KTF Weekly Newsletter: The NRA’s Columbine Conference Call, the Great Flood, and the Cash Hoarding Cancer Hospital
Hi everybody,
While the next bonus Shake the Dust episode won’t come out until next week, you can listen to Jonathan and Sy tomorrow on Good Faith Weekly where they had a great, wide-ranging discussion with the hosts on Jesus, politics, and creating community across differences. Also, we recorded next week’s Shake the Dust episode while broadcasting on Twitter Spaces, which was a lot of fun. We might try it again in future, so follow us on Twitter if you haven’t already. We would love to see you there, and we’ll probably leave time for questions and comments at the end of the recording.
Alright, let’s get to this week’s highlights:
Sy’s recommendations:
Listen, I get that there’s a lot going on in the news, but I think this one should have made the rounds more than it did. Here’s the set-up: In 1999, only days after the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, the National Rifle Association (NRA) was supposed to have its annual conference just down the road in Denver. People wondered whether it would cancel the event, or maybe express condolences and try to keep a low profile. Instead, actor and the NRA’s then-president, Charlton Heston, gave a speech drawing the blueprint for the organization’s response to mass shootings ever since: call it offensive to suggest that the NRA should even have to comment on such events, attack the media for sensationalizing tragedy, and carry on as usual. But before this speech, the NRA had other options on the table, and one anonymous person recorded a long conference call where the leadership discussed those options. Now here’s the story: NPR just recently got a copy of that recording. No joke. The reporting provides significant insight into both the sheer extent of the NRA’s power, and the ways enormous amounts of money and influence make even the simplest, humane actions — like donating money to the victims’ families — seem impossible. It’s a great read (or listen, since it’s NPR) for people trying to be, as Jesus put it, shrewd as snakes when it comes to how cold, calculating apathy and sin operate.
About a decade ago, two BBC reporters went rogue and handed over a huge scoop, the result of years of investigative reporting, to one of their own network’s biggest rivals. The story was that a major BBC personality was a long-time child sexual abuser, and the company had knowingly swept that fact under the rug for decades. A couple weeks ago, The Guardian published an excellent, longer piece recounting the saga. The protagonist is the late Liz MacKean, whose patience, persistence, and empathy won her the trust of dozens of victims who wouldn’t speak to other journalists. Their trust, in turn, made her a fierce and uncompromising advocate years before #MeToo forced the media to acknowledge that powerful institutions frequently downplay and deflect accusations of sexual predation in their ranks. This is a tragic story, but MacKean’s sacrificial refusal to participate in what her employer did is worth learning about and emulating.
This recent article in the Intercept is a must-read, but only if you’re ready. It’s an informative piece on the complex, overlapping, ineffective, and neglected systems of care that the state of Georgia and the city of Atlanta have in place to try to assist people with trauma, mental illness, drug addiction, and homelessness. The systems fail, and do so miserably. But the writer is not a detached journalist aiming for distance and objectivity. He is an activist and someone who has spent real time on the street, getting deeply involved in the challenges of the people who employees of Atlanta’s jails and hospitals know by name. He describes details of one particularly sad case, and the story alternates between thoroughly-researched reporting and raw lament. I’m not sure I agree with the ways he talks about people in poverty at one or two moments, but it’s the combination of his honesty, knowledge, and stubborn refusal to look away that makes this one worthwhile. He says at one point that the overworked and underfunded people tasked with making a difference in people’s lives amidst these kinds of systems requires “the patience of an anvil.” I can say as a former public defender: that phrase hit me hard.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
Over the weekend, “Let’s go, Brandon!” rang out from the stage of John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. The phrase, a euphemism for “f**k Joe Biden,” blasted from the loud speakers and swept the crowd into a frenzy. The Washington Post reports, “a Who’s Who of Christian nationalists, anti-vaxxers, Trump loyalists and conspiracy theorists” gathered at the QAnon-friendly congregation. The church hosted the Reawaken America National Tour, which features a long list of folks who drive the Christian nationalism narrative in this country. If we are to leave colonized faith, the nastiness, pettiness, and ultimately the dehumanization of those we disagree with must be dismissed and resisted by those in power. This is especially true of those who steward our pulpits.
The most destructive flood to ever hit the continental US struck seven states in 1927. This Throughline episode lays out valuable historical analysis explaining the poverty of the Mississippi Delta, pockets of Louisiana, and the beginning of the Black exodus from the party of Lincoln. It also paints in great detail the gross mistreatment of Black Americans under Herbert Hoover, after the Mississippi River swelled to over 80 miles wide and destroyed their land. Followers of Jesus engaged in the fight against material poverty must not just know the poor but we must also know why there are poor people in the first place. This podcast begins to answer those questions for some of the poorest locations in our country, particularly the Mississippi Delta.
St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital solicits donations by claiming the money will go toward offering free treatment and payment of medical travel, housing, and other ancillary costs associated with the cancer treatment for children that it provides. So why did ProPublica find one patient’s father sleeping in his car in the hospital’s parking lot? In a report that came out last week, readers learn about the truth behind the glossy ads and extravagant promises. In 2019, St. Jude’s raised over $1 Billion, outpacing the sum total of giving at all of the other top 10 children’s hospitals combined. Sadly, half of those funds went toward fundraising efforts and cash reserves, while an additional $110 million of patient care costs were covered by insurance providers. Only 2% went toward paying the non-medical expenses of patients’ families. Followers of Jesus who give their resources must look behind the commercials and beyond the brochures to ensure that the resources we give reach those in need. We should be unsurprised by and educated on this enormous level of dishonesty because financial stewardship is central to leaving colonized faith for God’s good Kingdom.
Thanks for reading! We are going to take next Thursday off from the newsletter for Thanksgiving. But remember to check us out on Good Faith Weekly tomorrow, and we will have a bonus Shake the Dust episode on the day after Thanksgiving. We’ll just leave you with the not remotely provocative title: Do We Have to Care What White People Think?
Happy Thanksgiving, and see you in December!
The KTF team