is no other commandment

greater than these.”