Learn. Pray. Blog.

This is a guest post by Laura Goren. Laura is a Policy Fellow at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy and a PhD student in Sociology at CUNY Graduate Center.

How do we, as a society, and as people of faith, learn to navigate a world in which extreme fringe perspectives, including hate speech, are amplified and visible due to the tool of the internet?

Has hate speech and uncivil discourse increased with the internet or has it just become more visible? How do we respond to hate speech and other forms of uncivil discourse?

Today’s 3rd Annual Law Day Conference, sponsored by the Virginia Law Foundation and Virginia Holocaust Museum, was an opportunity for a diverse group of about 100 people from across Virginia to learn about hate speech, its consequences and to grapple with these questions.

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The protesters from Westboro Baptist Church are a distant memory now, but their presence prompted some deep questions about free speech in America and how a productive citizenry should be engaged. That’s the focus of a conference at the Holocaust Museum tomorrow, Friday April 30, entitled “Free Speech, Fair Speech, Fear Speech: Civil Discourse in a Volatile World.”

The conference is organized by the The Virginia Law Foundation and is their 3rd Annual Law Day Conference. It starts at 8:30am and features topics such as:

• Conflict Resolution
• Methods of Fear Communication
• Constitutionally Informed Responses to Hate Speech
• Community Responses to Hate Speech

Governor McDonnell made an announcement this morning that is good news for our most vulnerable brothers and sisters. The press release states that he will form an advisory committee to craft a comprehensive statewide housing policy. In conversations about development and transportation during this administration, affordable housing and ending homelessness will be included.

It is encouraging to hear his statement that

“affordable and safe housing is a fundamental component of healthy and prosperous communities.”

I couldn’t agree more. Individuals and families experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities, seniors and teachers, police officers, and nurses should and will be considered part of our prosperous and thriving communities. This issue touches the lives of all Virginia residents. With cost of living rising faster than incomes for the past several decades, affordable housing is harder and harder to find. When people have to move further away from where they work to find an affordable place to live, problems with transportation and pollution are exacerbated, too.

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About a week ago, a Hampton School Lunch Lady known as “Miss Barbara” was buried after dying from cancer. She died early (in her 50’s) because as a low-income person, she had no access to health care and eventually gave up. Unfortunately her death came just before her life insurance kicked in so her family wasn’t even able to pay for her funeral.

Luckily, community members came together, in the best spirit of what it means to be Americans, and raised money to cover the cost of her funeral.

A piece in the Daily Press captures her tragic struggle with our broken health care system:

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Virginia’s Cold Stance against People without Documentation

By: Hannah Anderson

Recently, I was told about an undocumented immigrant living in Southwest Virginia who saw a woman collapse in her front yard.  In a panic over what to do about the situation, he called a friend (who has legal status) living in a different county and told them to call 911. He was afraid to call the police himself because state law allows police officers to inquire about the residency status of any person when investigating any given situation.  Reporting this event, even when being a good samaritan, could have resulted in his incarceration and deportation.

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Fox News Firebrand Glenn Beck will speak at Virginia's Liberty University

Liberty University, founded by late televangelist Jerry Falwell, has announced that its graduation speaker will be Fox News

evangelist Glenn Beck.

LU has had interesting graduation speakers in the past including Chuck Norris and Ben Stein but few of their tapped commencement speakers have had such a controversial pattern of taking direct attacks at mainstream Christianity which seeks to fulfill God’s call to compassion and justice.  Beck is not exactly the most compassionate person on TV today.

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A great column in the New River Voice about Social Justice and Faith Communities in Virginia.

The debate about what is the appropriate role of religion in American politics has heated up in recent weeks, this time thanks to Glenn Beck and his vitriol toward social justice advocates with religious connections.

Mr. Beck, one may assume, considers the halls of Congress and our state legislatures to be the purview of lobbyists with more “legitimate” objectives than the likes of Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners who relentlessly pressures those holding the purse strings in government to remember the needs of the poor. In Virginia, we have The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP), and its member faith groups and justice seeking individuals who have similar designs on our General Assembly.

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National gun rights groups were able to scrape together 2000 or so folks in Washington, D.C. yesterday to tote guns and brandish theological absurdities.  As has become part of the constant drumbeat of the extreme right, President Obama was referred to as a socialist out to steal people’s guns and violate the second amendment with some claiming that he may actually be the “Anti-Christ” or close to it. While this is usually hyperbole, some protesters seem to actually believe the President is no longer a Muslim but now Beelzebub.

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Many people think that Virginia is part of the Bible Belt.  While we certainly can claim our share of televangelists like the late Jerry Falwell Sr., Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and of course Pat Robertson the truth is that the landscape of Virginia’s faith community, the faithscape if you will, is more diverse than that these days and not just in NOVA.

Consider a small entry on the VAPilotOnline.com Web site featuring a Hindu family.  While Hindus have lived in Virginia for generations, few ever received such positive attention from mainstream media.  Their sisters and brothers in the Jewish community have been part of Virginia since the 18th Century.  Today it is not uncommon to also know Buddhists, Sikhs, Unitarians, and a heavenly host of other faiths living together in our communities.  Hey! Quakers are your Friends.

The diversity of expressions of faith in the Commonwealth should not surprise any of us as Virginia’s population continues to culturally and socially diversify.  In many ways, given the tribal nature of faith itself, faith and cultural diversity go hand in hand.  What will be very interesting to see is a 22nd Century Virginia when those tribes have intermarried and it is virtually impossible to know a family that is not racially, culturally, and most likely religiously diverse.  That faithscape may provide a whole new era of religious unity and spiritual depth.

As a Christian, that sounds a whole lot like the reign of God to me.

Banking Titan Goldman Sachs is a prime example of why we need Wall Street accountability.

As is being reported, the greed of big financial institutions means investors, and most notably small investors, are being misdirected and led astray by misleading products where the house bank always wins.

This is yet another reason we need Wall Street accountability to come from the Congress to get our banking system in line with American values and the expectations of every day consumers.

Virginia is raising taxes on 114,000 low income Virginians, and Governor Bob McDonnell’s press secretary, Stacey Johnson, doesn’t want the public talking about it.  The Governor’s office is claiming that a new report by The Commonwealth Institute is:

“politics at its most ridiculous,”

and yet they acknowledge

“the accuracy of its claim.”

In other words, the Governor’s office would really prefer people not notice that the Commonwealth is choosing to raise $6Million in taxes on low income workers at the very time it ensures $10Million is available for Virginia’s manufacturers.  As we often say, budgets are moral documents that speak to the priorities and values of government.  Right now the priority seems to be the manufacturers lobby.

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In case you haven’t read the news for the past few months, Virginia’s General Assembly has had to grapple with significant revenue shortfalls in the state budget. Just for context, since fiscal year 2007 the state has cut about $7 billion out of state revenue, and this year had to reconcile another $4 billion shortfall, which they did through cuts to the kinds of core services that Virginians rely on. While I would disagree, the reason many Democrats will publicly tell you they went with an essentially all-cuts approach because Governor McDonnell had already publicly stated that he would veto any budget that included a tax increase.

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Greed may have undercut our economy but more greed will not help America rebound going forward. We need Wall Street accountability to keep American families from ever having to experience what big bankers and financial institutions have done to this country ever again. This “Great Recession” has created tremendous hardship and that is unfair for everyday people who are working so hard just to pay the bills.

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This is a guest post  by Sara Okos. Sara is a policy analyst with the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, which provides credible, independent and accessible information and analyses of fiscal and economic issues facing Virginia with particular attention to the impacts on low- and moderate-income persons.

Every year, a conservative national think tank estimates, on average, how many days residents of each state must work in order to earn what they will likely owe in federal, state, and local taxes that year. The Tax Foundation has declared today- April 13, 2010- Virginia’s “Tax Freedom Day.”

In addition to their use of some shoddy analytical techniques, the concept of “Tax Freedom Day” is particularly deceptive because it suggests that our government simply takes and takes from us. It ignores the benefits that we all receive from a functioning and adequately funded public sector: benefits like clean water and air, roads to get us from our home to the grocery store and to work, and school systems that equip us with the knowledge and skills that allow us to be productive members of society.

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“This plan will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this state in less than 5 years, so that in no single county will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.”
Carter Glass, Delegate to the 1902 Virginia Constitutional Convention

In Virginia, all people with felony convictions are barred from voting, even after completing their sentences, including any incarceration. Only the Governor has authority to restore their access to the ballot box.  This is exactly what Carter Glass and others like him wanted to happen in order to keep people of color from voting.

The barriers we have put in place to keep people from voting have at their roots racism.

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Haley Barbour and Bob McDonnell, southern governors.

Just when you thought that Governor Bob McDonnell was putting the whole Confederate history month debacle behind him, Mississippi’s Governor Haley Barbour kicks up the dust again.

“To me, it’s a sort of feeling that it’s a nit, that it is not significant, that it’s not a – it’s trying to make a big deal out of something (that) doesn’t amount to diddly,” Barbour said in the interview aired on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Barbour articulated.

This puts Governor McDonnell in an even worse place than he was in earlier this week.  Now he not only has to continue to apologize about his original flub up, now he has to take on Haley Barbour publicly about his ridiculous comments or face renewed heat from Virginians who are deeply embarrassed to once again find themselves on the international stage because of the ignorant comments of a politician (sometimes Republican, sometimes Democrat).

Sure Barbour is gaining party power, among the more radical elements of the GOP but that should not scare Bob McDonnell.  He should stand up to Barbour and explain that the future of the Republican party is not in being revisionist.  In fact, he should stand up to the extremist parts of the party who will now rush to the defense of Barbour as well.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell admitted his sin of omission by leaving out any mention of slavery in his proclamation of April as Confederate History Month.

“The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed….The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War.”

Kudos to Bob McDonnell for standing up and admitting his office made a grave mistake.  Earlier today I indicated that the Governor needed to learn a little more about the Civil War if he thought slavery was not a “significant issue.”  Now, that he has clarified his understanding of the facts let’s hope he uses this moment to teach Virginia and the country about how far we have to move toward reconciliation.

Many people will ruminate why he didn’t get it right the first time.  I think the more important opportunity before Bob McDonnell is to use this as a teaching moment.

Virginia’s climate deniers could not help but claim that global warming was a sham this past winter because it was so cold. Now it is the first week of April and it’s 90 degrees outside. Those same people are silent.

Just saying….

Governor Bob McDonnell has avoided being a lightning rod on race since his run up to state-wide, and now national, visibility.  He had a major endorsement from democratic-funder Sheila Johnston, a prominent African American, during his run for Governor who became an excellent validator of McDonnell on many levels since she is an entrepreneur, African American leader, and of course the founder of BET.  There were questions when McDonnell suggested closing Twin Lakes State Park as part of a budget fix.  The park has significant ties to the black community as our only state park open to African Americans during segregation, but the Governor has avoided the broader race debates that George Allen fought given that Governor’s many encumbrances with historical southerness.

Now McDonnell may have some explaining to do after reclaiming April as “Confederate History Month” yesterday, and it may become his own Macaca Moment.  There are many months commemorated in VA but rarely those dealing a war over a state’s right to protect chattel slavery.  And no other commemorative month coincides with a month when Virginia seceded from America.  [time will tell how our attempt to secede from health insurance reform will be venerated.]

McDonnell says he issued the proclamation in an effort to revive Virginia’s tourism knowing the 150 Anniversary of the Civil War is approaching.  And yet, he says:

he did not include a reference to slavery because “there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.“

Shockoe Bottom and Shockoe Slip were the major entryway for trading slaves who survived the middle passage.   I know that the Governor is new to the neighborhood but about a 1/4 of a mile from the Governor’s Mansion there is a memorial to the slave trade that indicates how despicable slavery was in Richmond as the former capitol of the confederacy and Virginia as a whole.  One might even describe the horrific love affair that Virginia had with slavery, significant.

I certainly hope that this does not become Macaca Moment because with all of those Civil War tourists we are trying to attract to the state it would be a shame to not have a strong Governor who can hel recognize the whole history of Virginia.  Let’s not overlook the realities that the Civil War (not a “conflict,” Governor) was actually quite uncivil for those families who fought on all sides, including my own.

Slavery was even more uncivil.

This is a teaching moment.  Governor McDonnell should learn, and then teach.

The Virginia Pilot has an interesting news piece providing quotes from Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell including an excellent statement about the extremists threatening violence.  Kudos to the Governor for returning us to the ideals of democracy and the importance of civic engagement saying:

“I think there are people in all parts of the political spectrum that are doing some things that are not reflective of the highest ideals of American democracy: threats, actual acts of violence against members of Congress, governors. Our solutions are at the ballot box and in the legislature. That’s the way we do things in America,” McDonnell said.

I wonder what the extremes of his base have to say about those sage words.  I wish I was hearing more from the left and right, including the tea party folks, about the need for civil discourse. Instead we have too many people that think freedom’s ring sounds like a shot from a gun.

The way of democracy is the way of unity.  The way of a united America should be the way of peace.