ERACISM Minute 10/3/2020 Claire Lending

 Hello, I am Claire Lending and I am going to talk youtoday about Michelle Obama’s early life based on her book Becoming. As I talk, I ask you to think about the racist system she had to face.

 

Michelle Obama grew up in Chicago’s South Side living with her parents and brother on the top story of a house owned by her Mother’s Aunt and Uncle. Her father worked for the government, but they could not afford their own house. As a young child her neighborhood was middle class and racially mixed. In Michelle’s kindergarten class a boy was earning gold stars for being able to read the names of colors. Michelle was very competitive so she studied at home so she could earn gold stars too. In second grade Michelle’s teacher was incompetent; the children were unruly and labelled bad kids. Michelle complained to her mother who then went to the principal and Michelle ended up moving with one other girl in the class to a newly formed joint 2nd/3rd grade class of high performing students. (Now she looks back and wonders how the rest of the children in that second grade classfared.)  Every year when Michelle showed up for school there were less White kids on the playground. Some transferred to the Catholic school but more left the neighborhood altogether and the schools reflected this. 

 

Michelle tested into a magnet school for high achieving high school students. She had to take a one hour city bus ride each way which meant she gave up sports and family time. She was at first not sure she belonged in the new school, but she worked hard and ended up in the top 10% of her class. She went to her counselorearly in her Senior year to discuss college. Michelle said she wanted to go to Princeton; the counselor discouraged her and said Michelle was not really Princeton material. But Michelle was stubborn. Her brother went to Princeton on a track scholarship and Michelle knew she was smarter than her brother. 

 

Michelle applied and got into Princeton. When she firstarrived, she thought other students were looking at her and thinking she was just an Affirmative Action choice. However, when she earned an A- average her first semester, she knew she belonged. Michelle found a community at Princeton and did well, then applied and was accepted at Harvard Law School. 

 

After graduating from law school, Michelle got a job at a prestigious law firm in Chicago doing intellectual property law work. One summer she was assigned an intern from Harvard Law. As soon as she saw him, she knew why he was assigned to her; he was Black. However, this turned out well as the intern was Barrack Obama.

 

Michelle did not stay in the job with her high salary. She wanted to give back. She took a big pay cut to work in Mayor Daley’s office and has continued to work for the public good since then.

 

As I read Michelle Obama’s story, I wonder how different my life would have been If I were Black and had grown up in South Side, Chicago.  Even though I am a college professor in the male dominated field of Finance, I very much doubt that I would have had the courage and determination to overcome the barriers that Michelle Obama faced.

ERACISM Minute 10/11/2020 Henry Ohana

 

The 13^th amendment was passed in December of 1865.  The text of that amendments reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”  This loophole was immediately exploited and many of the newly freed slaves were imprisoned for minor crimes such as loitering or vagrancy.  Thus, slave labor was allowed to continue and the notion of the “black criminal” was created.

 

This system of labor allows states to maintain their reliance on forced, uncompensated or undercompensated, and predominantly Black labor to this day.  Cheap prison labor is a powerful labor market incentive against criminal justice reform.   Private corporations are incentivized to lobby for policies that maximize prison populations in order to sustain a business model that is only profitable because they can exploit artificially deflated labor costs.

4100 corporations profit from prison labor and every state, except for Alaska, has a state-governed prison industries initiative.

 

Most inmates are engaged in in-house work within correctional facilities, such as food service and laundry, however around 63,000 inmates work in prison industries which produce goods for external sale. Work ranges from farm production and manufacturing to call centers and distribution services.  Those Idaho potatoes you may eat?  Prison labor.  McDonald’s containers, cutlery, and employee’s uniforms?  Also - prison labor.

 

Usually inmates are not “required” to work; however the consequences of not working are harsh.  They may lose their “privileges” such as family visits or even may end up in solitary confinement.  If the prisoners are paid, they can earn as little as 74 cents a day and are often required to pay for basic items such as soap, deodorant, and shoes. Inmates can have 80% of their measly pay taken for taxes, room and board, and restitution.

 

Here are some companies to avoid if you don’t want to support prison labor

Meeting Minutes 10/5/2020

 

BUF Black Lives Matter Ministry Action Team

Business/Planning Meeting:  October 5, 2020

 

Present:  Mary Aldin, Genia Allen, Murray Bennett, Lauralee Carbone, David Curley, Claire Lending, Cat McIntyre

 

1. Eracism Minutes. 

10/11   Cat will ask Hank Ohana

10/18   David Curley

10/25   Lauralee Carbone

11/1      Cat McIntyre (about 8th Priniple 'whereas' statements)

 

2. Program for Oct. 12.  Kaitlin Davis will complete the three-part series, "Difficult Conversations. Genia would like to repeat this series in the new year, perhaps with facilitators.  This could also be a 'meet up' topic. 

 

3. Program for Nov.  9. Subject will be a talk by Ibram X Kendi. Genia encouraged whomever presents this to use enhanced audio. Lauralee and Genia will coordinate the technology, with help from Kevin Allen-Schmid. 

 

4. Phone Tree Report. Genia reports that she and Henry Ohana completed the phone tree list. It will initiate by Cat McIntyre calling eight people who will then each call 5 or 6 others. Calls will be selected for urgent actions that require a quick response. An example would be local shooting with vigil the same night.

 

5. Eighth Principle Update.  Five more listening sessions have been set up through November 8. Kara Black did a session on Sunday, Oct. 4 for Chalice Circle facilitators.  Two frequent questions are the format of the resolution, particularly concerning: 

a.    Accountability

b.    Whereas statements -- does one have to agree with all the statements to sign on to the principle? and

c.     Where is BUF regarding Beloved Community now, and how would that change under 8th Principle?

Upcoming Eracism minutes will address these questions.

 

6. Meeting with Whatcom Co. Prosecutor. Lauralee put together a power point presentation, some of which she showed to the group. Hank Ohana is working to add Grass Roots Law's Four Demands. Once the presentation is edited to focus on 2-3 items that the prosecutor has power over and could effect change, Lauralee will arrange the meeting.  Several people are interested in working on this, including Kara Black, who has already met with the prosecutor, C2C and Restorative Justice. The point of our meeting will be: although we are all white, we have a moral stance, we are allies, we care and we vote. 
 

Next BLM Program meeting: Oct 12 at 7 pm

Next BLM business/planning meeting: November 2 at 6 pm

 

Respectfully submitted,
Cat McIntyre, co-facilitator, BUF Black Lives Matter Ministry Action Team

ERACISM Minute 9/13/2020 Lauralee Carbone

 

ERACISM MINUTE

September 13, 2020

Lauralee Carbone

As I sit here, the Air Quality Index hovers around 200 here in Bellingham. Last week it was over 400 in California’s Central Valley where I grew up, and last night it was over 600 in Portland. We are all connected by our air and water.

I want to talk this morning about Environmental Racism, the intersection of racial discrimination in environmental policy making, the enforcement (or lack) of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants, and the history of excluding people of color from leadership of the ecology movements. It stems from the legacy and the history of residential segregation which includes practices of redlining, zoning, and colorblind adaptation planning, hence causing disproportionate effects on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color).

African-Americans are 75 percent more likely than other Americans to live in so-called fence-line communities, defined as areas situated near facilities that produce hazardous waste, like oil and gas refineries, incinerators, smelters, sewage-treatment plants, landfills and petrochemical plants.

A study found that Black Americans are subjected to higher levels of air pollution than white Americans. While socioeconomic status was an important correlation, race was the most significant factor. Black Americans are exposed to 1.5 times as much of the sooty pollution that comes from burning fossil fuels as the population at large. This dirty air is associated with lung disease, asthma, heart disease, cancer, and now Covid-19. The urgency of this environmental crisis has been hastened by climate change and has now gathered speed and attention as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the current racial-justice movement.

From the American colonists’ earliest encounters with the indigenous people of this land—what they call Turtle Island—Native wisdom has warned against the unsustainable practices of exploitation and extraction. We need to think of climate change as a series of ecological catastrophes caused by colonialism and an accumulation society. Our First Nation sisters and brothers help us see that we cannot save the planet without first reconstructing the systems that have overlooked and marginalized non-white people from their inception. There is no Green New Deal without a Third Reconstruction, as Rev. William Barber calls the organized change that needs to happen.

To further quote his article, “We cannot separate the question of whether we can survive together on a warming planet from the question of whether we can redeem the promise of liberty and justice for all in this nation. We are, in the powerful image from the biblical story of Noah’s ark, all in the same boat. A future free from the polluting economy of extraction is inextricably tied to a future free from the systemic exploitation of white supremacy, and this future requires reconstruction and transformation. When we are willing to look honestly at our history to understand the foundations of interlocking injustices, we can see in that same history examples of multiracial movements that have worked to reconstruct America from its very beginnings.

We are all connected in this interdependent web of existence, as our 7^th principle reminds us. We need the 8^th principle to remind us of our interconnectedness to each other in Beloved Community.

https://lithub.com/rev-william-j-barber-ii-on-the-scourge-of-environmental-racism/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/magazine/pollution-philadelphia-black-americans.html

https://www.naacp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Fumes-Across-the-Fence-Line_NAACP-and-CATF-Study.pdf

https://www.diversegreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Green_2.0_Retention_Report.pdf

Eracism Minute 9/7/20 Barbara Gilday

Eracism Moment Sept. 7, 2020

This morning, I’d like to share the evolution of my experience regarding racism.

I grew up in a conservative town in a conservative family in Ontario, Canada.

There were no people of color – diversity was Catholics, Protestants and Jews.  

Before I graduated from University, I realized that my upbringing had been narrow and I came home and told my parents I was going to Africa to teach.  My mother’s response was: “You are not!”  But I did.  I knew I needed to expand my horizons, and this seemed like a good way to do it.

My takeaway from Ghana was Ghanaians are welcoming, generous and good humored.

 

Some years later, after living in the sometimes subtle, sometimes not subtle American behaviortoward blacks, I was sitting in the parking lot of Macy’s at South Center Mall, when I saw a white man running, followed by a black man and woman.  I assumed he was being attacked.  Turns out, he had stolen something and was being chased by security guards.  I was ashamed and shocked by my assumption.

 

At a church dinner around the same time, someone told a racist joke.  I think we were all stunned, but no one said anything.  I did gather up my courage and talk to him at church the next morning. It was progress.

 

Fast forward a few years and was co-teaching diversity classes in Seattle and running a peer tutoring program with inner city, mostly children of color, tutored by suburban kids, all white.  For many, it was their first experience of a relationship with a person of another color and developed some very sweet bonds, and academic improvements of both the younger and the older children.

 

In the same time period, my daughter, Andrea was talking about a friend of hers at school.  Later she showed me a picture of her.  My response was: “Oh, she’s Asian.” Andrea’s response: “So”? You see, I was celebrating her embracing diversity, whereas she took it for granted.

 

In Nigeria in 2005 on a Global Citizen Journey, I met Judy, who later immigrated to the US.  We had become good friends in Nigeria and continued the friendship here.  

 

Today, I’m mentoring my friend Judy, who has decided to develop support groups for black girls in schools in NY city using the Compassionate Listening model she learned on Whidbey Island, and other leadership skills she learned in Landmark Forum.

I’m also a new member of the Black Lives Matter team at BUF and I’m listening to Podcasts to educate myself and sharing what I’m learning with others.

 

Each one of us is on our own path, but to become whole, as individuals, to restore our soul as a nation, our challenge and opportunity is to start, at whatever place we are on ourjourney and grow into more accepting, fulfilled human beings and communities. I’d like Black Americans to be able to freely express their welcoming natures, their generosity and their good humor, without having to always look over their shoulders in fear. We would all be the better for it, wouldn’t we?

Thank you.

ERACISM MINUTE 8/23/20 & 8/30/20 Henry Ohana

In 1870 the 15^th amendment was passed which explicitly stated that states could not bar citizens from voting based on “race, color, or previous servitude”.  Newly freed black people came out in masses to vote and there was a brief period known as the Reconstruction where many black officials were elected into state and federal political offices.

 

This was not tenable to whites in power and soon they began to create laws that prohibited people from voting for reasons other than race but were specifically targeted against people of color.  Literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright mob violence were used to suppress black voters.

 

In 1957, Eisenhower signed into law the Civil rights Act which was the first attempt at rectifying this situation.  However, this was not enough.  In 1965 the Voting rights acts was passed with the goal of remedying these issues.  A core special provision is the Section 5 preclearance requirement, which prohibits certain jurisdictions from implementing any change affecting voting without receiving preapproval from the U.S. attorney general or the U.S. District Court for D.C. that the change does not discriminate against protected minorities.

 

Now, new ways to suppress black voters were needed.  More and more states began implementing laws that restricted the rights of former felons to franchisement.  Although not directly naming race, with the rising “law and order” governments, blacks by the hundreds of thousands began losing their rights to vote.

 

In 2000, the national election between Al Gore and George W. Bush came down to one state: Florida.  The person who is in charge of all voting in any state is the Secretary of State.  In Florida, it was Katherine Harris.  She was also the Chair of the George Bush campaign.  She hired a private firm to purge the voter rolls of any felons and they were told to use “loose parameters”.  They needn’t worry if the middle initial, the spelling of the name, the DOB, junior or senior – and even sometimes race or gender – didn’t match.  They were to purge those names from the voter roles.  In 1 county 690 people were removed from the voting roles.  When an independent review came along to follow up on this, they discovered only 33 of the 690 were actually previous felons.  There’s no need to go with what happened because we all remember that catastrophe.

 

In 2008, after the Republicans lost the White House, they began organizing on a local and state level very successfully.  By voting Republicans into the State Legislature they could effectively control the voting districts and racist gerrymandering escalated.

 

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the section of the Voting Rights act that required states to get approval from the Attorney General before changing any laws regarding voting and voter’s registration.  Right away, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia enacted voter ID laws.  Other states added other various restrictions such as showing proof of citizenship.

 

The governor’s race in Georgia in 2018 shows what happened as the results of restrictions.  One of the candidates, Brian Kemp, was also the State Auditor and therefore in charge of the vote.  He began purging the rolls.  On one night in July 2017 he purged over ½ million people from Georgia’s voter rolls!  Voters from Democratic Counties were purged at over 4 times the rate Republican counties were.  When the day for the actual election came, many, many polling sites were closed thereby making voting unavailable for many and inordinately unfair waiting times for those who could reach a polling place.  As one example, in Randolph Co which is 95% black, 7 out the 9 polling sites were closed.  For those who were able to make it, many were turned away because of “exact match” requirements.  If the voter’s name didn’t match EXACTLY what was written on the roll they were not allowed to vote.  Latinos and Asians were 6 times as likely to not have an exact match and African Americans were 8 times as likely.

 

Now we’re faced with the 2020 election and most of us are already worried about the ability to vote and make sure those votes are counted.

ERACISM MINUTE and Message 8.16.2020 Lauralee Carbone

 ERACISM MINUTE

Good morning! I’m Lauralee Carbone and this is an Anti-Racism Minute. I am listening to Ibram X. Kendi read his book, How to Be an Antiracist and I quote him this morning:

“The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘antiracist.’ What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.’ ”

Journeying Toward a Beloved Community: Enacting the 8th Principle

8/16/2020

Good morning! Two weeks ago, Paula Cole Jones and Bruce Pollock Johnson zoomed into our Sunday service from their homes in the eastern U.S. to present their experiences as writers and developers of the 8th Principle back in 2013.  

Ah, have you forgotten already what the 8th Principle is? It’s not a short one that rolls off your tongue like the other seven, and that’s ok. It’s a bit different and I’ll go into why that’s important. 

The 8th UU Principle reads: “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”

Ok, I see your wheels turning out there. Questions popping up. First off, why isn’t the UUA adopting this for all congregations? Why do we need to do this congregation by congregation? Because that’s how we do things now, from the ground up, not top down. Over 2 dozen congregations have adopted the 8th Principle since its rollout at the 2017 General Assembly and endorsed by Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism and Diverse Revolutionary UU Ministries and supported by the Allies for Racial Equity the UU white ally group. Let’s just say a LOT of UUs have been working on this for many years, nationwide. The Black Lives of UU encourages all Unitarian Universalists to advocate for the formal adoption of an 8th principle, articulating a commitment to the dismantling of white supremacy, within the stated principles of our faith.

Alright, now let’s take the Principle apart and look at some of the terms it includes. Okay, it speaks to dismantling racism and other oppressions. Why racism? At a global level, this would not necessarily make sense (for instance, the oppression of women is fundamental to poverty and lack of development in many areas), but in the USA, racism stands out. Racism in the US stems from chattel slavery, where people were uniquely legally treated as property that could be inherited, for something (skin color) they had no control over. It also causes oppression among Latinx and indigenous peoples.

The 8th Principle speaks to journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community. What’s THAT, you ask. Beloved Community happens when people of diverse racial, ethnic, educational, class, gender, sexual orientation, and backgrounds/identities come together in an interdependent relationship of love, mutual respect, and care that seeks to realize justice within the community and in the broader world. Wow, that sure sounds like a worthy goal!

But wait, what about that accountably part?  White UUs hold themselves accountable to communities of color, to make sure whites do what they say they will do. Black UUs hold each other accountable and help each other see and dismantle signs of internalized racism. 

In conclusion, our existing 7 Principles imply this 8th Principle, but do not explicitly hold us accountable for addressing these oppressions directly, especially at the systemic level. UUism has great potential for building diverse multicultural Beloved Community as envisioned by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but it won’t happen without conscious awareness and effort on our part. Dismantling racism, white supremacy, and other oppressions requires work at the personal and institutional levels.  

The UU Principles were designed to be dynamic, not a fixed creed.  It means we want to always continue to be educating ourselves, exploring truth, and raising our consciousness.  When we get to a new level of understanding and clarity, our structure makes it possible to reflect that.  UU is the only religion that intentionally builds in that flexibility to acknowledge the importance of ongoing revealed truth.  This happened when environmental awareness reached a critical mass and got added as a 7th Principle.  We are approaching a similar critical mass level of awareness with the systemic nature of racism and other oppressions.

None of the other Principles mentions love; by having “Beloved Community” in the 8th Principle, it brings our commitment to love higher in our consciousness, consistent with our Standing on the Side of Love campaign.

The 8th Principle is really just the beginning of action, rather than the ultimate goal.  It should lead to restoring funding and support for Anti-Racism trainings for any UUs who want them and the other programs, as well as starting an anti-racism version of the Welcoming Congregation program that was so effective for LGBTQ awareness and progress.  Many people of color have been attracted by the values and potential of UUism, but their souls have been repeatedly wounded by its whiteness.  Let’s make our actions match our values.  Let’s be a UU movement that feeds them.  That would be spiritual wholeness.

Now I’d like to introduce you to the team here at BUF that has been working on promoting the 8th Principle: Mike Betz, Kara Black, Beth Brownfield, Deb Cruz, David Curley, Cat McIntyre, Henry Ohana, and me, representing four Ministry Action Teams under the Social and Environmental Justice Committee, along with Karen Nuckles-Flinn, who is our Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator on the Healthy Relations Team. We’ll be joining you later in our interactive breakout groups. 

Now here to guide us in meditation is Kara Black.