Friday, August 09, 2019

ICYMI ... Countering White Supremacy with Congressman Adam Schiff


Scheduled way back in June, the idea for the event sprang from Capitol Hill testimony of Omar Ricci -- Chairman of the Islamic Center of Southern California -- on the issue of inaction towards white supremacist violence.

After that hearing, Congressman Schiff agreed to participate in a community forum with Omar and MPAC ... and All Saints and IKAR joined as co-sponsors as "a powerful message of our unity against hate." We secured the venue (All Saints Church), recruited a panel of interfaith leaders (Salam Al-Marayati, Andre Henry, Mike Kinman, Omar Ricci, Susan Russell and Brooke Wirtschafter), and issued  joint statement which began: “We must move beyond words, thoughts & prayers and into action.”

Over 600 community members gathered at All Saints Church on Monday, August 5 for a two hour program that included remarks from Congressman Schiff and wide ranging panel discussions and questions from the audience.

You can watch the whole forum here and I hope you will ... it is well worth the time and -- IMHO -- a beacon of hope and encouragement that together we can be the change we want to see.

Monday, August 05, 2019

Countering White Supremacy: Moving from Words to Action

Tonight we welcome Congressman Adam Schiff to All Saints Church for a Community Forum entitled “Countering White Supremacy” – an important and timely conversation exploring how we can combat bigotry and discrimination and promote pluralism, acceptance and freedom for all.

Here's the video clip Rep. Schiff recorded to promote the event:



Scheduled way back in June, the idea for the event sprang from Omar Ricci [Chairman of the Islamic Center] testifying on Capitol Hill in May on the topic of inaction towards white supremacist violence. 

After that hearing, Congressman Schiff agreed to participate in a forum with Omar and MPAC ... and All Saints and IKAR joined as co-sponsors as "a powerful message of our unity against hate."

And so we secured the venue (All Saints Church), recruited a panel of interfaith leaders (Salam Al-Marayati, Andre Henry, Mike Kinman, Omar Ricci, Susan Russell and Brooke Wirtschafter), and issued  joint statement which began: “We must move beyond words, thoughts & prayers and into action.”

And then El Paso happened. And they Dayton happened. And the event we started planning in May took on the fierce urgency of now as we reeled from the toxic combination of unlimited access to automatic weapons in our nation and unleashed white nationalistic venom in our national discourse.

As Mike Kinman said in his comment for our press release this morning:
"We need look no further than this weekend's deadly shootings to know that white supremacy kills. It kills not only with the speed of an AK-47 but slowly through inequalities in opportunity, health care, education and more. With a president whose words and policies embody white supremacy and embolden those who would enforce it at the point of a gun, it is critically important that we come together across faith traditions and with our elected leaders to have action-oriented conversations about changing the direction in which our nation is heading. All Saints Church has always been a place for conversations like that -- and that is why we are hosting this conversation this evening."
So join us if you can. We'll be live streaming from this link ...

Thursday, August 01, 2019

Dem Debate 2.0 Postmortem


From its reality show hype intro to a format that literally pitted candidates against each other with questions baited with GOP talking points CNN did not offer a “debate” designed to help voters understand policy positions and distinctions between candidates ... it orchestrated a set-up to create the click-bait headlines they wanted in the morning: Democrats Deeply Divided.

And that — in a nutshell — is the distillation of the disease that infects our American body politic: exploiting differences into division in order to divide and conquer the majority into polarized cells and inhibit their capacity to challenge the dismantling of our democracy before our very eyes.

We have to be smarter than that. #organize
We have to be better than that. #mobilize
We have to be the change we want to see. #unify