CLOSE QUANTANAMO

There are a hundred and sixty-six prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Military officials told reporters earlier this week that thirty-one—almost one in five—were engaged in a hunger strike. By Friday, the number was thirty-seven, or closer to one in four. Eighty-six—more than one in two—have been cleared for release, meaning that the government doesn’t think that it has a case against them or even that they pose a threat, but it is keeping them locked up anyway, and has no imminent plans to let them go. Only six of the prisoners—just about one in twenty-eight—are facing trial. That means that there are six times as many prisoners on hunger strikes as there are those who have actual charges lodged against them.

Read the entire piece.  The prisoners on hunger strike are being force-fed through nasal tubes.  That such a prison as Guantánamo exists at all is a shameful blight on the reputation of the United States.  President Obama must do everything in his power to close the prison by executive order or whatever means possible and not continue to depend on Congress.  The prisoners who have been cleared and have no hope for release fall into despair and want to die, and who can blame them?  At the press conference yesterday, Obama said, "It's not sustainable - I mean, the notion that we're going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no-man's land in perpetuity,"  Exactly.  So do something, Mr President.

PRAY FOR MARK ADAMS

Mark Adams was the only defendant at the Monday trial of Occupiers who was sentenced to do prison time.  Occupied Bishop George Packard writes:

For as long as I’ve known of OWS there’s been Mark Adams. He's the poster person for this phenomenon coming from somewhere else after his home was swallowed up in foreclosure. There are other parts of his story he should tell you, not me. Those details add fuel to that motor of energy inside him of, “Why not justice? Why not now?” He said to me last week that he “came to join a social movement in Occupy and found a family instead.”

I think that discernment is what makes his representation in Occupy so compelling. When others might be drawing from personal agendas he fulfills what Jesus said of Nathanael in John’s Gospel, “Here is a man of no guile!” (John 1:47) By no design of his, circumstances around him drop pretense…like a court room revealing itself as nothing more than a star chamber so Trinity can collect rents and swagger. 

Even as I prepare to pick up trash at Tompkins Park for my days of community service I still breath the air in freedom but my sweet brother languishes behind bars where he has started a hunger strike “for all those who are unjustly imprisoned.” Even from jail Mark Adams beckons to our better selves.

TRINITY: CHOOSE TO ACT AS THE BODY OF CHRIST

Jack and George

Giles Fraser in the Guardian on the prosperity Gospel:

This is a big idea for many of the little shopfront Pentecostal churches that share space with the nail bars and pawnbrokers all the way along the roads that spread out from the Elephant and Castle. The Old Kent Road may be the cheapest brown on the Monopoly board, but in its theological imagination it dreams of being Mayfair and Park Lane.
....

This is a theology that hums to itself "O Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?" and is widely – and rightly – dismissed by the more liberal mainstream as being highly exploitative. For it often turns out that the best way to express belief is by giving to the church and often specifically to the pastor. The more you give, the more you will receive.
,,,,

For while I wholeheartedly agree that prosperity theology is deeply mistaken – I feel the need to say this several times – , there are many for whom it represents the dream of a world radically transformed for themselves and their family. Is this not a legitimate aspiration? Would you too not dream of this as a loo attendant at the Elephant and Castle? I don't much care that the abundant life ministry brings out liberals in hives. When so much of our political culture has become little more than the management of an existing order, an order that does precious little for the poor, who else is giving voice to the order of change that would be necessary in order to bring prosperity to all?

And I'd add that all too often church culture "has become little more than the management of an existing order."

The Village Voice reports that Occupy protestors who were forcibly evicted by the police from Duarte Square, the barren plot of land owned by Trinity Church Wall Street, are scheduled to go on trial on Monday, June 11.  Occupy has asked Trinity to drop the charges against those who were arrested, but the church responded as follows:

Trinity does not have the legal ability to drop charges. Those cases are being prosecuted by the District Attorney's office. However, Trinity has contacted the District Attorney's office and has been advised that the District Attorney has offered non-criminal dispositions without fines or incarceration to all those defendants who were arrested and charged with trespassing for simply being present at Duarte Square.

On the other hand:

Gideon Oliver of the National Lawyers Guild says this statement is misleading on several counts. For one thing, while many of those arrested were offered and have declined Adjournments in Contemplation of Dismissal, not all of them have. For another, its disingenuous for Trinity to claim it has no control over the outcome in these cases. Sure, the District Attorney is in charge of the prosecution, but without the testimony of the church's lawyer, Amy Jedlicka, prosecutors would have no case.  (My emphasis)

See?  It's not that hard.

Press accounts make [rector of Trinity, James] Cooper, sound like the modern Episcopal version of a Borgia pope. He received compensation of $1.3 million in 2010, awarded himself the supplementary title of CEO, and picked out a $5.5 million SoHo townhouse for himself, paid for by the church. And his Scroogely actions extend well beyond stiff-arming Occupy Wall Street: he shuttered Trinity's homeless drop-in center in 2009, then announced plans to borrow church money to build luxury condos on top of a palatial renovation of the church's offices.

What's wrong with this picture?  And yes, I know that churches across the country and the world showed hospitality to the Occupiers, but the church of Wall Street, the street which symbolizes so much of what's wrong about the inequities in our country, surely failed in the Gospel imperative to welcome the stranger.

Another piece of the picture from Occupied Bishop George Packard:

Recently there has been commotion about the wisdom of Jack Boyle’s decision “to choose” a hunger strike and refuse to take his AIDS medication as a witness against Trinity Church’s prosecution of the December 17th protesters. Jack says, “Drop the charges and I will eat and take my meds.” At first I thought my friend was a little batty, worse, showing signs of PTSD from that violent early morning roust on November 15th at Zuccotti. He wouldn’t be the first to exhibit signs of that trauma’s aftermath. But after spending two hours with him at his home last Sunday I’m not so sure.
....

But during that long talk at his apartment I realized I didn’t really know him at all and the dignity of the man who had the right to make such an existential choice. I didn’t know his fears of being HIV positive since 2003, his sense of his own finitude and what “it was good for” or of his dual Irish citizenship, or, most tellingly the minute-by-minute recall he had of that violent sweep of Zuccotti on November 15th and how a cop had disfigured his hand.

God knows, I want Jack to eat and take his medications, but God also knows, I want Trinity to drop the charges.  My wish is to see Trinity turn its part of the world upside down in this small way, heeding the words of Mary in her song of praise to God, the Magnificat:

His mercy is for those who fear him
   from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.

 George ends his post with these words:

And herein is the ultimate blasphemy for God’s church to defer to the law at hand rather than the justice on which it stands. But that would meant Trinity Church would have “chosen” to act as the Body of Christ instead of the soulless corporation it has  become.