Daily Archives: June 2, 2023

The following statement was issued May 24 by Joanne Kuniansky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey State Senate.

Around the country Writers Guild members are striking against bosses drive to slash wages and residual payments, and worsen working conditions. I had the great pleasure to join hundreds of Guild members in a spirited New York City rally yesterday.

Teamsters at UPS nationwide are fighting for a contract that ends two-tier wages and for substantial pay raises for part-time workers.

In the last two weeks, United Auto Workers members at the Clarios battery plant near Toledo, Ohio, walked out for better wages and conditions; nurses in Belleville, New Jersey, rallied for safer staff/patient ratios and higher pay; and meatpackers at two Iowa plants have begun union-organizing drives.

Working people in East Palestine are fighting for greater control over medical care and the cleanup of the area after a toxic train derailment there. Theyre winning growing support from the unions.

Bosses count on help from the big-business press to maintain a wall of silence around these fights. My campaign and the Militant strive to build working-class solidarity. All these battles deserve wide support.

Help spread the word! Help involve your union in sending messages of support, visiting picket lines and organizing contributions for these strikes.

Millions are learning from their own experience that politics today is class vs. class. They sense that new winds are starting to blow, and theyre increasingly open to getting involved. Victorious labor struggles set an example.

More workers are also learning they cant look to the bosses political parties the Democrats and Republicans in these class struggles. The employers count on workers believing the only choice they have is to hold their nose and choose the lesser evil between parties that govern for them at home and abroad. But evil is evil. Millions have given up and no longer bother to vote.

Working people need our own party, a labor party based on the unions, that can speak for and mobilize all those exploited and oppressed by capital small farmers and shopkeepers, immigrant workers and more.

A labor party can fight to put in power a workers and farmers government to rebuild society in our class interests. With power in our own hands, we can end the system of wage slavery and join in the worldwide fight for socialism.

The rest is here:

Build support for today's union struggles The Militant - The Militant

Where did work requirements come from?

The idea that people should have to work to receive benefits has been around since the Middle Ages. In the U.S., modern work requirements have roots in racist ideas about what counts as work, who should work and who deserves to be supported when they are unable to work.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mothers pensions were small cash payments designed to help single mothers mostly widows take care of their children. There were no work requirements. In fact, the whole point of these payments was to allow women to stay home to take care of their children. But these payments were overwhelmingly given to White mothers. A 1931 survey found that 96% of participants in the program were White while Black mothers were required to work.

Requiring Black people to work is rooted in slavery. White enslavers consistently portrayed Black people as lazy and unwilling to work even though enslaved people worked almost constantly, which further perpetuated the institution of slavery.

To get the New Deal passed during the Great Depression, a compromise between liberals and conservatives gave states the power to control who received new benefits. Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) was a cash assistance program that replaced the mothers pensions and was designed to help mothers support their children. The program still didnt have official work requirements; instead, local officials decided who deserved assistance. In southern states, where most Black people still lived, those officials regularly gave Black women lower payments or withheld support altogether.

A federal welfare administrator who traveled to the South to understand why so few Black families were enrolled in ADC discovered an intense desire not to interfere with local labor conditions. That worker noted people saw no reason why the employable Negro mother should not continue her usually sketchy seasonal labor or indefinite domestic service rather than receive a public assistance grant.

In other words, this new social safety net simply wasnt available to Black people. They were required to work because the local economy depended on White people benefitting from the enforced low-wage labor of Black people who worked as cooks, laundresses and childcare providers.

In time, states lost the ability to exclude Black people from public assistance based on their own biases. Thats when formal work requirements came into the picture.

As Black families migrated north and started to gain access to public assistance programs like ADC and unemployment insurance, local officials relied on racist narratives to institute work requirements.

For instance, in 1961 amid the Great Migration, unsubstantiated rumors said Black families were moving to Newburgh, N.Y. with the sole intention of receiving public assistance. Newburgh was undergoing an economic decline that had nothing to do with the arrival of new Black residents, but City Manager Joseph Mitchell leaned into racist narratives about Black workers to propose a set of welfare rules that required new residents provide evidence that they had job offers. George McKneally, a Newburgh City Council member, stated his support for the measure, saying, Theres hardly an incentive to a naturally lazy people to work if they can exist without working.

In the decades since the Newburgh proposal, work requirements and accompanying racist framing have become commonplace. Former President Ronald Reagan, who long sought to restrict access to welfare as Californias governor in the 1960s, repeatedly invoked the infamous welfare queen trope in his 1976 presidential campaign and passed strict, punitive work requirements when he became president. By the 1990s, both policy discussion and popular discourse were intertwined with racist narratives and imagery that depicted Black people as the main beneficiaries of the social safety net.

In a word, no. Theres no evidence work requirements help people get and keep good jobs that allow them to support their families. However, theres plenty of evidence that work requirements harm people and take away needed health care and other support systems.

If work requirements are added to Medicaid through the new debt limit bill, thousands of people could lose access to health insurance. Since 1997, adding work requirements to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (cash welfare) has resulted in millions of people losing benefits. And in states like Wisconsin, where the administration of work requirements has been privatized, work requirements are enriching private companies and trapping low income workers in a cycle of poorly paid jobs that dont provide either a living wage or the training to achieve real economic mobility.

So why do Republican legislators continue to insist on these provisions? Work requirements are like many aspects of U.S. social policy: They have little to do with reducing poverty or supporting people in need and everything to do with perpetuating racist narratives.

Nomi Sofer specializes in storytelling for social justice and developing and disseminating antiracist narratives. She is the Project Director for Voices of Reentry and the Associate Director of the Narrative Office at the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.

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Work requirements wont affect the debt ceiling but they will stir up ... - The Boston Globe

North Korea leads the world in the percentage of its population forced to work as slave labor, according to a report compiled by an Australian human rights organization, Walk Free.

Dedicated to campaigning against modern slavery, Walk Free in its newly released Global Slavery Index estimates that more than one out of ten 2,696,000 of North Koreas 25,779,000 people are slaves. That number includes all those forced to work by the state or risk being penalized with hard labor in prison camp.

The countries estimated to have the highest prevalence of modern slavery tend to be conflict-affected, have state-imposed forced labor, and have weak governance, says the report, ranking Eritrea as second with nearly one in ten, with 90.3 of every 1,000 people,or 320,000 people, living in slavery.

The percentages for North Korea and Eritrea are by far the highest of any country, according to Walk Free, relying on its own research and that of the International Labor Organization and the International Organization for Migration. The report estimates the number of slaves worldwide at 50 million as of 2021.

Walk Frees report, though, seeks to create an equivalence between what is going on in North Korea and judicial punishment in America. It does so by including in respect of America, a nation of some 330 million, the estimate that1.1 million persons the vast majority of whom are in prisons after conviction of crimes under American due process or 0.33 percent of Americans, are living in modern slavery.

The report, however, makes clear America ranks low in prevalence of what it counts as slavery 122nd out of 160 nations. In America, involuntary servitude is specifically permitted in the Constitution.

The 13th Amendment ordains that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.

The Walk Free report coincides with a report published by Asia Press, headquartered in Japan, of an increase in the numbers of North Koreans facing poverty and suffering from malnutrition while the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, invests heavily in nuclear warheads and missiles.

Since the start of May, Asia Press quotes a North Korean informant, our neighborhood watch unit has suffered four deaths, all from malnutrition. There are a lot of people suffering from tuberculosis due to malnutrition, says the informant, along with a dramatic rise in wandering homeless people.

The Asia Press report conjures images reminiscent of the mid-1990s when famine and disease killed approximately 2 million North Koreans.

Since April, urban dwellers nationwide are mobilized to work on farms, it says. People are fighting with whatever they have to survive, but market commerce doesnt make any money, and people are too weak to engage in wage labor. People are dying.

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Ten Percent of North Koreans Forced To Work as Slaves: New Report - The New York Sun

MODERN slavery was in the national news last week with a Melbourne couple appearing in court accused of keeping a person in domestic servitude.

Most people think of slavery as something from the past, but, according to Dr James Cockayne, the first full-time, independent Anti-slavery Commissioner in Australia, it still exists.

His role was established by the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (NSW) and includes advocating for and promoting action to combat modern slavery, identifying and providing assistance and support for victims of modern slavery, support to and oversight of NSW public procurement efforts to remove products of modern slavery from supply-chains, issuing codes of practice and maintaining a public register related to efforts to address modern slavery risks in supply-chains and raising community awareness of modern slavery.

Dr Cockayne made his third visit to the Coffs Coast last week, and met with a range of people to discuss modern slavery issues.

He said that the Coffs Coast is one of a number of places of interest in New South Wales, not only because of concerns with agricultural workers but also because of migrant communities with historical issues related to modern slavery.

Forced marriage might be slavery as could the use of international labour with the possibility of forced labour, wage theft and physical and sexual assault.

Modern slavery involves exploiting vulnerable people and there are a range of reasons why people might be vulnerable, Dr Cockayne said.

His office does not have enforcement powers, but has mandatory information gathering powers and can refer victims, and follow up.

He has already assisted victims of modern slavery and helped them get the assistance they need.

However, he said a large part of his work is in the area of procurement.

NSW Government agencies and local councils are required to take reasonable steps to ensure that the goods and services they procure are not the product of modern slavery and Dr Cockayne is currently working with 400 entities across NSW to help them meet their obligations to procure resources not produced from slavery.

An example he gives is cleaning services, which have an element of risk because labour hire companies could be better regulated in NSW and some cleaners might be in debt bondage, with the people whose premises they clean being completely unaware.

Because he can report directly to Parliament, Dr Cockayne also has a role in policy development.

He pointed out that the most powerful weapon against modern slavery is to raise awareness that there is now somewhere for people to share information if they suspect that someone is being ill-treated.

The role is incredibly energising because we have the opportunity to help people, Dr Cockayne said.

His office can be contacted by emailing antislavery@justice.nsw.gov.au

By Andrew VIVIAN

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Anti-Slavery Commissioner visits the Coffs Coast - News Of The Area

If figuring out how much gratuity to leave restaurant workers has you scratching your head, one creator has some tips about tips.

I feel like the tip discourse has reached the mainstream of TikTok, so I wanna talk about it, said Horace Gold (@horacegold) ina recent video that appears to have been deleted from the TikTok app. Prior to being deleted, the video had almost 93,000 views and more than 7,000 likes.

Gold made the video as a response to creator @poorandhungry, who posted about their frustration with being asked to tip on small items like ice cream cones.

Gold explained in his video that he worked as a server for several years in Los Angeles.

His first rule: seldom tipping on takeout orders.

Theyre putting it in a bag. What am I tipping for? Gold said.

The second guideline, Gold said, only applies to states like California, where servers are getting a livable wage, which they define at $15 to $17 plus tips on top. (If youre in a state like Alabama? Just tip them, Gold said.)

I look at that hourly wage like work you do for the restaurant whether there are customers and guests inside or not, Gold said.

He continued, If a guest asks one questionone questionyoure getting tipped, because we dont learn that information for free, b*tch.

You gotta pay for this knowledge. Youre tipping for that knowledge, Gold said.

Commenters had a lot of opinions about tipping.

A lot of places, like coffee & ice cream shops, I will give change if theres a jar. But to ask for tips on the iPad?? no, one person said.

One viewer wrote, I tip everyone so they can have a treat after work.

Another comment read, Most to-go workers make the same hourly as servers, so if they dont get tipped they make essentially nothing.

I work for $2.13 hourly and when people dont tip they dont understand how seriously this affects me, someone commented.

The Daily Dot reached out to Gold for comment via Instagram direct message on Tuesday and did not receive an immediate response.

According to a guide published this year by U.S. News & World Report, current etiquette calls for a 20% tip at sit-down restaurants and 10% for quick-service restaurants. Youll find no shortage of opinions about tipping on TikTok; take the creator who recently said they would no longer tip over 15%.

One commenter wrote on Golds TikTok, Currently working in a country where the idea of tipping is wild. It honestly is so funny how weve been tricked into thinking tipping is normal.

Theres a thorny history to tipping, including wealthy Americans in the mid-1800s wanting to seem aristocratic and people post-Civil War using tipping as an excuse to not adequately pay people recently freed from slavery, according to Time magazine in 2019,

The legality of the practice across the states has gone back and forth over the decades, according to Time.

Currently, the federally mandated minimum cash wage for tipped employees is $2.13, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

*First Published: May 30, 2023, 11:50 pm CDT

Eric Webb is a native Texan and national award-winning pop culture critic, arts & entertainment journalist, and editor.

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Former Server Says Customers Should Tip If They Ask Questions - The Daily Dot

A little-known period of post-slavery life in the Caribbean is being explored in a new exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands.

I say little known, for those involved, its very well known, but often the narrative in the UK about the ending of slavery in the sugar plantations seems to end at that point, and doesnt look at the slavery in all but name that followed on afterwards.

Following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, British planters in the Caribbean devised a new scheme to source cheap labour for their plantations, recruiting workers from India to work for three to five years in return for transport, a minimal wage and some basic provisions. Known as indenture, it was pretty much slavery without the ugly name.

Having successfully petitioned the British government for their support, the first indenture ships to the Caribbean set sail in 1838. Between then and its end in 1917, around 450,000 Indians were recruited to work in the British Caribbean.

A modest display telling this overlooked period of British colonialism has now opened in the Docklands museum, on the top floor at the end of the existing sugar and slavery exhibition space.

There are a few books, some documents and a number of explanatory boards to tell the story of what happened after slavery ended.

A long contract is on display with a display message about whether you think the terms in the contract would be acceptable today. Having asked the question though, it would have helped to display the document in question in a way that it can be read, rather than sideways, and considering the small text size, maybe printed a replica on the wall.

In the end, I took a photo and read it at home on my computer, and I would recommend doing the same as I would say this document is probably the most important item in the collection as the text shows how oppressive indentured workers lives were.

For example, the working day was nine hours, with just 30 minutes for lunch, and having signed a 5-year contract, they were only offered half-price travel back home to India if they worked for 10 years.

Its this difficult to read (physically as well as emotionally) document in the glass case that should be the highlight of the exhibition.

The exhibition, Indo + Caribbean: The Creation of a Culture runs until 19th November 2023 and is free to visit. Its on the top floor of the Museum of London Docklands.

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New exhibition looks at the UK's role in indenture labour - ianVisits

Since the first decade of the 20th Century, Black Greek-lettered organizations have worked to protect the interests and Constitutional rights of African Americans on college campuses and in the communities they serve. Now, more than 100 years later, the 2.5 million+ members of the nine National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) organizations find themselves standing vigilant against Jim Crowesque attacks from those who seek to undermine the foundational freedoms of Black people and marginalized communities across our United States.

Emboldened by divisive white nationalist rhetoric from prominent American political leaders and influential media figures, state and local officials have introduced and adopted laws that target efforts to diminish and/or erase diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at public institutions. For example, Floridas governor recently signed legislation that bans the states public colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs a clear retrograde for our nations education system.

In addition, members of K-12 school boards across America have considered and adopted policies to severely limit students exposure to perspectives, research and ideas that deviate from narrow and sometimes inaccurate depictions of American culture and history. As a result, educators have been blocked from presenting books and curricular topics that examine systems of oppression like slavery, racism, and sexism; as well as historical stories of marginalized people that overcame said oppressive systems to make this country a better place.

As a result, local school districts have been transformed into political battlegrounds where extremist activists wage divisive and faux attacks on so-called woke culture while seeking to impose a neo-segregationist framework in public education. This is a deliberate attempt to undermine the intent of the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education by devaluing the benefits of integration and culturally inclusive curriculum. This is not a popular movement, but one driven by a small group of well-funded, extremist activists with a clear intent to destroy public and culturally inclusive education as a public good.

Many of the same political leaders who are motivated to ban books that present difficult truths about the sins of America are utterly silent and unwilling to grapple with daunting challenges like gun violence which continues to plague the communities in which we live and serve. Issues like the irresponsibly laxed availability of assault weapons, which has facilitated mass shootings of American children, should be countered with sensible gun legislation to protect the lives of all Americans.

Yet all around us, the courts and elected officials are constantly eroding our rights; including a womans right to bodily autonomy.

A small minority of Americans appear to wield outsized influence, leaving the majority feeling increasingly disempowered. In the face of systemic social, political, and economic injustices, its impossible to overstate the ominous impact that overturning Roe v. Wade will have on the lives, safety, and wellbeing of not just women, but men and families alike. Additionally, the sheer consequences of inaction at a time such as this would have a devastating impact on the lives and liberties of many generations to come.

At this pivotal moment in history, the NPHCs Council of Presidents reaffirms our commitment to civic engagement and through our chapters, will present programming to inform our communities of the potential consequences of laws that would erode or prevent the expansion of our rights.

We will stand united and steadfast in leading and organizing efforts to oppose restrictive laws and work to enact laws that will expand freedoms for all Americans.

We will continue to push our members to fully engage in the political system as voters, election volunteers and elected officials.

And like our organizations founders and elders, well use our talents and resources to fight against oppression because complacency is too high a cost to pay today and sacrifice for future generations.

The National Pan-Hellenic Council, Incorporated (NPHC) is currently composed of nine (9) International Greek letter Sororities and Fraternities: Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc., Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. For more information, visit http://www.nphchq.com or CONTACT: Donna Jones Anderson, 470- 898-8655, president@nphchq.com.

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UNITED WE STAND: THE FIERCE URGENCY OF NOW - Savannah Tribune

Its always tough to know whether youre helping or just adding fuel to the fire when you amplify a so-called bad take only in order to refute it, so I try to refrain from the practice in general. But this opinion piece really stuck in my stomach the argument it made was so damaging as well as so uninformed that it made me feel physically ill.

To make things worse, this op-ed was also written on a topic that happens to be a research specialty of mine: White Christian Nationalism in America and its growth in recent years.

I came across the article through a tweet from Religion News Service writer Jack Jenkins, who was frustrated that the writer tried to discount the meaning of Christian Nationalism by suggesting that it wasnt clearly defined.

Hm, I thought, let me read this.

To simplify things for you, I will summarize the article here:

I am going to attempt to be snarky here and make fun of the myriad of dedicated researchers, pastors, theologians, and historians who have well-documented the existence and danger of Christian Nationalism in several books, by doing a quick cursory study of exactly one of those books and frameworks, setting it up as a straw man headed by a White former Southern Baptist thirty years younger than me (Im 87) to say that I think I am a Christian Nationalist and of course, if I think I am one it cant be a bad thing.

Also, I will throw in there an aside that Martin Luther King, Jr., was also a Christian Nationalist, so it cant be a movement based on racism (as countless scholars have proven it most certainly is, foremost among them Black researchers and Christian thought leaders such as Jemar Tisby, PhD, Prof. Anthea Butler, Dante Stewart, and many, many more).

I will ignore the seminal work and study connecting Christian Nationalism to gender-based violence and gender roles in the church, particularly the role of abuse of women and children in the church (convenient, as I am a Catholic), and will refuse to engage with the work of scholars like Kristin Du Mez and Beth Allison Barr, the powerful witness of Beth Moore, and the well-documented survivor stories of journalist Sarah Stankorb.

Basically, I will ignore the huge body of work that refutes everything Im saying, and instead continue on my dangerous path of whataboutism, ignoring the history of the theology of glory, which leads Christians to confuse salvation with worldly power and esteem, and a suggestion that Gods Kingdom is meant primarily for White American Christians.

The first time I read this abomination of an op-ed, I think I came at it from a journalist lens similar to Jenkins, and I was frustrated that such a well-respected news organization like the Post would publish something that has so little engagement with reality. It came off to me basically like a befuddled older man being frustrated that research and current thinking on American religion had left him behind, while he spent his entire professional career as editor of the religion section for Newsweek magazine. A position that Im almost certain no longer exists and would also not afford a middle-class American lifestyle, much less supporting an entire family, as it did for this writer.

And let me be clear here, too, that while I think its relevant that this op-ed was written by an 87-year-old former journalist who has written several books published by major New York publishers, I do not wish to suggest that the writers age means he cannot make valuable contributions to scholarship/journalism today.

In fact, I know many of you who read this might be officially classified as seniors according to the AARP. And I value and treasure the witness and wisdom and learning Ive received from each and every one of you. There is great value in listening to our elders and understanding the lessons of the past when applied to the present.

This op-ed is not that at all, unfortunately. Instead, the writer engages in dangerous historical revisionism, failing to listen to and learn from the lessons of the past, in order to, I can only imagine, preserve his own sense of power and esteem in a world that maybe he feels is passing him by. And unfortunately, the Washington Post was more than happy to oblige.

Maybe they thought it was cute or funny that this writer declared himself to be an innocuous Christian Nationalist, thereby writing off the whole thing as a sort of Proud to be an American exercise in flag-waving, hot-dog-eating, fireworks-watching, Onward Christian Soldiers-singing worship service.

Thats the thing, though. Only someone who knows that hes not one bit threatened by the violence, hatred, and destruction wrought by Christian Nationalism could write such an article, and only someone willfully ignorant to their own risk or similarly unthreatened could decide to publish it at the Post.

Women, of course, especially those of us women who happen to be ordained clergy members or happen to be experts in this field, know much better. In fact, after appearing in a viral video about Christian Nationalism last week, I was the proud recipient of several hate comments and notes sent to my email, as well as one disturbing packet sent to me via USPS priority mail (I have no idea how he got my home address).

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Black and brown Americans, AAPI Americans, and LGBTQIA Americans know this threat all too well, too. One only has to watch the rightwing Christian response to the killing of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway to know that the lives of Black Americans still do not matter the same as those of white Americans to so many in this country, the valiant work of Black Lives Matter notwithstanding.

We have a national lynching memorial established in Alabama with 805 hanging steel rectangles representing each U.S. county where a documented lynching took place. And still, last month, 16-year-old Black teenager Ralph Yarl was shot and nearly killed in Kansas City just for ringing the doorbell of his white neighbor.

The lies of Christian Nationalism kill. They inspired the shooter who killed nine people, including three children, at a mall outside Dallas. They were the impetus that sent a shooter in rural New York on a killing rampage in a Buffalo grocery store where hed researched that he would have the highest probability of killing the most Black victims.

The lies of white Christian Nationalism sent ELCA Lutheran-raised 21-year-old white man Dylann Roof into a Bible study prayer meeting at a famous and historic Black congregation in Charleston, where after being warmly welcomed to join the group, he killed nine of the same Bible Study participants who welcomed him in, all of whom were Black.

Thats where this road of white Christian Nationalism ends. It ends in death. Death first for the most vulnerable, but ultimately death for us all. Death too for the progenitors of violence and hatred, which often begins as hatred directed at themselves. Death due to poverty and violence and despair around the world, for an inability to see or care about the ways our greed and actions impact those far from us those who arent Americans or self-declared Christians, but those who suffer because of our choices, political and economic.

Its breathtaking to me that someone who was immensely privileged to spend his entire career working at the intersection of journalism and religion, in a position and career class that frankly no longer exists, would so carelessly fan the flames of hatred and violence in Christianitys name, all to I guess absolve himself of his own self-guilt due to benefiting from American white Christian Nationalism.

Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mathew Ahmann in a crowd on 8/28/1963. Original black and white negative by Rowland Scherman (The National Archives and Records Administration). Colorized by Jordan J. Lloyd. (U.S. Information Agency. Press and Publications Service. ca. 1953-ca. 1978.)

And heres the final thing I want to say about this and it might be the most important.

It took me years of reporting, studying, and research and honestly a period of self-introspection, reflection, and repentance after the murder of George Floyd not far from my house to recognize the massive role that white American Christian racism plays in the growth of white Christian Nationalism in this country.

American Christian Nationalism is built on a belief that America is the Promised Land and that Jesus came especially to save, redeem, and uplift Americans. Extrapolate that promise and history just a little bit, and you realize that such an understanding of America requires a purposeful ignorance of Americas racial sins: beginning with slavery and people brought against their will to America from Africa and continuing in killing and subjugating and abusing Indigenous peoples, and on to lynchings and segregation and redlining and mass incarceration and police brutality and healthcare inequalities and the war on drugs and micro-aggressions and all the ways in which White American Christians maintain their sense of superiority by promulgating a belief system that necessitates the dehumanization of Black Americans (and by extension, anyone who isnt a cishet conservative, wealthy White man).

To suggest, as this article did, that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., himself was a Christian Nationalist is among the most pernicious and racist sins of Christian Nationalism itself. Dr. King was steeped in the global liberation movements of his time, and while he was called particularly to the struggle of Black Americans his theology was such that called for the liberation of all people, the same Gospel witness lifted up by Jesus himself.

Thus Dr. King preached against the demonization of the poor, the soulless evil of unfettered capitalism and predatory debt; and he connected the struggle of Black Americans to the struggle of oppressed peoples all over the world. His was an inclusive gospel, even as I acknowledge that as no human is neither was Dr. King perfect, particularly in his understanding of the need for the liberation of women and LGBTQIA Americans.

No one person can fully encompass the liberation of Jesus Gospel, just the same as no one country or people can lay claim to the redemption and glory that Jesus promises the world. The lie of white Christian Nationalism is that white American Christians are especially saved. The specialness of our salvation is its exclusivity, they claim, but the New Testament says the exact opposite: the specialness of Jesus salvation is its inclusivity.

If only conservative scholars would dwell more on Pauls revolutionary words in this sense, and less on his particular prohibitions to the women of Corinth during worship, or the sexual practices of the Roman world.

The inimical sin of this article in calling Americas most famous Black preacher himself a Christian Nationalist is that by doing so it attempts to inoculate white Christian Nationalism itself from claims of being racist. No, of course this movement cannot be racist (and implicitly, neither can I if I support it, this author suggests) because look, a Black preacher himself was a Christian Nationalist.

Notably, the article does not even attempt to back up such an insupportable claim, and mentions it almost as an aside, so much so that I missed it upon first reading.

This is so often the case, though, is it not? That its not the loudest pronouncements, the most egregious offenders, that lead to mass movements of hatred. It is not the men with the fashy haircuts carrying tiki torches, or the shooter covered in swastika tattoos, or the writers of online manifestos, dangerous as they are, who we must be most careful to guard against.

Instead, it is those who look presentable, in 3-piece suits with careful language and elite college pedigrees, who serve as apologists for hate. Those who couch their language in studied terms and phrases, who often appeal to the center and who say, You know, I am a registered Democrat, but

It is those who spend their lives in elite media siloes, then cast stones at others who dare to call out clear and present danger to themselves when powerful people continue to platform a violent, convicted sex offender.

It is those who make their money on the backs of young, underpaid, inexperienced journalists, or those independently wealthy enough to do a professional job for a salary just barely above minimum wage; those who make their news-worthy decisions primarily on how they will play with Wall Street, shareholders, and SEO.

It is those who decided, oh, this will be a fun, snarky little op-ed to publish in the Washington Post about Christian Nationalism, undermining the work of countless scholars and eyewitnesses because we are too busy or too scared to actually account for the damage its wreaking on America. And worse, to clearly see our role in allowing it to fester, grow, metastasize, and kill.

Angela Denker is a Lutheran pastor and veteran journalist. She has written for many publications, including Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, and FORTUNE magazine. Denker has appeared on CNN, BBC, and SkyNews to share her research on politics and Christian Nationalism in the U.S. Her book, Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump, was the 2019 Silver Foreword Indies award-winner for political and social sciences. The revised edition ofRed State Christians,subtitled: A Journey into White Christian Nationalism and the Wreckage it leaves behind,came outAug. 16and is currently available everywhere books are sold.

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No, MLK Was Not a Christian Nationalist - Word and Way