Freedom Church of the Poor
July 11, 2021
Season of the Jubilee: No Needy in the Land
Deuteronomy 15:1-11, Luke 4:18
https://www.facebook.com/kairoscenternyc/videos/515879693014051/
Dan Jones, University of the Poor
Moses Hernandez McGavin, WI Poor People’s Campaign
Leonardo Vilchis, Union de Vecinos
Cynthia Pease, Freedom Church of the Poor
Dan Jones
Good evening, everybody. My name is Dan Jones. I live in Miami, Florida, and I’m so grateful to be part of this Freedom Church of the Poor. I was particularly excited to be asked to be part of this week. It worked out very well. We’re in our Season of Jubilee, and it just so happens that in this week in the Ashkenazi cycle of annual Torah reading, we just got into the book of Deuteronomy, which we just saw is one of the many, many, like really so many places in the Jewish sacred text that deals with jubilee.
And we should define what we mean by that, which, in my reading and my study, that means it’s the reorganization, the reconstruction of society around the needs of the poor. It means canceling debts, which I think if we study that in its context, what it really means is canceling somebody’s obligation to work to enrich somebody else. To enrich the wealthy instead of working to provide for their families and their communities.
And it’s important to say that the jubilee is not like some funky, weird, curious old law, or something like that, that probably wasn’t enforced, or something, but is at the heart of Jewish tradition. Our holiest holiday, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, it’s the day of debt forgiveness. It’s the day that you sound the ram’s horn, and it’s the announcement that debt’s been forgiven, captives go free, people are returned to the land, and I think that that’s important to remember. And if you look throughout the entire Torah, into the prophets, into the other writings, there is just a steady drum beat of debt forgiveness, right? And for the right of the poor to not be poor anymore, over the right of the wealthy to continue to accumulate wealth.
And this, when we look at Deuteronomy 15, this focus on forgiving debts, on ending people's obligations to labor for the wealth of others, it's part of a larger tradition, right? Because also here in Deuteronomy 15 it says there is no need for poverty here. That there's enough for everybody. That God has blessed us by putting on this earth enough for everyone. But also in this tradition, and to me, what makes it actually resonate, actually reach out and grab a hold of us because it's actually true, right? Yes, honey. Sorry, my daughter is…needed something. What makes it actually true is that it also says that injustice is also possible, right, that human beings, and in particular the wealthy and the powerful, can choose death instead of life. That they can create poverty, that they can create poverty through unjust economic policies and relationships that create poverty and that waste wealth that God has blessed us with.
And so I think when we look around today that this is so clearly a message that our nation needs. I think about the fact that the CDC moratorium on evictions is ending; I think about the millions of people who are months behind on their rent that is coming due; I think about the landlords that have been illegally evicting people all throughout this pandemic, and how in reality, every eviction of the poor is illegal in the eyes of God; and how that's only the tip of the iceberg, right, when we talk about the needs of people today.
And so again, here in Deuteronomy it says the right of people not to be poor and not to have their labor and their lives controlled by landlords and creditors, that that outweighs the right of the wealthy to accumulate more wealth. In truth, private wealth has no rights. No rights that are recognized by God.
And so, I look at this and I think about how God is angry today. In Deuteronomy 30, after laying down this law of Jubilee, God says, "Pick a side! Tell me which side you're on." God says, "I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have given you this choice. I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. And I've begged you to choose life so that you and your descendants may live. I put before you the blessing and the curse, the choice between life and death, but you have to choose. Choose justice and choose life," says God, "But know that if you move aside from what I have told you today, you can choose injustice and death, too."
What it says is that if you do not reconstruct your society on time, if you show disdain toward the poor, then your whole society will suffer. The economy will shut down, the economy will go into crisis, the land will suffer, war will come, violence will spread. A society that curses the poor, that refuses to end poverty, curses itself.
And so I, you know, I come from the Jewish tradition. I love the Torah, and my God, the God of the Torah is an angry God, a jealous God that cannot condone the worship of false idols of wealth. And honestly, my God can get carried away sometimes. There are plenty of stories of prophets having to ask God to pump their brakes, right? That there's a chance here that there could be a remnant. And so God sends us the law, God tells us what our choice is, and when the powerful choose injustice God sends prophets to warn us to turn away, to remind us to forgive debts, to free the poor from bondage to the rich.
And I'll give you another example, God sent Jeremiah to the rulers of Judah and when they refused to forgive debts of their people. And I want you to hear what my God who gets carried away says to those who refuse to cancel debts, who insist on the right to wealth and not the right not to be poor. In Jeremiah 34 it says, "You would not obey me and proclaim a release." And that word for release, deror, it's on the Liberty Bell. It says, proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants. It's deror, it's debt forgiveness, it's the right not to be poor. And Jeremiah says, "You have refused to proclaim liberty. You have refused to proclaim a release to your brothers and your neighbors. And so I proclaim a release on YOU. I'll release you to the sword, I'll release you to pestilence, I'll release you to famine, and I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the Earth."
And America is certainly a horror today. But prophets are rising up, too, thank God, and warning us that worse is coming. Our prophets are calling for a release, a reconstruction, an emancipation from the economic and political power of the wealthy. They say, "Choose life, America!" And choosing life means forgive debts. Cancel the rent. Ban evictions. Expand our democracy. Ban deportations. Provide healthcare for everybody. Turn away from the poisoning and plundering of our planet. Choose life, say the prophets today. And I am so grateful for them, and for all of you and the chance to be here with this Freedom Church of the Poor today.
Moses Hernandez McGavin
Hi everyone, tough to follow Dan [laughs] but my name is Moses, as I said before, and I am with the Wisconsin Poor People's Campaign, and soon to be Atlanta. But I'm really excited to be here tonight.
So, yesterday, before I started writing this reflection, I was on a call with Sabine Adler from the Rochester Homeless Union and Kristin Colangelo with the National Union of the Homeless. And in our conversation we brought up the mission statement of the unwaged, which I'll just read:
"The heart and soul of the National Union of the Homeless is to commit our lives to ending homelessness and poverty, and to work tirelessly for the human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for social and economic justice for all. We dedicate ourselves to raising the awareness of our sisters and brothers, to planning a sustained struggle, and to building an organization that can obtain freedom through revolutionary perseverance. We pledge to deepen our personal commitment to end all forms of exploitation, racism, sexism, and abuse. True solidarity demands that we create, not only the new society, but also the new human being."
So, I've spent a lot of time with this statement in the past year, and that's because the more I look at it, the more I just realize how critical it is for our work. And I have it printed out and pasted above my desk, and I try to read it every single morning. And I try to bring this statement into a lot of circles as a piece of political education because I think this statement really identifies what we're doing in this movement. You know, we have this massive challenge in front of us that what we are doing as organizers is organizing toward a revolution of values and organizing to change the hearts and the minds of many.
And so, looking at this mission statement this morning, and really studying the reading today from Luke 4, I can actually really see the similarities. So, Luke is basically a reading of passages that are tied to Isaiah 61. And in this passage in Luke, Jesus identifies four groups. First, he identifies the poor, which in ancient Rome many people were poor because of the huge rates of taxation that were imposed by ancient Rome. Jesus identifies the imprisoned. And many scholars think that what they're talking about here is basically referring to people who are in debtors' prison, which is people who were thrown into jail because of indebtedness. And then the third group that Jesus identifies is the blind, which we know there are many stories in which Jesus makes the blind see, such as in Mark 10 and John 9. And finally, the last group are the oppressed, which Jesus is specifically addressing those who are suffering under Roman oppression. And in different translations, this part will actually read, "Proclaim liberty to the captives." And the word used for liberty is deror in Hebrew, which is also the word for debt cancellation. And in the next verse, right after this, which is Luke Chapter 4, verse 19, Jesus goes on to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, which is a direct reference to Jubilee. So, basically in this reading Jesus is calling forth that good news and freedom must be brought to all those people, or in other words, that we not only create a new society, but also the new human being.
And I'm sure everyone here knows that the Roman Empire that Jesus was going up against was absolutely no joke. Not only did a majority of people in the Roman Empire live in poverty, or in slavery, but the other part about the Roman Empire is that it had exceptional propaganda. Propaganda that would make people believe that they were all good and that ancient Rome was awesome; and that not only was change not necessary but it was never going to come about because the Roman Empire was just way too strong.
Ancient Rome's propaganda was so strong that if you asked like the average person today in 2021 what they thought ancient Rome was like, chances are they're going to be like, "Ancient Rome was awesome, it was peaceful, it was beautiful, it was wonderful." But the reality is, is that unless one was just extremely wealthy, life in ancient Rome was pretty bad.
And so that's what Jesus was up against, right? He was tasked with this challenge of changing the hearts and minds of people in the wealthiest nation of that time to tell people that poverty is not God-ordained; and that if they moved enough people in society, that they could truly transform and change society.
And we also know, too, that Jesus didn't just stop after he like, read this, this piece of Isaiah from the temple, he didn't just like go home and stop; he went on to organize. And as the Kairos Center talks about, he went on to organize a poor people's campaign in ancient Rome. And so, I know, like, honestly for me on hard days when, like, I feel stuck in my organizing, I will literally open up the New Testament and I will read the ways in which Jesus was battling the mental terrain in ancient Rome. I will read how he figured out how to battle that through stories, through leadership development, and through endlessly meeting people where they were that through his revolutionary patience and through his revolutionary love.
I know, of course, that we have immense challenges in front of us as organizers, right? What we are fighting for, this huge transformation of society, is no small feat, and it's not something that can come about with one mobilization, or one person that is elected into office. It's something that can only come about with a united group of leaders that have crossed lines of division to organize towards a different future. And I think the biggest lesson that I've learned in the past year through a lot of Bible study and work with the University of the Poor, and my organizing with the Poor People's Campaign here in Wisconsin, and the National Union of the Homeless, is that the need for a revolutionary patience and a revolutionary perseverance, and a revolutionary love is perhaps...it's so necessary, and perhaps can be one of the biggest challenges that we come up against as organizers.
But I read passages like this passage in Luke, and I'm reminded that, like, not only first and foremost is God on our side, but that this struggle that we're in has been going on for so much longer than we've been here; so much longer than our elders have been here; so much longer than our elders' elders have been here; and that we must continue in this struggle until change has come.
And as I said, we know that Jesus didn't just read from the scripture and stop: He organized people into a movement and God was in and all around that movement then, as he is today.
And so, I wanted to close tonight with actually a quote...close my reflection with a quote from General Baker. And I first heard this quote, there's a video with the amazing collaboration between Subversive Activity and the media team of New York State Poor People's Campaign. And it featured quotes from an interview with General Baker. And the last quote of the video is, "Don't go blaming the people for not moving; blame yourself. Cause usually what happens when people rise up, and the leaders got demoralized and quit, and then when the folks rise up, ain't nobody there to lead them. You need patience and persistence, and stay with that movement because people need change."
Thanks, all.
Reflections
Leonardo Vilchis
My name is Leonardo Vilchis, I’m from Boil Heights. I live in East Los Angeles. And these readings and thsi moment bring me very close to the fact that we're having our community. The last year-and-a-half, as everybody knows, thousands of people have been either pushed into the streets or forced in a horrible situation because of their inability to pay their rent.
And in Los Angeles, as part of the Los Angeles Tenants' Union, which we're local, we decided to call for a rent strike, which basically meant that people had to choose between paying their rent and paying for food, and the idea was, you choose food, not rent.
This is an experience that is not an abstract thing for us. This is the experience of Rosalie, whose house was burned by the landlord to kick her out, and then when she lost the house she also lost her children because she didn't have a place for them to live in. And when she came back to recover her belongings, she found that her money and some of her property was stolen, if not destroyed.
We're also talking about the Mariachis, musicians in the street for hire, who lost a lot of jobs because of the pandemic and because of the orders to stay at home. Who together owe about $250,000 in the apartment building that they live in.
We're speaking on behalf of The Michigan residents, another building, where also most of them owe their rent. From the residents of Hillside Village who have been promised to receive affordable housing, but only for 30 years because the loan the city gave for the private landlord was finished in its terms, and now the landlord can increase the rent 100 percent.
We're also thinking about the Second Street Tenant Association who also owe together about $25,000 in rent. And the only different thing is they are part of our local. When we brought some of them together, we calculated about one-and-a-half million dollars in rent that this small group of people owe. This small group of people are only a minority in the larger community of Boil Heights. We're talking about a hundred-thousand people who live in Boil Heights, and those hundred thousand people are only a minority of those who live in the city. And when we look at the country, it's nothing. But these people have chosen to speak up, have chosen to denounce the system that created this debt. And they're looking at the debt that goes beyond the payment of the debt.
A lot of the politicians around us, they are saying, "Oh, we're going to pay the debt." But they're only giving the money back to the landlords. They're not paying back the food, the jobs, the hours, the healthcare, and everything the tenants have lost. They're not paying back the debt that the tenants incurred to be able to pay their rent. We know, for example, Roberto, who went to work for $15,000 so he could pay rent, and now none of the government money that is coming to pay back the rent is going to help him pay the rent. We're talking about Amanda who owes $5,000, but none of the money that is supposed to pay the rent is going to pay her.
So, we remember, also, then that it's not enough to say that we're paying the rent. We have to pay everybody then. And it's important to understand that this fight cannot be just fought by us, but has to be fought by the people themselves that have been part of this stuff. And that they're the ones chosen to make these things happen.
So, just as in the New Testament reading, we are the ones that have to proclaim the good news to the poor. We are the ones that have to say, it is not enought to pay back the rent. We need to talk about the rebuilding of the homes, about the housing of the homeless, about bringing back the jobs with wages that take care of you, that really support you. We talk about healing the sick and the new world that we have to build, and we're the ones that have been called to make this happen.
So that's something I'm thinking about, and we have to take that mission and continue to the end.
Cynthia Pease
Thank you, Moses. And I'd actually like to respond because I heard this morning several quotes on what power means that was given by several philosophers. And the one that hit home most to me was from Nietzsche, who defined power as the ability to decide what reality is.
And it just hit me in the gut because that is what powers do. They decide for everybody else that the poor are to blame for their poverty and the poor are to blame for their debt, and predatory lending doesn't have a thing to do with it, apparently. And people who have been laid off from work for a year should get right back to work for the same low miserable wages they were making before.
And this notion of power, of which we are all victimized by, it just spoke to me so strongly, and also through the reflections of Dan and Moses. And so thank you, I'm just riled up about that at the moment.
Transition less than a 1 min- short intro of Speaker 2
ASL Interpreter 2- William
Reflection from Speaker 2 (5 min) - Moses
So yesterday before I started writing this reflection, I was on a call with Sabine Adler from Rochester Homeless Union and Kristin Colangelo with the National Union of the Homeless, and in our conversation we brought up the mission statement of the NUH. Which is, of course:
The heart and soul of the National Union of the Homeless is to commit our lives to ending homelessness and poverty and to work tirelessly for the human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for social and economic justice for all. We dedicate ourselves to raising the awareness of our sisters and brothers, to planning a sustained struggle and to building an organization that can obtain freedom through revolutionary perseverance. We pledge to deepen our personal commitment to end all forms of exploitation, racism, sexism, and abuse. True solidarity demands that we create not only the new society, but also the new human being.
I’ve spent a lot of time with this statement in the past year because I just think it’s so critical to our work. I have it printed out and pasted above my desk and I try to read it every single day, and I try to bring this statement into a lot of circles as a piece of political education because this statement really identifies what we’re doing in this movement. We have this massive challenge in front of us that what we are doing as organizers is organizing towards a revolution of values and organizing to change the hearts and minds of many.
And so in looking at this mission statement today and really studying the reading today from Luke 4, I can really actually see the similarities. Luke 4 is basically a reading of passages that are tied to Isaiah 61. In Luke 4, Jesus identifies 4 groups. First he identifies the poor, which in Ancient Rome, many were poor because of the huge rates of taxation imposed upon citizens in Ancient Rome. Jesus identifies the imprisoned, which many scholars believe refers to people who were in debtors' prison, which were those who were thrown into person because of indebtedness. The third group Jesus identifies is the blind, which we know there are many stories in which Jesus makes the blind see, such as Mark 10 and John 9. And finally the last group is the oppressed, in which Jesus is specifically addressing those who were suffering under Roman oppression. In different translations, this part will say “proclaim liberty to captives,” and the word used for liberty there is deror in Hebrew, which is also the word for debt cancellation. In the next verse, Luke 4:19, Jesus goes on to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, which is a direct reference to jubilee. So in this reading, Jesus is calling forth that good news and freedom must be brought to all of those people--that we create not only the new society but also the new human being.
And as I’m sure we all know on here, the Roman Empire that Jesus was going up against was no joke. Not only did a majority of people in the Roman Empire live in poverty or in slavery, but the other part is that the Roman Empire had exceptional propaganda. Propaganda that would make people believe that they were good and that Ancient Rome was awesome and that not only was change not necessary, but change was not going to be possible--the Roman Empire was too strong. Ancient Rome’s propaganda was so good that even if you talk to the average person today about Ancient Rome, they would probably say that life in Ancient Rome was a pretty good place to be; it was peaceful, beautiful, and wonderful. But the reality is, is that unless one was extremely wealthy, life in Ancient Rome was tough.
And that’s what Jesus was up against. He was tasked with changing the hearts and minds in the wealthiest nation of the time to tell people that poverty is not God ordained, and that if they moved enough people society could truly change and truly transform. And we know too that Jesus didn’t stop after just reading from Isiaiah in the Temple. He went on to organize, as the Kairos Center often talks about, a Poor People’s Campaign in Ancient Rome. And so I know for me, on hard days, I read the New Testament to see the ways in which Jesus battled on the Mental Terrain through story, through leadership development, and through endlessly meeting people where they were at with his revolutionary patience and love.
I know, of course, we have immense challenges in front of us as organizers. What we are fighting for--a transformation of society--is no small feat. It’s not something that can come about with one mobilization or one certain person elected into office, but it’s something that can only come about with a united group of leaders that have crossed lines of division to organize towards a different future. I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned the past year through the University of the Poor and with my organizing in the Poor People’s Campaign here in Wisconsin and with the National Union of the Homeless, is that the need for a revolutionary patience and perseverance is so necessary, and perhaps is one of the greatest challenges as organizers. But I read passages like Luke 4 and I bring myself to remember that God is on our side, and that the struggle has been going for much longer than we’ve been here, and we must continue in this struggle until true change has come. We know that Jesus didn’t just read from scripture in the Temple and stop there, he organized people into a movement, and God was in and all around that movement, as they still are today.
I wanted to close tonight with a quote from General Baker. This quote comes from a video that was a collaboration between Subversive Activities and the Media Team of the New York State Poor People’s Campaign, and it featured quotes from an interview with General Gordon Baker. The last quote of the video is:
“Don’t go blaming the people for not moving, blame yourself. ‘Cause usually what happens when people rise up and the leaders got demoralized and quit, and then when the folks rise up, ain’t nobody there to lead them. You need patience and persistence, and stay with that movement, ‘cause people do change.”