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Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. America's strong bonds with Israel are well known.
Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don't want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. We have real enemies in the world. I didn't fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. It's an idea that's often forgotten or dismissed in cynical times. Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company.
I was not raised in a particularly religious household. Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves - protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody.
So it's 1985, and I'm in Chicago, and I'm working with these churches, and with lots of laypeople who are much older than I am. Universities and states, including Illinois, are taking part in a divestment campaign to pressure the Sudanese government to stop the killings. It's time for us to change America. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities which are also threatened.
But I've got news for them, too. It comes from Deuteronomy 30 when Moses talks to his followers about the challenges they'll find when they reach the Promised Land without him.
God bless you.