You all
know I’m kinda a partisan hack. The
Iraq War radicalized me and this blog, which up until July 5th,
2003 was simply a place where I posted religious thoughts and poetry. I railed
against the Bush administration for 5 years, worked my first election in 2004
when I thought the Democratic Party’s mediocre candidates, John Kerry and his
philandering VP, could steer America in a better direction. I bought the
Obama hype hook line and sinker, and kinda still do. Before this election I
gave 3 reasons why I supported Hillary
over Trump.
So, you
know on a visceral partisan level, I am sad blue lost to red. Steelers beat
Ravens, Oakland beat Denver. And if that was all this was, who cares, right?
Then people out there protesting are like sports fans whose team lost
the game.
But there
is something else that is going on that goes well beyond partisan politics, and
I hope most Republicans and Libertarians would agree that American needs to
stand-up against. In this first week after the election—Wednesday to
Wednesday—the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that there were 437
instances of harassment based on race, religion, country of origin, gender, etc.
This compares to an
average from 2013 of 114 instances a week (to be clear I don’t know how
best to compare how the FBI and the SPLC label these things). That’s almost a 4-fold
increase!
This uptick
in hateful acts is so noticeable that our Bishop
wrote a letter addressing this issue, first to the clergy, then passed it
on to everyone in the New Jersey Synod. Here is an excerpt:
“Regardless
of who you or your parishioners voted for, we all must denounce this behavior.
As the body of Christ, we are called to stand with those whom God loves and
claims as God's own cherished children. We are called to speak out when we
witness acts of hatred. We are charged to eradicate racism in all its forms,
welcome the refugee and immigrant, and work for justice and peace in all the
earth. There is no place for bigotry in our church… We need to risk our own
safety in order to step up and tell them they are wrong. We need to examine our
own prejudices and biases and confess our own sinfulness. By our actions, we
will witness to the truth as expressed by Bishop Desmond Tutu: "Goodness
is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than
darkness; life is stronger than death".”
And before
we think this is just another media freak out. Two quick personal stories.
1. A couple who are friends of mine are wondering if they
should go home for Thanksgiving to Upstate New York, because there have been 3
anti-Semitic incidents in their home town, and they wonder if they and their
children will be safe.
2. There was an incident between a server and a customer at
Trolley Car Diner right next to my seminary in Philly—a common hang out for
Seminarians and a great place to get ice cream in the summer.
The incident is a she-said-she said kind of thing (here,
here, and here
are 3 different stories about the incident). Post-election a customer came in
with Trump gear; the server said snide things she shouldn’t have said. The
owner of Trolley Car disciplined the server.
The next morning the same customer came in again. The
customer said she was “checked” by the server. The server and owner said the
customer purposefully snuck up behind the server and when the server turned
around from her table she accidently bumped into the lady.
Then, Jack Posobiec, the Special Projects Manager of
Citizens for Trump, showed up and tweeted to his 60,000 followers that they needed
to do something about Trolley Car Diner. Since then the owner of Trolley Car
has received so many death threats and the building arson threats, that they
had to disconnect their phones. Some of these threats have been explicitly anti-Semitic,
for example, referring to the owner’s last name, “'Weinstein,' eh? Interesting name. Very oven-worthy."
So, I’m
saying this simply, these attacks are wrong.
They go
against the faith of Jesus Christ.
They go
against, as well, the highest values of our society.
Winning, or
losing, an election never justifies hate, never justifies violence.
Those who
would use the election of Donald Trump as a platform for peddling the dead and
deadly ideology of white supremacy are wrong.
To those of
you who are inclined to these evil deeds, listen to the President Elect
himself. Stop It!
