Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break with
Carmela Monk Crawford.
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And I always say
it with hesitation
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because I first knew
you before you were married.
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That's right. It's Carmela Monk.
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Carmela Monk. So I
have to think carefully.
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But before the
break, we were wandering
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through the interesting fields
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of how we respond to emergencies
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and disasters in the military
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and the civil
liberty applications.
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The US has been through
some of that territory I think,
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and Christians show that
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it was important
for them to respond
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and to be in the
leadership of dealing
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with huge social ills
that had structural components.
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Even the Civil Rights Movement,
I think was coming of age,
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if you like, of
Christian activism.
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Well, not really coming of age,
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because the
evolutionist movement
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to me had a huge
Christian involvement.
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But in the modern
era, Civil Rights Movement
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did give an
opportunity for people of faith
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to step up and speak out.
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It did give an
opportunity for some,
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sadly not everybody
to that opportunity.
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I didn't say
they all did. Right.
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Well, and even now, you
know, I was listening to
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what you said before the break,
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and I agree we cannot
create heaven on earth.
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The sad thing about
it is that for people
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who are not
affected by the social ills,
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it is just too easy to
be complacent on earth.
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And not only not
fight for equal access
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and equal justice,
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but to demean and
criminalize the people
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and marginalize your word,
marginalize the people who do.
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And I think that, you know,
this is one of those things
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where you really
have to get involved
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and be vocal about
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what is happening
on a social basis,
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especially for
people who may not happen to
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or things don't happen.
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I may be different
from you, we both have sons.
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As a black mother
of two black sons,
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it is important to me
when I think about it,
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and we live in
the same community.
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My children, when
they ride their bicycles
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and if they go
around the neighborhood
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or if they go to school,
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it's a different feel
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than what I would
expect could happen.
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Although, you know,
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it could happen to
your son as well but...
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Our son's been
stopped a lot of times,
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but I know exactly
what you're talking about.
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But the fear is there.
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And I don't know, and
I guess we're talking...
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He's told me that he, in
Hagerstown where we live,
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he's been out
wandering on his bicycle
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and the police have
stopped him, "Why are you here?
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What are you doing?"
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That's not good.
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My very first introduction
to the United States,
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very first, the day we arrived,
we stayed in Takoma Park
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in apartments
our church provided,
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and I was 16, and
I went out running,
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and the police stopped me.
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Yeah.
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And very
prejudicially, and they said,
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"What are you doing?"
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'Cause I didn't
speak the Patwah.
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I said, "Well, I'm
staying in the flats over there,
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apartments."
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They looked at me,
"What sort of language?"
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And they said,
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"We're looking for
someone who committed a robbery,
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you match the description."
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And right away, I
realized, "I'm a suspect."
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That was a very day.
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So I know young
people generally, but, yes,
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there's no
question, young black men,
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the police will...
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You are fortunate to have those,
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you know, from my point of view,
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it helps that these
things have happened to you.
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It helps that you could see
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that someone
would make a distinction
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based on your accent
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or you are new,
coming to a place,
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or that your children,
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but these are
the kinds of things,
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and I guess I'm going back to...
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Well, there was a case recently.
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Yes.
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An elderly gentleman
from India went out walking,
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and the police stopped
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and he didn't
speak English properly,
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and they ended up,
I think they shot him.
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They shot...
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Is that the
case where they shot?
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Was that in Alabama?
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No, but this was about a year...
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within the last
year. No, it wasn't that.
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And sadly, I mean, I
kind of talk about that...
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That means misunderstandings
on the face of it,
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but there's an
underlying attitude
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that kicks in more here
than some western countries.
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And I know what
you're talking about
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with your sons, absolutely.
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Right.
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So as we see these things,
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and you're talking
about things lining up.
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And we can't make
this a heaven on earth
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but we do see that
the path is laid out
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for people to be
stopped unnecessarily,
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for people to excuse
it for their own security
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or for their own bias
or whatever reason is.
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And so we see those
things coming to pass
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very easily right now.
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But I still a Christian
should speak out on that.
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When injustice is
done to other people,
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we shouldn't say,
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"Well, it's not
us, it's not me."
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You know...
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Or that, you know,
when Jesus comes back,
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this will all be taken
care of, and you can't fix it.
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Now that's what
I hear more often.
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I was going to jump
at something I might get,
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I don't know the
reaction I'll get from you.
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It's before my time
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but I love music
and it impressed me,
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Paul Robeson, an
icon of American music
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had his passport
taken away from him.
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He was not allowed to travel
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because He
spoke out for freedom.
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You know that, right?
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That doesn't fit the
pattern of American thinking
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that somewhere else
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that someone's
restricted, not here.
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And I connect
funny dots sometimes.
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It troubles me that
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even in our own
Christian community,
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many people are in a
great rush to go to Russia
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or Latin America,
someone go for mission service.
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It may not be too
good in their own town.
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No.
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There's great injustices,
great spiritual darkness,
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but they're not
willing to recognize it
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because it doesn't touch them,
they're willfully ignorant.
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So they just think, you know,
"I'll go, help them there."
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They may not
want your help there
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but they sure needed
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in not always the
nicest part of town
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and the town we live in here.
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I better be careful,
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I don't want to give a
bad name to Hagerstown.
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But you know,
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there's huge
watches of Hagerstown
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that in my view
are beyond the pale
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and could use great help.
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Yeah. Right, right.
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Well, you know,
that reminds me of,
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we've done some
stories for Message Magazine
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around the idea of
police mistreatment,
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and the police abuse.
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And for me...
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I've shared this story
with people of church folks.
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And you get two reactions,
you know, some people are very,
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"Yes, we need to talk about this
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'cause this has happened to me,
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this has happened to my family."
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But the other reaction
is, "These are good people,
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we shouldn't even
be talking about it
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because you give
them a bad name."
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And I think there
has to be a medium
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in which we tell the truth,
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and that is very
important right now
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to tell the truth,
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recognize the
issue, and confront it,
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and then fix it, fix
it as far as you can.
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Well, I'll throw in something
that may get me into trouble.
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I don't think so.
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Well, as long as you get
you and not me in trouble.
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Go ahead.
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But go back to...
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In another program,
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I mentioned the democratic
national convention in 1968,
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the police there behaved in ways
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that we certainly
wouldn't accept it now
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in a wholesale manner.
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I mean, when you see
the video, it's unreal,
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just wailing away
with blood and broken bones
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right, left, and center,
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and abusing
hundreds of young people
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who were probably bothering
their sense of law and order
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but they weren't any
eminent threat to the police,
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but they...
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It's incredible
police brutality.
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Where there was policeman today,
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I don't think so.
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They had been given a signal,
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in fact, direct
instructions from a leadership,
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"This is what you are to do."
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And the police today
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are generally
well meaning people,
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they're
professionals, most of them.
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But they will take their
cues from what they expect
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that they think the
government expects them to do
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and society expects them to do.
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No more no less,
generally speaking.
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And if they think
this society is comfortable
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with the roughing up our
people in the neighborhood,
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the society wishes wasn't there,
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they'll do it.
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Yeah, isn't that sadly the case?
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That is sadly the case.
So we can throw a signal.
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If the Christian
community make it very plain
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that this is not
morally acceptable,
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it will start to fade away.
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I love how you say that.
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A few years ago, I
talk to Michelle Alexander,
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the author of the
book The New Jim Crow,
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when she explores the
idea of mass incarceration.
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And I asked her,
I said, you know,
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along your same lines.
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I said, "You know,
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I think part of the reason
why the Christian community
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has not weighed in
on mass incarceration
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is because there's
something in us that says,
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"Well, these people
who are in the system
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kind of deserve it, don't they?
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Or these people who
are jailed are there
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because they did
something that wanted that."
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And then how do we,
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you know, mobilize everybody
to come to their defense?
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And she said,
"Well, you have to,
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because you know
that the system is broken.
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And unless you say something,
you cannot correct it."
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Well, how can you correct
a massive system like this?
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Well, how did they connect
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the issue during slavery time?
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How did they connect
the issue at slavery time?
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If they could get an idea
of how they could run away,
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escape, or fight
for justice and freedom,
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we have to do the same thing.
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As late as the mid '60s,
the Reverend Martin Luther King
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in his advancement of
the Civil Rights agenda,
00:10:02.16\00:10:05.47
famously gave a speech
00:10:05.50\00:10:06.84
where he said that the
moral arm of the universe
00:10:06.87\00:10:09.74
may be long,
00:10:09.77\00:10:11.11
but it bends toward justice.
00:10:11.14\00:10:14.24
Of course Message Magazine
00:10:14.28\00:10:16.95
has inherited
that call to justice
00:10:16.98\00:10:19.11
for a subset of the
American population,
00:10:19.15\00:10:23.39
but really all
religious liberty endeavors,
00:10:23.42\00:10:26.76
all civil rights endeavors
should be arguing for justice.
00:10:26.79\00:10:31.59
And all true religion,
00:10:31.63\00:10:33.19
as the Bible
says, is to do justly.
00:10:33.23\00:10:37.63
But of course, the question is
what is justice, what is right.
00:10:37.67\00:10:41.60
And unless it
has a divine origin,
00:10:41.64\00:10:45.07
it's very
subjective and very variable.
00:10:45.11\00:10:49.04
Do right, do justly,
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and walk before the
Lord and acknowledge Him.
00:10:51.25\00:10:54.12
That is the
root of true freedom.
00:10:54.15\00:10:58.52
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:10:58.55\00:11:01.62