Justice, Finally

The Pastor’s Page
The last days of 2010 saw justice delivered to two young African American women who have been in prison for 16 years.
Jamie and Gladys Scott were accused and convicted of a robbery that occurred on Christmas Eve in 1993 in Forest, Mississippi. About $11 was taken and nobody was hurt, but the sisters’ conviction netted them both two consecutive life sentences. The girls were accused of luring two African American men into a situation which resulted into their wallets being taken.
Outrage about the convictions was swift, and activists began advocating for their release almost immediately, to no avail. At the time of their release, all appeals had been exhausted.
At the time of their arrest and conviction, Gladys was 19 and pregnant with her second child and Jamie was 22 with three children. Three teens boys also arrested in the case reportedly said at the outset that the Scott Sisters were not involved in the incident, but were said to be pressured to implicate the young women in a plea deal.
The teen boys received far lesser sentences and the Scott Sisters were sent to prison…for two consecutive life sentences.
On Wednesday, December 29, 2010, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who is said to be considering running as a Republican presidential candidate in 2012, suspended the sentences of the women. Jamie is seriously ill. Both her kidneys are failing – and Gladys’ release is said to be on the condition that she donate one of her kidneys to her sister.
This case has not received a lot of attention from mainstream media. There have been activists in Mississippi, however, who have been relentless in getting news about the plight of the women national attention. Recently New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote about the case, commentary was heard on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, and Ben Jealous, head of the National Association of Colored People, have taken the case on. The Innocence Project also took up the case.
Gov. Barbour’s interest in the case is most likely political. He recently praised the Citizen’s Council, a known white supremacist group, for helping schools in Mississippi integrate quietly.
What the Council did was make sure the schools integrate as slowly as possible, threatening and carrying out actions that intimidated people into not stepping over the color line, federal law notwithstanding.
The report about the release of the Scott Sisters said it would take 45 days for the paperwork for the release of the Scott Sisters to be completed. Once out, they will be allowed to travel to Florida to live with their mother, who has been caring for their children since their incarceration.
I hope that Jamie holds out that long, that she holds out long enough to get to Florida and get the help she needs. I also hope that those who love and demand justice never give up and give out, no matter how hard the journey.
Even as I write this, in the wee hours of December 30, there has been no mention of the case on CNN, the so-called “most trusted name in news.” I guess this doesn’t qualify, not like the blizzard, or like the missionary in Haiti who was released from prison after being accused of kidnapping a Haitian child.
Hooray for the Scott Sisters. Hooray for those who worked tirelessly for their release. And shame on Mississippi for handing out such an inhumane sentence for this crime. We still have a way to go in meting out justice for minorities and poor people.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Christmas and Chanukah Not Seasonal

I read a fascinating article this week which talked about the difference between Christmas and Chanukah.
Rabbi Michael Lerner noted that both holidays, the one celebrated by Christians and the other by Jews, share a message, that it is possible to bring a message of light and hope in a world of darkness, oppression and despair. But he said that ‘whereas Christmas concentrates on the life of a single individual who was supposed to bring liberation, Chanukah is about a national liberation struggle involving an entire people who seek to remake the world through struggle with an oppressive social and political order.”
The political, economic and social order is so oppressive that people will do anything to survive. Women sell their bodies; people sell drugs, even to kids, not caring whose lives they are messing up. Just this week, a 14 year old boy, an American citizen, was arrested for killing four people. He was under the direction of the Mexican drug cartel and was paid to kill people. He said he did it because he wanted to escape the squalor in which he lived, and he said he “loved” killing people.
Surely, there is a need for light in this world. And who but we who love God should be bearers of that light?
We celebrate the birth of the Christ, but as an isolated holiday where the emphasis is gifts to each other, not provision of light to the world. How wonderful it would be if we as Christians would take on the national liberation struggle seeking to remake the world through struggle with our oppressive social and political order?
This week, the Republicans forced a compromise on tax cuts that will allow the most wealthy people to continue to get tax breaks for at least two more years. That was their price for extending unemployment benefits for another 13 months for the long-term unemployed. There was no justice in what they did; the wealthy will only get more wealthy, and the tax cuts for them will add about $500 billion to the federal deficit.
In the end, the poor will bear the brunt of suffering for the spoiled habits of the rich. There is no justice in that.
We need to be the light of Christmas and Chanukah, long after the tree is down and the lights are put in storage. We need to concentrate on being the light to those who live consistently in darkness, from homeless kids to homeless adults to people suffering from HIV/AIDS to inmates trying to make it in a society which is so closed to them to abused women … we need to be the light of Christmas every single day.
I would say that we give food consistently to feed the hungry; the number of homeless and hungry are increasing, not decreasing. We need to make sure we take care of our children, making sure they can read and write and compete in this world. We cannot afford to think that Christmas is a one day a year thing, or that the Christmas season is only a December event.
Not so. There is too much darkness in this world, due to oppression. The tax breaks given to the wealthy does not mean that there will be more jobs for people, or relief for those suffering. We who love God need to take the spirit of Christmas and Chanukah and make it a year long center of everything we do.
We cannot afford to do anything less.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith