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A standing-room-only crowd of young black Catholics in a frank session that lasted more than two hours told bishops, priests and women religious why they stay in the church, what threatens to drive them away and that they want a stronger voice from church officials for the Black Lives Matter movement.

As the National Black Catholic Congress got underway in Orlando July 6 with more than 2,000 attendees, some 120 participants discussed ways to keep young adult black Catholics engaged in their parishes and the church and raised criticism of, and an apology for, the church's silence regarding the movement spawned by the killings of unarmed blacks by police. Among the bishops attending Congress XII was Archbishop Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

Discussion centered on key themes:

"How do we respond as people of faith to issues of race that have always been going on in society but especially in light of the Black Lives Matter movement? And in a lot of the police killings, a lot of people feel that the church has been almost silent in its response," Stacy Allen, one of the facilitators, said toward the end of the session.

"The church is very vocal on a myriad of issues -- immigration for instance -- which are important," Allen said. "But specifically on the issues of race, especially from the perspective of a young adult black Catholic, what should the Catholic response be?"

That prompted Auxiliary Bishop Fernand Cheri III of New Orleans to stand. With a bow to those in the room, he said, "To the black youth, I apologize to you as a leader of the church because I feel we have abandoned you in the Black Lives Matter movement and I apologize.

"Partly, I didn't understand it, and by the time I did understand it, it was too late the moment was gone," he said. "I'm very proud of you you stood up and said enough is enough. As a leader, I want to say that to you thank you."

He then went on to tell of challenges in his own journey as a priest and a bishop, his outreach to bring young people, and starting choirs in parishes. "You're going to struggle and you're going to persevere," he said.

He counseled that young black adults reach out to each other and others within their parishes and church communities.

"No one knows how to best minister to you as young people we're all learning this together," he said. "One of the reasons we have faltered when it comes to vocations from our community because when it comes to being church, we just don't have the community working at it together and that's the failure."

Many at the session spoke of the need to address a lack of programs for young adults and meaningful engagement and leadership opportunities within parishes and the larger church. Young adults want more than to be tapped to set up tables, take out trash, run kids' programs and generally do things that older parishioners don't want to do, participants said.

Too many parishes have youth programs that end at high school and nothing for those who come back after college with talents and skills and a willingness to get involved, participants said. It's particularly difficult for young black Catholics not in large metropolitan areas like Chicago, Atlanta or Washington with black churches.

"People leave because there's just no community," said one young woman from Lansing, Michigan.

While a participant from New Orleans said the reason she stays Catholic is the strength of her parish community, she has encountered resistance in other parishes. "One reason young adults are leaving is that sometimes it feels like the church does not want us," she said.

She says she's tried to volunteer and has been told "no because of age, or no because they don't say it, but because I'm a young adult, and they think I'm too young to know about that, or no because that's 'too black' and that might be fine for your church in New Orleans but not here," she said.

The rejection is like "asking for a hug and someone is crossing their arms," she said, recounting how she and a young Asian woman were "shut down" in a parish in San Francisco when trying to introduce new programs. "That's why people leave, because they don't feel wanted. And if you don't feel wanted, you leave."

Applause, laughter and murmurs of recognition swept through the room as participants from New York, California, Louisiana, Texas and elsewhere shared their experiences and ideas.

"We as young adults don't want programs, we want a relationship," said a participant. "We don't want things to do we have enough to do. We want a place to belong. Successful young adult ministries are where they feel invested to make change within their parishes."

One mistake is to mix up "youth" programs with "young adult" programs without recognizing the huge differences between them, some participants noted. One mentioned having a young adult "meet and greet" to get ideas for programs they want and then implementing them.

Another mentioned having eucharistic adoration on Monday evenings rather than Fridays to not interfere with happy hour. One priest mentioned having the sacrament of reconciliation available on Sundays when people are already at church.

Participants from Nigeria and other African nations shared their experiences of encountering cultural differences assimilating into U.S. parishes, the lack of welcome, and some of the strong communal faith traditions they know from their homelands.

"You feel like you don't belong," said one participant. "It is hard as an African to belong to the Catholic Church in the United States."

Programs focused on prayer and spiritual, not just social, needs are important, participants said.

In an interview afterward, Allen, who is from the Galveston-Houston Diocese, expanded on the issue of race relations and the lack of support for the Black Lives Matter movement by the church.

"It's been painful that a faith that I love so much and I dedicate quite a lot of time to feels like it hasn't seen my own humanity, hasn't seen my own pain," said Allen, who is an attorney and serves in her parish counsel, youth ministry and catechism programs.

"As someone who mentors young people too, I see those stories and I worry about if they're going to be the next hashtag. So with something so dominating the news cycle, and I think the American psyche, for our church to be so silent it just questions whether people like me even matter if we are even seen within the faith and if we belong," Allen said.

"Because of my faith and the holy Eucharist, there's no way I am going to leave, but I wish that the church would on a national level create a think tank or a group that really tries to address black Catholics in the church and what is our space."

Cheri in an interview said bishops haven't been more supportive because they haven't really understood the Black Lives Matter movement, relying more on media reports than talking with black people within their dioceses.

"One of the primary teachings of the church is the value of human life and human dignity, and if Black Lives Matter is not a matter of human dignity, something is wrong," he said.

"We [bishops] speak out for many things and we stand for many things and I think we stand for life. I'm not saying I'm against police it's not a question of that, it's not a question of for and against. It's about life at all levels and all times," he said.

The National Black Catholic Congress, held every five years, continues through Sunday morning, July 9.

[Gail DeGeorge is editor of Global Sisters Report.]

View original post here:
Engage young adults, support Black Lives Matter, bishops told - National Catholic Reporter

July 6, 2017 6:58 PM By Dom Giordano

Philadelphia (CBS) Heather Mac Donald, from the Manhattan Institute and the author of the book,The War On Cops, blames Black Lives Matter protesters and activists for the killing of police officers, like the shooting that occurred this week resulting in the death of Officer Miosotis Familia in New York City, telling Dom Giordano on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that protests encourage violent criminals to act out.

People have been fed the lie for the last three years by the Black Lives Matter activists and their media and political enablers that were living through an epidemic of racially biased police shootings of black men, a claim that is 100 percent false and, we shouldnt be surprised that kooks and people that have been fed a longstanding hatred of the police act on this. The numbers bear this out. The cops are under attack because of this ideologically fueled and completely unjustified hatred.

She discounted incidents of police shootings that have elicited outrage around the country, saying they are statistically insignificant compared to the number of police killed in black communities.

A police officer is 18 and a half times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer. The percentage of people that are shot by cops is trivial and it is overwhelmingly predicted by violent crime rates. Blacks are shot at a much lower rate than their violent crime rate would predict.

Mac Donald contends that police will stop doing their jobs if Black Lives Matter and similar groups continue to stage protests and demonstrations.

Its a lot easier to blame the police than to take responsibility for your own community. Were living in a real life experiment here, which is de-policing. Black Lives Matter activists actually say they want the cops out. Well, ok, policing is political and if cops get the message enough times that they are racist for getting out of their car at 1AM and making that stop with somebody whos hitching up his waistband as if he has a gun, theyre not going to do it. They dont have to. Thats a discretionary activity and were seeing what happens when cops back off.

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Author: Black Lives Matter Activists Motivate Police Shootings - CBS Philly

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

In the wake of the Virginia congressional baseball practice shooting by James T. Hodgkinson, a former Sanders volunteer who targeted Republican Congressman Steve Scalise in early June, trend piece-giddy journalists rushed to publish horseshoe theory takes on the rise of the extreme left and how it too poses a threat to the fabric of society. In many of these articles, civil rights organization Anti-Defamation League was there to reinforce this false balance and populate its articles with warnings of emerging left-wing violence.

Take, for starters, this recent scare piece in Vice:

I think were in a time when we cant ignore the extremism from the Left, said Oren Segal, the director of the Center on Extremism, an arm of the Anti-Defamation League. Over the past few months, the ADL, which hosts regular seminars on homegrown extremism for law enforcement officials, has begun warning of the rising threat posed by far-left groups, most recently at a seminar just this past Sunday. When we have anti-fascist counterprotests not that they are the same as white supremacists that can ratchet up the violence at these events, and it means we can see people who are violent on their own be attracted to that, Segal said. I hate to say it, but it feels inevitable.

This posturing was undermined by the followup sentence in the next paragraph: The evidence is so far largely anecdotal.

Anecdotal, as in not proven to exist in any meaningful sense. The ADL, to maintain its just calling balls and strikes image must denounce extremism on both sides and though it sometimes notes right and left violence are not equal, it is happy to help frame the problem as such.

Warning of the potential for another Greensboro Massacre a 1979 street battle in North Carolina between communists and the KKK that left five leftists dead ADLs Mark Pitcavage told Politico, My big concern is sooner or later is that were going to have another Greensboro Massacre type of event.

The Vice article went on to call the Black Panthers a left-wing extremist group. Its unclear if the rampant institutional racism, police brutality, and the ongoing skilling of hundreds of thousands of Indochinese by the U.S. government the Black Panthers fought to undermine is also considered extremist in their calculation, but the parameters of acceptable violence have been laid out, no matter how arbitrary.

Nowhere in any of these reports, and nowhere in the ADLs official statement, was Hodgkinsons history of domestic violence noted, a trait thats afar bigger predictor of mass shootings than liberal ideology. Also left unmentioned was that in addition to being a Sanders fan, Hodgkinson wasobsessedwith the Trump-Russia collusion theory, a narrative that spans the center-left to the neocon right. Hodgkinson had to be jammed into a vague far left label and any evidence that ran counter to this narrative was ignored by both the ADL and the reports its quotes help populate.

Smearing Black Lives Matter activists

Another tendency of the ADL is to smear Black Lives Matter activists who couple their struggle with those of the Palestinians.

In an op-edlast weekin Time magazine titled Anti-Semitism Is Creeping Into Progressivism, ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt went out of his way to smear the Movement For Black Lives, a confederation of grassroots Black Lives Matter organizations, as anti-Semitic:

Last summer, a plank in the platform of the Movement for Black Lives bizarrely accused Israel of genocide. . .We were outraged by the baseless accusations made against Israel in the M4BL platform released last summer.

Nowhere in his drive-by potshot does Greenblatt specify what he found objectionable, other than vaguely alluding to the Movement for Black Lives claim that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

No rebuke is necessary, no understanding of the broader context of their grievance. M4BL had a 32,000-word manifesto and put Israels violence against the Palestinians in the broader context of U.S. military aggression against black and brown people throughout the globe, a common anti-imperialist critique leveled by everyone from Noam Chomsky to Malcolm X. Whether or not the charge of genocide is appropriate is debatable, but theres no evidence it was coming from a place of hatred against Jews.

But so it goes with the ADL which, by its own admission, makes little distinction between criticizing Israel and libeling Jewish people. It allows for legitimate criticism of Israel around the margins, but never clearly defines what this is or how polite nudging among liberals will ever compel right-wing forces within Israel to cease settlement activity or recognize Palestinians right to self-determination.

Anti-BDS lobbying

The ADL has a history of doubling as a pro-Israel public relations firm. Earlier this year, the ADL co-authored a report with hard line Israeli think tank Reut Institute highlighting how to combat the growing Palestinian solidarity movement and establish what they called a pro-Israel network to defend the legitimacy of Israel as Jewish state.

Does this sound like the activities of a civil rights organization or a lobby acting on behalf of a nation-state? To the ADL, its both it makes little distinction between Zionism and Judaism and thus little distinction between meaningful criticism of Israel and irrational hatred of Jews. Nonetheless, its ideological aims are clear. While ADL does do important workhighlighting and documentingright-wing extremism, its broader aim is running spin for Israel. A search of the ADL website makes this clear. Israel returns 29,300 results, whereas white supremacist returns 6,560, KKK 777, African American 2,490, and islamophobia a paltry 361.

ADL president Greenblatt spends a considerable amount of time attacking the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement designed to isolate Israel over its 50-year military occupation of the West Bank. So lets see BDS for what it is, he wrote last year, a continuation, a modern version if you will, of an irrational hatred of the Jewish people.

Greenblatts smear continues:

Linda Sarsour, a leader of the womens rights movement, has lambasted Zionismas incompatible with feminism and advocates for the exclusion of pro-Israel Jews from activist groups. And some in the anti-Israel movement have accused Israel of pink-washing, claiming that Israel and its supporters celebrate freedoms enjoyed by the LGBTQ community in Israel to divert attention from Israels treatment of the Palestinians.

For an organization like the Anti-Defamation League, which was founded both to combat anti-Semitism and protect the Jewish people but also to secure justice and fair treatment to all Americans, these manifestations are upsetting.

Nowhere does not Greenblatt specify what Sarsour or critics of pink washing said that was anti-Semitic. He just asserts they are and and moves on. The reason he doesnt, of course, is that to drill down on their arguments one would see Sarsours criticism of Zionism isnt rooted in hate, but rather an objection to a specific ideology and the policies of a specific country. Instead Greenblatt is given free rein to pin on her and other activists the most vile of labels without consequence.

The BDS movement rose out of necessity. With an automatic U.S. veto at the U.N. on behalf of Israel, a corrupt Israeli-sanctioned Palestinian leadership with little legitimacy and 50 years of humiliating military occupation, Palestinians had no other recourse. Despite vague, decades-long appeals to a bilateral peace process which the ADL always insists they try Jewish settlements in Palestine grow geometrically, rendering a contiguous Palestinian state a physical impossibility. Greenblatt puts the bulk of the blame on Palestinians he says have practiced rejectionism, whatever that means. Meanwhile, the occupation goes on and the lack of progress is always blamed on some broad moral failing within Palestinian society manifested as mindless anti-Semitism.

Denounce terrorism and practice nonviolence, Palestinians are told. After doing just this via BDS they are then told that this, itseslf, is racist hate speech. Palestinians cant win and the ADL is on the ideological vanguard setting out to make sure they never can. How, one is compelled to ask, does this serve the cause of civil rights?

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Media allows bogus civil rights group ADL to smear Israel critics and Black Lives Matter activists - Salon

COLLIER COUNTY, Fla -

A Collier County man is facing several charges after a scuffle with sheriff's deputies.

It happened after a routine traffic stop Wednesday for a seat belt violation at the corner of 47th Street Southwest and 25th Avenue Southwest.

"At the beginning everything was quiet, and turned violent," said Ben Gonzalez, who witnessed the confrontation.

According to the police report 34-year-old Anthony Denson Jr. asked deputies "Why the F*** did you stop me?"

When the deputy asked him for his license, registration and insurance, he told them he was afraid to reach into the glove compartment because he would be shot.

The deputy then ordered Denson out of the car so he can arrest him for obstruction of justice after he wouldn't give him his driver information.

"They kind of got physical, started arguing, fighting with the guy," said Gonzalez.

He watched from a distance as Denson fought with deputies, throwing one of them onto the hood of his car as he tried to cuff him.

Once Denson was restrained he yelled "Black Lives Matter" on his way to the jail.

Once he arrived he told deputies: "If I get out tonight that officer is going to get it, I will get him." And continued to yell "Black Lives Matter.

"It surprised me, I've never seen this in the neighborhood, I lived for not too long in the neighborhood and you don't see this often," said Gonzalez.

Denson is facing several charges including threatening to kill a law enforcement officer.

Visit link:
Suspect yells "Black Lives Matter" on the way to jail - Fox 4

Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, leads a gathering at The Underground Museum in Los Angeles in memory of Charleena Lyles and other police shooting victims. Michael Radcliffe/NPR hide caption

Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, leads a gathering at The Underground Museum in Los Angeles in memory of Charleena Lyles and other police shooting victims.

It's been almost four years since Patrisse Khan-Cullors helped birth the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. Those three words gained national attention for demonstrations against police brutality and grew into a movement.

But progress has been slow, admits Khan-Cullors, a Los Angeles-based activist who co-founded the Black Lives Matter Network.

"The local is where the work is. If we're looking at just the national, it's pretty devastating. But if you zoom into cities, to towns, to rural areas, people are fighting back and people are winning," she says, pointing to one example in Jackson, Miss., where voters recently elected a progressive new mayor in the Deep South.

Other Black Lives Matter activists around the country, who are part of a decentralized movement, are also focusing on local activism.

"We go to locations where people generally ... don't have to think about or don't want to think about white supremacy and patriarchy and how that's affecting black people," says Mike Bento, an organizer with New York's NYC Shut It Down, a group which considers itself part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mike Bento (center), an organizer with NYC Shut It Down, leads a march in honor of a black transgender person who was recently killed in New York City. Hansi Lo Wang/NPR hide caption

Mike Bento (center), an organizer with NYC Shut It Down, leads a march in honor of a black transgender person who was recently killed in New York City.

The group started holding weekly demonstrations around New York City two years ago to honor mainly people who have died at the hands of police. On a recent Monday evening, about two dozen protesters gathered outside a restaurant in downtown Manhattan, where diners sipped wine at bistro tables on the sidewalk.

While a protester held up a sign saying "MX BOSTICK, REST IN POWER," Bento started a call-and-response describing the recent death of a black transgender person who was found unconscious on a sidewalk after being struck in the head in May. A suspect is now charged with manslaughter.

"We're here tonight because while you are dining, black trans people are dying," Bento shouted at the restaurant patrons.

Still, it's not all about protesting in the streets. Sometimes, Bento and other Black Lives Matter activists go underground and into New York's subways. They pay for people who would otherwise try to get on a train without paying, which could earn them a misdemeanor.

"This is all connected," Bento says. "This is all part of how we get a system of mass incarceration. And so we start with basic things that we can do to keep our brothers and sisters out of that system."

Other basic forms of activism include standing outside the courthouse to support people charged with low-level offenses and helping to serve dinner to homeless people.

In Washington, D.C., April Goggans, an organizer with Black Lives Matter DC, is holding meetings with other local activist groups to figure out how they can make communities facing high crime rates more self-sufficient.

Goggans says she's been following the recent police shooting of Charleena Lyles, a pregnant, black mother in Seattle, as well as the not-guilty verdicts for police officers involved in the deaths of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Sylville Smith in Wisconsin. They've all reinforced her conclusion, she says, that any type of reform will not improve police departments.

"I don't even know that I would put my effort into charging and imprisoning individual police officers because it's just not gonna happen very much and that kind of justice, it's not a deterrent for other police officers," says Goggans, who says she is focused on getting rid of the current system of policing in the long term.

Khan-Cullors says she is also taking a long view when thinking about how the Black Lives Matter movement will tackle issues black people have been living with for decades.

"We are not new to police brutality. We are not new to police violence. We are not new to people dying inside jail cells and prisons," she says. "What is new is the visibility. What is new is that they become headlines."

Khan-Cullors helped birth the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. Starting campaigns to change laws and policy, she says, is the obvious work. But staying together as a movement is harder. Michael Radcliffe/NPR hide caption

Khan-Cullors helped birth the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. Starting campaigns to change laws and policy, she says, is the obvious work. But staying together as a movement is harder.

She says she's always been concerned about how the movement can sustain itself when social media is inundated with photos and videos of black people killed at the hands of police and victories for the movement seem hard to come by.

With the U.S. Supreme Court reinstating part of President Donald Trump's travel ban and Congress considering substantial cuts to Medicaid, she's worried that the current political environment is becoming even more overwhelming for activists.

"If you can't fight the state, and you can't fight for the things that you need, then you take it out on each other," says Khan-Cullors, who cautions that infighting could destroy the movement.

That's why gatherings like a recent candle-light vigil at The Underground Museum in Los Angeles for Lyles and other police shooting victims are important to Khan-Cullors, who wants to keep activists energized and encourage them to work together.

Starting campaigns to change laws and policy, she says, is the obvious work. But staying together as a movement, that's the hard stuff.

Shaheen Ainpour contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.; Michael Radcliffe contributed from Los Angeles.

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Amid 'Devastating' Progress Nationally, Black Lives Matter Engages ... - NPR