KTF Weekly Newsletter: The Most Influential Activists, Revolt of the Delivery Workers, Whitewashing School Choice
Hello everybody,
We’re having some interesting conversations about what bonus episodes of Shake the Dust we might bring to you during this off-season period. Please remember to write in by replying to this email if there are any questions or topics you would like to hear us discuss! Alright, here we go with this week’s resources:
Jonathan’s recommendations:
The New York Times Magazine recently featured the story of Vicha Ratanapakdee, asking why did he have to die? Mr. Ratanapakdee was violently shoved to the ground while on a morning walk; ultimately the 82-year-old succumbed to his injuries. Too many elders from the AAPI community this past year entered public consciousness as victims of violence. This piece goes beyond hashtags and headlines and presses into the fallout from a family and a neighborhood brought swiftly into and out of the national spotlight by our country’s history of racialized violence and present turmoil. It shows the complexities of the criminal justice system and the long history of prejudice between minority communities. It invites us to lean into the richness and limitations of forgiveness — its freedom and its failure to resurrect loved ones. Violence against the AAPI community requires a record more detailed than the videos of their continued violation. This piece is a solid step toward honoring the image of God in those who suffer violence and those who inflict it.
“San Francisco State University professor Russell Jeung, who had been an East Oakland, Calif., organizer for Cambodian and Latino youths since the ’90s, founded Stop AAPI Hate in March 2020 with veteran activists Cynthia Choi, co–executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, and Manjusha P. Kulkarni, executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council.” This quote is from the article in which Time Magazine honored these three in this year’s 100 Most Influential People. #StopAAPIHate did what law enforcement claimed it did not have the resources to do: track the abuse and violence perpetrated against the AAPI community. Click here to see their work! Jeung, Choi, and Kulkarni created a place to document the injustices that we know are happening, but that dominant culture denies. Part of honoring the image of God in ourselves and our neighbors is to recognize their suffering. Jesus said “mourn with those who mourn,” and fortunately, we have a practical space to do that because of these three amazing people.
There are an estimated 65,000 delivery workers in New York City. Prior to the pandemic, for many of us who live in NYC, they were a force that made the city run; yet few were willing to honor their importance with dependable income, legal protections, or benefits. They were just the people darting back and forth in and out of traffic with huge bags on their backs and no safety net. During the pandemic, we found out how essential they are, and now I fear the inevitability of their return to the background noise of the city. But that would both deny the reality of our profound dependence on the service they provide and dismiss their exploitation. Josh Dzieza, writing in a special collaboration between The Verge and New York Magazine, illuminated the hidden hardships and the ingenious organizing of the city’s delivery men and women in powerful detail in “Revolt of the Delivery Workers.” Accompanying the article, this video shows one harrowing effort to deliver a single ice cream during Hurricane Ida. There is no question for followers of Jesus that labor exploitation has no place in the Kingdom of God.
Sy’s recommendations
A lesser-reported story of the pandemic is the gains made by the school choice movement, which has effectively taken advantage of the chaos in the educational world to reach more of its policy goals. This week, Duke historian Nancy MacLean put this movement in some perspective in the Washington Post, which I share because the history on this subject is relatively unknown. Starting as a segregationist attempt to evade the ruling in Brown v. Board, the movement gained support from libertarians like Milton Friedman, who saw an opportunity to push toward their goal of eliminating public schooling altogether. The transformation from a movement of racism and privatization to one touting the somewhat confusing notion of a free-market-ish public education is perhaps odd but tracks with the attempts to conceal and obfuscate racism after the civil rights movement made explicit, public bigotry less tenable.
A recent article in Arc Digital by a national security expert breaks down the ideological commitments of white nationalist terrorists across the US and Europe. It highlights themes in thinking, sources of motivation, and online forums that were popular among perpetrators of several well-known attacks from the last decade. Drawing inspiration from Timothy McVeigh and an infamous Swedish terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011, attackers from the protest in Charlottesville, to the Synagogue in Pittsburgh, to the Walmart in El Paso have a lot in common. And the main aim of the article is to pinpoint how Tucker Carlson amplifies their worldview on a regular basis to millions of viewers. Given this, along with the trend of Republican political candidates doubling down on the stolen election narrative, I would be surprised if political violence in the US did not increase in the coming years. I bring this up in the hope that we can pray about this in an informed, clear-eyed way, and prepare to help some people see the evil behind how pundits are discipling them.
My last one today is a longer, beautifully-written essay on an Indian-American writer’s experience of living halfway between her life of relative privilege in America and the life many of her loved ones are leading among the pandemic’s devastation in India. She contrasts the traditional Hindu mourning process she went through when her father died in India 17 years ago with the cold, assembly-line grief many in India have had to experience in the last year-and-a-half. The piece is also a reflection on the trade many immigrants from India make: security and financial well-being for alienation from Indians and discrimination from Americans. She tells her story honestly, vulnerably, and with a significant amount of grace for herself and others. My reaction here is both sadness and, perhaps oddly, the hopefulness I find in people who are able to articulate and face their pain squarely, without reaching for simplifying stories. I think that is how Jesus greeted tragedy, despite the many, many simplifying stories available to him. Witnessing someone else do the same is a powerful example for us.
Thank you all so much for reading, and we’ll see you next week.
The KTF team