While condolences and prayers of comfort for recovery are much needed considering the callous events in Butler, PA, it should not be lost to us that vile verbal vitriol in any volatile political environment WILL make conditions conducive for physical violence. May the words of a man, committed to the politics of love through non-violent resistance to unjust legislative and political violence, and killed by a collective assassin’s bullet, provide light for the coming months and years.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said the following, ‘Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.’
In a country where we face the reality of too many guns that kill too many people, we must continue mobilizing to rise to majestic greater understanding. In a society where otherization has fostered too much hate and hopelessness, anger and anxiety, we must continue organizing to rise to majestic higher ground. In a democracy where we are impacted by too much mistrust in, and misuse of institutions designed to advance quality of life regardless of one’s zip code, we must rise to the majestic advancement of equity.
In the land where freedom is selective for some, and bravery is an elective for many, we have no choice but to rise to the majestic destination of beloved community. With so many ways to extend the human circle of concern and compassion, there is too much distance from, and disregard for one another; we must rise above and beyond the entrapments of an American heritage infected with and affected origins of discontent.
Assassinations and attempts thereof, undoubtedly have changed the trajectory of American politics. What happened in Butler, PA certainly will invite a rise in each one of us. It already did! The question is whether it will be a rise to that will move us to “majestic heights” or plunge us into majestic depths? The sad realization is that sometimes in America, the bullets of an assassin has more impact than the ballots of Americans! Hopefully the words of another American President that experienced the bullets from an assassin’s gun, Theodore Roosevelt, could provide us with much needed wind for our wings as we rise above yet another experience of political turbulence.
“This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.” An extraordinary place characterized by radical and equitable belonging where mutuality and unity in diversity thrive.
Is the United States reaching a point of no return from a perilous and dangerous course of implosion or explosion? Our commitment to courageously protect and preserve multi-racial democracy must be unflinching! Our tenacious resolution to realize social and economic equity must be unwavering! It’s clear that Donald Trump will survive the assassination attempt on his life.
What’s unclear is whether the United States will survive Trump’s ongoing assaults on the constitution of and attempts to assassinate democracy in the United States. Has the tragic events in Butler, PA moved the United States to a turning point, inflection point or point of no return?
The point is this, it’s in our hands! The choice is ours! Will we summon the best within us to boldly become a people that will begin a new political dispensation fueled by Project 2025, or will we become a people molded by the final verses in Matthew 25!
What movement will this moment catalyze? The choice is ours! With divinity embedded in humanity, how we proximate with “the least of these” will direct and determine our becoming. This is an audacious opportunity for us. Moreover, it’s a valorous obligation to generations to come. To be exact, the next seven generations!
Once again, a long-overdue time has come, as articulated by Rep. Ayanna Pressley from Massachusetts’s 7th Congressional District, “we must become better ancestors than descendants.” As descendants who stand on the bold, broad, and bodacious shoulders of our ancestors, timorousness and cowardice are not optional!
Our shoulders must be bolder and broader! Our hands must reach higher and further! Our hearts must connect deeper and more deliberately! Our backs must become long and short bridges with complete emancipation as its destination.
Again, again and again, with our feet a’ marching towards the ballot box with a re-imagined vision, eyes on the prize of a more just and fair society and facing the rising sun on radical and equitable belonging, prayers upward and outward! With all eyes on Milwaukee, let those who ‘still’ have ears, hear…and rise!
PRAYERS-UP for just-peace to prevail. A peace that is not just the absence of political violence, but a peace catalyzed by the presence of racial and social justice. PRAYERS-UP with opened eyes, minds and hearts that moves us from mere inflection to moral introspection and metamorphic action grounded in the sanctity of our common humanity.
Rev. Kelvin Sauls is the former Senior Pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles. A faith-rooted community organizer, he is the co-founder of the Black Alliance for Just Immigrant (BAJI) in the United States, and Beloved Community Coalition (BeCoCo) South Africa. He is the founder and Chief Catalyst of Sauls Strategic Solutions, a multi-faceted movement-building organization in emancipatory leadership development, place-based community upliftment and progressive equity advancement. He lives and works at the intersection of South Los Angeles and South Africa.
