Inextricably Entangled: White Supremacism and Gun Violence: Buffalo, Uvalde and Beyond

The shootings seem to be coming quicker now. Buffalo, Laguna Woods, Uvalde. During that time there was also a shooting on the New York Subway. During that time twenty one people were shot by police. Three of them were unarmed. Of those who were allegedly armed, one was armed with a toy gun, one with a garden tool and one with an unknown weapon. 

So far this year 17, 237 people have died from a firearm. 

660 of those people were under 17. 

554 were killed by police. 

Young Black men are 14 times more likely to die of a firearm homicide than white men.

As of this writing, since Uvalde there have been eight more mass shootings.

We have an interconnected web of problems. A tangle that cannot be undone because its roots are foundational. Our country was founded with a toxic brew of violence and racism – one  which celebrated guns, and valorized military power while purporting liberty. 

There are more guns in private hands in the United States than there are people. These are handguns, long guns, combat style weapons, even 105mm Howitzers. Every person in the United States could be shot by a different weapon, and there would still be weapons yet to discharge bullets. These are the guns in private hands. We don’t publicly worry about the guns in police hands, even though police have used their guns to kill 554 people this year… so far.  In addition their guns end up on the secondary market and then in private hands. 

There are people in this country who are evil and hateful, and to rationalize their evil hatred construct fantastical theories about how Black people and Jews and feminists, and brown and Asian people, and trans people, and lesbian, gay, and bi people, are all coming to threaten them and take away their god given right to run this country or their family or the rotary club or whatnot. They have now typed it all up nicely and called it The Great Replacement Theory. Jews are supposedly orchestrating a conspiracy to import brown people to replace the white people. Jews manipulated the media and the Congress and the banks to pass the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts. And on and on. 

This is all, of course, bullshit. It is just a patina of words on top of old fashioned antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, and generalized fear and hatred of the Other. 

In the 1930s, Nazi Germany proclaimed: the Jews are our misfortune. That is, the Jews were considered a disease and therefore needed to be killed. The Jews also supposedly caused the Germans to lose World War I and therefore needed to be killed. Also the Jews undermined the Aryan blood stock and therefore needed to be killed. You get the idea. So the Nazis invented mechanized mass murder. 

After killing off Native Peoples and stealing their land, and then kidnapping Africans and building the economic power of this country on their backs, white enslavers made up a story about how God had intended the land for White Christians and Africans were only worthy of being enslaved. They edited the Bibles their preachers preached from so it didn’t have the Exodus stories. They made up nightmarish tales about Black people raping white women, inspired by the numerous actual rapes of Black women by enslavers. 

And so all these evil hatreds are not new. It is old wine, old putrid, toxic wine in new bottles. This latest bottle is being peddled not only by folks in sheets, but also with a slight domestication by the likes of Tucker Carlson, who tells his stories about the Democrats bringing in illegal immigrants to vote white people or “legacy Americans” out of power. 

Now, here is where the seemingly inextricable entanglement comes in. Gun violence is behind the genocide of Native Americans. It is mythologized in the story of the colonization of the West. The gunslinger was the hero of this mythology. The gunslinger who in real life actually got his acreage as a handout from the government who had the army steal it from Indigenous people. 

Armed slave patrols and their license to kill anyone they suspected of being a fugitive ultimately evolved into our police forces. 

Kidnapped Africans, who from the beginning attempted to gain their freedom by all possible means, were brutally suppressed by gun, whip, and chain.

From the founding of this country American identity was bound up with the violent use of guns. There was at times a gentlemanly flair that hid the brutality, but as we now all know Alexander Hamilton was killed by Aaron Burr in a duel over a perceived insult, over honor. 

This notion of honor has also been incorporated in the police framing of law and order. Disrespecting a police officer can be deadly. “Contempt of cop” is what cops call behavior by people toward law enforcement officers that the officers perceive as disrespectful or insufficiently deferential to their authority. Think about that. America’s police forces have become (perhaps they always were) armed militias who think that their mission is to occupy rather than protect the most vulnerable populations. 

And also, and equally as important, from the beginning by law and custom, Black people were not allowed to own guns. This changed during Reconstruction and then reverted back during Jim Crow. Martin Luther King’s application, early in his career, for a gun permit was turned down. When the Black Panther Party began openly carrying guns and shadowing the Oakland police force, Ronald Regan became a strong advocate of gun control. Philando Castile was a licensed Black gun owner who was shot by a cop for having a gun, (he had informed the officer about the gun because he was afraid of getting shot by that officer). Gun ownership is part of American identity, which is understood as white American identity.

So we have a violent white supremacist problem because we have a gun problem. We have a gun problem because we have a violent white supremacist problem. 

To be an American today in many parts of the country means to own one or many guns. As we saw in Texas, this American white supremacist ideology is so much part of the DNA of our country that it managed to assimilate a Mexican American kid who bought two Rambo style weapons two days apart, a day after he turned 18, and slaughtered 19 children, and 2 adults. 

We are broken. As a country we are broken. Our hearts are not broken in a way that humbles us so that love, or God, or the light can come in through the crack; our institutions are broken; our polity is broken. 

So how do we move forward? 

A problem that took four hundred years to create will not be solved in a day. There are steps that we can take, and that we can pressure our lawmakers to take. We, in our communities can move to decenter weaponry in our understanding of what it means to feel safe, what it means to “be a man”. This means getting police out of schools. They are ineffective in stopping school shootings, and too effective in the school to prison pipeline. 

It means moving away from militarized and police based security at our synagogues and churches and mosques. There is no good data that shows that guns are especially effective. In addition, having guns, gates, and guards undermines solidarity between communities. This is, in the end, where we have to go. We have to build solidarity with each other. Inside communities and between communities. We have to radically love each other, we have to see the image of God in each other. 

We also have to start getting rid of the weapons and the culture of weapons. It might have to begin slowly. Perhaps universal background checks. Perhaps banning automatic military style weapons.  As many police as possible should be disarmed. The armed forces should not be allowed to transfer weapons to police forces. Ultimately we should aim for a complete ban on the private purchase of firearms, but this will take time. 

“For this command which I charge you today is not too wondrous for you nor is it distant. It is not in the heavens, to say, ‘Who will go up for us to the heavens and take it for us and let us hear, that we may do it?’ And it is not beyond the sea to say, ‘Who will cross over for us beyond the sea and take it for us and let us hear it, that we may do it?’ But the word is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it. See, I have set before you today life and good and death and evil, … Life and death I set before you, the blessing and the curse, and you shall choose life so that you may live, you and your seed” (Deuteronomy 30:11-19). 

The sword and the Book are antithetical. 

Choose life. 

Ben Carson’s Golden Calf Problem (on 2 more campus shootings)

A favorite saying of the gun rights absolutists is “an armed society is a polite society.” However, the essence of democracy is not politesse—it is argument and debate over core issues. The way to create a more perfect union is not by sitting politely and waiting for one to come by. The only way to perfect our democracy, to try to perfect our democracy, is by the time honored tradition of debate and dissent. None of this is polite. It is confrontational, loud, at times chaotic. It is engaged, at its best, it is educational—ideological opponents engaged in verbal and rhetorical give and take about the public good.

On the other hand, Wayne La Pierre and his NRA minions want everybody to be armed. In that way you will express your opinion only to the extent that you have more weapons. Once you are outgunned you will politely retreat to your corner. This is not democracy. Continue reading

Ten dead in Oregon: How many more?!

As I write this, there is an “active shooter situation” at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College. 10 people are dead according to reports, while possibly 20 more are injured. Soon the politicians will express their regrets and condolences and the feeling that “what can you do?” and let’s not politicize this (from Republicans); or anger, and bluster, and then “Washington gridlock” what can you do? (from Dems). Right now I want the anger to burn. This is a terrorist conspiracy which has been unleashed on the American people by the NRA, the gun industry, and their lacky politicians from both parties. Right now as ten more people lie dead we have to focus our anger on our electeds and tell them that it is time that they looked into the contracts that the government has with the gun industry, and whether those contracts are directly or indirectly funding this kind of terror—by funding NRA and anti-gun control propaganda. We have to turn to our clergy, rabbis, priests, imams, and demand that they declare a state of moral emergency. It is impossible to create a just society in a state of war. It is impossible for people to come together in a state of war. We must stop the shooting, and get rid of the guns, before there is any hope of moving towards a more just society. Declare a state of moral emergency. Start investigating the NRA as being an accessory to murder. Stop contracting with companies that lobby against gun control laws. People are dying in the streets every day. Almost 10,000 people are dead this year. Over 20,000 are injured. From gun violence. Enough.

Call your congress people. http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

Call your state reps. https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

On the way to Sinai (on racism and economic justice)

We are on a journey. This period that we are now moving through, the seven weeks that start on the second day of Passover and end at Shavuot or Weeks,  the next holiday in the calendrical cycle, is a journey from Egypt to Sinai. It is deeply symbolic that as the first day of Passover was waning this year, we were marking the 47th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This year that anniversary was marked amidst the outcries of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, amidst the sounds of gunshots and the cries of unarmed black and brown men killed by officers of the law, of the state.

Africa shootingWe are on a journey—but where are we going? Continue reading

A Time for Righteous Rage (on Martin Luther King Day)

Any Sage who is not vengeful or does not hold a grudge is not a Sage. Yoma 22b-23a

On the official anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., one might think that I could have found a more appropriate epigram than the one that graces this essay. Yet, this is the statement that comes to mind and I think it appropriate. “But wait!” you might object along with the anonymous editorial voice of the Babylonian Talmud, “Doesn’t Torah say ‘You shall not take vengeance, and you shall not harbor a grudge?!’” “This is true,” that same anonymous sage answers, “but it only applies to monetary matters or business dealings or interpersonal relations around material things.” If I ask to borrow your shovel and you refuse, I may not tomorrow refuse to lend you my hose saying: “You did not lend me your shovel.” Nor may I lend you my hose and say: “I am not like you. I lent you my hose even though you refused to lend me your shovel.” In these instances, vengeance is forbidden and grudge-holding is prohibited. 

However, there is an obligation and a place for righteous rage. The mishnaic Hebrew word for it is tar‘omet, which has the same root as thunder. The Sage who witnesses an injustice and does not burn with righteous rage is not a Sage. The Sage who does not carry the memory of unjust treatment, and does not rage against it is not a Sage.

Around this time every year we memorialize the Martin Luther King who was a peacemaker, a conciliator, a lover and not a hater. In reality, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was the master of the thunderous cadences of righteous rage. He preached nonviolence, he lived nonviolence. King had no illusions about the “valley filled with the misguided bloodthirsty mobs.” He agreed with Langston Hughes: “O, yes, I say it plain/America never was America to me,/And yet I swear this oath—/America will be!” Martin Luther King taught that nonviolence is the most powerful weapon we have to transform the world. Because the world is not only created by those with the guns and the truncheons. 

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

With clear vision and a burning soul, Martin Luther King saw the related ills of racism, and poverty, and violence, and war and called America out for not addressing those ills. With the prophetic cadences of his righteous rage King walked fearlessly into the forces of evil and did not let the evil of racism hide behind the mask of “our way of life.” He did not let the evil of poverty hide behind the mask of business and capitalism. He did not allow the evil of war to hide behind the mask of anti-communism. 

We live in a day when the word of the Lord is rare and prophecy is not widespread. In the place of the righteous rage of prophetic justice we are offered a diet of macho anger masquerading as policy foreign and domestic. Thirty thousand people die every year of gun violence, and yet it seems that the second amendment is the only amendment which is inviolable. The rhetoric of “patriots” takes pride in wanton violence. 

There are more than 1000 counties in which one in four children are at risk of hunger {http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-studies.aspx} and yet we cut food aid and unemployment benefits. 

There are still many in Congress who, when given the choice, would rather risk war against Iran than peace with Iran. 

One  hundred years ago a rabbi from a small town in the Eastern European province of Bialystok railed against the “the heroism of sticking a bayonet into the bellies of people with whom one has no complaint or difference, only in order to ‘find favor’ in the eyes of the masters the commanders and get from them a piece of round tin called a ‘medal’ for ‘dedication.’” Aharon Shmuel Tamares, that rabbi, also challenged “the god called ‘homeland’ and its rites called ‘war’—in which the evil portion of it is greater than the stupidity—which modern man has not abandoned, but rather has left in its place.” (Mussar HaTorah VeHayahadut {http://www.hebrewbooks.org/33243}) A century and millions of dead later we are still officiants at the same idolatrous rite.

The Jewish community is rightfully proud of the picture of Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Martin Luther King and thousands of others into and through the forces of evil in Selma, Alabama. We must, however, ask ourselves: “What have we done to earn that legacy? Is the Jewish community in the forefront of the fight against racism? Is the Jewish community in the forefront of the fight against gun violence? Is the Jewish community in the forefront of the fight agains poverty and for good jobs with dignity? Is the Jewish community in the forefront of the fight against war?”

This anniversary should not be only a time of celebration. It is a time of accounting. Are we still marching with King?

Any Sage who is not vengeful or does not hold a grudge is not a Sage. –Yoma 22b-23a

On the official anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, one might think that I could have found a more appropriate epigram than the one that graces this essay. Yet, this is the statement that comes to mind, and I think it appropriate.

“But wait!” you might object along with the anonymous editorial voice of the Babylonian Talmud, “Doesn’t Torah say ‘You shall not take vengeance, and you shall not harbor a grudge?!’” “This is true,” that same anonymous sage answers, “but it only applies to monetary matters or business dealings or interpersonal relations around material things.” If I ask to borrow your shovel and you refuse, I may not tomorrow refuse to lend you my hose saying: “You did not lend me your shovel.” Nor may I lend you my hose and say: “I am not like you. I lent you my hose even though you refused to lend me your shovel.” In these instances, vengeance is forbidden and grudge-holding is prohibited.

However, there is an obligation and a place for righteous rage. The mishnaic Hebrew word for it istar‘omet, which has the same root as thunder. The Sage who witnesses an injustice and does not burn with righteous rage is not a Sage. The Sage who does not carry the memory of unjust treatment, and does not rage against it is not a Sage.

please continue reading here

How can we bear the guilt? (On the first anniversary of Newtown)

This week’s Torah portion includes Jacob’s blessings—first of his grandsons and then of his sons. Jacob’s blessing of his grandsons Ephraim and Menashe (Joseph’s children) read as we would expect—summoning God’s blessing on these children and their progeny. However, when Jacob blesses his children, the blessings come out as a review and critique of their lives. Our Rabbis tell us that Jacob had intended to foretell for his progeny “the end of days” (Genesis 49:1) but that his prophetic vision was blocked. Instead he takes account of what his children have wrought.

In blessing his second and third born sons, Shimon and Levi, Jacob must come to account with one of the most disturbing events in Genesis—the slaughter of the Shechemites following the rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah. In the event, it was Shimon and Levi who orchestrated the well wrought response. They demanded that the Shechemites circumcise themselves on the pretext that then Jacob’s clan would intermarry and trade with them. Once the Schechemites were weakened from the circumcision, the brothers proceeded to slaughter the Shechemite males. (Genesis 34) Jacob in his “blessing” says the following:

Simeon and Levi are a pair; Their weapons are tools of lawlessness.

This is the newer Jewish Publication Society Translation. The word which poses a problem is me’chayrotetayhem which is translated here as “tools of lawlessness.” The Old (1917) Jewish Publication Society translation, renders the phrase “Weapons of violence their kinship,” while the King James version has “instruments of cruelty are in their habitations.” This should give one a sense of the difficulty in figuring out what the word me’chayrotetayhem means. Continue reading

Glocks, Glatt Mart, Walmart, and Nonviolence

glocks@walmartThis past Thursday night, in need of Whole Wheat flour and sugar to bake challah, I attempted to use voice commands on my iPhone to find out when the local kosher supermarket closed. I said: “Find Glatt Mart.” Siri (the voice of the iPhone) returned a page labelled “Glocks at Walmart.” (see picture)

What is one to do with this information?

(Glocks, according to Wikipedia, is a series of semi-automatic pistols designed and produced by Glock Ges.m.b.H., located in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria.  By way of a rather brilliant marketing strategy (targeting Police Department with discounts, and then using the “cred” of being used by those Police Departments to move into the civilian market) the Glock has become the most popular American hand gun — for police officers, civilians, and criminals. It is easy to learn how to use and easy to fire. Once the guns age a bit, the Police Departments gets new guns and the used guns go on the largely unregulated second hand market.) Continue reading

Isaiah’s vision and Our Blindness (Justice and Trayvon Martin)

Yesterday, in the Jewish tradition, was the “Sabbath of vision.” It is named after Isaiah’s bleak vision described in Chapter One of his eponymous Scripture. Isaiah, speaking, no, screaming at those who would sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem declares in the name of God: I am tired of your sacrifices, I am sated already with the fatted calves that you offer, your offerings are now abominations to me. I no longer wish for you to celebrate festival days and Sabbaths. When you reach out to me, when you raise your voices in prayer, says God, I will ignore you, I will turn a blind eye. Why? First you must “Learn to do well; demand justice, relieve the oppressed, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.”

Finally, Isaiah turns to the city of Jerusalem and wails: “O! How the city full of justice, where righteousness dwelt, now dwell murderers!” It was not a true question, of course, it was the strangled scream of a prophet pointing to the everyday injustices, which led to the larger injustices, all hidden behind a veil of righteousness, of holy celebrations and fatted calves upon the altar and the smell of spices in the Temple.

As Sabbath finished and I performed  the ceremony of differentiation with wine and candle and spices with my family, I turned on my computer to news of the acquittal in the George Zimmerman case. How do we answer Isaiah’s lament? What were the steps that led from there to here? From the quotidian racial injustices to the loosening of gun laws to the ignoring of the history of racial discrimination. Continue reading

Zionism, Militarism, and Fantasy Camp

For some reason I don’t think that any of the founders of Zionism are standing and applauding from their places of eternal reward (wherever those may be).

NPR reported this morning about Caliber 3, an Israeli company which, according to their website, “was established in the year 2000 to design and apply effective security solutions around the world.” They now have a special two hour course which “is geared to all tourists of any age who would like to learn about anti terrorism tactics. Experts in anti terrorism combat will teach how terrorism is fought, how to shoot a pistol and give hands on experience for all participants in shooting a weapon.” They stress that the “program … combine[s] together the values of Zionism with the excitement and enjoyment of shooting which makes the activity more meaningful.” They also do birthday parties. Seriously. Continue reading