Huffington Post is reporting that charges against internationally renowned Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates, have been dropped. Gates was arrested after forcing the door of his own home in order to enter upon returning from an overseas trip, in a scenario that has every appearance of racial profiling. I’m sure the city of Cambridge would like to make the story go away.
Category Archives: events
hate crime
I’ve beeen reading reactions to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Reports that characterize Dr. Tiller as an “abortion doc” are bad enough. At last count, Politico presented 460 comments to its lead story posted by citizens who applaud Dr. Tiller’s death, or not; and they are mostly worse. I like New York governor David Paterson’s statement the best among those I have seen from Public figures.
Dr. Tiller was targeted for his belief in the right of women to make their own health decisions. He protected that right and sought to ensure that his patients were provided with the medical, emotional and spiritual counsel they needed to make the right choice for themselves and their families. He continued this work despite the threat of harmful retaliation, physical attacks and the destruction of his clinic.
I’m also distressed tonight that someone I know was severely beaten last Friday outside a gay bar here in St. Louis as he took a breather from a birthday party he was attending there. The events are similar and also radically different. And it’s ironic that my friend’s beating qualifies as a hate crime, but the murder of Dr. Tiller doesn’t.
22 November
I had almost forgotten what day it is. I was on the way to a class on 22 November 1963, and I learned of the President’s death from a colleague, Elizabeth Lomax, a close relative of the famous Alan, God rest her soul.
22 November was a Friday. I was teaching an extension course at old Crozier Technical High School in downtown Dallas the following Monday evening. As we were getting ready to begin the lesson, an impassioned voice came over the loudspeaker asking us all to join in prayer. I don’t remember the prayer, only its agonized conclusion: “Why, Lord, why did it have to happen, and why did it have to happen here?!”
In the time intervening we had witnessed, via the relatively new medium of television, report of the the death of Officer J. D. Tippett, a good deal of bluster from Dallas District Attorney, Henry Wade, and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. We had also witnessed the President’s funeral, with the Kennedy family walking behind the horse-drawn caisson that bore the President’s coffin through the streets of Washington from the White House to St. Matthew’s Cathedral.
It was a time like no other–until I walked into my office building at North Texas years later and saw on television the death of the World Trade Center.
Thanks to Susan Russell for these images.
making sure it goes on
I’m hoping to write pieces about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent lecture on scripture (some commentary and the full text of the lecture may be found here); and on the “cautioning” of Jon Sobrino. I’ll get these up soon, though I’m not sure right now which will come first.
Meanwhile, Tim Burke has what seems to me a worthwhile note about the shootings at Virginia Tech:
Do we have to domesticate every event into the simple-mindedness of single-cause arguments, master the meaninglessness that sometimes comes with being human with the jabber of the punditocracy? Can’t we just reach out collectively to put a quiet hand on the shoulder of those who have lost friends, family and colleagues?
Read the rest here.