While the Elderly, Minorities, and the Imprisoned Die, A Push to "Re-Open" the Country by "Pro-Life" Christian Republicans

Reported US coronavirus deaths:

7 weeks ago: 0 deaths
6 weeks ago: 17 deaths
5 weeks ago: 49 deaths
4 weeks ago: 249 deaths
3 weeks ago: 1,588 deaths
2 weeks ago: 7,152 deaths
1 week ago: 18,758 deaths
Right now: 36,997 deaths

— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) April 18, 2020

Cristina Cabrera, "Reported US Coronavirus Deaths Surge To Record 4,591 In A Single Day":

The U.S. saw a grim milestone this week: A record 4,591 patients in the U.S. with COVID-19 died in a 24-hour stretch ending at 8 p.m. ET Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, the figure beats the previous record of 2,569 deaths. 

The sharp increase is likely because in New York City's probable coronavirus deaths are now being counted in the official tally. 

As of Friday morning, John Hopkins University reports that the death toll in the U.S. has reached 33,286, the highest mortality rate in the world.

"You Served Your Tour with Valor": Honoring Veterans of the African-American Struggle for Justice and Dignity

Today is the U.S. Veterans' Day holiday, and as tributes to this or that family member who has been in the military pop up in my social media feed, I'm thinking of a tribute my friend Wendell Griffen posted on his blog a number of days back to an Arkansas civil rights attorney and state representative, John W. Walker. John Walker died 28 October, and Wendell eulogized him at his funeral in Little Rock on 1 November.

Wendell Griffen, "Standing with Elaine"

With the permission of my friend Judge (and Reverend) Wendell Griffen, I'd like to share with you a statement he has made recently on his blog The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope. A bit of background: as Wendell's posting notes, in October 1919, hundreds of black men, women, and children were murdered in an event in eastern Arkansas now known as the Elaine Massacre. There are some outstanding historical accounts of what occurred in this massacre — one of the largest race-based massacres in American history. These accounts provide a narrative of what happened to the extent to which historians can piece together what occurred, when so much evidence has been lost or suppressed.

Roy Moore Defeated, But Polling Data Tell Us Why We Have Miles and Miles to Go Before We Jubilate — Fusion of White Nationalism and White Christianity Remains Potent Toxic Challenge

Roy Moore rides away on his horse after voting in the Alabama Senate election.

Here's what to watch in today's hotly contested race: https://t.co/iONlmtfGJd #alsen pic.twitter.com/WI2xoJbi6s

— POLITICO (@politico) December 12, 2017

Ezra Klein, "Why Doug Jones’s narrow win is not enough to make me confident about American democracy":

Twitter Chews Over Election Results: "Thoughts and Prayers to all the Republican Politicians Who Lost Their Seats Today"

Thoughts and prayers to all the Republican politicians who lost their seats today. We won't do anything to prevent it from happening again.

— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) November 8, 2017

Move to Impeach Judge Wendell Griffen: "Latest Effort to Punish a Judge, a Black Judge . . . with Whom the White Power Structure in Arkansas Disagrees"

I thought I'd update you today on what's happening with my friend Judge (and Reverend) Wendell Griffen right now. As his recent Democracy Now! interview with Amy Goodman and Juan González reports, a move is afoot to have him impeached as a member of the Arkansas judiciary due to his outspoken opposition — as a Christian pastor — to the death penalty. On Good Friday, he took part in a protest against the death penalty organized by the church he pastors, New Millennium Baptist church in Little Rock, and the impeachment proceedings are due to his participation in that protest.

Notes on "Moonlight": The Price Men Pay for Showing Vulnerability — And the Higher Price Some Men Pay

As it happens, Steve and I watched "Moonlight" Saturday evening, and yesterday, I put together a set of notes about the film — not dreaming it would (as it richly deserved to do) win the Best Picture award at the Oscars. Here are my notes, with an appended "footnote" from Max S. Gordon's essay on James Baldwin yesterday at NCRM's site, entitled "Faggot As Footnote: On James Baldwin, 'I Am Not Your Negro,' 'Can I Get a Witness?' and 'Moonlight'":

Why I Keep Asking Where Francis Effect Is for Marginalized Catholics: Pretending Is Never Way to Build a Healthy Anything

When I keep asking where the Francis effect is for various groups of marginalized Catholics (like the black Catholics about whom Anthea Butler writes with first-hand testimony, or survivors of childhood clerical sexual abuse, or Catholic women and millennials, or native Americans, or divorced  Catholics, or LGBT Catholics), I'm not blaming the pope for these problems. They're problems with and within the Catholic church in the U.S. I'm simply stating that talk about the Francis effect that is pure media spin, disembodied hype that overlooks the real-life situation of American Catholics in all their diversity, will hide those problems, pretend they do not exist, compound them — and pretending is not what we need.

It's never the way to build a healthy anything.

The photo of Pope Francis on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, 28 January 2014, is by Stefano Spaziani.

#WhoIsBurningBlackChurches: A Series of Links for You

Dr. Maya Angelou Reads From James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" from DKDMedia on Vimeo.

A series of excerpts from commentary I've seen in the past few days about the spate of suspicious burnings of black churches in the South after the Charleston shootings, which I want to share with you:

A Musical Evening about "Slavery and Song": A Resource to Recommend to You

In a posting here last October, I mentioned that we had with us friends from Edinburgh, Ian and Donna Gilmour, and that Ian had a sabbatical fellowship from the Church of Scotland, in which he's a pastor, to research African-American spirituals — how they're used in worship, how they enshrine key aspects of black liberation theology, and how they sustain the spirit to enable it to resist oppression.

More Things I'm Reading at Week's End: Baltimore, Racism, White Privilege, Recognizing African-American Contributions to American Culture

More stuff I'm reading as this week ends — these resources are about what's happening right now in Baltimore, about the need of white Americans to understand and address racism, about the manifold (and often unacknowledged) contributions of African Americans (including LGBTQ ones) to every facet of American life, etc.

Madonna on Gay Rights as "Way More Advanced Than Women's Rights": Some Noteworthy Responses

Something else gaining attention in this week's news: Madonna's statement,

Gay rights are way more advanced than women’s rights. People are a lot more open-minded to the gay community than they are to women, period.

The Sea Change in Cultural Attitudes Toward Gay Lives: Importance of Telling Gay Stories and Bearing Gay Witness

Last week at the Huffington Post site, Arianna Huffington announced that the Oprah Winfrey Network would air several programs on 27 October about being gay in America. I'm telling you about this after the fact. Those shows aired last evening. Steve and I taped them but haven't yet watched them. The network will, I would hope, run them again at various times, in case you missed seeing them.

DOMA Decision and Voting Rights Act Decision: We Stand Together or We Fall Together

I want to lift a statement I made at the end of my posting yesterday about the initial Twitter commentary re: the Supreme Court and DOMA, and place it in a separate posting today. I think it's very important that this be said:

Charles Blow Explains to Rand Paul How the GOP Lost the Black Vote

Charles Blow's rejoinder to Rand Paul in the New York Times today about precisely how and why the GOP has lost black voters is priceless. Paul naively (as in faux naiveté) asked yesterday in a speech at Howard University how it could be that the party of the Great Emancipator lost the black vote.

Bishop John Shelby Spong on 2012 Elections: U.S. in a "New Place"

And yet more post-election commentary, this from noted Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, who maintains that the 2012 elections move the United States to "a new place."  Frank Douglas at the Voice from the Desert blog helpfully provides the entire statement from Spong's site, which requires registration to access the text.

New America of 2012 Elections: Implications for Religious Conservatives and American Catholic Centrists

Vis-a-vis religion-and-politics news, one of the big narratives emerging from this election cycle is the increasing impotence of the religious right in American politics, and the significant challenges posed to the religious right by the broad coalition of voters (African Americans, Latinos, women, gays, and young people) that, during this election cycle, refused to be browbeaten into submission by the aging white men (including the Catholic hierarchy) who have created and continue to run the religious right machine.  Here are a few statements about this matter:

Post-Election Commentary: History Turning a Corner with the New America

This morning, a selection of post-election commentary from the last two days that, to my mind, makes valuable points and raises interesting questions: the following all focus on the new America that one commentator after another sees expressing its political will in the 2012 elections, in which a record number of Latino voters voted, in which the gender gap nationwide was 18 points, in which significant numbers of progressive young voters made a powerful difference at the polls, in which 77% of gay voters backed Obama, and in which black voters responded to ugly, raw GOP attempts to suppress their vote by turning out in droves to exercise the right to vote:

Tyree Keeps Spouting Off: "Don't Want My Kids to Think Homosexuals Are Normal"

And so now we hear from Mr. Tyree re: what it's really all about for him, when he calls same-sex couples "unnatural and spouts off about what his bible says:  it's about the children, for God's sake!   It's about that old canard to which NOM and other anti-gay hate groups inevitably return, when they gather than people's appetite for gay bashing is waning: it's about the old insinuations that "unnatural" gays are out to molest and recruit my children.  

Eric Deggans on Martin Luther King's Legacy: Why Do the Media Still Give Time to Anti-Gay Spokespersons?

A day late, but Eric Deggans' commentary on Martin Luther King's legacy in light of the  contemporary struggle for LGBT rights deserves wide readership.  Deggans asks--an extremely important question--why major mainstream media outlets like CNN, which wouldn't dream of pretending to offer "balanced" coverage to issues like racism or segregation by inviting rabid racists onto their programs, still think it's legitimate (and necessary) to give air time to rabid homophobes whose only arguments against gay rights are that they themselves find gay and lesbian persons distasteful.