Capitol Police blew an easy call

Somebody let the crazy out ... and we know who.

 

I'm beginning to formulate some political thoughts about yesterday's Trumpist assault on the Capitol, but I want to let them marinate a little.

Meanwhile, I'm much frustrated by this from an otherwise unremarkable Washington Post oped by David van Drehle: 

There will be a lot of second-guessing of the Capitol Police and of public safety officials generally in the District of Columbia. How could they let this happen? Let’s be clear: Such questions are completely off-base. No official should be blamed for failing to anticipate that the president of the United States would incite a mob to overwhelm the Capitol. We cannot accommodate ourselves to the idea that this should be foreseeable; that we should plan against it; that law enforcement in Washington must go to battle stations in anticipation of an attack by one branch of government against another.

Bullshit! Second guessing is entirely proper. Trump has been attacking parts of the government he pretended to lead since long before the national democratic shipwreck of November 2016. Anyone remember Judge Curiel? He's attacked his own Secretary of State, two of his own Attorneys General, Senators who didn't bow before him, multiple Congresswomen whose gender, religion, skin color and national origin offend his thin sensibilities ... pretty much all he has done in public life is incite mob violence.

More to the point, F.B.I. director Christopher Wray, whose job is to know, has been calling out the danger of domestic terrorism from white supremacists and right wing conspiracy nuts. You'll never convince me that the F.B.I. didn't know these dangerous thugs were on their way; unless the federal agency has badly fallen down on its game, probably many of the "members" of these Trump-supporting right wing groups are actually infiltrators. 

Law enforcement knew what was coming unless heads were willfully buried in sand. And some cop heads should roll in the aftermath.

Black people save the country -- again

The Senate elections in Georgia -- the two new Democrats that the Peach State is sending to DC to break the Republican legislative strangehold -- mean, once again, we can hope for sane governance from the Feds. Congrats to "Rev. Warnock and Mr. Ossoff" as I've been naming them to voters on phones for a month.

It was a tremendous privilege to work with UniteHERE on this campaign, while knowing that every progressive force and person in the country was pulling hard for a Democratic and small "d" democratic result. And the people of Georgia have delivered, even if it isn't quite official at the moment of this writing.

The insightful reporter Perry Bacon Jr. pointed out a meaning of this result during a FiveThirtyEight live blog of the election. He wrote:

Democrats spent a lot of time the last four years obsessing about states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and wooing white voters without college degrees in particular. And while it’s not clear that Biden did that much better than Hillary Clinton with white voters without college degrees, he did win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

But Georgia is a different ball game, in part because of its big Black population. And notably, the Democrats ran a campaign for these Senate seats that reflected the large Black electorate in the state:

1. They embraced the approach of Stacey Abrams, a Black woman, of really trying to boost turnout among voters of color, younger voters and those in the Atlanta area.
2. They embraced two candidates with lots of ties to Atlanta’s Black community. In Warnock, the pastor of the church MLK and his father ran, but also in Ossoff, who worked for two Atlanta Black congressmen, the late John Lewis and Hank Johnson.
3.  And lastly, they embraced a kind of social justice message. Ossoff and Warnock talked a lot about voting rights and other “Black” issues on the campaign trail.

If Democrats win one or both of these races, I would expect them to run similar campaigns to this in other states in the South with large Black populations.

Southerners have been telling the rest of us for years that there's a hopeful promise in their region arising from the Black history of pain, of enslavement, and of struggle. If we're to preserve and extend freedom, Black southerners will be among our leaders. Let us continue ...

The stakes in Georgia

Today Georgians vote in the two U.S. Senate elections which will determine whether Republicans or Democrats control that legislative body. If the Rev. Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff prevail, our new President will have a chance of getting something done. If the GOPer incumbents win, expect stonewalling of everything, including funds to vaccinate against the coronavirus and to assist economic recovery.

Those are the national implications of this election. But this election also has huge stakes for democracy within Georgia. The New Georgia Project's Nsé Ufot explained what the election means for Georgians in the Atlanta Voice:

For too many years, Georgia’s conservative leaders have gotten used to cherry picking their voters. Instead of trying to appeal to a wider swath of voters, they have worked to deny voting rights to those Georgians whom they don’t care to represent, especially Black people. Thanks to extensive voter suppression tactics — from purging voters from the rolls, to withholding voter registrations under an “exact match” law, to shutting down precincts – these officials have worked, too often successfully, to suppress our votes.

... Even as more than 10,000 Georgians have lost their lives to COVID-19, Georgia Republicans are already working to walk back the measures taken to make voting safer in the face of the pandemic, recently unveiling a plan to restrict vote-by-mail and roll back the election laws that facilitated record-high turnout in the state in November. This move comes on the heels of a decision made by election officials in Cobb County to cut early voting locations by half ahead of the Georgia runoffs, which will disproportionately affect voters of color. 

... These suppression efforts are a response to the shifting power dynamics in Georgia: our representatives are afraid of our power and want to curtail it. Because of a multiracial coalition of Black, Brown, Gold, and progressive white voters, Georgia went blue in November. You see it in the numbers: our state had more than 6.6 million registered voters in 2016; this year, it reached an all-time high of 7.6 million, with registrations among Black, Latino, and Asian voters booming. 

... The defenders of the status quo have seen what Georgians can do when we all turn out to vote, and that’s why they’re scared.

Over the last month, it's been an education and sometimes a pleasure to phone Georgians about their election. UniteHERE callers have been thanked and blessed -- a lot.  Let's hope Georgians who have already voted, and those who turn out today, succeed in building a new, more inclusive future, for everyone, in their state. Just as in Washington, democracy itself is on the ballot in Georgia.

Why are Jenkins and other UniteHERE members working so hard in Georgia?

Let him tell you himself. Jenkins Kolongbo is knocking on doors in Georgia for U.S. Senate candidates Rev. Rafael Warnock and Jon Offoff. UniteHERE members expect to hit 1,000,000 doors before the polls close tomorrow.

Hundreds of us are backing up Jenkins and the Georgia team on the phones from all over the country. You still have one more day to join us. Sign up for a shift and join us on Tuesday, January 5.

A civil rights hero for public transit

When I came upon this banner celebrating Mary Ellen Pleasant (lived 1814(?) – January 4, 1904) on one of the most obscure public bus barns in the city, I'd never heard of her.

In case that's true of you too, here are some glimpses of the life of this amazing San Franciscan. The New York Times featured her in one of their obituaries for people they know the publication had "Overlooked."

Pleasant lived her life between the lines of legitimacy and infamy, servitude and self-invention. She became known throughout San Francisco as Mammy Pleasant, because of the years she spent as a domestic servant. Yet she was also, incredibly, a former slave who became a millionaire. Add to that improbable pairing, a dedicated abolitionist, credited with being an important conductor of the Underground Railroad.

What we know of her life history is murky, apparently including fables she encouraged herself and inventions in 19th century tabloid newspapers which found her an attractive subject. It seems mostly agreed she was born in Georgia or Louisiana sometime in the second decade of the 19th century and spent her youth as a domestic servant for a wealthy white Nantucket household, probably abolitionists. In the 1830s, she married a James Henry Smith, a white or perhaps mixed race Virginia planter. During their marriage, she led groups of enslaved men and women to freedom via the Underground Railroad to Canada. When Smith died in 1840s he left her a significant inheritance. She claimed to have helped fund John Brown's attack on the federal garrison at Harpers Ferry.

She remarried to John Pleasant and went looking for new opportunities, again according to her delayed obit:

In 1848, the California Gold Rush began and word soon spread that even blacks were free to seek their fortune on the West Coast. Pleasant heeded the call. She moved to San Francisco and found work as a cook, invisible and unimportant once again. She shrewdly eavesdropped on the wealthy people she served, and using the information, invested bits of her inheritance. “It’s quite possible that the jobs she had as a domestic were a cover that she was using because she clearly made her money from investments,” [Lynn] Hudson, [her] biographer, said in an interview.

Her portfolio grew to include shares in businesses that ranged from dairies and laundries to Wells Fargo Bank. She owned restaurants and boardinghouses, which locals whispered were actually brothels. In the 1890 census, she stated that she was a “capitalist” by profession. 

... She formed a decades-long business partnership, possibly romantic, with a white man named Thomas Bell. After his death, it turned out that much of Pleasant’s portfolio, including the mansion she designed and had built, were held in Bell’s name. Historians believe that the pair used his name in many of the business dealings to facilitate what surely would have been more difficult for a woman, and especially for a black woman. Bell’s widow sued Pleasant and won control of the Bell estate. In an instant, Pleasant’s fortune was diminished. She died in 1904.

Yet that spectacular rise and fall in wealth is not what caused Mary Ellen Pleasant to be heralded by our bus service. According to an ACLU Northern California history website, along the way this indomitable woman won a major victory for civil rights in her new state.

In 1866, a street car conductor in San Francisco refused to let her board because she was black. Outraged, Pleasant sued. The case went all the way to the California Supreme Court. In a historic decision, the court ruled that segregation on streetcars was illegal in California.

In keeping with so many episodes in her life, she didn't receive the money damages a lower court had ordered. But she landed on her feet, with an implausible victory.

San Francisco has always been a boom and bust town attracting determined, unconventional characters. Against the odds, Mary Ellen Pleasant found a right place for her talents and made it a better one.

End the federal killing spree

Joe Biden, once in office, will have the power to put a quick halt to one facet of the Trump/Barr drive to further embed cruelty and retribution in our political fabric. Such a move would stir up howls from the vengeance caucus, but it would make us a better country.

Countdown in a San Francisco window. Accurate as of January 1.

According to Andrew Cohen of the Marshall Project, writing at the Brennan Center for Justice, a president can halt activations of the federal death penalty which before Trump had sat unused for 16 years.

The Trump administration’s decision to execute five condemned federal prisoners during the presidential transition — an unprecedented killing spree — stems from the same blunt theory of governance that saw Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuse to hold a Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland in 2016 while rushing to confirm Amy Coney Barrett earlier this year.

In each instance, those with power eschewed cherished norms and political comity and used it. Their right to do these things gave them the might to do it, you could say, regardless of what the rest of us thought about it all.

In a little over four weeks, Joe Biden will have that same power to write his own history with capital punishment in America. The central question is whether he has the political will and moral strength to exercise the power. He can empty federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, by commuting to life-without-parole terms the death sentences of the 50 or so people left on it. He can direct the Justice Department to instruct each and every U.S. attorney around the country not to pursue capital charges for federal crimes. He can order the completion of a death penalty study disappointingly left unfinished during the Obama administration.

Very gradually, this country has been learning that demanding the government kill terrible offenders for us neither creates moral satisfaction nor justice. Our legal processes are riddled with inequities that ensure that poor and dark defendants never get the kind of fairness that rich and white people can buy. The requirement that juries in death penalty cases be made of people who state a willingness to apply the ultimate sanction undermines any potential for understanding and mercy. The tangle of legal safeguards that we've added to a bad system to try to minimize its racism and class bias merely drag out an inherently inequitable, over-complex, expensive, and drearily lengthy process.

Before the Trump/Barr killing spree, we were backing away from capital punishment. According to the AP:

Colorado in 2020 became the 22nd state to strike death-penalty laws from its books. Currently, 34 states have either abolished the death penalty or not carried out executions in a decade or more even though their laws permit them, the report said. This year, Louisiana and Utah passed the 10-year mark of no executions.

Historically, it has been mostly the states, not the feds, that executed. The death penalty degrades us all. Joe Biden can walk the federal government back from this misbegotten relic.

Saturday scenes: San Francisco holiday season 2020

As everyone knows, this is the one of the least religious cities in the country. So it's no surprise that Walking San Francisco at this season, I encounter very few creche scenes in yards and on porches. By and large, San Franciscans go in for reminders of the winter we don't have here: snowmen and reindeer. We also favor consumer Christmas: lots of Santas weighed down with packages.

But I have noticed a new theme this year, turning up in widely separated areas of the city.

Guess this is the Year of the Grinch.

The local variant often seems more unhinged than malevolent.

Sometimes the tableau is just a mixed metaphor. It's been a crazy year.

New Years reflections: not quite arrived and aging in place

Though the calendar has turned and we're finally out of 2020, I'm not quite into a new year -- yet. And I won't get there until after the voting ends in the Georgia Senate runoffs on January 5; I'm still phoning for Rev. Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. 

Perhaps I'll feel the arrival of a new year when Congress votes to accept the results of the election on January 6. Or perhaps the feeling will wait until Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20. I've lived four long years in a hyper-vigilant state, struggling for the survival of the better possibilities of this deeply flawed country -- that doesn't just disappear with the flip of the calendar.

I'll write plenty here during this new year about what I learned in that struggle -- and the struggles going forward -- but not yet.

Today I want write a little about what I learned in 2020 of my own experience of aging, of growing into getting older.

Going into the year, I knew what I thought was ahead. In the first half of the year, Erudite Partner would teach and I'd run, and continue Walking San Francisco, and writing this blog. In the second half of the year, we'd work in some way, somewhere, on a campaign to elect whatever Democrat emerged to contest Trump and the GOPers.

And then came the pandemic -- and we were locked down at home in a constrained world. This wasn't much of a hardship. Though I missed seeing people in person, I could still walk about, and read, and write. We could afford Costco deliveries and cooked more regularly. Pandemic isolation was comfortable for us.

But little nicks and aches interrupted my running. By July I was largely immobilized with a bad back which morphed into medicine-induced digestive problems. And we understood, incompletely but not inaccurately, that the coronavirus was a respiratory threat I had to take seriously. Over the last decade I've had several bouts of pneumonia and I just don't recover rapidly or cleanly. So I chose to reduce risk of infection drastically. I didn't even go out to participate in the racial reckoning protests triggered, this time around, by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

And I certainly couldn't join an on-the-ground political campaign during a pandemic. For me, working a political campaign is the equivalent of going to war; I have always required absolute and unstinting focus from myself when on campaign. I couldn't deliver that in my condition or in the situation the disease had created.

Erudite Partner is a little younger and healthier, so she could go, and in August she departed for 3 months in Nevada. I had to content myself with working on the hotel workers union (UniteHERE) phone bank. This got off to a slow start but built up into a significant effort in Florida, Nevada and Philadelphia -- and continues now in support of canvassers in Georgia.

But stuck at home, I became aware that the pandemic and my own aches were slamming me with a reality that I, like most of us, prefer to push aside. As we age, how we physically and psychically participate in the world around us changes. My mentor in aging Ronni Bennett taught me to experience these changes with curiosity and humor. In her honor, I hope to write here occasionally about what I learn from my aging.

Here are some snippets from this plague year:

• I can't use ladders to change light bulbs anymore unless I've got someone around to hand me needed tools, etc. Found that out the hard way; nothing broke in the tumble except the lamp cover.
• Best have a wall or bed nearby to lean on when pulling on pants. I no longer can do this comfortably standing on one foot.
• I don't know whether this change comes from aging, or the pandemic, or both: mundane tasks that just need to get done like an oil change for the car or calling in the roofer to clean gutters seem more challenging.
• Interests changed. Don't know whether this is a consequence of the pandemic or increasing maturity, but I find I am no longer interested in football, professional or college. Football is a less violent alternative to war. Maybe I don't need that jolt anymore?
• I no longer can intelligently write in the evening; I'm too tired. So it's a good thing I don't now have, and expect never to have, a day job. When would I blog? I can listen to books during evenings, and that's a delight. I hope the San Francisco Public Library reopens soon, as I like to borrow a hard copy of any book I write about here to check quotes. There's quite a blog backlog of booktalk coming once they open.
• You can't go home again (thanks Thomas Wolfe) but old passions recur -- and it's possible to take them up again. I spent much of my early adulthood working to ensure that people in need of food had some. In the pandemic, I find that just about the only useful service I can perform outside the home is contact-free deliveries of food to homebound households one day a week for the Mission Food Hub. 
  

We'll see what the New Year brings ... May yours be happy and peaceful.

Friday cat blogging

Janeway is not interested in any New Years activities. Just give her a warm lap. She did perk up and stare at the screen when I watched the Pixar short Kitbull.

Blog break

As we all know, computers and the internet are wonderful, until the intricate connection to the world they give us is disrupted.

I find myself dealing with one of those hiccups. 

It appears I'm going to have to devote several days to sorting out my internet identity. If we have corresponded by email, you might receive an update from me with a new email address. Or not, if I'm fortunate.

I had already thought to give myself a holiday break from here. Now I need that blog break. 

It's not that I don't have enough to do, what with a weekly delivery for the Mission Food Hub and phoning into Georgia with UniteHERE for Senate candidates Reverend Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. Neither hunger nor the struggle for the minimal preconditions for justice takes a break -- certainly not as Trump takes his revenge on the country for not re-electing him.

Additionally I have about 500 photos waiting to be processed and culled for Walking San Francisco. That's my idea of relaxation.

Blog will be off for a few days and return in January.

Holiday decorations for a neighborhood

It's no particular household's tree. It sits on a median strip in an obscure corner of the city. The red balls are welcoming.

It's San Francisco. There's an historic district, warehouses past their prime, a private marker for a motorcycle club, and a cul-de-sac.

Encountered while Walking San Francisco.

Joyous Christmas to all

We all need hope for light, for peace, for love. For all the contradictions around us, it's to the credit of our sometimes cruel and vacant society that we elevate such a holiday and celebration! Let us delight!

On the theology of inclusion

After spending several days mulling it over, I am writing to recommend what I found a very good book which makes a plausible and intricate case from Christian history with which I resonate strongly. And yet I also found this excellent volume slightly unsatisfying.

Professor of Religion and Ethical Studies at Willamette University Stephen J Patterson offers The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism. Writing in the intellectual lineage of such theologians as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and John Dominic Crossan, Patterson explicates the ancient text fragment that we meet in the Apostle Paul's letter to the early Christian communities in central Anatolia, modern Turkey:

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus,
for as many of you who have been baptized have put on Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Gentile;
there is no slave nor free;
there is no male and female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:26-28

Paul's letter was written before any of the Gospel books about Jesus' life and teachings; Patterson contends this fragment is older still, existing before Paul's travels, probably a creedal statement used when people joined these communities through baptism.

And he insists its intent is every bit as broad and radical as we might assume if we did not associate it with a Christian history in which laying down the law about right relationship to God and drawing boundaries about who is in and who is out were such prominent features.

He dissects each of its clauses. He explores their context in the first century Roman empire and concludes Paul was not trying to erase Jewish history:

[This] creed was not originally about cultural obliteration. "There is no Jew or Greek" stands alongside "so slave or free" and "no male or female." These are not distinctions of religion and culture, but of power and privilege. In the world of Greek and Roman antiquity, free men had power and agency, slaves and women did not.  ... The creed was originally about the fact that race, class, and gender are typically used to divide the human race into us and them to the advantage of us. It aimed to declare there is no us, no them. We are all children of God. It was about solidarity, not cultural obliteration.

He regrets that

... in the long history of Christian theology, spanning centuries and continents, this creed played virtually no role. How could it? The church became a citadel of patriarchy and enforced this regime wherever it spread. It also endorsed and encouraged the taking of slaves from the people it colonized. And within a hundred years of its writing, "no Jew or Greek" became simply "no Jews," as the church first separated from, then rebelled against its Jewish patrimony, eventually attempting patricide.

He points out that this ancient formula is very different from the carefully negotiated, imperially endorsed definitions of right faith that came to be named "creeds" in Christian religious practice.

[This] creed says nothing a creed should say. It is not about God. Nor is it about the nature of Jesus Christ or how he saves us from our sins. It is about us. And that is perhaps why few have ever really believed it. It is easier, it turns out, to believe in a higher power, a God, a savior, who will save us from our sins of hatred and violence than to think, to believe that human beings are capable of the miracle of solidarity: of reaching out beyond one's own interest to see the interests of another, to live with and for another in the hope only of a common redemption from the tears in the human fabric that have come from difference. ... There is no us, no them.

Patterson's scholarship is accessible and impressive. I can believe his exposition. I highly recommend this book.

• • •

So why have I had a hard time writing about this? It comes down to finding Patterson's way knowing not how I approach these matters. And I don't think I'm alone in that. A little history ...

Recently I was trying to recall for a friend how it came to be that today, at least in its official aspirations, The Episcopal Church, the Christian sub-branch to which I belong, came to affirm the full inclusion of women and LGBT people in all the rites of membership and leadership in the church. 

This required a process which felt long, fraught, and belated as we lived it. First women and queers were just there and not about to be silent about our presence. This came as a shock to much of mid-20th century Episcopal conventional orthodoxy, but the brave gender pioneers didn't go away.

And through a succession of internal institutional struggles and with some re-writing of our internal practices, we inched toward welcoming everyone who wanted to come into our particular practice of life in Jesus.

At every step along the way, our scandalized comrades in institutional religion would scream: But you haven't done the theology!!!

This wasn't true; worthy, serious, erudite theologians "did the theology" of women's and queer inclusion over and over. It was just that those who were made uncomfortable didn't read it or like it.

And meanwhile, faithful uppity women and LGBT folk continued to hang around, and participate, and find comfort and truth in the actually existing life of the church. (That goes for many Christian branchlets, I just focus on the one I lived this among.)

Here's a secret: the uppity intruders didn't usually read the theology either. Oh, perhaps occasionally we did. But it wasn't the excellent, urgent, writings of the theologians that made us able to approach God through a changing Church. It was the lived experience within that Church and among its people, in a community that provided us with the assurance that we were, despite all bigotry and suspicion, indeed loved by God.

Patterson is well and truly "doing the theology" and I'm glad. And this still is not the bedrock that does it for me. But I'm delighted that it does for some people! If curious, check out The Forgotten Creed.

A little more Stacey Abrams wisdom

How did a former Georgia state Senate minority leader and defeated gubernatorial candidate in a red state become a nationally known progressive Democratic star? We know she is one -- but how'd she get there? It wasn't by winning (statewide) elections or by mastery of sound bites in national media. 

Stacey Abrams' prominence started with -- and still largely rests upon -- her service as an evangelist for smart grassroots organizing as a route to political power within our quasi-democratic system.

This month, thousands of Democrats are trying to apply the lessons that she and her extended network -- Fair Fight, the New Georgia Project, and many local groups -- have perfected over a decade.

A while back Abrams gave the incomparable feminist journalist Rebecca Traister an interview full of organizing tips derived from her Georgia work, a few of which I want to share here. Says Abrams:

Having volunteers is great, but having experienced volunteers is vital. So when someone learns how to door-knock, when someone learns how to organize and get other people to work with them, that is gold. When campaigns are intentional about building that muscle memory in places where it hasn’t existed before or worse, where it’s atrophied, that changes the outcome. What [Atlanta Congressional candidate] Jon Ossoff did in 2017 by investing in communities that had not been contacted in previous elections, what I did in 2018, absolutely helped support what [Atlanta Congressional candidate] Lucy McBath was doing in the Sixth in 2018. It’s one of the reasons she had an even easier time this cycle of winning. Because you’re building capacity among voters who become more engaged.

Jon contacted this whole group of voters called the unlisted — people who don’t vote, so they really get pushed outside of any communication about politics writ large. But when you go to them and say, “We think you matter,” that changes the dynamic. It doesn’t guarantee a voter, but it guarantees an eyeball. Those people got contacted by Jon’s campaign, and by my campaign, and then again in 2020. So we’re growing new voters: low-propensity voters who may move from low propensity or no voting into moderate propensity, or maybe we create a super-voter.

... It’s important that we understand that voter suppression being stopped is why they are so mad. Republicans had a plan for stopping voters from getting to the polls. We beat them in multiple states and flipped the outcome. The margins are small because the outcome can be undone very quickly.

... we have to invest in people who understand the places where they live. I understand Georgia, but I only understand Georgia because I worked with Georgians who were here before I got here and who will be here after I’m dead. There is absolutely a necessity to build in place.

Thanks to all this organizing work that has gone before, two Democratic candidates have a chance to win Senate seats on January 5 -- and the whole national Democratic organizing cohort is on the ground and on the phones to get it done. Thanks Stacey!

How about a little Christmas spirit?

I can only hope the good Roman Catholic Cardinal of Washington isn't responsible for the headline on his oped about why he is suing to further open churches in the capital that have been restricted during of pandemic. However the headline finds an echo in the text, so I'm afraid we can take it as his. 

He's whining. 

We recently brought legal action to protect the free exercise of religion in the nation’s capital. This was a last resort, as we could no longer bear the burden of turning away the faithful from Mass due to D.C.’s 50-person cap on religious services when big-box stores, retailers, and even liquor stores and many other venues continued to operate without similar limits. The right of the faithful to assemble for religious services is one of our most cherished constitutional legacies, and we maintain it should be treated as an “essential” activity — just as D.C. regards shopping and so many other activities as essential.

He goes on to report that the congregations he leads have conformed to social distancing practices, required masks, and limited their attendance, in accordance with the D.C. pandemic rules (since rescinded). But somehow, those measures seem to him an illegitimate infringement on his liberty.

Where is the generosity or confidence in the goodness of creation in this? In a time of collective need, a time when satisfying individual wants risks the health of the community, isn't it the proper role of religious institutions to be even more conscientious about the common good than secular institutions? 

We don't expect BevMo or Safeway to sacrifice for our health (or even the health of their workers). But can't we expect better of religious bodies, especially when some accommodations have been made? Not very graceful.

All out for the Georgia Senate races

Stacey Abrams rallied over 700 UniteHERE canvassers and remote phonebankers this morning over zoom.

"You are going to knock on one million doors! If you have to, irritate the dickens out of the people you meet. Ask them what they want and let them know we can get it done. We turned Georgia blue and we can do it one more time."

Walking door to door this time of year is cold work.

Canvassers and phone callers alike are learning about Georgia.

Walkers on the ground are out from dawn to dusk. We know -- if we want more coronavirus help from the federal government, if we want health care for everyone, if we want a government that respects workers and democracy -- we have to get this done.

Seasonal musings

Today's conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, of the Winter Solstice, and of the approaching completion of another Christian season of Advent all put me in mind of these lines from Madeleine L'Engle. 

Into the Darkest Hour

It was a time like this,


war & tumult of war,


a horror in the air.


 

Hungry yawned the abyss –


and yet there came the star


and the child most wonderfully there. 

 

It was a time like this


of fear & lust for power,


license & greed and blight –


and yet the Prince of bliss came into the darkest hour


in quiet & silent light. ...

I am fond of the Advent season. Waiting in joyful, disciplined hope for more light, for a better day, seems the most human of conditions. 

But I also always wonder each December, what would Advent mean in the southern hemisphere, when the seasonal shift approaching would be mid-summer's longest day and shortest night?

Maybe if climate change is not mitigated, humans will have to learn to wait at the approach of summer solstice for a gradual waning of temperatures that threaten life itself?

Vaccine delight and other concerns

Dr. Jane Jenab displays her vaccination record.

She is an ER doc who has been treating COVID patients for months. Her relief is profound:

I won’t lie, I teared up several times on the way to the hospital, and definitely shed a tear during the actual vaccination. So incredibly relieved. I’ve been holding on by my fingernails to make it through until we had a vaccine, and now we do. It’s hard to express how grateful I am. Hopefully I will live to continue to serve my fellow humans for a whole lot longer now.

There has been so much darkness and so much death this year. There have been so many days when I have struggled to find any semblance of hope. Today, there is hope. We have lost over 300,000 Americans, including countless healthcare workers. For all those who didn’t make it to see this day, we will carry on, carry the torch, and keep fighting the fight. Thank you to the scientists who have brought us these vaccines. My fervent hope is that everyone has access to them soon. Onward, friends. I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

... For those who have asked about side effects from the vaccine, I am about 24 hours out from my injection and so far, I have some mild soreness at the injection site and in the deltoid muscle, similar to tetanus shots in the past. Otherwise, I feel perfectly fine.

Another friend works in a hospital. News that she is eligible for one of the first batch of doses forced her to ponder the justice of vaccine allocations.

WE'RE GETTING THE VACCINE TOMORROW!!!! Shot 1/2. ... I am so freaking excited - and grateful. Also, I feel a little guilty about it. I mean, the system just isn't sophisticated enough to make sure that risk/vulnerability is calculated precisely ... I'm "just" a chaplain - I'm behind nurses and doctors and many others in line, which is as it should be. I'm ahead of people who sit at desks, which is also as it should be.

I am in the hospital 4 days a week, seeing (presumably!) non-COVID patients all the time and entering a COVID room about once a week, and meeting with immediate family of COVID patients usually multiple times a week and I'll be honest, I don't feel 100% confident in the screening, in terms of what their exposure is etc. See? I feel guilty enough to talk through my justification for getting this! But anyway - my only choice here is to opt in or out. I'm opting in with tremendous enthusiasm and gratitude!!!!!

 I shared my own concerns about the vaccine priority list previously. I'll get the shot when Kaiser gets around to me, which will be awhile.

We know the Trump administration has broken the bureaucracy's capacity to distribute this life saving intervention fairly and efficiently. We know that rich people and powerful people will find ways to jump the line. Distibution is going to be a train wreck. And still -- we can be amazed and delighted that hope for protection from infection is finally on the way.

Electoral extortion at work

Joe Biden has cut an unusual dual campaign ad for both Democrats -- Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock -- seeking to win U.S. Senate seats in Georgia on January 5. A joint campaign ad for two candidates at once is rare. (I tried to remember when I'd last seen two U.S. Senate races in one state at once -- we had Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer in 1992. Any others come to mind?)

Aside from some unnecessary deference to "the troops" (is Georgia honeycombed with military bases or something?), Biden's pitch is just what it needs to be: if we hope for meaningful federal cash to support a vaccine-enabled recovery from the pandemic, we need a Democratic-controlled Senate.

The Republican evil genius of the Senate, Leader Mitch McConnell, agrees. Audio from a conference call catches him telling current Republican Senators that, despite their tight-fisted inclinations, they have to vote for some kind of cash stimulus before Christmas.

“Kelly and David are getting hammered,” explained McConnell.

Kelly (Loeffler) and David (Perdue) are the Georgia GOP Senate candidates and incumbents. All 48 Democratic Senators have been waiting to vote for more aid since May when the House first passed an aid bill. McConnell has said no.

Thanks to the danger that Ossoff and Loefller might prevail, it looks like we the people will get something out of Washington this week. McConnell is being squeezed. But watch out if he retains his majority. If we want real government action in the new year, both Georgia candidates need to win.

Joe Biden did just carry Georgia -- maybe he can help do it again.

Pure joy!

Today our courtesy niece Tara Geraghty-Moats (#6) won the first ever Women's Nordic Combined World Cup competition in Ramsau am Dachstein, Austria. 

For decades women were excluded from the Scandianian-origin sport which starts with a ski jump and concludes with a cross country race.

"Today here in Ramsau was a dream come true, it was something that I was thinking about since I was 10 years old," said the 27-year-old.

"I just kept telling myself I could do it... huge thanks to my team and the FIS (International Ski Federation) for finally inviting the women to the big leagues."...

Women will also compete in the discipline at this year's Nordic World Ski Championships, which are being held in Oberstdorf, Germany, between February 23 and March 7.

However the sport's World Cup season could be very short, as after a series of cancellations due to the coronavirus pandemic, Friday's event was the only one left scheduled. (Story via France24)

 Way to go Tara!