We spoke in faith. We prayed in faith. We sang in faith. We marched in faith. It is the same faith of which the children of Birmingham spoke, prayed, sang and marched with some fifty years ago and the walls of legal segregation came tumbling down.
We spoke in faith. We prayed in faith. We sang in faith. We marched in faith. It is the same faith of which people spoke, prayed, sang and marched with in Selma some 49 years ago and the anti-voting walls came tumbling down.
It was Friday, the first of seven days of the Jericho March at the Alabama State Capitol. We spoke, prayed, sang and marched around the walls of the Alabama State Capitol. However, I know some will ask the question, “Where are the walls today?” It is a reasonable question because these same questions were asked in Birmingham in 1963 and in Selma in 1964. Those on the inside see the walls as protection. That’s how the Canaanites in the City of Jericho saw the walls 3,500 years ago. They did not see themselves as blocking the way to the Promised Land.
Those on the inside rarely see the walls for they are not brick and mortar. Even when many of those on the outside see the walls, they somehow expect to eventually be on the inside so they abide the walls. The walls are there staring us in the face if we are willing to look.
Allow me to point out a few of the walls. There are walls when laws such as voter photo ID hinder the young, the old, the poor, the minority from voting. Out of a billion votes cast in elections over the last 14 years, there are only 31 known cases of persons entering polling places pretending to be someone else in order to vote. That’s not even one instance of voter fraud for every 30 million votes. Photo ID will not prevent fraud; Photo ID is voter fraud.
There are walls when the Alabama Legislature created districts to further divide the state by race as well as political parties. There are walls when Alabama legislators cannot debate critical bills in the legislature because debate is cut off immediately to silence any discussion.
There are walls when free health insurance is denied to hundreds of thousands of Alabama citizens. There are walls when 700 Alabama citizens die each year for lack of health insurance that stands waiting. There are walls when tens of thousands of jobs are not created and go unfilled by the unemployed and under-employed. There are walls when hospitals close for lack of paying patients. There are walls when thousands upon thousands suffer in pain and fear when they could have medical insurance and medical care. There are walls aplenty when all these benefits could be provided with one stroke of the pen.
There are walls when public education is under constant attack; when public education funding is diverted; when the powerful and the greedy line up to have corporations run our schools for profit; when public education workers are denied the right to protect themselves.
There are walls when poor people are under unrelenting attack through laws that prevent them from securing the basics of life; laws that humiliate and debase them; laws that slam the doors of opportunity in their faces; laws that hurt instead of heal.
There are walls when immigrant children, mothers and fathers are under brutal attack through laws such as HB56. There are walls when these mean-spirited laws not only hurt immigrants but also everyday citizens, businesses and churches. There are walls aplenty.
There are walls when people work hard every day and cannot earn enough to live; enough to buy food to eat; enough to buy health insurance; enough to have a decent place to live; enough to feel like a human being. There are walls when women are attacked and degraded through proposals that would make birth control a crime or invade their bodies.
There are walls when too many of our people are being convicted and incarcerated; when Alabama has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world; when jobs, housing and governmental services even after sentences are served, are denied for life. There are walls when we make it so difficult for former felons the only route is further crime.
There are walls when justice is something we can only hope for; when our courts hand down decisions based on who we are rather than what was done; when justice is more about politics than right and wrong. There are walls aplenty that block our way to the Promised Land.
When those walls stand in our way to the Promised Land, they have to come down. Because the walls are so powerful, we have to speak in faith, pray in faith, sing in faith and march in faith until the walls come tumbling down. Join the SOS Jericho March.
EPILOGUE – Unity within our individual selves is powerful. Unity among our collective selves is powerful. Unity in action is powerful. Unity with God is powerful. When we unite in faith, speech, prayer, song and action, our power is greatly multiplied and is sufficient.
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