In the hilly neighborhood around our home, radio reception is spotty. So often I’ll get a surge of Mozart followed by a news clip: “USAID funds cut,” then a swirl of Vivaldi and “World’s Richest Man Stops Feeding World’s Poorest Children.” It’s enough to make one’s head spin, but may be an accurate reflection of the world in which we live.
So, with dizzying channels probably due to my tech incompetence, I was driving to an Oakland elementary school where I’d volunteered to read for Black History Month, one small step to combat racism. It’s a delight to see the welcoming committee of spit-and polished fifth graders, hear first graders correctly identify Rosa Parks, and when asked what this month meant, admire the beaming response of a kindergartener: “It celebrates US!”
One of the books for older children was Above the Rim, How Elgin Baylor Changed Basketball by Jen Bryant. Beyond Baylor’s formidable athletic prowess, he led a revolution which the book parallels to students training to integrate the schools and lunch counters of the south nonviolently. The Lakers team, touring West Virginia in 1959, found “Whites Only” signs at restaurants and hotels. To their credit, they refused to stay or eat in places that wouldn’t admit Elgin, their team member. The fifth graders and I agreed that our favorite scene was Elgin sitting on the bench at a game, wearing white shirt, tie, and dress slacks.
Fans who’d paid to see the game were grumbling that they wouldn’t see his famous shots, but he replied, “I’ll suit up and play when you treat me like a human being.” Newspapers and the NBA took note, quickly creating a policy that teams wouldn’t stay in hotels that discriminated. I cheered the success of that movement, then looked for parallels today. We can play two channels simultaneously in terms of time, too, our own era starting to sound like Baylor’s. The issue is the same: the dignity the Creator gives every human, and the current official contempt for human rights.
But resistance is bold: for instance, Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego who will soon move to DC, (the pope who appointed him must have a sense of humor—or justice) decrying the White House crackdown on undocumented immigrants: “We must speak up and proclaim that this unfolding misery and suffering and, yes, war of fear and terror cannot be tolerated in our midst.” “We must speak up and say: ‘Go no farther’ because the safety … humanity of our brothers and sisters, who are being targeted, are too precious in our eyes and in God’s eyes.”
On February 11, Pope Francis, who rarely engages in national affairs, weighed in to support the U.S. bishops, reminding everyone that Jesus, too was exiled, fleeing to a foreign land and another culture, his life in jeopardy. “The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” the pope wrote.
On another topic, Alistair Dutton, secretary general of Caritas Internationalis, head of the Catholic Church’s global charity arm said: the decision to gut foreign aid is “reckless” and will likely “kill millions of people and condemn hundreds of millions more to lives of dehumanizing poverty.” “This is an unhuman affront to people’s God-given human dignity, that will cause immense suffering.” To the billionaire making these cuts, foreign aid — which makes up less than 1% of the annual federal budget–must look like chump change.
Two themes interplaying with McElroy, Pope Francis and Dutton sounding like Mozart and Vivaldi. In every era, the light and dark mix—and one hopes desperately, more voices like theirs and Elgin Baylor’s will protest loud and clear. As this is written, it’s unclear how the courts’ intervention will affect the power grab, but sounding direct and forceful as Beethoven, Judge John Coughenour of Washington responded emphatically to the attempt to end birthright citizenship, enshrined in the 14th amendment. “I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, and this is a blatantly unconstitutional order.” Amen!
Kathy Coffey 