A Settlement for Separated Families, Disability in a War Zone, The New Speaker
KTF Weekly Newsletter
Hi everyone,
We have some really exciting things happening this month, including our monthly bonus episode for paid subscribers. So stay tuned and please do subscribe to support everything we do at KTF as well as get access to those bonus episodes and the entire newsletter!
And now, on to this week’s highlights!
Sy’s recommendations:
One of my first thoughts when I heard about Israel throttling internet and cell service in Palestine was how hard this would make things for blind people like me who rely more than the average person on digital and phone communication. Like the COVID-19 pandemic and many other disasters, Israel’s attacks have dramatically and disproportionately increased the vulnerability of disabled people. This Human Rights Watch report, published yesterday, surveys what challenges disabled Palestinians are currently facing, and tells several individual’ stories of evacuating before a bombardment using a wheelchair, fleaing the sound of bombs while deaf, or managing mental health symptoms with a blockade preventing medicine deliveries. One man describes trying to get out of his house after a bomb hit it; the challenge was that he lost both his legs in a previous Israeli bombardment. The report also discusses the rights of disabled people during armed conflict under international law. I’m grateful someone is paying attention to this aspect of the war. I hope it leads us to prayerful lament and more fervent advocacy for an immediate ceasefire.
One in six in-patient psychiatric beds in America are in facilities run by Universal Health Services (UHS), a for-profit, Fortune 500 company. UHS facilities have faced innumerable lawsuits and scandals regarding a wide range of problems. But this investigative article from Mother Jones highlights the company’s focus on profiting off of foster children. It found that foster care agencies hand over older children with psychiatric conditions with remarkable, often-neglectful ease because there are so few parents willing to take them. Plus, UHS’ CFO once pointed out how profitable behavioral health can be because of how little attention Medicaid and other insurers pay to claims made in that category. And, one expert notes, with no parents in the picture, and only overburdened caseworkers checking on them, foster children often stay much longer than necessary in these hospitals, making them a “gold mine” for UHS. Fair warning, the stories in this article are gut-wrenching. As I’ve noted on Shake the Dust previously, the Church interacts with the foster care system a ton, often actually running the agencies. Hopefully articles like these teach us to be highly skeptical of the system and its aims so that we might be voices advocating for the actual needs of the children and families that it consistently fails.
The government reached a settlement with about 4,000 immigrant families that the Trump administration separated at the US-Mexico border. The families will finally have the opportunity to apply for asylum, and they can remain in the US with work authorization for three years. They will also receive housing and mental health services, plus legal assistance for their immigration cases. They will not however get the financial compensation they initially requested for the trauma they endured. And of course, there are still hundreds of children whom the government has not reunited with their families. Please pray that these families would find peace, stability, and each other over the coming months and years. This is a significant step, but just one step in a long process.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey, the person behind the popular Nap Ministry accounts on social media, was a gift for me while I was in COVID quarantine last week. It’s a gift to all of us immersed in the dominant settler colonial framework for understanding work, rest, and the formation of our core identities. The book is an analysis and rejection of the way that racism, capitalism and White Supremacy turn humans into automatons, stripping us of our divinity. It is raw, accurate, and powerful. Watch her read an excerpt on Instagram and get the book today!
Scholar, author, and past Shake the Dust guest Kristin Du Mez was clear in her interview with Politico that Mike Johnson, newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, is an unapologetic White, evangelical, Christian nationalist. That combination is anti-democratic, dangerous, and unhelpful for the witness of Christ. Scholar and author Jemar Tisby named these realities as well in his piece noting Johnson’s efforts to repeal the Johnson Amendment (no relation) which prohibits churches from endorsing political candidates. Johnson does not believe in the separation of church and state. He preaches and practices a political theology that is harmful and heretical. We should resist and intercede against His agenda.
In our newsletter last week, I wrote about a philosopher arguing that the first step toward genocide is dehumanization. Following up on that idea, I wrote this reflection (for my day job) naming that we are in danger of dehumanizing others when we choose pride over humility. In many of our dialogues, the rhetoric communicates without equivocation that you must pledge your allegiance to Israel. Hamas’ violence on October 7 warrants a strong response, so the displacement and destruction of Palestinians is fully justified. And I fear that mainstream voices may begin making the opposite argument about support for Palestine if indiscriminate violence in Gaza continues. We cannot seek to learn and understand with the goal of finding a way to peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation if we continue down this path. And that path is the pride of believing oneself to be morally pure. We must resist that pride, the exceptionalism it engenders, and the violence it can manifest.
Thanks for reading and see you next week!
Jonathan and Sy