Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
April 13, 2003
Checking In on the Checklist
I have never been one of those who, in the words of T.S. Eliot, "dream of systems so perfect that no one has to be good." From all that I have ever learned, I expect that the capacity for theft and adultery and even murder and all the rest remains embedded in the mammalian evolution of the human physiology and brain. And human society is always going to be about the business of persuading us not to summon up and not to indulge those capacities; such impulses do not just evaporate in the sunshine of adequate education and prosperity, no matter how much we might wish that they would. Nevertheless, it seems to me that history demonstrates that there are, in fact, more and less effective ways of setting up social organizations to do that business; there are cultures that help to suppress those impulses within us, and cultures that serve to aggravate them. It is probably inevitable in the nature of things that only a mythical "kingdom of god" would see a total absence of those human urges of destruction and their manifestations in the world, but I think that it is worth asking what kind of communities have come closest to the ideal, and what that ideal is, whether illustrated by the ten commandments, or something else. This is important not only in the most obvious sense, as the United States now comes up against the challenge of all would-be colonial powers in the task of reconstructing a civil government in Iraq, but also because it seems to me that our own legal and cultural infrastructure has arrived at something of a crisis. Let me show you that crisis in two vivid personal accounts; first the words of my colleague, Sarah Oelberg, describing in her church's newsletter a recent experience related by her brother:
My brother called me the other night. He wanted to tell me that he was alright, in case I had by chance seen him being beaten by five policemen on TV at the peace demonstration in New York. I had not. Then he told me the whole story.
Nathan and his wife, Nancy, were toward the front of a very large (25,000 or so) group of people quietly walking down the street in New York carrying signs protesting the war in Iraq. It was a legal and peaceful demonstration, with many police present. Nathan, who is a poet and dancer, had incorporated a mask he used in dancing into his sign, and mounted it on a stick. Suddenly, a policeman came up and yanked the stick out of his hand, saying, "No sticks allowed." Nathan had not known that there was a new regulation against signs on sticks. He asked the policeman if he could please have his mask back, as it was a prop for his dancing. The policeman responded by grabbing Nathan's arm, twisting it behind his back, throwing him down on the street, and placing his foot on his neck. Soon four other police officers joined in, and they beat him quite badly. One had his knee on Nathan's head, hitting him with a nightstick, while others stomped on his back and legs. Then they handcuffed him behind his back, with the cuffs so tight there was no circulation in his hands, which became blue and swollen. He was then thrown, along with some others, into a van with two metal seats along the side and entirely metal inside surfaces, with sharp corners and protruding rods. For two hours, they were driven around, over bumpy roads, with quick starts and stops, throwing them against the metal walls. Finally, they were taken to the "tombs," the notorious prison in New York.
After a long time, Nathan was thrown into a cell with forty men no other "demonstrators," but suspected murderers, thieves, drug dealers, drunks, etc. The cell had no seats or beds, only a hole in the corner in which to relieve oneself. There was not enough room for more than a few at a time to sit on the concrete floor. Here he was held for 20 hours, still painfully cuffed. He was allowed no phone calls, no lawyer, and no medical attention to his wounds. During that time he was given one bowl of sugary dry cereal, one bologna sandwich and a glass of milk.
After 20 hours, he was taken out, uncuffed, and charged with assault and battery on a police officer. He was then moved to another, similar cell, but there were other demonstrators in this one. Most of these had been arrested at the end of the demonstration, during what the New York Times called "a small riot".
According to those arrested, when the time on the demonstration permit expired, instead of telling the group to disperse, the police suddenly started backing their horses into the crowd, spraying them with pepper spray, and arresting them. Some tried to protest, saying they were leaving peacefully, but were arrested anyway. Those "in the know" said the police try to brutally arrest a few at the beginning, to make an example of them, and then make sure the demonstrators leave as soon as the time is up, by arresting and spraying others.
All in all, Nathan was held for 70 hours. At one point, he struck up a conversation with a guard. Amazingly, the guard said to him, "I don't know why you are protesting the war. You ought to be protesting what is going on in here." When Nathan asked him what he meant, the guard said that before 9/11, they were only allowed to hold people without charges for 24 hours now they can do it for 72 hours. And no phone calls, lawyers, etc. now. Even the guard was disgusted at the loss of civil liberties in the name of "freedom" and "safety." He was obviously having a hard time being part of this new system, but he needed the job to feed his family.
I spoke to Nathan again yesterday. He says most of his cuts, bruises and abrasions are healing, but his spine and kidneys are still very painful. Worst are his hands, which are still puffy and numb. Still, he says he suffered less than most because, being a dancer, he was able to move and resist some of the bumps and hits. Others had broken bones. He said the women had it worse, because they were put into "isolation cells" and couldn't talk with other demonstrators, so they had no support and no way to know what was happening.
The only good news in all this is that, since Nathan was the first to be arrested, someone got it all on video tape, which is why he thought I might have seen it. It seems that this kind of thing happens so much that a cadre of volunteers accompany marchers to video what happens. The old man who got Nathan's arrest on tape will give it to him so it can be shown at the trial. Nathan goes before a grand jury on June 8. The charges are ridiculous, but, as the guard told him, "That's about right. They charge you with what they do to you."
The second illustration is an account from the author, Terry Tempest Williams, writing about a Washington, DC protest/direct action a few weeks ago, in which she took part along with other notable authors and activists, including Alice Walker.
On Saturday, there was the "Code Pink" Rally at Martin Luther King Park. I honestly cannot articulate the power of that day. We walked four miles or so to Lafayette Park directly across from The White House only to find a blockade of police dressed in black, bullet-proof vests, rifles, clubs, standing shoulder to shoulder. We were not allowed to enter the park, this park that is a public park, this park I had just sat in hours before, this park that "Pro-life demonstrators" were standing in with their hideous, brutal pictures. They were standing in front of The White House, where we could not.
We tried to negotiate with the police. It was clear they could barely uphold the law they were being asked to enforce. We made the decision that 25 of us would test the waters. Rachel Bagby, one of the most powerful, beautiful African American women, began singing with the strength of her voice, which is legendary, "All we are saying....is give peace a chance." She would not stop. We joined her, thousands of women joined in this song. Her eyes locked on the African American policeman blocking her. His eyes met hers, and in that moment, you could see the instant recognition that both of them were there because of dissent, the dissent of their mothers and fathers before them. He quietly stepped to the side and created an opening, the opening we walked through.
This is how I remember it. Once "inside" we walked toward the White House, now prohibited. Slowly, incrementally, we just kept walking backwards, singing, quietly, peacefully.
The police said our arrest was imminent. That at 4:05 p.m. they would begin the arrests if we did not leave. 4:05 came, 4:10, 4:20 -- We had managed to simply be there, as people have always been allowed to be there before all this "Homeland Security". The local captain of the police said he was not going to arrest us. He then asked Nina Utne, in a whisper, if he could have a Code Pink button for his wife.
The atmosphere changed abruptly when the federal police arrived. They arrested Amy Goodman of Democracy Now press; they took her camera. She was yelling, "You cannot arrest me; I am press, I am protected by the First Amendment. I am bearing witness. I am not with these women." It didn't matter. They then went over and arrested a second press person, took her camera. It was only then I became frightened. We kept walking until our heels touched the White House fence. We turned and faced The White House....our "illegal act."
Two cars arrived and wagons -- the FBI police arrived, set up a tripod with a video camera and filmed us, each one of us. After they were done, the arrests began.
Can I tell you what that felt like to watch Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, Susan Griffin and the Reverend Patricia (I have forgotten her last name) who had just returned from Iraq, handcuffed, photographed like criminals against a white sheet taped to the paddy wagon and taken away? Can I tell you what it felt like to be stripped of all possessions, notebook, pen, handcuffed, photographed, then yanked into the back of a dark vehicle and shoved into a makeshift cell and find yourself sitting next to Amy Goodman, who almost died in Timor, and then hear the door slam shut and locked. It felt like being inside a dog pound. I smiled and asked her what breed she was. In the back of the vehicle, we listened to these women tell their stories about what was it in their lives that brought them to this place. None of us had any intention of being arrested.
And then we were taken to Anacostia Corrections Facility, booked, fingerprinted, and locked in a cell. Alice, Maxine, and I were in one cell with a brave student named Holly, 19 years old, and a wonderful housewife from Houston who told us her name was "Mrs. McWhorter." Four hours later, we were released. As Maxine said, "It was the least we could do."
The police at the Correctional Unit were quite wonderful. Nobody has the will to uphold these newly instated laws and regulations. Our citation is for "Stationary Demonstration in Front of The White House (restricted)" A direct quote.
Two days later, hundreds of young activists, many part of the Sierra Student Coalition, arrived to lobby Congress on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They were on fire, so idealistic and impassioned for the wild. It made me weep to hear of their hope and strength and resolve. They had organized a rally for the Arctic and Utah Wilderness on the hill, with their own student speakers and all. They had invited a congressman or two. Now, because of Attorney General Ashcroft, a new rule has been initiated that after a member of Congress speaks, the gathering must be broken up. So of course the kids, not knowing of this new rule by our fascist government, deferred to the Congressman and allowed him to speak first. Then, the police ordered the rally to be shut down. Can you believe it? The kids did not get to speak, did not get to gather in the name of democracy, did not get to celebrate and defend their arguments as to why the Arctic must be saved. They began to protest, but were quickly silenced.
Friends, we all know that the stock market is down; shares in IBM and Bristol Myers and Sprint have lost value, some of us can feel it in our pocketbooks and in our pension plans. But there is another market, one that does not run a stock ticker, but that nevertheless affects our lives in powerful ways - the marketplace of public ideas. Whether we know it or not, each of us holds significant shares in certain corporations of concepts and convictions; we have each made our civic investments in notions about human nature and the common good. If our ideas are widely shared, they will come to undergird the structures of our laws and social institutions - our stock will rise in value. And if we have been correct in our assessment of the human condition and the function of society, then we will begin to see the emergence of the kind of community we would like to live in, and the world that we would like to bequeath to our children. I don't have to tell you that the value of notions like freedom and personal character has seldom been at a lower point on this index of prestige than it is at present. The current administration in Washington, if judged by its actions, has no commitment to the concepts of freedom, equality, inalienable rights, and a decent respect for the opinions of mankind that were at the heart of this nation's founding. The idea that leadership ought to be vested in individuals who have demonstrated personal character and moral integrity has pathetically little popular currency in these days of media analysis and spin control. If you are like me, you regard every statement announced by the White House or the Pentagon with suspicion, and you take in the reports of the news media with skepticism. The best that we expect of politicians these days is to evade straightforward questions entertainingly, and to tell us what the polls say with earnestness and charm.
Nevertheless, I want to urge that this is no time for us to sell our holdings in the ideas of liberty, human rights, equal justice, and personal accountability. True, they are out of fashion just at present, but like the prophets of ancient Israel, I bear witness to the essential and enduring truth of these convictions with a prediction - which is that they are due for a recovery of popular esteem in the not too distant future. And those who have held them steadfastly through the current period of volatility will reap an interest on their investment which can be acquired no other way. Before long, I tell you, America will sicken of the open contempt, dishonesty and self-interest of its current leadership. The visible manipulation of public opinion, the willful use of violence and acts of repression, the international arrogance, will in the end breed a collective hunger for examples of authentic character and integrity - such a reaction is inevitable, unless you and I are, and have always been, totally wrong about what makes human beings and human society tick. And then, what a scramble there will be to acquire stock in these now neglected ideas! Yet I think it will be those who have quietly held our convictions about democracy and freedom who will have the greatest credibility then; it will be those who have steadily invested in the development of our integrity, no matter how opportunistic the people and the culture by which we were surrounded, who will receive the dividend of moral authority.
These are anxious times; there can be no doubt. Yeat's familiar line that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity" rings direfully true. But let us not make it any truer than it needs to be; let us not lack conviction for the best of our beliefs and our best aspirations for our country, and our world. Rather, let us take stock of our own character, and measure it against the expectations we have of our leaders, and let us see to it that we are investing in the cultivation of our own integrity, even in a down market. Let us give voice to the qualities we expect in those who offer to lead us, and celebrate those qualities wherever we see them - and decry their absence, wherever that lack reveals itself. Above all, let us not cash in our own investments, and sell out our beliefs. Let us not return violence for violence, no matter how tempting that apparent reciprocity seems. Let us not begin to deal in lies, or to seek our own advantage at the expense of others. These are not the ways of the moral universe as we understand them, and such behavior can never give rise to a peaceful, creative society, or a fulfilling way of life. Power used without integrity necessarily destroys - first it destroys others, the innocent and vulnerable, and then, inevitably, it turns upon the wielders of it. I have no grief to offer for Saddam Hussien and his corrupt regime; the lives that were lost and the sufferings that were endured in the service of his lust for absolute authority are innumerable and overwhelming. His fate does not concern me overmuch; from what I can tell, he has reaped his own sowing. What does concern me are the principles, or lack thereof, of the people now in power in my own government. What does concern me is the fate of the rights that were assured and the checks and balances that were instituted at the origins of the American experiment, for these are threatened today in a way that has no historical parallel that I can see. In a moment, I am going to challenge you to identify for yourself the qualities that you want to see in this nation's governmental and cultural leaders. But first, I want to suggest some examples, in part because I find myself being forced to identify and articulate what I once assumed were underlying values that all reasonable people agreed with. That assumption seems to me today to be dangerously mistaken, and I believe that as liberals and Humanists, we cannot rely on any revealed source for our principles of personal integrity and public good. We must arrive at them through the exercise of reason and compassion, refine them through dialogue, experience, and observation, and strive to apply them to ourselves and our own lives as much as to our leaders. Speaking for myself, what I want for my society are these things:
Candor and honesty, as opposed to spin and manipulation. I want leaders who seek to communicate content, not just manage impressions, and that's what I want to do myself.
Concern for the welfare of others, especially the most vulnerable. I want leaders who deplore human suffering, and strive to end it wherever possible, and to avoid causing it. I seek to live my own life in such a way as to cause as little suffering as I can.
An ability to articulate principles, so that people know who we are, and who we want to be. Leaders with integrity are those who can say what they believe in with clarity and conviction, so that people can give or withhold their assent knowing what that assent implies.
A willingness to sacrifice advantage in the service of principle. The leaders I trust are those who can demonstrate that they have not set aside their announced convictions when those convictions are inconvenient, and who are willing to accept difficulty or forego opportunities for themselves and their friends in order to keep their principles. I want to be committed enough to my own values to make those same kinds of renunciations myself.
The capacity for reciprocity. I want leaders who can put themselves in another person's position; who recognize that what goes around comes around, and who take seriously the implications of the golden rule. What we are unwilling to have done to us, we should not impose on others.
Respect for the integrity of others, and an appreciation of diversity. I long for leaders who are strong enough to admire the character of those who disagree with them on issues, and who value divergent views, original thinking, and the variety of personal and cultural backgrounds. I don't want everyone to be just like me, and I don't want leaders whose deepest hope is to make me just like them.
An openness to discovery and emerging truth. Since I believe that the human race has much yet to learn about the world and about ourselves, I want a leader who acknowledges that he or she does not, in fact, know everything; who, as William Ellery Channing once said, greets new knowledge as an angel from heaven, rather than clinging to outdated information and opinions.
One could, of course, go on and on with such a list, but I tell you - if I could have only these qualities; candor and honesty, concern for the welfare of others, an ability to articulate principles, and to sacrifice personal advantage in the service of principle, a capacity for reciprocity, an appreciation of diversity and a respect for the integrity of others, and an openness to new truth, I would be far more satisfied than I am with the character of leadership in this country. And it is not irrelevant that these are the qualities I strive to exemplify in my own leadership, for that is the essence of integrity, to operate ourselves by the values we look for in others.
I submit that each of us has an implicit list like this by which we evaluate our own integrity as well as that of those who are, or would like to be, in power. For the next few moments, I invite you to reflect on the contents of those values, and make them explicit; what are they, actually, for you? Several of the sheets in your orders of service have blank sides, if you want to jot something down. If you are still working with the whole life humanism checklist that we considered back in January, you might wish to add a part or all of this list to that document, and periodically ask how you are implementing these qualities in your own life. It is far more possible to hold ourselves as well as others accountable, when we are clear about what integrity means to us. Let us enter into the community of shared reflection.
The late Senator Paul Wellstone challenged his followers to "be the change you want to see." That, it seems to me, is the essence of character; to expect from ourselves no less than we expect from our leaders. Let us also hold fast, in these turbulent times, to the vision of a nation in which we expect no less from our leaders than from ourselves. Felix Adler, an early leader of the humanist movement in the 20th century, wrote the words to our closing hymn as an aspiration toward the kind of integrity we have been considering this morning; let us join together in this song.