Bulletproofing Schools, American Children’s Rights, the Military Told a Lie
KTF Weekly Newslettter
Hi everybody,
Please remember to send in your questions about anything you’ve read in this newsletter or heard on our podcast recently. We’ll be recording our season finale Shake the Dust episode soon where we answer listener questions. Get any questions you’ve been thinking about in now! Send an email or voicemail to shakethedust@ktfpress.com!
Sy is off this week due to the scheduling complications that arise when a toddler gets sick the day before your newsletter is supposed to go out. We very much appreciate everyone’s understanding!
Jonathan’s recommendations:
This article and interactive digital classroom show how American schools are changing in the absence of meaningful legislation to stop mass shootings. Bulletproof backpacks, auto-locking doors, and other measures to minimally mitigate a problem that is uniquely American underscore the terrible reality that teachers and children, professors and students, live in fear every day. “I’ve come to terms with the fact that I might die in my classroom,” says one teacher in the article. The fact that we are turning classrooms into saferooms should drive us to our knees in prayer, open our hearts and minds to work on behalf of the most vulnerable, and make us fight for the right not to be shot while doing math and learning how to read.
In a February newsletter, I highlighted how Republican states are rolling back child protection laws so that it’s easier to recruit them for dangerous jobs on construction sights and in factories. This is one movement demonstrating the shallowness of the refrain many politicians’ use to justify their preferred policies: we are protecting children. You can see that the US actually has relatively little interest in protecting children for their own sake if you zoom out and look at the whole policy landscape. A Recent report by Human Rights Watch on children in America gives us the details. Child marriage is legal in 41 states. Corporal punishment, which disproportionately affects Black and disabled children, is legal in all schools in 22 states (another 25 allow such punishment only in private schools). The report also covers child labor and juvenile justice, where the statistics are particularly distressing. There is no minimum age requirement to do farm work in 23 states and 24 states don’t have minimum ages for arresting children or placing them in juvenile detention. 22 states have no minimum age for trying children as adults and punishing them with life in prison without the possibility of parole. This report should drive us to pray, fast, and seek the Lord to steward our resources to love the most vulnerable around us—children.
The United States military said that no civilians died when they killed the leader of ISIS in a raid on his hideout in 2019. This Episode of NPR’s Morning Edition and the accompanying article explain how that was a lie. US troops severely injured and permanently disabled An Agricultural worker named Barakat Ahmad Barakat and killed the two other laborers in the car with him. Military representatives have claimed for years that these men were enemy combatants. Barakat is now trying to put his life back together, provide for his family, and receive some form of restitution for what was truly an unjust act. Sadly, his story mirrors that of police shootings in the United States. An officer with a gun makes a decision because of fear. The official report doesn’t tell the truth about the circumstances. Nobody but the victim’s community thinks any more of it. Occasionally, somebody like a reporter from a trusted media institution puts in an enormous amount of work to expose the truth and help the victims fight for accountability. I pray for justice for Barakat and his family. I long for the day when air strikes won’t blow up cars full of friends headed home from work.
Shake the Dust preview
Tomorrow, we’re talking about the trend of pastors who are not prepared for their job, inspired by a recent somewhat viral article by a minister on why he quit his church. Polling says almost half of pastors are thinking about following his lead. We’re breaking down how the idols and theology of colonized faith set many pastors up to fail, and what we can do about it.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Jonathan and Sy