Hope in Direct Action

A couple of days ago I got up at the usual time, got dressed, put on my NYS Poor Peoples Campaign T-shirt, and got on the L to Union Square to meet up with a nonviolent army going to DC to make good trouble. “You only get what you’re organized to take,” it says on my shirt. The bus we ride is named Panoramic because of its big windows. I see the sunrise as we roll through the Garden State. The sun is my Advent candle. We all have our vaccination cards and our masks. This is only the second time I’ve been outside the city during los tiempos de la Corona. I generally don’t like to leave New York, or even my apartment, even when its not a plague year. Kelly is our bus captain. She and I are the only people from Middle Collegiate Church on the bus, but we also belong to the Freedom Church. Freedom Church is a Zoom gathering started by the Kairos Center shortly after the quarantine began. It is live-streamed on Facebook Sunday evenings. Both Middle and Freedom Church practice public theology, social justice work, protest, lobbying, reminding people to vote, petitioning.I think of this activism as liturgical practice. Marching in a protest against a war, or against police violence, against evictions, or for abolition of prisons, for environmental justice, and for the lives of black people, are ways of celebrating our faith that another world is both possible and necessary. This rally is an Advent celebration. As Rabbi Heschel said, we pray with our feet when we march in protest.The Kairos Center was founded by Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who also co-founded the new Poor Peoples Campaign with Reverend Doctor William Barber. At a recent Freedom Church gathering she reminded us that John the baptizer was calling on the crowds to change their way of thinking and to understand that another world is possible. John called on the crowds to join a revolution, and this is what Jesus joined when he was baptized.

I first saw Bishop Barber speak at Riverside Church in 2017 on the 50th anniversary of MLK’s speech against the Vietnam War. In that speech King made clear the connections between the racist system in America and America’s imperialist war abroad. It was at the 2017 service I became aware that the movement King led half a century ago is having a revival and at the same time saw that I had to be part of it. I imagined a beam of light was shining on me. Like I was called, or something.Not long after I had a chance to see Bishop Barber again at Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village. I was impressed with the congregation and Rev. Jacqui Lewis’ gospel of revolutionary love and started coming to every Sunday celebration.

Our bus got to DC on time, which meant earlier than most groups, and they were still setting up the stage and sound equipment. Rob Stephens was standing there overseeing it all. We hugged and chatted for a couple of minutes. Rob was a minister at Middle Collegiate when I joined in 2017. Before that he worked with Rev Barber in the North Carolina NAACP. I got to know him when we both got arrested for disrupting the Senate. I had responded to Rev. Jacqui’s altar call for volunteers to fight McConnell’s attempt to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. As the Senate was about to vote we stood up in the gallery and shouted, “Kill the Bill, don’t kill us!” It is my only arrest, so far. It was my baptism into the Movement.

Now Rob works full time as an organizer with the Rev. Dr. William Barber and the Poor Peoples Campaign. I told him I had come with Captain Kelly's bus. I mentioned her getting arrested with him a couple of weeks ago. He said all the arrests have become a blur. 

The rally was well organized. Speakers from thirty three states spoke for one minute each, giving what Rev. Barber called their CNN statements. The organizers kept things moving and the witnesses, who were poor or "low wealth" (I'm going to start describing myself as 'low wealthy'), gave well-honed messages about the situation of the American underclass, something like 140 million of us.The purpose of this action is to pressure Congress and Biden to pass critical legislation like the For The People Act and Build Back Better before the end of the year. “Get it done in 21!” After the speeches we marched, two by two, to a nearby intersection and took over the street. There is a lot of singing in the Poor Peoples Campaign, especially old and new freedom songs, sung in the streets. This Advent protest is what I imagine the original Jesus movement to be like, something like the demonstrations and disruptions and civil disobedience of the original Holy Week that led up to Jesus’ arrest. 

Anyway, hundreds of us surrounded the seventy two who had volunteered for civil disobedience. We were in the street until the first warning from the Capitol Police and then we retreated to the sidewalks and sang freedom songs and cheered on the seventy two who defied the police orders and stayed in the intersection. Rev. Liz and Rev. Barber and Rev. Rob were among those arrested. Barber kept preaching through a mic as they were handcuffed and taken to tables for processing. He even told the police they should quit their jobs. The Capitol Dome was nearby. He told the police what must have already been evident to them. We weren’t a criminal, violent, anti-democracy insurrection like the January 6 mob. We are a nonviolent army fighting to protect for democracy against voter suppression and against the big money interests who control Congress.Middle Church’s building burned down a year ago but the fire hasn’t stopped us. The first time I came to Middle was to hear Rev. Barber speak and I remember he began his talk by saying, "It's always good to be in The Middle -- in the middle of everything, in the middle of the street…”

And here we are.