My friend Touba and I got up early and went to Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Seattle this morning. The sermon was given by Reverend Al Sharpton. We saw $67,000 given out in University scholarships and the music was so fabulous we didn't stop moving for two hours! I told Sebastien in Paris about it and he sent the photo of himself (upper right, tall guy) taken in NYC while he was an intern for Bill Clinton recently. "Is this the guy?" he asked. Definitely!!

"Every day above ground is a great day!"
Reverend Sharpton proclaimed this in observing that the world seems on a collision course, with bombs, going to Iraq on a lie, poverty and homelessness. He talked about how the church needs to return to its roots of social justice. We should not come to church expecting to learn how to get rich via "gospel Lotto." After 150 years of segregation, why should people be afraid to discuss what's going on in the world.
"You meet many preachers but few ministers."
"Anyone can be saved for two or three hours a week."
"We live in a strange time .. with big edifices with small missions."
"Too many of us are so heavenly bound that we're no earthy good."
"Ain't no use filliln' up your tank if you ain't got nowhere to go."
"We don't need preachers to bless our shackles, we need preachers to break our shackles."
"God used Moses to speak up against Pharaoh, and God can use an al Sharpton to speak up against George Bush."

He really hit hard on going back to "the fruits of our roots." Knowing that there is a large black middle class in Seattle yet some gang and social problems, he wondered whether parents were doing enough to underline the historic role of people who "died to give them their rights." He championed illiterates who paved the way for later generations to go to college, unempoyed who opened the door for corporate executives.
"Mirrors are not to reflect what you see. Mirrors are to correct what you see."
He told how one of the news magazines had featured three black executives and titled the article "The New Black Power." They considered these individuals to be "the alternative to the Jesse Jacksons and the Al Sharptons." He pointed out that they are the "result of the Jesse Jacksons and the Al Sharptons." Similarly, he chided black academicians who never fought for affirmative action but champion the right to use the "n word." Gangsta rappers have told him they are only exercising their right to "free expression" and "keepin' it real" and "kicking it like we see it." He told them that it was interesting that they only denounced their own and wondered what would happen if they used racial slurs for other groups on the radio. Similarly, he denounced the degradation of women in music.
"There wouldn't have been a Colin Powell if there hadn't been an Adam Clayton Powell."
That one almost made me fall off my feet, because it came on the tales of a history lesson about Althea Gibson and Medgar Evars and Martin Luther King. Adam Clayton Powell and Jesse Jackson were mentors of Al Sharpton's. Adam Clayton Powell was known for saying "Keep the faith, baby" and Jesse Jackson was known for saying "Keep hope alive." Over time, Al has come to believe that Adam Clayton Powell's slogan is much deeper than he ever imagined, for what is hope without some kind of underlying faith - in the future, in something. Otherwise, what is the point of even hoping?!
Al used to join the entourage of Muhammed Ali when he would come through Brooklyn, where Al came up through the projects as child of a single mother. He once asked Ali, "When did you know you were the greatest?" At first Ali thought it was after he beat Sonny Liston. Then he thought it was after he returned to boxing after being kicked out for not going to Vietnam. Then he thought it was after he knocked out Ken Norton, an unknown, when the tide was turning against him. He said, "Al, you wn't be great until you've been knocked out." The message was "don't give up." This tied in perfectly with Al's earlier message that the legacy of the black race has been not to surrender, even when considered subhuman.
I think I would call what we saw both triumphant and inspiring, and it's a little of an antidote to one of those depressing articles a friend just sent me about consolidation of Bush's base through the megachurches.

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