Jim Wallis

photo of Jim Wallis from Sojourners

Jim Wallis spoke at Chautauqua at a Conference on 'Moral Leadership.' 
Below are the bullet notes I made of his remarks entitled 'The Bridge to a New America':

• The narrative needs to change
• The safety of our sons and daughters
• Trayvon Martin was the inspiration for Jim's latest book, 'America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America'
• Black boys in America are assumed to be violent
• Time to get real about where we are
• America's original sin
• Still we are not cleansed of this
• The sin wasn't just slavery
• Centuries ago we threw away the orthodox beleif that we are all created in the image of God (Imago Deo) and acquiesced to a doctrine insisting that blacks were 3/5 human
• BLM is the latest movement which challenges that doctrine
• The need to see every person as fully human with the right to go home
• The need for repentance - the need for turning around and going into a whole new direction
• What is white privilege? If you don't see it then you've got it
• The framework / the rightness of whiteness
• The whole idea of whiteness is a lie, a justification of what we were doing to native and black people
• If white Christians were to act more Christian than white, the blacks would be less fearful
• Whiteness is an idol and like all idols, it creates division
• The end of white Christian America
• 72% of white Christians believe the shooting of blacks is the result of circumstances rather than race
• The intent within America to not hear each other's stories has to be reversed  - we need to know the other
• Every black kid has had the parental talk with their kids about how to behave when talking to police
• The need for white parents to say to their kids 'your black team-mates are in danger of being shot'
• 11 million undocumented people in the US - separated from their families
• What are they afraid of?
• They are afraid of you.
• Why? 
• The bridge to a new America - from a white America to an America which allow full humanity to all non-whites
• 2035 the United States will be a majority of minorities
• The old donkeys that are dying kick the hardest
• The Moral Monday event is one movement challenging the status quo
• Master James Crow Esquire - whites are admitting that they can't change the changing demographic but they are fighting hard to resist the change
• Examples include: 
• the legalizing of workers but not as citizens
• The drug war - mass incarceration means mass disenfranchised voters
• The Matthew 25 voter suppression 
• by elevating a White Nationalist candidate to be President of the United States
• I don't believe that Trump has the conviction to be a racist
• we must help vulnerable voters to vote
• Galatians 3 - race, class and gender - read at every baptism - the 3 great societal divides are according to the gospel not to happen among us
• for a democracy to work, privilege and punishment cannot be a factor of skin colour
• You are lucky this time - this is intolerable
• From warriors to guardians
• Community policing 
• Campaign Zero - we don't need allies, we need accomplishes
• Talk to your kids, talk to your police
• To save black and blue lives
• Trying to sustain ourselves, the need for healing
• Our own healing is tied to justice
• To find our own healing is connected to the healing of others the repairing of broker breaches and restorer of streets to live in (see Isaiah 58)
• The biggest enemy is cynicism and hopelessness 
• Hope is believing despite the evidence and watching the evidence change
• The message of sin is rooted in the dynamic to repent, to change
• What do BLM want - schooling, a job and a family
• Gerry-meandering, there are pushbacks because there have been advances - white supremacists don't die easily
• We don't live in a post racial society
• Washington DC is the last place where change happens, change happens when the wind changes, we have to be attentive to the wind of God's spirit