Hope and jubilation were palpable at the United Methodist General Conference in Spring 2024. Conservative forces that had hammered away at the denomination for more than half a century had decamped, unfortunately taking with them more than 7,600 local congregations, not all of which joined in a new denomination.
June has become the traditional month for Pride celebrations in honor of the gay and transgender people, including Black and brown gay liberation and transgender rights activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who fought back against harassment and abusive policing in June 1969.
Republicans opposed the nomination, but Clarke won confirmation because Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) used the chamber’s “Discharge Petition” to move her candidacy forward and vote.
In the fantasy of White supremacy, traitors like Jefferson Davis and other Confederates are memorialized for being freedom fighters — the freedom of whites to own black human beings and work them to death — while a woman who risked her life time and again to free enslaved people is simply dismissed. Ignored. Erased.