The Horrific Events that Transpired in Tulsa
The Justice Department issued a report on Friday, January 10, 2025 on the Tulsa Race Massacre. The report documents the department’s findings, made during its review and evaluation of the Tulsa Race Massacre, undertaken pursuant to the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act. The Civil Rights Division previously announced it was undertaking this review during a Cold Case Convening held on Sept. 30, 2024.
“The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings, and locked the survivors in internment camps. Until this day, the Justice Department has not spoken publicly about this race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa. This report breaks that silence by rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation’s past. This report lays bare new information and shows that the massacre was the result not of uncontrolled mob violence, but of a coordinated, military-style attack on Greenwood. Now, more than 100 years later, there is no living perpetrator for the Justice Department to prosecute. But the historical reckoning for the massacre continues. This report reflects our commitment to the pursuit of justice and truth, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles. We issue this report with recognition of the courageous survivors who continue to share their testimonies, acknowledgement of those who tragically lost their lives and appreciation for other impacted individuals and advocates who collectively push for us to never forget this tragic chapter of America’s history.”
To Be Disobedient in the Face of Power
A message from Chani Nicholas, re-posted from her website.
I tried to stay off the internet that day. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of being stressed out by what men in power with bad hair, worse fashion sense, and criminal records or intent are going to do to us all next. I’m not saying what they have planned isn’t anything short of terrorizing, but I’m no longer offering my cortisol to their whirligig willy-nilly. I know that every piece of news I lay my eyes on over the next four years is going to be demoralizing, to say the least. I need to conserve my energy. No need to spend any excess on the first day, I thought. This isn’t 2016. I’m wiser and far more wary. I want to keep as much of myself intact as I navigate my way through the onslaught of violent acts that are promised to us.
But I saw it anyway. Clear as day. We all did.
The images of the openly transphobic billionaire, left arm raised, fingers taut, reaching for the gold medal of supremacy were everywhere. The richest man in the world — a man who promotes the far-right party in Germany, the AfD, the British anti-immigration party, and Reform UK — in a full Nazi salute.
Which he did twice.
Continue reading “To Be Disobedient in the Face of Power”Kirkridge Retreats for 2025
Kirkridge Retreat Center in PA is offering a compelling line-up of retreats in 2025.
Dear Radical Discipleship community,
I wanted to reach out to this beloved circle to let you know about retreats that are happening at Kirkridge Retreat Center in 2025. We would love to have you here at some point this year.
You can also see our full list of retreats here: https://kirkridge.org/retreat-programs/
Grateful for you all,
Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
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Continue reading “Kirkridge Retreats for 2025”Spiritual Genius
The opening paragraphs of “Communities of Care and Concern” by Rev. Dr. Nick Peterson, an assistant professor of Homiletics and Worship at Christian Theological Seminary in Indy. As a practical theologian, Nick interrogates how intentional and unintentional practices shape Christian identities and configure worldviews. Click on The Political Theology Network here to read it in its entirety.
Oppression overwhelms. Its incessant dehumanizing and dishonoring practices work together to undermine human dignity and quench the spark of hope that dreams of otherwise possibilities. Surviving and overcoming oppression require what Mother Ruby Sales has coined “spiritual genius.” This genius represents a determined refusal to surrender one’s value and worth to the deformed imagination of the oppressor.
Sales describes this genius as conscience-making work, where the fundamental narratives that make life meaningful affirm self-love without requiring hatred of others. For Sales, spiritual genius requires intimacy with the Creator and the ability to never let hate take root in the heart.
Similarly, Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday is on the 15th, said in his final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
“The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of [their] intellect, [their] racial origin or [their] social position. Human worth lies in relatedness to God.”
The ultimate problem with oppression is its intention to profane – to render the oppressed beyond divine relationality – to violently desacralize the human subject.
Click here to keep reading.
Manufacture Consent through Popular Support
Some helpful analysis from the [Fred] Hampton Institute as we head into another Trump administration.
Trump worked out two deals to gain a ton of political capital before even taking office. The first (which was probably done months ago and contingent on him being reelected) with his close friend, Netenyahu [the temporary ceasefire deal], and the second with fellow Ivy League capitalist Shou Zi Chew [overturning the Tiktok ban]…
We don’t know exactly what the long game is here but we do know that (1) Trump unconditionally supports the colonial apartheid state of Israel, has very close ties to Netenyahu, and wholeheartedly supported the genocide of the Palestinian people, and (2) Trump’s support of “free speech” is conditional on such speech being in line with the capitalist/imperialist narrative (although with a more controlled-ops orientation, ala Infowars, Rogan, etc).
What we anticipate is that this political capital is being used to manufacture consent through popular support for some early power moves being planned by his administration (US/Israel expansion, destroying Iran, pressuring China, more fascistic domestic policies regarding immigrants, the homeless & the poor/disabled, strengthening the internal police/surveillance state, etc.). We should also know is that Trump has proven to be an asset to the American empire (including the “deep state” that supposedly hates him), has proven his loyalty to unrestrained capital, and has proven to be no friend of the struggling, working-class masses here in the US.
The bottom line with all of this is that overt fascism is a *systemic* development rooted in capitalist decay. While Democrats/Biden have served an important role in pushing this systemic transition, they’ve also effectively set up Republicans/Trump to play an even more important role. With this pre-arranged political capital supercharging his facade as an “anti-establishment outsider,” Trump now has a clear path (with popular support) to guide this capitalist decay into a more organized and powerful form of fascistic corporatism.
Running in Circles on Racial Justice
By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, Senior Advisor, The Fellowship of Reconciliation USA
We keep running in circles when it comes to addressing racial justice in the US. This means that with every advance we almost come back to the same place and must fight the battles all over again. It doesn’t mean that progress has not been made, but the progress retrogresses due to the immediate backlash that charges any advance to rectify past racial injustices as an affront to white people. At best there is an ebb and flow when it comes to rectifying the racial harms and damages of the past. Race history and the many initiatives to rectify past wrongs is more of a circle than a linear line. It may be an expanding circle considering advances, but for every victory won there is a vicious throw back. It is almost like the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” where morning after morning we awaken to histories repeating itself, and where victories of racial justice are swept away by the courts or a change in the body politics. The struggle continues, and in many cases, we must begin again.
Continue reading “Running in Circles on Racial Justice”Collapse of the Veneer
An excerpt from Chris Hedges’ piece “How Fascism Came.”
President-elect Donald Trump does not herald the advent of fascism. He heralds the collapse of the veneer that masked the corruption within the ruling class and their pretense of democracy. He is the symptom, not the disease. The loss of basic democratic norms began long before Trump, which paved the road to an American totalitarianism. Deindustrialization, deregulation, austerity, unchecked predatory corporations, including the health-care industry, wholesale surveillance of every American, social inequality, an electoral system that is plagued by legalized bribery, endless and futile wars, the largest prison population in the world, but most of all feelings of betrayal, stagnation and despair, are a toxic brew that culminate in an inchoate hatred of the ruling class and the institutions they have deformed to exclusively serve the rich and the powerful. The Democrats are as guilty as the Republicans.
Sanctuary Medicine
Check out this compelling offering from March 31 to April 4, 2025 from our comrades at Dreaming Stone.
The Sanctuary Medicine training offers skills and strategies for mitigating harm and building a more healthy and just future, fortifying our relationships, growing our capacity, and building our readiness to care for one another.
Sanctuary Medicine flows from a spiritual, emotional, physical vision of care for individuals and communities in crisis resulting from increased vulnerability. In a world shattered by climate change, racial capitalism and failing democracy, devastating storms and fires, growing unhoused populations, and growing numbers of people targeted by dehumanizing state policies, such as migrants and trans people, Sanctuary Medicine recognizes that church buildings and other community spaces of refuge are still places of first response, and creates a framework of care that includes preparedness, emergency medicine, spiritual and emotional support, and liturgical community care and mutual aid in the face of trauma.
Sanctuary medicine imagines communities of care and refuge, prepared for and able to respond to disasters and community trauma, increasing resilience, relationship and solidarity. Participants will receive training in:
- Field medicine focusing on specific rising needs of vulnerable community members including chronic wound care, weather exposure, stop-the-bleed instruction and chronic conditions faced by those who do not have access to medical support. Trainers include certified EMT’s and WFR’s with extensive street medic experience.
- Emotional and spiritual support for crisis care by disaster first responders, street chaplains and mental health professionals.
- Preparedness practices, including creating community specific plans and supplies as well as organizing community medicine gardens and mutual aid that centers the most vulnerable.
- Liturgical and ritual response and care to allow for long term processes of grief, justice building and cultural transformation.
Altadena
Re-posted from Word in Black, a ground-breaking collaboration of ten legendary Black news publishers.
As the rapidly-spreading Eaton wildfire in Los Angeles crept closer to the home he’d lived in for nearly six decades, Rodney Nickerson, 83, wasn’t going to panic. Despite the pleas of his worried daughter and anxious neighbors, he was staying put.
It apparently made sense for him to hold on: he bought the house in 1968, back when it wasn’t easy for Black people to own property in L.A., much less in a great neighborhood like Altadena. To Nickerson, a retired engineer who clocked in at Lockheed-Martin for almost half a century, there was no reason to panic. He would ride it out.
“He said, ‘I’ll be fine,’” his daughter, Kimko Nickerson, told a reporter for KCAL, a local TV news station. “He said, ‘I’ll be here when you come back and the house will be here.’”
Tragically, he miscalculated: when she returned to the house, Kimko Nickerson found her father’s body in the charred, smoldering ruins.
Continue reading “Altadena”
Radical Discipleship 