It's time for Sunday Salon. Usually this is space to talk about what we're reading. This time, my post is related to something I have had college courses in, and have read more than once: The Constitution of the United States. Most especially, this relates to some of the best words ever written in any document establishing a government:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
These rights are being threatened in the United States as they have seldom been threatened before, most recently by incidents in Minnesota, the shooting of American citizens in American streets by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) troops. I want to call ICE "brown shirts," after Hitler's Sturmabteilung (SA), but Cezary Jan Strusiewicz says ICE is not like the SA.
"And when ICE agents aren’t wearing their vest-and-hat starter kit, they dress up as civilians. They’ve been known to pretend to be utility workers (electric company, gas, even delivery drivers) to trick people into letting them into their houses. Do you think the Brownshirts ever bothered with ruses? Hell no. They were proud of being fascists."
So with these tricks and ruses, maybe ICE is more like the KGB.
Anne at My Head is Full of Books wrote this Sunday on the recent incidents in Minnesota. She charges each of us:
Now I urge you: to find out what your church, synagogue, temple, mosque, or other community centers are doing to end the trouble with ICE and how you can send financial or physical support. Figure it out and publish your actions on your blog. It is time for us behind the scenes book-bloggers to get activated! We can't sit this one out.
She describes the latest pronouncement on the incident by her denomination, the Presbyterian Church. Though I am off my feed about organized religion as an old woman, I was raised Episcopalian and am proud to say so with their stands on a number of issues in our nation today. Here's what Episcopal leadership has to say:
In an evening letter to the church, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe referenced Matthew 4:12-23, the Jan. 25 Gospel reading, saying Jesus understood the divisions sewn “when earthly powers persuade human beings to fear one another, regard one another as strangers, and believe that there is not enough to go around.”
“In our time, the deadly power of those divisions is on display on the streets of Minneapolis, in other places across the United States, and in other countries around the world,” he said. “As has too often been the case throughout history, the most vulnerable among us are bearing the burden, shouldering the greatest share of risk and loss, and enduring the violation of their very humanity.”
And not unlike vulnerable communities, Episcopalians can no longer expect to practice their faith without risk; the Constitutional right to peaceful protest comes with deadly risk, he continued.
“In the coming years, our church will continue to be tested in every conceivable way as we insist that death and despair do not have the last word, and as we stand with immigrants and the most vulnerable among us who reside at the heart of God. We will be required to hold fast to God’s promise to make all things new, because our call to follow God’s law surpasses any earthly power or principality that might seek to silence our witness.”
I have communicated my horror and disgust at these incidents in Minnesota to my senators and representative, to the governor and legislature of my state. This is no time for "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot." These are indeed "times that try men's souls," and women's souls, too.
I served my country in the United States Coast Guard, in which I took an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." I hold myself still bound by that oath.
RESIST!
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