good friday notes

state violence, suffering, and solidarity

Simon of Cyrene, the man compelled by Roman officers to bear Christ’s cross, represented in the 5th station of the Cross.

1. I keep thinking of gardens. The darkness of Gethsemane. The first gardeners of Eden, made in God’s likeness. The resurrected Christ, in the likeness of a gardener, surprising His friend Mary, “why are you weeping?” Fresh green buds, unfurling ferns, fragrant blooms — the marks of Spring and Eastertide. I am thinking of this miraculous world we share and what it might mean to protect her at great cost — as she continues to protect us. I am thinking of the Weelaunee Forest.

In early March, Executive Director of Atlanta’s Beloved Commune Matthew Johnson delivered a powerful message following the arrest of Stop Cop City protesters and the murder of Tortuguita. Often, political elites call in faith leaders to co-opt social movements or chastise militants. This courageous group of faith leaders refused to take the bait. Below, you’ll find Matthew’s searing critique of State violence, and his assertion: if you oppose empire — peacefully or militantly — the State will use violence to repress your efforts. The Stop Cop City movement has been an exemplary teacher for what it means to make space for and honor a diverse ecology of revolutionary tactics.

I come from the baptist tradition and I believe that there is a lot of missing context around when Jesus came onto the scene. There were many people who were thought to be the Messiah before Him. Let's start with one who has been on my mind since our friend Tortuguita was killed: John the Baptist. 

John the Baptist tended to stay to himself. He lived in the forest. He lived off of the land. He was not very familiar; he was not very liked by the political establishment. The political establishment was of his hue, but not of his interests. The political establishment was not appointed by the people, but the imperialist power of Rome. So we find John the Baptist in the woods converting many and telling them of this new world to come. Meanwhile, in the Temple, they were doing all manner of evil and had nothing to do with the people that, instead, had decided that their luck was better in the woods to create a new world. 

Lesser known than John the Baptist, was Judas — not the one that we know about — but Judas of Galilee, which is why Jesus scared people so much when He came from Galilee. Judas of Galilee got his start after the increasing of taxation — you know, kind like what gentrification does — because of Rome in 6 CE. When that happened, Judas wasn't playing around. Judas said, "anybody who pays the taxes: we will burn down your farm and take your cattle and have that belong to the people from this point forward." You know, Judas of Galilee got a lot of stuff done, but he was not the Messiah. 

Then you find Jesus, who said that we need to create a world of our own. Generate the power within ourselves to change things, and transform this world by the renewing of our minds and all other things would follow.

You know what they all had in common?

They all got killed by the State. No matter what they did. 

If you stay in the forest, you get killed.
If you burn things down, you get killed.
If you try to start a new world simply by transforming yourself, you still get killed. 

We're projecting that by the end of the day, there will be 40 people who have domestic terrorism charges, many of which — just for being in a parking lot. I don't know how anyone can accept this.

2. My experience with my faith and my God have been both strange and estranged. Perhaps one of these days, I’ll write a bit about it here. I’ve moved through several religious communities in my brief Christian life — from Southern Baptist, to conservative Presbyterian, now Catholic. Today, I’m visiting a new-to-me Episcopalian parish in hopes it is a safe enough space to engage with the Stations of the Cross. What I’ll say about my religiosity now is — despite all, I cannot seem to escape the person of Jesus. Flannery O’Connor writes of a Christ-haunted South, and I find my own existential landscape in the shadow of that corporeal, risen ghost.

About an hour ago, I finished reading Olúfẹḿ i O. Táíwò’s Elite Capture. It ends like this,

Contra the old expression, pain, whether born of oppression or not, is a poor teacher. Suffering is partial, shortsighted, and self-absorbed. We shouldn’t have a politics that expects different. Oppression is not a prep school. […]

When I think about my trauma, I don’t think about life lessons. I think about the quiet nobility of survival. The very fact that those chapters weren’t the final ones of my story is powerful enough all on its own. It is enough to ask of those experiences that I am still here to remember them. […]

When I think about my trauma, I also think about the great writer James Baldwin’s realization that the things that most tormented him ‘were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.’

The Gospels tell us God came to suffer. Not that He might learn a lesson or appreciate joy or develop some character — all reasons our culture loves to give us for our pain and abuse. He suffered in order that we could be united. Salvation and solidarity. The only African-American spiritual included in the Catholic Church's Liturgy of the Hours asks, were you there when they nailed Him to the tree? We will never plumb the deep mystery of that question.

3. There’s a heavy strain of Christian theology that talks about the Cross in the language of transaction — Christ paid our debt, faith is credited as a righteousness. The Debt Collective’s Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay includes this revealing etymology of the word Solidarity.

Changing the world requires more than just a radical vision of a different world; it requires solidarity. The word solidarity originally meant debt held in common. The idea first emerged in the legal books of the ancient Roman Empire. When people held a debt together, they were said to hold it in solidum. In other words, the state of being on the hook as a group was the basis of solidarity. If one individual faltered, the group had to step up—meaning that its members would be either bailing one another out or defaulting together. Thus, from its genesis, solidarity had a financial component that raised the stakes. In this original formulation, solidarity is a common identity and a state of interdependence.

Ideas around debt and credit are ancient, and understanding the debate that has surrounded them for thousands of years can help us navigate our current converging crises: medical, housing, education. Another mystery appears in the ledger: what are our debts to one another?

what do we owe to our neighbors?

could we with ink the ocean fill
and were the skies of parchment made
were every stalk on earth a quill
and every man a scribe by trade

to write about our infinite obligation to and from every living thing

would drain the ocean dry;
nor could the scroll contain the whole,
though stretched from sky to sky.

Love to you. Peace.