Jailing Poor People, COVID and the Navajo Nation, A MasterClass in Blackness
KTF Weekly Newsletter
Hey everybody,
If you didn’t get a chance to read Jonathan’s piece on the death of Queen Elizabeth, “How to Grieve a Colonizer,” give that one a read. It’s powerful, emotionally nuanced, and absolutely worth your time.
And now, let’s get into this week’s highlights to help us as we seek to leave colonized faith for the Kingdom of God.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
This short and entertaining opinion piece in the Baltimore Banner by author Leslie Gray Streeter is a straightforward, honest perspective explaining why the “personal responsibility” argument against student loan forgiveness lacks understanding about the landscape for graduates with debt in today’s society. A lot of Christians have been jacking verses out of context and mixing politics with faith to justify their opposition to forgiveness. I think this article speaks to those who need simple facts, links to statistics, and a compelling argument. I had student loans, and I paid them off. The same is true of Ms. Streeter. But we both believe that our own survival of the fraudulent gauntlet of increasing costs, decreasing returns, and predatory institutions does not mean every person behind us must struggle too.
The highest COVID death rates intersect with the highest rates of poverty and comorbidities and the lowest levels of access to quality healthcare. This puts Native Americans in the crosshairs of a pandemic that exacerbates many issues they have faced since Europeans invaded Turtle Island. The trends of economic depression, isolation, and disease meant that COVID wreaked havoc on the Navajo Nation, according to this excellent New York Times piece. As we seek to leave colonized faith, it is important for followers of Jesus to lean into the experiences of those who have been colonized and learn how our tragic history stretches its tentacles to the present to devastating effect.
Sy’s recommendations:
The American criminal legal system’s use of cash bail belies its incredible indifference and bigotry toward poor people. Judges set bail when they find it is unlikely that the defendant will flea or endanger the community. But bail always means that wealthy defendants get to go home while poor defendants sit in a cage. Nevertheless, politicians and law enforcement routinely oppose bail reform on the grounds that this form of class discrimination is necessary for public safety. In New York, the legislature in 2020 drastically cut back on the number of crimes for which judges could keep defendants in jail pre-trial, and pro-police forces have been trying to pin every subsequent headline-grabbing crime or spike in arrests on that reform. This story recounts one politician’s recent attempt to aggregate police data in his county to demonstrate the danger of releasing defendants pre-trial, only to find that the data was not at all on his side. His commitment to the falsehood is depressing, but we have to be people who see through these narratives to the truth.
Last week, A Trump-appointed federal judge halted the Department of Justice’s investigation into the classified government documents found at Trump’s personal residence. The judge found that the former president’s assertion of what is called executive privilege prevented the DOJ from viewing the documents until a “special master” goes through them to determine which of those documents are in fact privileged. This is a somewhat complicated issue, but Georgetown Law professor Heidi Li Feldman does a great job of breaking it down without using a lot of legal speak in this Twitter thread. She explains why the seemingly dull procedural ruling is distressing to many legal experts, even though it didn’t make that big of a media splash.
Suzie’s recommendations:
Christian historian Diana Butler Bass recently dropped another powerhouse blog post tracing the connection between the stories evangelicals tell about American history and the rise of Trumpist fascism. Bass begins with what she refers to as a movement of “Christian nation-ism,” the belief that America is a Christian nation ordained by God. She argues that this perception morphed over time into full-fledged Christian nationalism, the belief that Christians are the only true American patriots and that they must seize and wield power. Finally, Bass warns that the logical conclusion of such a brand of religious fundamentalism is inevitably Christofascism marked by an authoritarian, militant, far-right Christian political force that seeks to govern as a theocratic minority.
MasterClass is releasing a series entitled Black History, Freedom & Love with teachers like Cornel West, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Angela Davis, and Nikole Hannah-Jones. Topics include “What They Didn’t Teach You About the End of the Civil War,” “Critical Race Theory: the Origin,” “Black Women and the Struggle for Liberation,” and “Recognize the White Supremacy Inside of You.” Based on the previews and trailer, the sessions look not only enlightening, but potentially deeply transformative. Unfortunately, the course is not free. But a MasterClass subscription costs $15 per month or $180 annually and it includes access to all the numerous other MasterClass courses.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
The KTF team