Mother’s Day, the Supreme Court, & the Spectrum of Trust

Mother’s Day, the Supreme Court, & the Spectrum of Trust 

David Ketchum 

May 8, 2022

Watch the Video HERE

Let me begin by saying that this is a sermon that happens to be preached on Mother’s Day, but this is not a Mother’s Day sermon. I am going to speak about some aspects of family relationships, but I don’t want to mislead or frustrate anyone looking for a Mother’s Day sermon. 

This will also be a sermon in two parts, because I feel compelled to begin with some comments on the radical history of Mother’s Day and its contrast to the Supreme Court and the leaked majority opinion on Roe vs. Wade. We’re planning to give a fuller treatment of these issues soon, so my reflections today are more introductory. 

Celebration

What I remember most about Mother’s Day from my childhood are the peonies. We’d fill a vase with cut flowers and I’d try to rescue the ants crawling on their stems. After breakfast, we’d go to church, and the pastor would hand out carnations to all the mothers there, as well as to the oldest mother, the newest mother, the mother with the most children, the mother of missionaries, and so on. I remember people clapping, and lots of Hallmark cards. It was a very meaningful day to many people, when our community collectively paused to say “thank you” for hard work that was often overlooked and taken for granted. It was also a painful day for many people, including those whose mothers had died, those who were estranged from family, those who had lost children, those who regretted becoming parents, or those who weren’t able to have children. So it was a strange day at church, with some folks showing up who usually didn’t, and others staying away. 

I suspect that this dynamic will be even more present for this Mother’s Day, as headlines filled with news about the draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade. But while you’ve likely been sorting through emails, articles, podcasts, memes, and protest invitations in response, I suspect that most of the churches in my city will be celebrating this morning. Overturning Roe v. Wade has been a long term goal, and they’ve made no secret about that. And I suspect that these celebrations will be conflated with their observances of Mother’s Day, repeating the idea that attacking reproductive rights and extolling patriarchal values supports mothers and families.  

That is in stark contrast with the origins of Mother’s Day, which  did not begin with either the domestication of women or the commercialization of gratitude and love.   For example, in 1858, Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis encouraged a Mother’s Day movement to “promote sanitation in response to high infant mortality”. (https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mothers-day-for-peace/ ) The holiday was also used as opportunity to help reunite families separated by the American Civil War. And in 1870, Julia Ward Howe wrote a Mother’s Day proclamation that called for mothers to bring an end to war by standing up to their husbands and teaching their children not to kill one another. (https://www.codepink.org/the_radical_history_of_mother_s_day )

Disillusionment

By 1914, the feminist movement – and its demands - had grown in strength. Leaders were lobbying then President Woodrow Wilson to set aside the first Saturday in May each year as a “Women’s Independence Day,” “in recognition of the right and necessity that the women of the United States should become citizens in fact as well as in name.” They were also organizing events across the USA to celebrate, demand the right to vote, and “read a woman’s version of the Declaration of Independence”.  

But President Wilson wasn’t ready to fully support suffrage, and he denied Shaw’s request to meet with him. Instead, he proclaimed Mother’s Day as a holiday, affirming the importance of women while stopping short of affirming their political and social identities and rights.  

As Kimberly Hamlin wrote last year, this proclamation, along with the resulting commercialization of the holiday, didn’t go over well:

“… shortly after Wilson declared Mother’s Day a federal holiday in 1914, women like Jarvis [the daughter of Ann Maria] became disillusioned with the frivolous commercialization of what to her should have been a sacred and sincere commemoration. Indeed, in 1933, Jarvis even wrote President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking him to remove the federal mandate for Mother’s Day. / Why? Because instead of equality, health care, peace, safety and support, Mother’s Day had become an occasion for vapid expressions of ‘love and reverence,’ increasingly characterized by flowers, brunch and store-bought cards. / More significantly, Jarvis’s opposition signaled that celebrating motherhood had become symbolic, not substantive. One could even argue that Mother’s Day provided a superficial placeholder in lieu of policies that actually would benefit mothers.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/05/07/women-asked-an-independence-day-they-got-mothers-day-instead/ )

I still love peonies, but the version of Mother’s Day I experienced as a child was more consistent with this more superficial version than the fiery cries for equality and justice. It’s strange to realize that, over one hundred years later, the superficial vision has survived and even flourished, often incubated in the patriarchal visions of fundamentalist religious communities. A few years ago, Esther Vivas commented on that patriarchal ideal: “According to the traditional, patriarchal view, there are only two types of mother: the devoted, self-sacrificing mother and the bad mother”. (https://www.equaltimes.org/the-rise-of-the-disobedient-mother ) This binary has been a useful tool in preserving patriarchal power. And, in my experience, it has invigorated the anti-abortion movement for decades. 

Reconnection

These insights bring us right back to the present day, when we also and still encounter these dynamics. With the draft opinion by the Supreme Court, a clear path towards increasingly restrictive laws on abortion, accompanied by harsher penalties, is opening up. What is less clear is any discernible way that this will actually benefit pregnant people, children, families, and communities. After all, it’s well-known that outlawing abortion “doesn’t end abortion, it just makes it less safe.” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/24/want-to-lower-the-abortion-rate-support-pro-choice-policies ) 

        However, we do have a pretty good idea about the kinds of things that are likely to create safer, happier, and healthier communities. And it looks a lot more like the activism of Ann Maria Jarvis, promoting public health and sanitation, than it does the opinion of Justice Alito. The kind of policies that should be getting our attention and support, and that our politicians should be exploring and championing, are policies like: 

• comprehensive sex education and access to contraception;
• universal health care, including all pre- and post-natal care, as well as abortion;
• generous parental leave;
• access to parenting education and caregiving necessities, such as diapers, car seats, formula, etc.;
• wages and/or tax credits for unpaid housework and caregiving for parents who stay at home;
• universal childcare for parents who work away from home; and
• universal preschool education. 

        As this list implies, we cannot separate reproductive rights from social, racial, and economic justice. Greater restrictions on reproductive rights, including abortion, will disproportionately harm marginalized communities, including poor, disabled, queer and trans folx, and people of color. (https://www.aclu.org/podcast/how-reproductive-justice-part-anti-racist-agenda-ep-109 ) There is no question that the stakes are high, and this Mother’s Day has been infused with a greater political and social significance by the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion. Protests have already rippled across the nation, coupled with calls for a general strike, beginning today. And this is fitting. As Hamlin wrote,

“This history [of Mother’s Day] reveals women activists have never considered brunch and a card an adequate way to recognize the work done by American mothers, especially after a year in which they’ve done so much more of it. Returning Mother’s Day to its original roots compels us to reflect on our nation’s long-standing disregard for maternal and infant health — among the worst in the industrialized world, especially for women of color — along with our persistent refusal to enact legislation that would provide meaningful support for working mothers.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/05/07/women-asked-an-independence-day-they-got-mothers-day-instead/ )

There’s a lot more to say, including all the impacts the Court’s decision could have on other issues, from privacy to marriage equality. This will also involve facing and transforming patriarchal, racist, ableist, and other violently repressive ideas and institutions that survive today and continue to harm us. The news this week was hard, but we expected that something like this was coming. And although there is a lot of work ahead of us, it’s not separated from the work we’ve been doing for a long time. So for today, we reconnect with each other, as well as all those whose hard work has brought us to this moment, named and unnamed. We take a deep breath, come back to the present moment, and resolve to keep working together to create communities where justice, wellbeing, and joy are real. 

-------

With that said, forgive me for clumsily turning to my original topic for today. For years now, we’ve been discussing different aspects how to manage broken relationships, especially relationships strained by the increasing polarization of American society. Debates about abortion have certainly been a part of that polarization. More recently, transgender rights and Critical Race Theory have shared the spotlight. More troublingly, the wild proliferation of conspiracy theories has further divided between family members, coworkers, and friends. More and more people speak with me about feelings of isolation and loneliness. Even before the pandemic, more than 40% of Americans reported feeling that their relationships weren’t meaningful, and 20% said that they “rarely or never feel close to people”. (https://www.welcomingpath.com/2019/09/loneliness-listening-and-gift-of.html )

Arriving at Estrangement

These feelings of disconnection and isolation include our family relationships.  In 2020, Karl Pillemer of Cornell University documented the results of a large-scale survey on estrangement. The study found that 27% of respondents shared they had completely “cut off contact” with at least one family member. (https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/09/pillemer-family-estrangement-problem-hiding-plain-sight ) And since this is information not everyone is ready or willing to share, the actual number is probably even higher. We can add to this tally those relationships that are strained, but not yet broken. When we pause to acknowledge it in this way, we glimpse the enormity of pain and stress that we are carrying around. As Pillemer pointed out, this “rejection and powerlessness” has a cumulative and harmful impact on our well-being and the well-being of our communities, weighing us with both grief and a “sense of incompleteness”. The weight is a chronic stressor, especially when it includes family relationships where we experienced bonding and attachment in the past. (ibid)

This kind of estrangement is also the slow fruit of long conflicts and destructive relationship patterns. Abuse, whether emotional, verbal, physical, sexual, or a combination, is at the top of the list of common causes. These are deep wounds. Divorce is also a common influence, with various causes, from feeling the pressure to choose between feuding parents to finding new conflicts in blended families. But it is also increasingly common to find that conflicting values are behind a clash. In one study, “value-based disagreements” played a role in more than a third of rifts between mothers and children. These differences in values usually relate to issues of gender, sexuality, religion, and politics. As we well know, these differences have been amplified by the polarization of most of life in recent years, fueled by popular political candidates and cultural and religious leaders stoking xenophobia and conspiracy theories. (https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211201-family-estrangement-why-adults-are-cutting-off-their-parents )

Distrust Becomes the Default

Some people have been surprised by this shift, but the reality is that we have been creating these conditions for a very long time. My own estrangement from my extended family has been twofold. The value-based disagreements are certainly present. It became very difficult to attend family gatherings with someone, for example, who openly carried a firearm and held racist, misogynist, homophobic, and transphobic views. There was no way for me to realistically feel or be safe in that situation. 

        But underneath the values-based rifts was a deeper unwillingness or inability for our family members to honestly engage with harmful patterns of abuse and dysfunction. I have always maintained that I am willing to do the work to honestly engage with, heal from, and transform those patterns. But I am not willing to pretend that they do not exist and expose myself and my loved ones to further harm. 

        This makes me one of those statistics that Pillemer lamented, estranged from several extended family members for many years. I’ve also connected with many people with similar experiences. Very often, we’ve lived through a merging of unhealthy family and religious experiences and cultures. And these experiences connect deeply with issues of trust. 

Growing up in communities that tolerated abuse and dysfunction, the lesson that many of us learned was doubly harmful. On the one hand, I felt pressure to trust everyone, at least everyone in our family or church community. Distrust was a sign that something was wrong with me, because the people in our circles were good by definition. We weren’t encouraged to heal and transform unhealthy relationships, because that would require acknowledging that something was wrong in the first place. This was generally not allowed. Especially in our conservative church culture, problems were only allowed in the past tense. You could sometimes share the problems you were facing, if they weren’t too scandalous, but only after you had resolved them. This became your chance to give testimony about how God had changed your life. But we didn’t really ask for help for relational problems, especially not publicly. Instead, we quietly hid them away – perhaps out of helplessness or shame, but always to our collective harm. In such an environment, vocalizing distrust came perilously close to unmasking how broken our relationships often were, and that was too big of a risk. 

In such a culture, though, trust became increasingly impossible, especially for any of us who had suffered abuse. The reality was that, while we felt pressure to trust everyone, we often didn’t trust anyone. How could we, especially when the people who hurt us were also the people society insisted that we should - and had - to trust? Over the years, I found my own experiences mirrored in the stories that countless people have shared with me. How do we trust, when we so often were harmed by the very people we were taught would protect and care for us? Over time, we learned that the way to stay safe was to assume the opposite about people. Distrust becomes the default.

 

A Spectrum of Trust

So this is where I find it necessary to start. I grew up learning that trust was an either/or proposition. Through decades of tending to both my own healing and supporting others, I have learned that trust is more like a spectrum.  At the far ends we have dysfunctional or unhealthy patterns of trusting and distrusting. Dysfunctional trust is the tendency to trust when we should be exercising boundaries and caution. At the extreme, dysfunctional trust puts us in a position to be harmed, especially repeatedly. We stay in unsafe and unhealthy relationships and groups too long. We also risk normalizing those destructive relational patterns, to the point that we tolerate, protect, and even promote them. 

On the flip side, dysfunctional distrust is the tendency to distrust, no matter what. It often arises out of a legitimate need for self-protection; we refuse to be harmed again. But we do this in a way that leads to isolation and even paranoia. We resist forming any relationships at all because the risk of that kind of connection is too great. So we avoid cultivating safe and healthy relationships. This feels like a reasonable cost when compared with the cost of getting hurt again. And it often feels like a reasonable cost, even if we are desperately in need of community and connection.

Between these extremes we find varying degrees of trust and distrust, and in the middle is the sweet spot. This is where we find trust that is healthy and relationships that are supportive and caring. But this is also where we find distrust that is healthy, where we are honoring the process of building (or rebuilding) trust. Healthy relationships cannot be coerced. And if you take one thing away from these reflections, my guess is that the most helpful idea for most people is simply this: distrust can be healthy. It isn’t automatically or inevitably healthy, no more than trust is automatically or inevitably healthy. But distrust is an important part of how we grow into strong, healthy communities. This is part of how we honor our bodies and needs, get in touch with our boundaries and limitations, practice compassionate communication, and learn how to give and receive care without hurting one another. 

Learning How to (Dis)Trust

We practice these skills internally, inside ourselves, and with each other, in our personal relationships and in our communities and organizations. Cultivating a culture of trust helps all of this happen. Time and again in conflict work, I’ve noticed that, when parties in a conflict can’t trust one another, they may be able to trust a mediator. This is why we spend a significant amount of time in pre-meetings with each party in a conflict, building rapport. That trust can then become a bridge for the parties to meet each other again. Similarly, in a community or organization that takes the time to cultivate a culture of trust, we have a much better chance that conflict won’t become overwhelming. We have a better chance of resolving a difference before harm is done. We have a better chance of healing when there is harm. 

On the flipside, it’s much more challenging to address a problem or conflict when we don’t feel and aren’t safe. This isn’t easy work, and the reality is that some relationships are not safe to continue in any form. Single, traumatic incidents can destroy trust in a moment. But distrust can also emerge out of the accumulation of unhealthy relationship patterns. Especially in the latter case, the situation may gradually get worse and take years to recognize an unhealthy pattern. In my experience, this often means that we are prone to staying in unhealthy relationships for too long. Unfortunately, these aren’t usually situations we are prepared to explore, so we often work through questions, such as: 

• When do I feel comfortable addressing problems? 
• What practices and values help me feel both safe and empowered to work through a conflict? 
• When am I least likely to feel that safety and power? 
• How do I recognize when trust or distrust has become unhealthy? 
• What tools and skills have been most helpful, and what tools and skills are still needed? 

Moving toward Wellbeing 

Getting practice like this in our personal lives also gives us insight into how can we create environments and communities where it is safe to heal from dysfunctional forms of trust and distrust, and where we can learn to practice functional trust and distrust. Going back to the Cornell research on estrangement and reconciliation, Pillemer shared that most instances of healing involved: 1) moving from a focus on the past to a focus on the present, 2) envisioning what a future relationship might be like, and 3) shifting a focus from trying to change the other person to “adopting more realistic expectations” about what was possible. (op cit) 

    I would further clarify that the shift from past to present is one where we move from adjudicating the past (what really happened, who is to blame, who is right) to healing in the present (how did what happen change us, what wounds still need to be healed, how can we cooperate in this healing).  We can then explore that boundary between what is possible and what is healthy:

• What needs am I trying to meet in this relationship? 
• What needs are appropriate to meet in this relationship? 
• What needs are realistically possible to meet in this relationship? 
• How might I meet the needs that don’t fit well in this relationship? 

        When you think about it in these terms, you can recognize that we are already experts in navigating trust and distrust. For example, you can trust me for a whole lot of things, but you really shouldn’t trust me with, say, repairing your car. That won’t go well for any of us! We are constantly making decisions like this, and we can tap into that wisdom to help us navigate more challenging relationships. I find this especially helpful in discerning how to relate with someone with whom I have a significant difference of values. Sometimes the answer is still, “there isn’t a safe way,” but, even then, the process is still valuable for me. 

        Finally, another aspect is the importance of centering the voices and needs of marginalized people. Oppression is the most severe and cruel normalization of harm, and it destroys the possibility of trust. This means that prioritizing justice and equity are part of the restoration of trust and the healing of both people and society. Similarly, the wellbeing of marginalized and oppressed people is the measure of the health of a society. Any work we are doing that ignores this dynamic will ultimately undermine our efforts, whatever our intentions. 

And this is important, because our vision of justice and equity is a shared vision; it is about learning to live together without harming one another. It is about being able to heal from our hypervigilance because we feel and are safe. It is about being able to relax and laugh and enjoy life. Social justice work is relational work, within ourselves, with each other, and in our communities and organizations. Making room for us to understand and practice the spectrum of trust supports this vital, healing, life-giving work. So thank you to everyone who has supported my own healing, and the healing of others. Thank you to everyone who has shared in this work - caring for our most painful wounds with compassion, and creating together communities where we can finally trust ourselves and one another with the fragile, precious, and wonderful joys of life. 

"Ain't Scared of Nothing" (May Day)

“Ain’t Scared of Nothing”: May Day, Unions, and Economic Justice

David Ketchum

May 1, 2022

Watch the video HERE

I grew up in a working class family, with a father who worked in a factory my whole life. Most of those years, he worked second shift, which was great in the summer. We were able to go to the school lot and play some version of baseball several times a week. It was a pick-up game if enough people were available, using ghost runners if we were short. And if only a few of us were there, it would be fly-knocker or hot-box. Other days, we were out in the community, maybe mowing grass together for folks who couldn't manage their lawns or picking up groceries. During the school year, I mainly saw him on the weekends, except for those nights I managed to stay up late, and we'd catch the late news or reruns of M*A*S*H*. 

In our home, there was never a question of the dignity and importance of manual labor. My dad considered other careers, but the factory had better pay and benefits than the options available to him after university, so he stayed at the factory. I grew up understanding that his work wasn’t less important than the work he might have done if he had chosen a different career path. There was also never a question about the importance of labor rights and union organizing. Even though my dad worked at a non-union factory, he always emphasized that the benefits he enjoyed were also because of the power of unions. 

        At the heart of all of this were some very basic principles. I couldn’t put them into words as a child, but I could give a short list now: 

•  a healthy economy cannot be separated from equity and equality; 
• everyone should have access to a safe, stable, and healthy economic and social life; 
• discrimination and disparities are signs of social sickness; 
• the right of workers to organize and collectively bargain should always be protected and prioritized;
• all work and workers should be treated with dignity and gratitude.

        But life is complicated. Although these were the ideals growing in my heart, it didn’t take long to begin feeling the contrast between these values and how people were treated in the workplace. I learned that lesson personally soon enough. As a teen, I spent a few years in the food service industry. As a young adult, my years as a student and then as a bivocational pastor meant that I often made a living by whatever means were available: as a graduate TA; a construction worker; a roofer; a seasonal laborer, from hay fields to vineyards; a private music instructor; and an educator as a Title I instructor. I also spent a decade as an unpaid caregiver and stay-at-home parent. These were mainly fields and jobs that did not enjoy the protection or benefits of a labor union. These experiences, combined with studying labor history, gradually gave me a better understanding of how the values and convictions I learned as a child did – and did not – translate into the economic world around me. 

The Decline

The biggest gap, of course, was the decline in union membership over the last 70 years. My dad grew up at the tail-end of the peak of the labor movement’s power, while I grew up as neoliberalism gained a bigger and bigger influence around the world and labor power was in decline. When my dad turned 18 years old, more than 25% of Missouri workers were unionized. When I turned 18 years old, that number had already slipped to less than 15%. (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/23/385843576/50-years-of-shrinking-union-membership-in-one-map ) When my own child turned 18, it was less than 10%. (https://www.bls.gov/regions/mountain-plains/news-release/unionmembership_missouri.htm )

    That’s consistent with the overall trend in the USA. As Reid Wilson reported in The Hill last January, union memberships bottomed out at 10.3% in 2019. This was the lowest number since 1983, when the Bureau of Labor started recording worker union rates. Wilson puts this decline into sharp focus with a simple comparison. In 1983, 17.7 million Americans belonged to a union, and "20.5 million were represented by a union". In 2022, "there are about 50 million more workers in the American economy than there were in 1983, and 3 million fewer union members." (https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/590631-union-membership-hits-new-low/ )

There was a small exception that Wilson noted, a slight bump in 2020. Union rates increased a small amount to 10.8%. But this was not because more people joined a union, but because more non-union workers lost their jobs during the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic. This result also intersects with racial disparities. In a report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in 2020, the authors demonstrated that “the decline of unionization has played a significant role in the expansion of the Black–white wage gap over the last four decades,” which left marginalized communities more vulnerable to unemployment during the pandemic. While unemployment for White workers peaked at 12.8%, it was 15% for Asian American/Pacific Islanders, 16.7% for Black workers, and 18.5% for Hispanic workers. Black and Hispanic workers were also much less likely to work from home, and more likely to have jobs that didn’t provide a safe workplace (with access to protective equipment) or paid sick leave.  As the authors pointed out, “The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt broadly, but not equally.” And although unionizing would be a major step in alleviating both economic and racial injustices, the system, including current labor laws, has increasingly made it difficult to organize. (https://www.epi.org/publication/why-unions-are-good-for-workers-especially-in-a-crisis-like-covid-19-12-policies-that-would-boost-worker-rights-safety-and-wages/  )

Not Just About Wages

This is by design. Business owners, corporate leaders, and employers have historically opposed unions, especially in the United States. The most obvious reason is the most commonly noted one: union members get paid more, in wages and benefits, which is viewed as a threat to the profits for the already rich and powerful. Significantly, union members are still more likely to earn a higher wage than non-union workers. The most recent data shows that a union worker earns $1,169 a week compared to $975 a week earned by non-union workers. (That adds up to more than $10,000 over a year’s earnings!) (https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/590631-union-membership-hits-new-low/ ) Not surprisingly, decreased union membership has also been met with increased income inequality. As the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) as documented, from 1979 to 2019, wages for the 1% grew about 160%, while wages for the bottom 90% gew only 26%. (https://www.epi.org/publication/union-workers-had-more-job-security-during-the-pandemic-but-unionization-remains-historically-low-data-on-union-representation-in-2020-reinforce-the-need-for-dismantling-barriers-to-union-organizing/ )

      But this is not the whole story. Ileen Devault, a labor historian and professor at Cornell University, has pointed out that this gap is about more than money: 

“Unions aren’t just about higher wages. They are very much about workers having a say about what happens in the workplace … . And that’s what employers don’t like.” (https://time.com/6168898/why-companies-fight-unions/ ) 

The numbers support this point. According to the EPI:

“We know that unions promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions. / But that’s not all unions do. Unions also have powerful effects on workers’ lives outside of work. / ... In the same way unions give workers a voice at work, with a direct impact on wages and working conditions, the data suggest that unions also give workers a voice in shaping their communities. Where workers have this power, states have more equitable economic structures, social structures, and democracies.” (https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-and-well-being/ )

This helps explain why those controlling most industries have found way to limit or stifle the power of working class people. As a result, unionization has been uneven across industries, political values, and geographies. First, public sector workers are five times more likely to belong to a union. (A third of government workers are union members, compared to just 6% of private sector employees.) So you are less likely to have access to a union if you work in the private sector.  Second, workplaces in blue states have more union members. For example, 17% to 20% of laborers belong to unions in places like Hawaii, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington. The numbers drop to less than 5% in Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. But even these states outpace South Carolina, where only 2.9% of workers are unionized. So you are less likely to have access to a union if you live in a red state. (https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/590631-union-membership-hits-new-low/ ) Third, certain industries are more likely to be unionized. In 2018, workers in utilities, transportation, and telecommunications, for example, all had union membership rates of at least 15%. But only 1.3% of food service workers belonged to a union. (https://stacker.com/stories/3094/most-unionized-industries-america ) 

Recent Victories

This backdrop helps us understand why recent union victories are so important. The medical industry, for example, has been under tremendous strain during the pandemic, and workers have suffered. In response to dangerous working conditions during the pandemic, many hospital workers have begun to organize and join unions. (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/11/955128562/for-health-care-workers-the-pandemic-is-fueling-renewed-interest-in-unions ) And a recent study showed that unionized nursing homes significantly lower mortality and infection rates during the pandemic. As CNA Rosalind “Ros” Reggans explained: 

“It’s pretty simple — the safer we are, the safer they are. … And with a union you have more [personal protective equipment], you can get a day off if you’re sick, you get more COVID pay . . . you can negotiate with your supervisor face to face to make things work. All of that helps residents, too, because we’re not infecting them as much if we have better standards for ourselves.”   (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/04/unions-nursing-homes-mortality-rate-covid-pandemic-save-lives )

        Even doctors, who traditionally have not belonged to unions, have had to consider options. This has been the case for emergency room doctors at the Valley Medical Center in San Jose, CA. They have been working with members of the Registered Nurses Professional Association to organize, with a goal to highlight and address problems and abuses emerging since being acquired by US Acute Care Solutions (a “private equity–backed physician staffing monolith that had taken over the hospital’s ER contract”). (https://jacobinmag.com/2022/04/emergency-room-doctors-organizing-usacs-hospital-corporation-greed-health-care )

But the most notable cases in our headlines have been workers at Amazon.com and Starbucks. In the latter case, we’ve seen ten Starbucks locations vote to join Starbucks Workers United, with 170 more stores petitioning for elections. (https://www.reuters.com/business/recent-us-union-wins-amazon-starbucks-more-2022-04-01/ )  Writing for Vox, Rani Molla reported on their goals, which align with the EPI’s conclusion that strong unions are associated with “more equitable economic structures, social structures, and democracies.” Molla wrote that the Starbucks organizers are: 

“hoping to use collective bargaining to get a number of improvements, including higher pay, more hours, and better safety protections, a more necessary change since the erstwhile latte makers became front-line workers during the pandemic. They want more say in what their working lives are like, and they want to hold a company that talks of progressive values accountable.”

        Mercado, a graduate student who also works at Starbucks, told Molla that: “We’ve been forced into this world where we can’t afford anything, where we can’t afford to live … . It’s not a difference between generations, it’s just a difference between what you’ve been given and the tools that we can use to make the change.” And Fagan, a 22 year old shift supervisor, said: “Starbucks is quote-unquote ‘progressive,’ ‘woke,’ whatever. They give us decent benefits … . But we’re literally selling our lives and time and bodies to this corporation. Tell me why I don’t deserve a living wage.” (https://www.vox.com/recode/22993509/starbucks-successful-union-drive )

Similarly, the importance of the success of organizers in Staten Island in unionizing with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) cannot be overstated, especially since their work was done in the face of an aggressive and powerful anti-union campaign. They did this through a combination of persistence, hard work, and creativity. Luis Felix Leon, reporting for In These Times, pointed out that the ALU “upended the conventional wisdom of how to run a union campaign,” relying less on “the staid world of establishment unionism” and more on “the spectacle of fearless, working-class Black leadership from below.” Gerald Bryson, a co-founder of the ALU, had previously been fired by Amazon for protesting pandemic working conditions. He put it this way:

“You really want to know how we did it? I’ll tell you right now how we did it. We didn’t go out and get expert, expert, expert. We went out and found crazy m*f*ers just like us that ain’t scared of nothing.” (https://inthesetimes.com/article/amazon-workers-labor-union-staten-island-new-york )

Taken together, these kinds of successes may indicate a shift to what Brooks, a NewsGuild field director, calls “momentum organizing.” 

“Workers are in terrible conditions all over the country and when they see a public example of a group of people in a similar situation taking action to better their situation, it encourages them to do the same … . So what was once a risky long-shot action by a small group of workers snowballs into a series of successes.” (https://inthesetimes.com/article/amazon-workers-labor-union-staten-island-new-york )

A Way Forward

Part of this snowballing connects with the anger, grief, and frustration of working people who sacrificed their wellbeing to survive a pandemic, while CEOs and shareholders cashed in on their sacrifice. We can all contribute to the process of creating and sustaining a movement for true change in the direction of economic and social justice. At the base is nurturing an attitude that centers and respects working class and poor people, rather than demonizing them. As I’ve said before, “Community, sustaining human lives, requires work, and a lot of it is manual labor. Working people, paid and unpaid, are essential and our labor is beautiful. All labor should be treated with dignity and respect.” 

For those of us who want to educate ourselves more about a way forward, I’d recommend at least three paths. First, study labor history.  You can read books, see a film, enjoy art, sing songs, or watch Youtube videos. Second, get a working knowledge of policies that support working class wellbeing. A good place to start might be the “Policy Agenda” at the Economic Policy Institute and the “Economic Justice” platform at The Movement for Black Lives. Third, find an organization where you can get involved. Join or organize a union if that’s possible in your employment. If that’s not an option, explore other groups, such as Jobs with Justice or the Poor People’s Campaign. Connecting with others – our shared history, our shared values, and our shared work - is at the heart working class solidarity and unionization. Together, we can choose to mark this May Day as another turning point toward a better, more beautiful, and more just world. 

        Happy May Day!

Demythologizing Islam

Demythologizing Islam        April 24, 2022      Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

 

Reza Aslan in No God but God “Like so many prophets before him, Muhammad never claimed to have invented a new religion. By his own admission, Muhammad’s message was an attempt to reform the existing religious beliefs and cultural practices of pre-Islamic Arabia so as to bring the God of the Jews and Christians to the Arab peoples.”

 

The first time I heard one of my professors say that the Apostle Paul was a mystic, I immediately wanted to object. Sure, he saw visions, he spoke in tongues, he believed in his own “revealed” religious truths, but I didn’t think of him as a mystic. I thought of him as a legalistic, misogynist, homophobic, literalist who killed the message of Jesus by turning a message of love into a religion of guilt and fear.

 

But, at his core, Paul was a mystic. Listen to how he describes his conversion experience in his own words, in a letter he wrote to the church in Corinth: (2 Corinthians 12:2-4

I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. ³ And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— ⁴ was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. 

 

Taken at face value, Paul’s description of his mystical experience is not much different from what we have read of other mystics, even those who are Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or Catholic. What we tend to call the “unitive” experience; a powerful but typically indescribable feeling of being united with God. A kind of personal epiphany . . . a unique but always indescribable sense of being in the presence of God.

 

But, a generation or two after Paul was dead, one of his fans, someone who certainly never met him, described Paul’s mystical experience this way, in the book of Acts:

Acts 9:3- 9  ³ Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. ⁴ He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” ⁵ He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. ⁶ But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” ⁷ The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. ⁸ Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. ⁹ For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

 

The writer of the book of Acts, in an attempt to make Paul seem to be more impressive, more important, takes his experience which was entirely indescribable, Paul didn’t know if he was just having an out of body experience or if he was physically transported to heaven, but he heard things he couldn’t repeat and saw things he couldn’t describe. But, Luke, in a total work of fiction, concretizes Paul’s experience and literally gives it a street address and witnesses…. He was on the road to Damascus, there was a blinding light, Jesus speaks audibly to him, other people on the road also hear the voice, giving him instructions. Paul is blinded by the experience until he is healed by a Christian in Damascus. 

 

Those of you who grew up going to a Christian Church probably remember the more concrete, fictionalized version of Paul’s experience and you may have no memory at all of his own description of the experience. It is not that you had never heard it, it is just that Luke’s version is more memorable. It creates a narrative movie in your imagination. 

Paul’s own words don’t leave any muddy footprints on your brain and, in fact, they may just not make any sense, and yet, that was his honest account.

 

The task before me today is to say something about demythologizing Islam and I must apologize, once again, for using the Christian bible for my opening illustration but I trust that you can see how later generations, in a sophomoric attempt at polishing the credentials of a deceased saint, will try to add details that actually destroy the story, rather than illuminating it. 

 

If you want to understand Paul, and mind you, I am not suggesting that would be a good use of your time, but if you do, you need to read the authentic letters that Paul wrote himself and try to ignore everything said about him in the book of Acts which is, honestly, just a bit of propaganda aimed at pumping up Paul’s resume. 

 

My only point in bringing Paul up is to say that something very similar happened to the founding prophet of Islam, the sixth century Arab reformer, Muhammad. Muhammad was born in 570 a.d. in the city of Mecca, which had long been a religious and spiritual center of the Arab world. 

 

He was orphaned at an early age and was raised by relatives and given exposure to both the ways of the Bedouin desert culture and the settled city dwellers. He was a product of his environment, influenced by the many Arab religions honored in Mecca as well as Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian faiths. 

 

He was, however, illiterate and depended upon his wife to read and write for him. She was older and had some means as a merchant. 

Muhammad participated in the common practice of robbing caravans that followed the merchant routes through what is now Saudi Arabia. But he kept up a practice of contemplation in isolation in a desert cave. It is said that while in prayer in that cave that he was visited by the angel, Gabriel, who gave him messages from God. Muhammad memorized these messages, given to him by Gabriel, and dictated them to his wife. These writing became, for Muslims, the actual literal word of God, collected into the Quran.

 

However, like Paul, his initial experience in the cave was not quite so cut and dried. He had some kind of a mystical experience, possibly brought on by fasting and dehydration, but real or imagined, he certainly didn’t call it a conversation with Gabriel. In fact, he panicked. Like most people of his era, he believed that the desert was inhabited by evil spirits, call jin. He believed that he may have become possessed by an evil jin and he wanted to commit suicide.

 

In his distress, his wife, Khadija, sent him to visit her cousin, Waraqa, who was well versed in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and he convinced Muhammad that what he had experienced was a visit from the angel Gabriel. It was Waraqa who announced to Khadija that Muhammad had been chosen to be the prophet to his people.

 

Muhammad’s progress, however, was rather slow. His own theology was evolving. The sura of the Quran are not organized chronologically. In fact, they are organized loosely, not by topic but from the longest to the shortest. But when you read them in the sequence in which they were actually written, it becomes evident that he started out with a more polytheistic world view and evolved into an adamant monotheist. 

His early, more poetic works, were very similar to others in his culture but he gradually grew into his own style. It should be clear that he had no intentions of starting a new religion but to reform the faith of his peers and unite the embattled tribes around a faith in one god, Allah. 

 

I have no reason to doubt Muhammad’s sincerity even if I do doubt his orientation to reality. I am reminded of what Scott Peck said about St. Joan of Arc, “You might say that she was schizophrenic, but you would be wrong to say that she was merely schizophrenic.” There was a greatness of character about Muhammad, even if he was also somewhat delusional. 

 

He reinterpreted many Jewish and Christian narratives from his distinctly Arab perspective and elevated his followers to become confident of their importance to a generous and loving God. Though not neatly expressed in a succinct way in the Quran, Muslims everywhere, from the time of Muhammad to the present, acknowledge five fundamental pillars of what it means to be a Muslim:

All five were already in practice before Muhammad in Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian communities but Muhammad sharpens each and gives them a distinct monotheistic focus.

The first is the declaration of faith, there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is god’s prophet.

 

The second is the obligation to pray five times a day. Earlier in his career, Muhammad was telling people to pray 50 times a day but he eventually whittled that down to something that could actually be done… 5 times a day.

 

The third is a binding obligation to charity. The fourth is obligatory fasting during the month of Ramadan. And the fifth is a requirement, if at all possible, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. 

 

Sadly, religions always seem to become institutions. The five pillars are guides to living a life in surrender to God in peaceful harmony with others. However, religions are rarely simply a belief system. They become identified with an ethnicity, a government, and authoritative and competitive view of the world. And, as an institution, religions become inflexible and oppressive.

Westerners are often deeply offended by the way that many Muslim women are expected to, or who choose to, cover themselves entirely in a burka, or almost entirely with a head scarf, along with all of the debates about whether women can drive or travel alone. I get that. I find it offensive. However….

while we accuse them of absurdly repressing the sexuality of women, they are not wrong to point out that westerners go to horrible extremes in pushing women to be objects of constant sexual exploitation. 

I don’t think there is a defensible position on either extreme, in fact, it often seems that our cultures cannot seem to find a sane center between pornography and Puritanism, but clearly, we cannot say that Islam is alone in being wrong on this point.

 

As with other world religions, even though Islam is the most modern of the major religions, it is still mired in myth and superstition. Obviously, Muhammad did not split the moon nor did he ride a winged horse/mule to Jerusalem and then to heaven to meet Adam, Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus, as well as God. And, more importantly, Gabriel did not dictate the contents of the Quran to Muhammad. Islam is a human invention, like all of the other religions of the world and like all of the other religions, there are good things and there are things that are in desperate need of reform. 

 

Although about 20% of the world claims to be Muslim, we associate the religion the most closely with the governments and peoples of the Middle East. Holding onto the myths associated with certain “holy sites” and disputed real estate claims, primarily focused on Israel but not exclusively so, keeps leading the Arab world and the western world into bloody confrontation.

 

This year the Muslim observance of Ramadan coincided with Easter and Passover when the temple mount in Jerusalem is so packed with pilgrims from all three faiths, tensions quickly became incendiary with the same old stories of rock throwing and Israeli police over reactions. 

 

Palestinians carry within them a huge burden of rage left over from centuries of colonization by European powers, which has only been made worse by the land theft that created the state of Israel and the way in which Israel confines and oppresses the Palestinians within their borders. So, sure, there is agitation from the Palestinians…. Every year, rock throwing, stabbing, and I have personally been on the receiving end of threats and a shoving match in the Palestinian quarter of Jerusalem when some young boys in the 1980’s assumed that because I am an American, that I was a supporter of Ronald Regan. I was saved only be being able to assure them that I hated Regan more than they did. . . which I did. Let me know if you need further details.

 

Still, even though there is Palestinian agitation, at the end of every season of conflict, the casualty count is always ten to one, injured Palestinians over Israelis. There is fault on both sides, but it is not an equal situation. It may not be that the Israelis hold all of the cards, but they at least start every hand holding three aces. 

 

There are those in the Muslim community who insist that the word, “Islam” means peace. I am anything but an Arabic scholar, but I know enough to know that is not true. “Islam” means “surrender” as in a total surrender to God. But the net effect is to say that Islam should be a religion of peace. And while the over whelming majority of the world’s nearly 2 billion Muslims are peace loving, decent people, they are not the Muslims we hear about in the news.

 

We hear about Muslim terrorists who attack the west, and Muslim factions who fight each other. You cannot blame all of the internecine fighting on Islam, and you can’t blame all of the terrorism on the religion. 

There are, as I have mentioned, centuries old colonial resentments, and anger about cultural domination of western fashions, products, music, movies, and language, all of which threaten their culture with extinction without even mentioning western military bases in their lands which is a source of constant irritation.

 

And the fighting between the major factions of Islam, Sunnis, Shi’a, and Kurds, which, at times, is religious, but it is also racial, geographical, and financial. Our nation’s longest wars have been in Afghanistan and Iraq and neither of them, in my opinion, are the major global offenders.

 

Forgive me if I am talking above my paygrade here, but, in my opinion, Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina, is the worst, exporting both terrorists and internecine battles among Muslim states. They export the extremist form of Islam, Wahhabism, with all of its insistence on a literal interpretation of the Quran and militance against anyone who differs from them.

 

There is no pretense of a separation of church and state in Saudi Arabia, their flag contains the Muslim confession, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is God’s prophet.” But there is also a sword, and the sword is not symbolic.

We are focused right now on the war crimes and genocide of Russia in the Ukraine. People like me have been decrying the “kids in cages” on our boarder and our overall mistreatment of immigrants; but all the while, the Saudis maintain the practice of public beheading with a sword.

 

In March, the Saudi’s beheaded more than 80 men in a single public execution.

More than 40 of those men were from the minority Shia population. The Saudis labeled them terrorists, but I am afraid that their real crime was just being Shia. This is barbarism at an intolerable level, and it goes on year after year, while they remain in the good graces of oil burning Western democracies. In fact, we are currently asking them to pump more oil so that we can stop buying Russian oil and that is, if I may say it plainly, hypocrisy and it should stop. I will be speaking to this issue more fully in June… I know that you can hardly wait, but as Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “This must be said, so now let it be said.” Or, at least, let it be said in June.

 

The 2018 torture, murder, and dismemberment of the American journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, is all the evidence we should need to say that this flavor of violent Islam must be reformed and in spite of Donald Trump’s defense of the Saudi prince, the civilized world must stop looking the other way. You cannot claim this is not, in important ways, connected to Wahhabism, and this cannot stand in the modern world.

 

I believe that the execution of prisoners is always wrong, whether it is in Missouri, or Texas, or Saudi Arabia; but public execution by beheading is taking pride in violent and cruel execution and we should be outraged by this policy. And, it should be obvious, this sermon would get me beheaded in Saudi Arabia.

 

Islamic scholars will insist that this is not true Islam, and I agree, but the religion that promotes peace needs to be a part of the obvious reform that is needed here. 

 

I would like to conclude this series on demythologizing religion by quoting, once again, the famous scholar, Karen Armstrong, who said, “If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.” The 21^st century must be the century when good religion takes the stage as we usher all bad religion into the pages of a dark and shameful past.