I wonder if they hear God
In the recoil of a gun.
Or if——
In the choir of children’s screams
They hear angels sing.
Does gunpowder rise like incense
To carry their prayers
Up to heaven?
If guns be their Bibles
And bullets be their verses,
Then let their communion
Draw them into the presence of God.
Raising. Rising. Lifting.
The foul and desecrated cup.
Despised and despising.
Infernal hells now bear them up.
Wicked tongues now contend
To shatter souls by misleading.
Toxic words will they bend,
Poison masked in gentle seeming.
Make war and put to death,
The gods of these accurséd men.
Make nothing of their breath.
And to thy God—their souls commend.
Stir and rise, lowly Fool,
Let your wisdom be their folly.
Drive back the hellish ghoul
With fire and flame and volley.
I dedicate this poem to far-right American White Evangelical Christians everywhere. May you die as you have lived, and may your God treat you as you have treated others.
Slurs are a slurry of swill.
Urine and feces
Served at wine tastings.
Their bottles are fermented.
Ours are fertilized.
Drink up.
It’s poison,
And we’re all gonna die.
Forgive all this white noise.
It’s just my religion.
A holy mission
To put women back in the kitchen.
Because I need a sandwich in this man’s world.
So break out the casseroles,
And there better be raisins
In that potato salad.
We conquered the world
Just to dump its spices into the ocean,
Like tea
On a balmy Bostonian day.
If we can’t handle it,
No one gets to have it.
White pride.
It’s a precursor to genocide.
We’ve shackled dark skinned bodies
And forced entire cultures to die.
Go ahead,
Write it down, it doesn’t matter,
We’re burning entire libraries alive—
With all the great works still inside.
So drink up—
To the new world we’ve civilized.
Or, colonized.
Shout out to Jesus Christ!
Cops give a damn about a negro
Tupac Shakur, “Changes,” 1998
Pull the trigger, kill a n——, he’s a hero
Give the crack to the kids, who the hell cares?
One less hungry mouth on the welfare
First ship ’em dope and let ’em deal to brothers
Give ’em guns, step back, watch ’em kill each other
Twenty-five years after the release of Tupac Shakur’s “Changes” and we find ourselves in the same place. The same story told over and over and over again, and still we miss the lesson. Public school, parental and American religious rhetoric, and political discourse insisted racism died with the abolition of slavery in 1865 and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
The fault of racism had been laid at the feet of very distant relatives—to whom none of us were related because our families would never be involved in such a thing—and yet the truth is it was our parents and grandparents and great grandparents perpetuating an evil ideology.
Many millennials have cut off older family members, including parents, as a result of their toxicity. These cut off family members often refused to change, own their faults, and react violently to culpability and consequence. Is it then a wonder that it is largely their generation and their successfully groomed offspring who rail against the social conversation of bigotry and stand in the way of progress meant to create a more humane and equitable world?
We weren’t the only ones to suffer their toxicity.
My genetic provider used to say that America wasn’t ready for a Black or woman president. As I have learned over the last thirty years, the accusations of these toxic people are usually confessions. Despite his feigned sympathy for such racial disparity, it was he—and those like him—who were not ready for a Black or woman president. The proof of such assessment lies in the formation of the Tea Party, the precursor to the far-right MAGA movement that would ultimately take over the Republican party today.
Tupac called it, we need real changes, and we can no longer wait for our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents to die out. They promised to prepare us the future to which we were heirs. They called us, their children, the future—yet they’ve held that future beyond reach. They took an America at its greatest economic and social potential and destroyed it in the name of neoliberalism.
“Make America Great Again,” what does this mean? The generations leading this war cry were entrenched in segregation, unfettered lynchings, and the reinforcement of systemic bias that now hangs from our necks like millstones.
We cannot move forward if we insist the answer lies in the past. I’m sorry Revolutionary and Confederate cosplayer, the answer isn’t embedded in our whitewashed tombs.
Verse by verse. Chapter by chapter. Book by book. –Calvary Chapel
I grew up in a church in rural California. What this means is every Sunday we went to church. We participated in a variety of “ministries” to support the church. I attended youth group Bible study and, later, college Bible study. I helped with worship team set up. My parents made copies of the services on audio tapes and sold shirts on behalf of the church (tape ministry and shirt ministry). For a number of years, we hosted home prayer meetings and Bible studies. We rubbed elbows with various church leaders and influencers. The church was an extension of my family to whom I was to go with every issue and question I had.
I grew up in the church.
It was very important to our community that we all live in a Christ-centered manner with our ears ever pressed upon the murmurs of the Holy Spirit. We asserted, if not so blatantly, that we were one of few truly Bible centered, Christ focused, and biblically sound churches left in the world. We were the Acts church! The church of the New Testament! Christ was our centerpiece, but Moses was our model.
Who we were in reality–in practice–was (and remains) far from any resemblance of a biblically centered or Christ centered church. It was our boast to proclaim that we studied the Bible “verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and book by book” (Calvary Chapel), and we did go through the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book, but to call it studying is only marginally true. For all our high mindedness of Scripture, we never really gave the bible an opportunity to speak. We were eisegetical in our approach. We read into scripture the things we wanted out of it. We threw out the entire literary approach to the Bible and approached it in the vein of Charles Finney–we approached the text as lawyers reading a law book. As a result, we became legalistic and insistent that our understanding of religious law be made the law of the land in order to save the world for Jesus. We walked with some of the earliest evangelicals to initiate the raging culture wars being fought today.
Our leadership, our pastor and his inner circle, asserted that we held the real and true, Holy Spirit inspired, understanding of the Bible, and as a child, I believed them. Right knowledge of the scriptures along with a prerequisite magical prayer inviting Jesus into one’s heart, assured our place in heaven and our superiority as God’s children on the earth.
Over the next few months, I am going to share my story. I am going to name names. I am going to share how divine intervention rescued me from a cult of personality and led me on a path to deconstruct the lies of my pastor and his church, spend over a decade in deep theological study that was both spiritual and scholarly, and how I came to save myself from becoming what they meant for me to be.
This project will not just be a work of essays but will incorporate various forms of art and media to convey my story. This work will be linked together using the “Valley of Shadows” category and tag.
I don’t expect this project to go smoothly, but after nearly twenty years, it is time to tell my story.
Register to Vote. Vote, and Vote Blue in 2022.
You don’t have to like Democrats. You don’t even have to agree with them, but at least your rights won’t be stripped away.
The Republican Party, the GOP, is responsible for today’s Supreme Court Decision. They stole court nominees from Democrats at the end of President Obama’s term, and then reversed their position to steal more Supreme Court nominees at the end of the 45th President’s term. Their nominees LIED under oath.
The Supreme Court has toppled the separation between Church and State, trampled on State’s Rights to enact common sense gun control, have given ICE agents free reign to terrorize citizens, have empowered police to violate the rights of citizens, and have chosen to enslave people through incarceration even if evidence exonerating a prisoner comes to light in just the last few months.
The conservative judges have chosen to legislate from the bench. Enough is enough.
REPUBLICANS have proven themselves the enemy of progress and the enemy of the people. They employ white, evangelical, Christian nationalism to hold power. This November, VOTE THEM ALL OUT!
They don’t care about you. Need proof? They stood in the way of the COVID relief for those in need during the pandemic. They stopped the Child Tax Credit which has significantly brought down childhood poverty. They have stood in the way of common sense gun control. They voted against initiatives to prevent price gouging at the gas pump by corrupt oil and gas companies. They voted against initiatives to relieve the baby formula shortage. They voted against expanded care for veterans. They voted against investigating the violence caused by white supremacists. They defund public education. They stand in the way of improved infrastructure for all.
It is time to dismantle the GOP.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
First Amendment, Constitution of the United States
Fresno County GOP, along with several other far right conservative organizations within Fresno County have released a hate filled divisive press release condemning the LGBTQIA+ community for existing in the public space.
As expected, these far right groups have portrayed themselves as victims while actively seeking to silence diverse communities and people in the public space.
As long as they think themselves the prioritized voices, they will continue to strike out at our diverse communities and silence their representation in local government. Perhaps all residents of Fresno County, and those who conduct business in Fresno County, should reach out and let the Fresno County GOP know their hate has no home here!
Those interested in letting them know how you feel:
Fresno County GOP Headquarters
770 E Shaw Ave, #220
Fresno, CA 93710
559-225-2566
info@fresnogop.org
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