So we are called to hear the stories and to act on them. When Mary learned that she was pregnant with Jesus, she sang about how God “scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts” and “brought the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” And when Jesus spoke to the crowds on a mount overlooking the Sea of Galilee, he told them, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” He said those who hear his words - and act on them - will be like those who build their house on a solid rock. And as we change, then we need to find ways to change the structures and the systems that created the injustices we hear about. And when we hear them - if we really hear them - we are changed, bit by bit. He wrote in the Detroit Free Press this past week about being beaten up by four police officers for no reason when he was 14, the bigotry and threats he faced later when he joined the force, even being pulled over for driving while black when he was the chief.ĭevon Snyder and Isaiah McKinnon and so many more are making us hear their stories. The second came from Isaiah McKinnon, who grew up in Detroit and served as its chief of police from 1993 to 1998. He calls it “The never-ending timeline of racism.” He ends with an incident this past February in Madison. He starts with an incident in fifth grade in his home town of Fond du Lac. One came from another life-long resident of Wisconsin, Devon Snyder. There are two stories that I read this week that particularly touched me, a white guy who grew up in very white northeast Wisconsin and who has lived all of my adult life in pretty white Madison. “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around,” LaTanya Maymon from Christ the Solid Rock Church led the crowd in singing as the walk moved towards the state Capitol. Zion Baptist Church and president of the African-American Council of Churches, set the tone for the march with a familiar verse from the prophet Micah: love justice, do kindness, walk humbly with your God. We heard ideas of ways we could act, some directed at reimagining what a police agency could be, some calling for economic development, some calling for respect for women, for youth.įor folks with a religious bent, Rev. When some 10,000 people - many from Madison’s faith communities - gathered downtown last Sunday night to march in solidarity with the principle that Black Lives Matter, we heard some of the stories of people in our community. Here’s a rough translation: Make them hear you. Therefore judgement comes forth perverted.įor there is still a vision for the appointed time And what was his complaint? He laid it out like this: In the Hebrew scriptures, the prophet Habakkuk wrote of standing on a rampart, waiting to see how God might answer his complaint. Today we are hearing a lot of the stories of struggles that go on, of justice denied, of justice still demanded. Will justice be demanded by ten million righteous men Go out and tell our story to your daughters and your sons And you can hear Brian Stokes Mitchell, who played the role of Coalhouse in the original production, sing it in this video at the Kennedy Center in 2019. It is not only a plea for stories to be told but for those of us who are white to listen…to listen carefully. The song he sings - “Make Them Hear You” - could be an anthem for our moment. Coalhouse tells his men to let the white man leave and to change the world through the power of their words. Washington, a symbol of black accommodation, comes in to mediate and works out a deal. There is much else happening in the musical that dominated the 1998 Tony Awards, of course, but when we get to the library, there is a standoff with police. The car is destroyed by white firefighters, his beloved Sarah is beaten to death by the Secret Service when she tries to plead his case for justice to a vice presidential candidate and Coalhouse goes on a murderous rampage against the firefighters who destroyed his car and his dream. The story of Coalhouse opens with hope and love and a new car. Morgan’s elegant library where Coalhouse’s armed men are holding a white man hostage. As the musical Ragtime nears its conclusion, Coalhouse Walker has taken over banker J.P.
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