Peace & Community

Dear God:

Like all children, I held my mother's hand as sign of assurance against a fall; a touch of loving; a way of being; the last time I saw her I was flying in from a rally of protest with a brief layover in her city. With the fervor of a prodigal son or better yet a prince returned, she made a fuss about me. (I am the baby you know.) We embraced; she sat me down and gave me that stern look and as always told me to be careful and not to make the president too mad. "Yes, ma'am", I obliged. We made chit chat about my siblings-some blue, all black.

As the value of a "Summer Holiday Oil Tax Break" is being debated between the presidential candidates, Oil companies are benefiting from the raise oil prices and wind fall profits. This windfall profits and high oil prices flow directly from an unwise, immoral, and illegal war on the precious people of Iraq.

Consumers for Peace has launched a campaign to hold at least one of these companies accountable and call upon them break with the conventional wisdom of capitalism and share in the wisdom of peace and justice.

The need for real dialog, candid debate, and mutual respect among various faith traditions is central to bridging the widening gap between religions at home and aboard. The claim that peace sits at the center of the Abrahamic faiths begins by "walking together" in the quest for justice. For five years, a group of faithful folks have walked together in Philadelphia, PA. On May 18th, they will continue to make the road of hope, peace and justice by walking to a Christian Church, Unitarian gathering place, a mosque, and synagogue. Please join them. For more information go to: www.interfaithpeacewalk.org

"Have you heard?" Paul asked me. "No," I responded, but I knew I needed to know. "They got off," he sadly replied. "All three?" I asked. "All three," Paul repeating me. "Damn," I thought aloud.

I was immediately overcome with a deep sense of fear. I feared for my life. I was so glad that after my philosophy of religion course at Union Theological Seminary that I would be getting on train and leaving New York City. Ironically, I would feel safer as Black man in the D.C. with the Bush administration. It was one of those moments that reminded me of that peculiar pole of patriarchy that renders Black male bodies dangerous and warranting deadly force by male police officers. I was glad that my sons, particularly my eldest did not live in New York with me.

My dear friend and brother Dedrick Muhammad, Senior Organizer and Research Associate at the Institute for Policy Studies, has written a saddening report on the state of African-American community and ultimately democracy in Post-King America. The report helps to situate the legacy of King in a concrete way within the prophetic tradition to call our nation into account.

Dr. Martin Luther King recognized that the next phase in the African American’s quest for civil rights and equality was one that would focus on the economic divide between the wealthiest Americans, the working class, and those in poverty. King’s analysis of economic inequality as the foundation of racial inequality remains as valid today as it was 40 years ago.

[Ed. Note: The following article will appear in the Spring 2008 issue of Fellowship magazine, and is offered here online in the context of this week's observance of the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. Click here to subscribe to Fellowship.]

Sitting in our favorite coffeehouse, Tyler Jared, my eldest son, and I are having our “man time.” I am sipping a cappuccino and he is drinking some orange concoction. We stare into one another’s eyes, with an occasional “What?” breaking our silence. We are excited to see each other and saddened by the time we have spent apart. I hold a deep sense of calling that has taken me around the world, but away from him and his siblings. He has grown so much. He is now taller than me, his 13-year-old face starting to break out with pimples, voice cracking, but he is still my baby. I hold his hand and run my fingers through his golden locks. It embarrasses him, but he does not stop me, because I am Dad.

He interrupts the silence. “Dad, everyone knows you want to be like Martin Luther King.”