Alabama

from Talk to Action

Last week, Flip Benham's Operation Save America converged in Birmingham to "push what is left of the abortion industry into a deep grave." Writing of an OSA action against Birmingham clinics in 1994, Benham likened his mission to that of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Saints [were] held in the Birmingham jail where Rev. Martin Luther King wrote his letter. The battle we fight is the same, just a different colored glove. One colored glove: the humanity and equality of our black brothers and sisters. Second colored glove: the humanity and equality of our little brothers and sisters in their mother's wombs. Both gloves cover the hand of one who has come to rob, kill, and destroy -- the devil! The battle is the same.

Legitimate members of the clergy on the scene in Alabama this year included the Rev. Dr. Katherine Ragsdale of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, who witnessed a different kind of battle altogether.

My skin is crawling because I just had a creepy epiphany about the power of religious story in politics.

I've been listening on CNN to Barack Obama preaching, I mean campaigning, in Selma, Alabama. Demagoguery is alive and well in southern churches; in the hands of a master, it does send shivers down your spine one way or another (either because you buy it utterly or conversely because it's frightening to see the congregation buy it so utterly.)

Looks like this will be an even more uneasy election cycle for me than the last two -- and this time not because of far-right Christian activists manipulating lesser-educated minds (always assumed to be headquartered in the South, sigh) with simplistic, storybook preaching to motivate and direct that base straight to the polls like lordly lemmings.

This time I may have to fight the so-called liberals too, those willing to dominate civic and global matters from the pulpit if need be, with an army of God behind their politics . . .

Obama kept evoking "Generation Joshua" this afternoon, to hallelujahs from the crowd (congregation?) If you're a secular homeschooler, that'll send shivers down your spine and if you're not, let me 'splain --

There's a well-financed, evangelical-dominated national organization of lawyers, lobbyists and speakers/advisors in the homeschool movement, known as the HomeSchool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA.) Its heft and heat tend to blot out the sun -- with the Son? -- in homeschool politics and the public mind. AS if that weren't plenty of power for me to fret over, in 2003 HSLDA leaders launched a kiddie "education" project aimed at getting conservative Christians to steer children into Republican politics and government at the highest levels.

Many months after Katrina hit America's Gulf Coast, exposing the racist incompetence of the Bush Administration as they left thousands of poor, black American citizens to die, I talked to a former co-worker of mine from Mississippi whose parents lost a great deal in Katrina. She talked of her mother's post-traumatic syndrome and the way inadequate insurance payments were made and inadequate help came from the government and many people simply couldn't afford recovery and so had to sell cheap to real estate developers who were aiming to build luxury hotels. Her story, which I cannot do justice, was a pretty damned good summary of much of what is wrong with America under Bush and the extreme right wing branch of the Republican Party...the one that promised to reduce government until it could be drowned in a bathtub. Seemingly they didn't care that thousands of Americans would drown in the process.

Even as Katrina refugees are being faced with eviction from their trailers by a government that STILL doesn't give a shit about them, one tiny hopeful milestone has been reached...and we can help expand that tiny glimmer of hope. From Habitat for Humanity:

Habitat for Humanity reaches a milestone in the hurricane-recovery effort with the construction of its 500th hurricane-recovery home along the Gulf Coast.

Just months ago, Habitat for Humanity and the Operation Home Delivery program marked the anniversaries of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a commemoration that acknowledged the historic storms’ destruction and looked ahead with hope to continued progress along the Gulf Coast. Now, Habitat has reached a significant construction milestone in that recovery effort: This week, the walls were raised on Habitat’s 500th hurricane-recovery home, just outside Mobile, Ala.