Civil & Human Rights

I have the pleasure of serving on the Board of Directors of the Auburn Seminary. For over 200 years Auburn has identified and strengthened leaders – from the pulpit to the public square – to build communities, bridge divides, pursue justice, and heal the world. In October 2021  Rev. Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson was named President of Auburn.

One of Auburn’s core values is ‘truth telling’  –the belief that powerful communication, giving voice, and listening deeply, are critical to manifesting a new reality.  Please find below powerful words of reflection Emma shared today as we relive the horrendous acts of a year ago and the devastating impact it will have on the future of our country and all of our lives. Today let’s not sit idle, but take the opportunity to answer the clarion call for each of us to ‘trouble the waters’; to earnestly work to achieve reconciliation, peace, and justice in order to manifest a new reality and heal the world.

Kim

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In the United States of America, January 6th is the day that a sitting president unwilling to accept the will of the people and intent on remaining in power, incited a mob to violence at the People’s House. It was a failed attempt at a coup. Failed for now, I should say. History has shown us what happens when countries have ignored the same, when they cheapened the call for healing by holding no one accountable for rupture and breach. I remember watching the footage of the violence at the Capitol one year ago and thinking that this tragedy may not just be about lies and disinformation. Maybe the violence that unfolded before us on that day was also one of the many consequences of our inability to sit with and hold truths.

Truth-telling and truth-holding is the work and imperative of our times because there can be no justice and no peace – no life and flourishing – that does not begin there. Equally as imperative is the relief we need from weaponized truths.

As you face today – January 6th – I offer you a poem Maya Angelou read at the United Nations some years ago – “A Brave and Startling Truth.”  I’m including the video because who can resist the peace of her regal image, who can resist listening to her commanding voice? May the hope, possibility, and truth she invokes in her poem inspire us to show up today, wherever we are today and with whatever is the work given to our hands today, with a hunger for a more authentic connection with each other and a willingness to work for a world where all belong.

Here’s the video of Maya Angelou reading “A Brave and Startling Truth.”

Because the news and media will be showing the violent footage nonstop today, I encourage you to take good care of yourselves, friends. If you want to be in community, you might also sign up to attend one of the many virtual Democracy Vigils taking place across the country this evening.

Sending love and New Year Light,

Emma Jordan-Simpson

President, Auburn Seminary

It is the definition of exhaustion: debilitating and humiliating, to live your life in and among symbols that celebrate the belief that you are inferior, lazy, and immoral, even bestial. Buildings, streets, schools, parks and public spaces that honor men who simultaneously progressed and profited on the backs of the very ingenuity and diligence that you have persistently and resiliently deployed.

Over your lifetime – and that of your great grandmother, grandmother, children and grandchildren – you learn to overlook and avoid these hurtful symbols, becoming numb or maybe compartmentalizing them in your mind as “the past,” something that your own experience has by now taught you is not always pretty or deserving of remembrance. You assess your progress, your blessings and your own wonderfully diverse friends who you know don’t feel that way. You ground and reground yourself by remembering that the need to subjugate you has always been driven by a fear of you and the greed of others.

This is what it feels like to go to Lee Elementary school or (Stonewall) Jackson Park, walk on Stone Mountain or sit in rooms lined with grim, framed visages of pale men who reviled you (I’ll never forget when I learned the history of Joel Hurt, who built the building in which I worked for nearly 15 years. As documented in “Slavery By Another Name,” by Douglas Blackmon, Hurt cavalierly built his wealth and fame on the backs of black convict labor, harshly disciplined and cruelly deprived of their most basic civil rights. I loved that building and thought (still think) it gorgeous. Yet from that point on, every click of my heel on those marble floors brought to mind the clang of chains on men who looked like my husband and brother).

Then Charlottesville happens and you’re reminded that to many these symbols do in fact mean the SAME thing today as they did 200 years ago.

All sheroes and heroes are not created equal. While Lee may have been a brilliant strategist, it matters that he honed his skill by fighting to keep a nation in chains. Appreciating the fruits of men who broke ground on a new Atlanta must be reconciled with their tearing apart of families through an organized system of human chattel.
So you say “enough.” Enough of avoided conversations and living surrounded by these ugly reminders and smiling through it. So you act. You speak up, cry, and march. Sometimes the emotion goes too far and you lash out destructively.

And then you are criticized for not being civil enough and adequately containing your pain. For not successfully monitoring the pent up frustration and being your most noble self. You’re accused of equal responsibility, impact and intent as those who advocate the same hateful perspectives of those whose names adorn the walls and corners that shout their disdain.

It feels familiar. Blame the Victim. Deflect. Discourage. Discredit. The table’s now turned.

The script has flipped.
First published February 16, 2018 at http://edgeofopportunity.blogspot.com/