Author: mopress

Two quick responses from the CounterPunch audience. Both stand clearly on the side of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The first one is short and sharp:

is the rev. wright not a truth sayer? are not his arguments entirely valid here? politically they may be a disaster for obama, proof that all his talk about hope and cooperation is spurious in a racist society.

The second reply opens with a question: was I likening Sen. Obama to Saint Peter when I said that he denied Rev. Wright three times with the phrase ‘as if’? Well, I was thinking about the three denials that are recalled during the Christian holy week. Then the reader turns to liberation theology:

The mostly secular mainstream didn’t want to hear about liberation theology when Latin American Christian base communities were being slaughtered with weapons and training provided by Uncle Sam, and most won’t want to hear about it now. Nevertheless, when it comes to Truth, there is always and everywhere no time like the present.

Thank you for pointing out the parallels between Liberation Theology and the theology of certain African American pastors. And now in the Spirit of the Season, some food for thought from an Arab Christian:

‘Persecution does not make the just man to suffer, nor does oppression destroy him if he is on the right side of Truth. Socrates smiled as he took poison, and Stephen smiled as he was stoned. What truly hurts is our conscience that aches when we oppose it, and dies when we betray it.’ — Kahlil Gibran

To both readers, thank you. Without contradicting anything you have said, I offer an experiment in hope, that an ethic of toleration might be applied toward a more respectful treatment of Rev. Wright than the one we have thus far witnessed from too many parties and players in the Great American Presidential Election Game–gm

From today’s Austin American Statesman:

Charles Laws, a water company executive whom local officials are calling on to resign, on Friday defended his decision to characterize a proposed detention facility for illegal immigrants as a “holding pen for w*tbacks.”

Laws said “w*tback” is widely acknowledged to mean immigrants who swim the Rio Grande and enter the United States illegally, not American citizens. Laws said the term is not racial, an assertion that others dispute. He said he wishes he had not used the word in an agenda item for the Creedmoor-Maha Water Supply Corp.’s board of directors but will not resign over it.

From yesterday’s KLBJ News:

According to Laws and other Mustang Ridge city officials, the proposal is to build a 1,000 bed facility that would employ approximately 200 people. Laws says the firm is interested in being within 30 miles of the Austin Bergstrom Airport, so that the detainees could be flown back to their countries of origin.

City officials tell us the proposal is to build a family detention center, much like the T Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, which is run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). That facility is run by the private jail firm to house immigrants and their children who have been detained by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers.

According to attorneys who represent people held in T Don Hutto, some of the detainees say they are in the U.S. seeking asylum from persecution. The large majority of the immigrants are not from Mexico or South America. Many are from South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Canada. The roughly 400 adults and children are held in the facility until their on-going immigration hearings are complete. Williamson County is named as the administrator of that contract, and receives a fee per inmate per day.

In December of 2007, Emerald made a proposal to the Caldwell County Commissioners Court to build a facility in north-east Caldwell County, between Lytton Springs and Dale.

Toleration and the American Pulpit

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / OpEdNews

What happened to Rev. Wright’s religious freedom? Sen. Barack Obama’s ‘race speech’ continued to presume that Rev. Jeremiah Wright deserves no special consideration on grounds of religious freedom. On Easter Sunday, perhaps, Americans will want to consider whether the pulpit at church deserves any special respect.

A cable newscaster on Good Friday asked in a tone of voice that expressed her wide-eyed naivety: “What is liberation theology?” Having covered the news for many years, and having covered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright thunderstorm for two weeks, it was still a question that she had not bothered to research. And frankly, I don’t want to experience that learning curve as part of my continuing coverage of the Presidential campaign.

I doubt that the summer of ’08 will be the time to provide a sufficient, good-faith answer to the question of liberation theology or how the black social gospel is spiritual grandfather to these momentous American movements. Such an attempt at national education played out upon our contemporary media landscape would likely morph into witch-hunt.

Sen. Barack Obama appears to agree with this assessment. The Senator’s public review of Rev. Wright’s oratory during Tuesday’s ‘race speech’ did not mention either keyword, neither liberation nor theology. And yet, Rev. Wright has asked that these be the key words applied to any serious assessment of his work.

Because it would likely be a poisonous time and place for the adult discussion that liberation theology requires, I think Obama’s judgment call is valid as he tries to move public discussion around the issue of liberation theology rather than through it.

However, I think there is a stronger argument than Obama’s for going around Rev. Wright’s oratory as a campaign issue. The stronger argument is that the American unity that Obama claims to want will require some faith in the principle of religious toleration.

Since it is liberation theology that is required to understand Rev. Wright, and since theological agreement is precisely the kind of thing that should not be required in the context of public policy debates, then it is time to agree that when Rev. Wright speaks from a pulpit in a church, it is better that a tolerant society back off of his comments as a Presidential issue.

There is some sophistication in the careful wording of Sen. Obama’s speech, which hints that he knows the difference between theology and policy discourse, even as he confines Rev. Wright’s oratory upon a two-dimensional plane of public policy. The clues are in the repeated uses of the phrase ‘as if’: “he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country . . . is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.”

Sen. Obama has three times denied the truth of his own pastor with the phrase ‘as if.’ But is not the theological function of prophetic speech to talk precisely ‘as if’? Public policy may spend long hours concerning the need to ‘store up’ resources for long-term planning. But does that dismiss the value of the prophet who walks up and says: “You fools, not tomorrow, but today, your souls are required of you!” As if there is no time.

Although it is unlikely that the cable news cyclists would respect calls for religious toleration in behalf of Rev. Wright, I think that toleration is the better argument for moving on.

The argument from toleration has the benefit of refusing to flatten theological oratory onto the plane of policy-speak. And if we achieve this act of toleration for Rev. Wright, then we will strengthen the three-dimensional life of spiritual language for all theologies (or anti-theologies), and maintain a more healthy distance between church and state as a precious resource for everyone’s freedom of worship in a robust democracy.

Not only do the continued houndings of Rev. Wright exemplify racialized ignorance, as Sen. Obama argues, but they also tighten the bands of religious intolerance that have too broadly constricted our national character for at least the past seven years. On this issue, perhaps, another great speech needs to be written that would restore Rev. Wright to the dignity that any theologian deserves when his name is dragged through the galleries of public-policy clamor.

NOTE: Article revised for OpEdNews (Easter Sunday, 2008)

(March 20, 2008) The attorney for Albanian refugee Rrustem Neza reports that US immigration authorities have resumed questioning his client directly, in violation of procedures that require them to notify legal counsel.

On the same day that attorney John Wheat Gibson expressed his concern in writing, he received an order from the federal district court of Abilene closing the case that sought to dope and deport Mr. Neza.

“I would appreciate it if you would explain to your client that it is unethical to communicate directly with an adverse party who is represented by counsel without obtaining the consent of counsel,” wrote Gibson to Assistant US Attorney E. Scott Frost of Lubbock. “In this case, your client did not even notify me of his intent to communicate directly with my client.”

Gibson explained that immigration authorities have asked Mr. Neza, to fill out a questionnaire with information that they already have.

After sending the letter, Gibson received a copy of the federal court order, dated March 20, closing the case that had attempted to get court permission to dope Mr. Neza for the purpose of deporting him in a submissive posture. Efforts to place Mr. Neza on a commercial airplane in 2007 were turned back because of his loud protests.

Mr. Neza has been seeking asylum since two of his cousins were killed in the aftermath of the assassination of Albanian Democrat Azem Hajdari. Mr. Neza fears that the same faction that killed his cousins and Hajdari will kill him, too.

Mr. Neza’s efforts to remain in the USA took a turn for the better when he was recently released from a year’s imprisonment at Haskell following a US House of Representatives Subcommittee Hearing that ordered a report on his case.

“It is clear that your client’s attempt to communicate [with] my client is nothing but a charade, so that the Bureau of Customs and Immigration Enforcement can tell the Congress that it conducted an ‘investigation,’ when, in reality, it has no intention of investigating anything, but only intends to rubber stamp the refusal of other bureaucrats to allow Mr. Neza to present his case for asylum to an immigration judge,” wrote Gibson in his letter to the US Attorney’s office of Lubbock.

The House Subcommittee on Immigration ordered the report in connection with a special bill filed in Mr. Neza’s behalf by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Nacogdoches).

For more information on Mr. Neza’s case and Rep. Gohmert’s efforts to help him, please see the Texas Civil Rights Review index of documents, “Saving Rrustem Neza.”–gm