Welcome Address to Black Lives Matter Rally - 6.6.20 The Rev. Vincent Pizzuto, Ph.D.

I am grateful to our neighbors for collaborating with us and making this rally a reality. More so, I am honored to have been asked to offer an opening address as we begin our vigil and march today. "No Justice, No Peace." This is a slogan which since the 1970's has been taken up as the battle cry of the marginalized and oppressed – and with each new year, each new decade, it has gained the collective momentum of those who demand to be recognized in the fullness of their humanity. For Christians, social justice is nothing other than the fulfillment of the gospel call to love indiscriminately. And, in that sense, Justice is nothing less than the extension of personal love to the stranger. While we cannot love all people personally, we can create a just society, in which all people of every tribe and race and nation, can live in a world in which they are safe, secure, and able to thrive. All of us stand to benefit from such a world. And thus, no degree of suffering or injustice—human or otherwise—is alien to the church's concern for the world. It is quite natural then, that we should find ourselves in one another's company today and I am personally encouraged and inspired by your enthusiasm—as we together explore where the effective history of our own privilege is either negligent or complicit in the suffering and injustice perpetrated against our fellow African American citizens. In my sermon today to my congregation I spoke about the poignancy of this moment in our national history, I told the story of my father, who, when he was a young boy developed a very serious bone infection called Osteomyelitis. It was in his left shin. Because there was not as yet any effective antibiotics to treat his condition, he contend for many years with resurgent flair ups that were as painful as they were dangerous. As years passed the conditioned worsened in intensity resulting in periodic excruciating blisters that would form over the infected area. With each new resurgence, doctors would apply the best ointments they had at their disposal. Prescribe pain killers and bandage the area, in hopes of suppressing the infection once again…at least for a time. This cycle continued for nearly 20 years until finally one doctor, in 1967, decided to do something different, to break with conventional wisdom, to take a different approach than any doctors had taken before: Rather than medicate and bandage the wound…rather than cover it up in hopes it would go away, he shined a bright light on the infected area, took a surgical knife in hand, and lanced the blister. Without the help of pain killers or anesthesia he dug deep into the wound: cleaning, scraping, sanitizing, and irrigating—clear down into the bone itself. For my father this was excruciating! Yet, it finally marked the turning point – the point at which he finally began to heal once and for all. Sisters and Brothers, like my father's body struggling with the reoccurring flair-up of a chronic infection, so too does the scourge of racism infect our society with as much pain, venom, and toxicity. Our country suffers from the disease – literally, the social dis-ease of a history of White – on – Black violence and oppression, from the very moment the colonizers of this continent began kidnapping Africans from their ancestral home, loading them onto boats like cattle, and dragging them across the ocean on perilous journeys which many millions would not survive. Once landed on the shores of the so-called "New World," for over 300 years the colonizers established ethnic slavery among the colonies as the basis for our economy. The numbers of abducted Africans trafficked between 1525-1866 amount to no less than 12.5 million men, women and children, resulting in over 2 million deaths among those who never survived the journey itself. Even after the so-called Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln on January 1, 1863 the dark history of state-sponsored terrorism—known as lynching—escalated in the years following the Emancipation Proclamation, perpetrated by Whites who wanted to instill fear in Black Americans in order to maintain their stronghold on White supremacy in economic, social, and political spheres. More than 4,400 lynchings (mostly targeting the African American community) are recorded—and many more suspected—in the years following Post-Civil War Reconstruction and World War II. And if we want to tuck this history away, relegating it safely to a distant past, consider this: Between 1890 and 1952 seven presidents asked Congress to pass federal anti-lynching laws." And yet, not one bill was approved by the Senate because of the powerful opposition of the Southern Democratic voting bloc. And as late as 2018, appeals by African American lawmakers for a reparations bill for lynchings has still been denied a hearing. Nevertheless, as lynchings decreased after 1919, a new form of oppression—the Jim Crow laws—ensured the continuance of White supremacy by enforcing racial segregation across the Southern United States. Jim Crow remained in force until 1965 – and was only lifted after the brave, hard fought battles and civil protests of the likes of Rosa Parks, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, along with thousands of African Americans and their allies who took to the streets, exercising their First Amendment rights, just as we are today. Inadequate as it is, I am asking all of us here today to allow the horror of this history— of this social dis-ease to settle in your bones. What is unfolding in our streets today, is not an isolated moment, nor do the vigils and protests rising up in our cities mark some new virulent form of American anarchy, as some have suggested! To the contrary, these protests, like those of Parks, King, and Malcom X, are the rightful expression of an oppressed people. They mark an inalienable human right guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution to petition the government for a redress of grievances. For centuries in our history, and now again, we are witnesses the boils and blisters that arise from the social history of racism and White supremacy – a disease that penetrates our own country down to its very bones. And I would like to think we stand here today, like my father's doctor so many decades ago, to once again shine the bright light of Truth on this most egregious sin of our Nation, to end centuries of White Silence and complicity – from which we have, and we Whites continue, to benefit, and to stand with our Black sisters and brothers until that great Dream of Dr. King, that great Dream of freedom of all our African American sisters and brothers is made a political, national, and social reality the world over. While today marks a day of solidarity in witness to this unique moment in history, I am deeply inspired by so many of you who are, and have been engaged in the work of social justice for years and even lifetimes. And thus you know also that anyone's fight for inclusion and equality is intimately linked with everyone's fight for inclusion and equality. And I am here to remind you today, that in our fight, in this little corner of the world, the community of St. Columba's stands with our wider community, to assist and collaborate in any way we can. And no doubt, we have our work cut out for us. The White supremacist stronghold dominating the narratives of this country—and the media outlets who serve them like henchmen, are working feverishly to denigrate this new exercise of First Amendment rights by African Americans. By twisting, distorting, and exaggerating the incidents of violent protests, of looting, and carousing the White supremacist narrative and their henchmen are trying to undermine the legitimacy of our current social unrest by blaming and demonizing the victims themselves. When in fact we know that the vast, overwhelming majority of protests have been peaceful assemblies, without violence or incident. Sisters and brothers, this is an old trick but with all the tools of social media at their disposal, they are more effective than ever. And the trick goes something like this: Demonize the oppressed to make their fight for justice look like a war against the Establishment, against the acceptable social order, and against the moral fabric of a peaceful society. But you see, I know this trick well, because I battled for decades the same sick, twisted, toxic narrative coming from conservative Christian churches and televangelists who turned the fight—my fight--for gay rights into a supposed "War on Christianity." A war against good old 1950's America, land of the free and home of the brave, where gays were "invisible," where women "knew their proper role in the home," and by God! Blacks "knew their place in White Society." And whenever the marginalized rise up to fight for their rights, threatening the power, status, or privilege of the dominant class those on the margins are simply made out to be enemies of the state and more tragically still, of the state's religion – and let's face it, in the minds of many that means Christianity. Sisters and brothers there is iniquity in our land, there is iniquity in the land, sisters and brothers, there is iniquity across this great country of ours, there is iniquity in our churches and court houses, our police stations and hallowed halls of government! And there is iniquity in every household and every heart that knows, that sees and hears the cry of our African American sisters and brothers, and deludes themselves once again into thinking that a little ointment, a tight bandage, and a couple of painkillers might just might go away! But this is the truth of the matter: there is no painless way to heal the disease of racism that has ravaged our country since its inception. And it is time that we who are privileged, like my father's doctor so many years ago, decide that it's high time to take a new approach. It's time to shine the bright light of truth on the pussing wound of the history of racism. It's time to lance that boil, and do the excruciating work of probing that social infection right down to the marrow of our bones. If my father's chronic illness has anything to teach me, it's that the social disease of racism won't go away until we do the hard work of seeing how White people have and continue to benefit from the mere fact of our Whiteness. And I believe, now more than ever, the time has come for us to face up to a history of kidnappings, slavery and oppression, a history of lynchings, a history of standing on the necks of our African American sisters and brothers. And let us make this day the day when with stalwart determination and compassionate resolve – each of us continues our work for justice in ever-greater solidarity, so that we may hasten that great day when, held aloft by the African American witnesses and martyrs of this country who fought so valiantly, and are fighting still:  That their song may become our own as well: We shall overcome. We shall overcome. We shall overcome. Someday. Thank you for your kind attention and for your solidarity.