The sacred rights of the people to demonstrate peacefully - and violation of the sacred by the current President

Yesterday, June 1, 2020.

Day 7 of the demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, MN. Early last evening, I had opened up the computer and I saw it was announced that President Trump was going to be speaking from the Rose Garden at the White House. A live camera was focused on the presidential podium, but there was nobody there except that I could occasionally hear people talking in the background. Then, I heard a sound, ‘pop’, small explosion somewhere, at some distance. Shortly thereafter, another sound like this. And a bit later, another. Never have I heard anything like an explosion near the White House, or prior to a Presidential briefing. It was deeply unsettling, and contrary all that has been before. I then began to wonder whether the President would seek exploit the audio backdrop, as a way of justifying the increased use of force against the protesters.
This was the day when, earlier in the day, he had talked by phone with the nation’s Governors - and he told them they needed to “dominate the streets” (with the National Guard). In that phone call he used the word “dominate” sixteen times. I searched for “live news”. I saw live coverage of protesters in Lafayette Park near to the White House, and police in riot gear, standing in line shoulder to shoulder. The protesters were there, peacefully assembled. Here is what happened (US News and World Report).
One of these events was President Trump's alarming speech, in which he threatened the nation’s Governors that if they did not “deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets… then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.” By these words, I believe that the President is threatening to impose his own view of order, using the lawlessness that has accompanied the protests as pretext and justification to declare a State of Emergency and Emergency Powers, invoke the the Insurrection Act of 1807, disregard the Posse Comitatus Act and its principles against military deployment within the country - and severely undermine the freedoms we cherish, that we have taken for granted.} Then - after having illegally ordered the clearing by force of the peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park - he walked out of the White House with top advisers and walked across the park in order to have "photo- op" in front of a boarded-up St. John Episcopal Church - and raising a Bible as if to imply he was in solidarity with the Bible. ~~~ This is so shocking. That people peacefully protesting were removed from a public park by the President's orders - so that he could stand in front of this churc, and make this statement. And he could claim to be upholding the Constitution, and the Bible - by violating them.

I remember seeing this church when I visited Washington DC – and feeling some awe about its place in America history. But for President to transgress the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and to undermine and abrogate the very principles upon with this nation is founded through this false symbolism, and through the use of excessive force – the very issue that the protesters bring to light – is profoundly alarming. It reminds me of false prophets, those who ‘speak with forked tongues’, and the corruption that people are affected by that enables this.

~~~ It was a relief to me, then, in no small measure, to hear this interview with Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde - who oversees the eighty churches diocese that includes the St. John Epicopal Church - said what she said in response to what Mr. Trump did (from CNN): Here is part of what she said: "Let me be clear: The president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese without permission as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our churches stand for. And to do so... he sanctioned the use of tear gas by police officers in riot gear to clear the church yard. I am outraged.
What I am here to talk about is the abuse of sacred symbols for the people of faith in this country to justify language, rhetoric, an approach to this crisis that is antithetical to everything we stand for. We align ourselves with those seeking justice for the death of George Floyd and countless others though the sacred act of peaceful protest. And I – I just can't believe what my eyes have seen." ~~~ May we be willing to reckon with our past as it is continues in the present - in the history of slavery, exploitation, discrimination, devaluation, and inequality that remains pervasive in our society, as well as the denial, complicity, and abuse of power that have fomented and allowed injustice. To reckon with this within ourselves, and with each another, so that we may truly change the underpinnings of what separates us from one another. And, in doing so, to create the foundations for a society that is free from racial injustice. May we find the right road together, so that the unity that lives within our deeper heart of who we are more deeply as Americans, will come to be - where we are all one another’s keeper, where every person matters, and where everyone's fundamental rights are upheld.