In the
foreground of the country’s deepening democracy crisis is the growing effort by
Republican-led states to cut taxes, block Medicaid expansion and curb voter
turnout. In the background is the growing concentration of wealth. In 2012 ten
percent of the U. S. population earned half the country’s income; meaning the
U. S. is already on the way to government by an oligarchy of the wealthy. [Annie Lowerey, NY Times, September 10, 2013]
The good news
is the progressive and diverse coalitions growing rapidly in Southern states to
protest this trend. Demonstrators by the
tens of thousands have filled the streets—80,000 last Summer in North
Carolina—with more than a thousand people arrested for acts of civil
disobedience. New coalitions are
disrupting legislative sessions that ignore the needs of low income families by
blocking Medicaid expansion or limiting the number of days and hours election
polls will be open. In Georgia
“There was a
son of a sharecropper and an advocate for the homeless, a college student and a
great-grandmother, a retired store manager and the senior pastor of Ebenezer
Baptist Church”….among 39 arrested on March 17th [NY Times March 18,
2014]
While clergy
are sometimes leading the protests, they comprise only part of the new
coalitions that have come together to resist Republican-led strategies. More
than 80 citizens were arrested in Georgia just weeks ago. Dramatic scenes in the Georgia legislature
over its refusal to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act led to
acts of civil disobedience including the
pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta—once the home pulpit of Martin
Luther King.
Even while the
gloves are coming off in these citizen protests against Republican policies the
hour has grown late. This very day the Supreme Court struck down limits in
federal law on the overall campaign contributions the biggest individual donors
may make to candidates, political parties and political action committees. The
“Citizen United” Supreme Court decision three years ago recognizing
corporations as persons had already opened the flood gates to governance by the
wealthy. Revolving doors for staff
moving from Wall Street to government and back again is pervasive. In the face
of rampant corporate corruption among the big banks, a tame Securities and
Exchange Commission staff has done little. Its own staff and board are composed
of personnel formerly employed at giant Wall Street firms. The hour is, indeed, growing late.
While protests
are growing against the Right, faith-based movements toward the Right also are
growing. New conservative church
denominations are forming in the country. Often energized by gender issues,
their composition is visibly an all-white community of the privileged. As many
as a quarter to one-third of congregations in the traditionally liberal
Presbyterian denomination may move toward this orbit this year.
A more hopeful
story is unfolding with unionization efforts at the Nissan auto plant in Canton, Mississippi. Led by a
marching community coalition that includes local clergy, human rights
advocates, and the UAW (demonstrating lessons the UAW learned in Chattanooga
about the need for allies and shared strategic planning), with Nissan workers urged by religious leaders
to vote their conscience, not listen only to the high pressure propaganda
coming at them. [LA Times, March 14, 2014]
The real question
is whether the moral and religious roots that gave democracy life in the U. S. in
the first place will find its full voice in this prophetically challenging
moment. The future of democracy in America may turn on the answer to that
question.
The record is
mixed. Christian churches co-habitated
with slavery and segregation for hundreds of years. Jewish congregations have maintained their
loyalty to the apartheid state of Israel during its 60 year repression of
Palestinian people and huge settlement expansion into Palestinian
territory. Muslim leaders often confuse
their spiritual and prophetic tradition with the more familiar authoritarian
rule practiced today in Syria, Egypt and many African lands.
It doesn't have
to be this way. There is a new, well educated younger faith-based generation of
leaders coming online that may yet breathe new life into the links between faith, justice
and democracy. The original Tahir Square uprising in Egypt was an expression of
democratic yearning among an educated younger Muslim generation. “Jewish Voices
for Peace” is a movement growing out of diverse Jewish traditions and raising
its prophetic voice against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Christian groups once deeply involved in the
Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s are once again beginning to provide new leadership
protesting the consequences of rising inequality.
“The most
important fact to remember,” writes Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect,
“is that concentrated wealth translates into concentrated political
power.” Conscientious voices on the Left
and Right should be able to see such concentration is disastrous for both democracy and their historic faith traditions.
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