LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Monday, March 13, 2023

For FBI legend J. Edgar Hoover, Christian nationalism was the gospel truth, argues new book

In 'The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover,' Stanford professor Lerone Martin details how the longtime FBI director shaped the belief in America as a Christian nation.

J. Edgar Hoover in an undated FBI file photo. Photo courtesy of FBI/Wikipedia/Creative Commons

March 10, 2023

(RNS) — Lerone Martin’s new book began with a cup of coffee that led him to sue the FBI.

While working on a book about religious broadcasters, a colleague suggested over coffee that Martin, a religion scholar, research the FBI to see if they had any related files. At the time, the colleague, scholar William J. Maxwell, author of “F.B. EYES,” had been studying the FBI’s surveillance of Black writers. Perhaps the FBI had been keeping an eye on religious broadcasters as well.

Martin, then living in St. Louis, began filing Freedom of Information requests. Around the same time, he was also hearing from local pastors in St Louis who had been contacted by the FBI in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. The FBI, they told Martin, wanted to know what the pastors were going to do to calm protests in that city.

“That got me thinking,” said Martin. “This is not a surveillance story. This is a story of partnership.”

Martin began thinking about the kinds of pastors the FBI might want to partner with. Chief among them was the late evangelist Billy Graham, known for his crusades for Jesus and against communism and liberals.

Lerone Martin. Photo by Andrew Brodhead/Stanford University

When Graham died in 2018, Martin asked for his FBI file. The Department of Justice said no. So, Martin sued in federal court and three years later settled with the FBI and got the files. He also obtained files on other Christian leaders and organizations, most notably more than a thousand pages of documents outlining the relationship between longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and the editors of Christianity Today, the flagship publication of Graham’s evangelical movement.

What Martin, now an associate professor of religion at Stanford, found in those files was this: Hoover was perhaps the most influential Christian leader in America during his tenure in office, promoting a gospel of America as a Christian nation and labeling anyone who threatened the power of white Christian men as communists and a threat to God’s will.

“Hoover saw his politics as nothing more than an extension of his faith,” said Martin, author of “The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism.“ “And because America is a Christian nation, the FBI is charged with defending and perpetuating that ideal.”

Unlike early Christian nationalists, like Father Charles Coughlin — a star of early broadcast radio — or Gerald L.K. Smith, longtime editor of “The Cross and the Flag,” Hoover had the institutional power and discipline to make his beliefs stick. And he had a gift for convincing conservative Christian leaders to join his crusade.

When the Nation magazine ran a series of articles critical of the FBI and Hoover, legendary Christianity Today editor Carl Henry rode to his aid, offering to run one of Hoover’s essays in the magazine. When the essay arrived, Henry was effusive in his praise.

In his book, Martin documents how Hoover saw anyone who upset the status quo and pushed for goals like “love, justice, and the brotherhood of man” or “personal freedom” as part of an atheistic communist plot. He used the power of his office to investigate those who opposed him, including religious leaders like the National Council of Churches and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism” by Lerone Martin. Courtesy image

He turned his office into a bully pulpit, writing essays for major Christian publications, saying that all the nation’s problems — including issues of race — could be solved if only everyone gave their hearts to Jesus. The FBI then reprinted those essays, adding an FBI seal as if they reflected official government policies, and shared them with churches, Sunday schools and almost anyone who wanted them.

Some preachers even preached them word for word on Sundays, Martin recounts, complete with Hoover’s warnings of disaster if America strayed from its spiritual roots and the Marxists took over.

“We are today threatened by twin menaces,” he wrote in a 1961 essay for Christianity Today. “Materialism has fathered both crime and communism. The criminal statistics for the year just past attest to the steady growth of the one evil. The progress of the other — and the intensity of the struggle in which we are engaged with it — does not yield to such forthright measure.”

Many evangelical leaders were eager to join Hoover’s crusade against communism and liberals. They also saw the advantages of having Hoover as an ally, said Martin in an interview.

“What better way in the midst of a cold war to authenticate your organization than to have the approval of the FBI — the organization that knows all and sees all?” said Martin.

Evangelicals embraced Hoover even though he shared few of their theological convictions. He did not believe in being “born again,” said Martin, and never had the kind of conversion experience that is so essential to evangelical life. He also did not share evangelical prejudice against Catholics, which was common in the middle of the 20th century. Instead, Martin writes, he saw Catholics as essential partners.

“I am a Protestant,” he said in a 1939 address to a Catholic gathering in Washington, D.C., that is recounted in Martin’s book. “And as a Protestant, I say sincerely and from experience, that the Catholic Church is the greatest protective influence in our nation today.”

Martin writes that Hoover was a particular admirer of the Society of Jesuits and recruited Jesuit priests to train FBI agents to be spiritual warriors. The FBI held yearly retreats for agents at a Jesuit retreat house in Annapolis led by his friend, the Rev. Robert S. Lloyd, and donated a chalice engraved with “FBI” to Lloyd for use during Mass.

The agency also held an annual Mass and Communion breakfast for Catholic agents and an interdenominational vespers service for Protestant agents to counter rumors the FBI had been taken over by Catholics. At both, only White Christian agents were welcomed, Martin writes. Agents of color never received invitations.

J. Edgar Hoover, left, fingerprints Vice President John N. Garner, circa 1939. Photo courtesy of Library of Congress/Creative Commons

In an interview, Martin said Hoover was a true Christian nationalist, who believed he was working for God — not the Constitution or the American people. He saw enforcing the law as a spiritual battleground, said Martin, a view he developed as a teenage Sunday school teacher.

“He saw Sunday school as spiritual formation — and believed the Bible teaches you how to live your life in a moral way,” he said. “And if you follow the teachings of God, you will be a great American citizen. And then the reverse of that is — if you’re a criminal, that means that you didn’t get the spiritual teachings as a child. And if you did get them and are a criminal, you’ve just decided to reject them.”

Hoover’s commitment to law and order above all and his views of America as a white Christian nation led him to reject Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the civil rights movement. Martin, who also directs the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford, said Hoover dismissed civil rights legislation as misguided and called King and other civil rights leaders “extremists.”

“Hoover’s gospel was focused on the individual soul,” Martin writes. “The best way to fix America’s race problem was not violence, protest, or legislation. Rather, individual and group piety was the best way for Black Americans to earn white respect and the eventual prize of equality.”

Any other approach, Hoover believed, was simply the work of communists.

Hoover remained influential for decades, said Martin, in part because he was a master at mythmaking. During his tenure, the FBI and its agents were cultural heroes, stars of “This Is Your FBI,” a popular radio program; television shows like “The Untouchables”; and a long list of movies. In the popular imagination, the FBI was America’s protector — which, combined with his endorsements of Christian America, turned Hoover into one of the most well-respected people in the country.

Martin said Hoover’s views — and his strategies — still shape American politics. Especially his habit of labeling all his enemies as socialists or Marxists. Doing that, Martin said, allowed Hoover to dismiss any criticism of American culture.

“Today we see people using ‘socialist’ the same way,” he said. “It’s a tactic where you don’t have to actually engage opposing ideas, you can just dismiss them while using that label.”

(This story was was reported with support from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.)

Republicans talk about the Canadian border. They skip all sorts of details

Increase in irregular migration from Canada is real — but

numbers got inflated, conflated, cherry-picked

Alexander Panetta · CBC News · Posted: Mar 03, 2023

A pedestrian crosses the Canada-U.S. border on foot between Quebec and Estcourt, Maine, in this 2006 file photo. (Reuters)

A group of Republican lawmakers left out all sorts of details earlier this week when they held a news conference in Washington to sound the alarm about a surge in migration from Canada.

They put some big numbers on a poster and included those same bulging figures on a handout distributed to journalists.

They noted, correctly, that irregular border-crossings from Canada are up.

Here's what went unsaid: The sum they were touting was a kitchen-sink statistical catch-all, a throw-everything-in-there mish-mash of federal data.

Meaning that the number of irregular crossings is so small, representing such a minuscule fraction of the total they touted, it's the equivalent to a statistical blip.

Republican lawmakers, including Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, centre, held a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to warn about a surge in migration from Canada. (Alexander Panetta/CBC)

The issue involves what the U.S. Department of Homeland Security calls "encounters" — and it covers a vast array of incidents at the U.S. border.

Such incidents range from the innocuous to the serious: from someone forgetting their passport or lacking proof of a COVID-19 vaccination, to missing a work visa, to being refused entry over a criminal record, to someone trying to sneak across.

Those figures, then, can frustrate migration-policy analysts. They argue the catch-all number winds up being used to confuse people more than enlighten them.

"The numbers require explanation and contextualization," said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. "Looking at encounter statistics, it requires getting into the details."

The Republicans did not, by any means, sweat the details.

Take the fact sheet they handed out: It cited a 1,498 per cent increase in land-border encounters since U.S. President Joe Biden took office. Never mind that, in January 2021, land travel was severely restricted under pandemic rules.

The grand total: 2.7 per cent

So what are the numbers at the U.S.'s northern border?

The data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) show about 165,000 encounters along the northern U.S. border since the start of 2022.

That's the stat Republican lawmakers showed.

Then if you filter that data for people being stopped between official ports of entry, here's what you'll find: 2.7 per cent.

Ninety-seven per cent are people stopped at normal border crossings by CBP's Office of Field Operations

To their credit, the Republicans listed the more precise, smaller numbers in a letter last week to the U.S. Homeland Security secretary, demanding details of his plan for the northern border.

The detailed data shows about 4,500 people being stopped from migrating into the U.S. from Canada, between normal checkpoints, since the start of the 2022 fiscal year.

Which, as the Republicans correctly identified, is an increase: If the current rate held, the 2023 number could end up being triple the number last year's, according to U.S. data.

Yet even that comes with an asterisk.

Ignoring the pandemic effect

The chart on the Republican poster starts in 2020, so it doesn't show the pre-pandemic level in fiscal year 2019.

Using that year as a baseline instead, there's a less dramatic trend: a 35 per cent bump over 2019, not the 300 per cent when compared to last year.

Digging down even deeper, some of that 35 per cent is due to pandemic rules: Back in 2019, travellers weren't being turned back at the U.S. border for lacking vaccine papers.

Republicans released this fact sheet showing eye-popping migration trends from Canada. It omits details. It conflates routine incidents with serious ones. It compares current land-border trends with January 2021, when there were severe travel restrictions linked to the pandemic. (Alexander Panetta/CBC)

Some Republican lawmakers demanded more personnel at the Canadian border, saying they wanted more agents hired in their districts.

They decried the staffing disparity: the Mexican border has about 20 times the total number of U.S. border patrol agents as the northern border.

That is consistent with migration enforcement stats.

Comparison with Mexican border: there is none

The southern border with Mexico, since the start of the 2022 fiscal year, has produced about 20 times more encounters than the northern border with Canada.

But the disparity in migration runs even deeper than the fact that the Mexican border has seen 3.25 million of those so-called encounters, to Canada's 165,000.

The differences in the detailed data are more pronounced.

Again, a minute percentage of so-called encounters recorded at the Canadian border occurred between border checkpoints, 2.7 per cent.

It's the opposite along Mexico's border, where 91 per cent of so-called encounters involved Border Patrol agents, who enforce between checkpoints.

WATCH | Republicans take aim at the Canada-U.S. border:

Republicans take aim at human trafficking across Canada-U.S. border

12 days ago

1:43

A group of U.S. Republicans are banding together to call attention to what they say is a surge in human trafficking from Canada into the U.S., forming what they're calling a Northern Border Security Caucus.

Despite all these differences, another U.S. immigration expert said the recent trend with Canada is worth paying attention to.

For starters, she said, there's the question of migrant safety. It's undeniable that more are crossing, even in the harsh winter months. A family of four from India, for example, froze to death trying to cross from Canada last year.

"Due to the danger of winter crossings, [it's] still a concern," said Theresa Brown, an immigration analyst at the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center.

The trend also raises questions for U.S. policymakers, she said.

One involves the potential impact on already-strained U.S. immigration systems, with the courts that process such claims facing mounting backlogs and years-long delays.

Analyst: Still worth examining this trend

Brown further said this recent trendline at the Canadian border could indicate an emerging pattern in migration: people using Canada to get to the U.S.

For example, Mexican citizens don't need a visa to travel to Canada; they do need one for the U.S. And more than 2,100 Mexicans have been stopped by U.S. Border Patrol between regular northern border checkpoints since the start of 2022.

American officials, Brown said, will want to know what's driving this – whether it's new enforcement at the southern border or other phenomena.

The bottom line on this issue?

The increase is real. The numbers are tiny. And politicians, sometimes, cherry-pick from that great big tree of data.

Mormons know how the Church sanctioned racial exclusion. That policy has a paper trail.

Paul Reeve's new book argues the decision to ban Blacks from priesthood and the temple began with Brigham Young but wasn't fully entrenched until the early 1900s under Joseph F. Smith.

"Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood" cover with Paul Reeve, left, and Darius Gray, right. Courtesy images

March 10, 2023

Jana Riess

(RNS) — Fifty years ago this spring, Lester Bush published a groundbreaking article in “Dialogue” that carefully reviewed how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first came to ban Black people from holding the priesthood and entering the temple. In short, he found no evidence the policy was instituted by founding prophet Joseph Smith.

The 1973 article was influential for a generation of Latter-day Saints who believed the policy was unjust. It also shifted the thinking of Spencer W. Kimball, the prophet who would reverse it five years later.

One person directly affected by it was Darius Gray, an African American man who converted to the LDS Church in 1964. He learned about the racist ban the night before his scheduled baptism but felt prompted to join the church anyway. Now Gray provides the foreword for “Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood,” historian Paul Reeve’s engaging and highly readable new book that traces the ban from its beginnings under Brigham Young through its 1978 reversal to today, when some people still try to justify it as having been God’s will.

I got to chat with both men about the book and the important story it is telling. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. – JKR

Darius, in your foreword, you describe a painful experience that happened at church in the late 1960s, when you and your wife were attending a sacrament meeting.

Darius Gray. Courtesy photo

Darius Gray: I was in a married student ward at the University of Utah, and my wife and I were doing the normal thing, going to sacrament meeting on a Sunday, and seated in the center section toward the left. I was on the aisle, and as the sacrament tray came by, I partook of the sacrament, and then I reached for the handle of the tray to be able to pass it to my wife. And the elder who had given me the sacrament quickly withdrew the tray and gave me a look. Then he reached around me and handed the tray to my wife, who is melanin deprived. It was clear that my cursed hands were not to touch that tray, the Lord’s supper. I remember that all too well.

You’ve been holding two things in tension for a very long time: trying to explain to people why you are a member of this church, but also understanding why they might see those things as incompatible because you were African American.

Darius Gray: Yeah, it can be difficult. It’s not just what the distant history was; it’s what the current realities are, and when you combine the two, it can get to be too much. It’s a troubling history in many ways.

Yes it is. Paul, can you describe the origin for this book?

Paul Reeve: Deseret Book approached me in 2018 and explained the “Let’s Talk About” series as modeled after Oxford’s “Very Short Introduction” series. They wanted to address sometimes controversial topics with scholarly expertise, but also pitched at a general Latter-day Saint audience. I liked the idea of this series and was pleased that Deseret Book was launching it, but I was also skeptical, and I expressed that skepticism.

What in particular made you skeptical?

Paul Reeve. Photo courtesy of the University of Utah

Paul Reeve: The church’s racial history is difficult history, and I know what the evidence is. In fact, I shared with Deseret Book the Pitman shorthand transcription of Brigham Young’s 5th of February, 1852, speech and said, “I’m going to be quoting from that. You have to be aware that if I’m doing this book, I will engage the evidence. You can’t come to me after the manuscript is produced and say, ‘you can’t say that.’” So my skepticism was just: Will a church-owned entity be willing to say these difficult things?

And I have to give Deseret Book credit: My editor, Lisa Roper, never backed down and asked that I give them a chance. So we worked together and came up with a manuscript that we were all pleased with.

The book is short but so clear. Even its very structure makes the argument that racist restrictions on priesthood and temple access were not part of the earliest LDS Church.

Paul Reeve: The book is structured around the way that I have come to understand the history, which came in three phases. First, we had open priesthood and temples, then segregated priesthood and temples, and then in June of 1978 a return to the universal roots of the faith. So the book’s structure is driven by the evidence.

My sense is that perhaps the average Latter-day Saint will be unaware of that. Even in 2023, there’s still an existing narrative that the racial restrictions were in place from the beginning. That they traced back through the foggy mists of time into the eternities, that God put them in place and human beings had nothing to do with it. This view says it took until 1978, according to God’s timing, to lift the restrictions. So the very structure of the book challenges that notion. I’ve spent over a decade in the archives and this is the evidence I’ve found.

Even people who are familiar with the basic contours of that history, like Elijah Able (also spelled Abel) being ordained to the priesthood by Joseph Smith, are going to find some amazing stories here that put a human face on the three stages of the history you’re telling.

Darius Gray: For me, that was the best part. The stories personalized this period in our history and the struggle that we yet deal with. It’s not sanitized, but it is pure.

Paul Reeve: It’s rewarding for me to hear that. The timing of this book is such that the Century of Black Mormons project allowed the narrative to include the stories of Black Latter-day Saints. The way the story has been told in the past has largely been from the perspective of the white male leaders, the decisionmakers — at what point did they decide to restrict the priesthood and the temple to people of African descent? But this book tells the story through the lives of actual Black Latter-day Saints, including people that haven’t been written about before. Some of them saw the space for full participation shrink across the course of their own lifetimes.

You talk about the way the racist restrictions slowly coalesced, from Brigham Young and then especially with Joseph F. Smith (nephew of the founding prophet Joseph Smith) at the turn of the century.

“Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood” by historian W. Paul Reeve. Courtesy image

Paul Reeve: It’s very difficult history. From 1879 and 1895, Joseph F. Smith makes two positive statements reaffirming Elijah Able’s priesthood as valid. In 1883, he sets Able apart for his third mission as a 75-year-old man. So that’s another indication that Joseph F. knows Elijah Able’s priesthood is valid, because he’s sending him on a third mission. But in 1904, Joseph F. says that Able having the priesthood was a mistake that was never corrected, and then in 1908 he claims that Able’s priesthood was declared null and void by Joseph Smith himself.

I believe that Joseph F. Smith’s false claim solidifies the racial restrictions in place. It’s the last brick in the wall of exclusion. So you create a new memory moving forward, and the new memory insists the racial restrictions have been in place from the beginning. God put them in place, and human beings can’t do anything about it. And that becomes the memory for the 20th century.

So although Brigham Young gets most of the attention in terms of the origins of the racial restrictions, and that’s true, they’re not solidified in place at his first utterance. I hope the book demonstrates the way they take on a life of their own across the course of the last half of the 19th century. Joseph F. Smith is just as much responsible for their solidification and perpetuation into the 20th century as Brigham Young was for beginning them.

Darius Gray: And for that reason, I want to have a talk with that man.

Paul Reeve: And I want to be there.

Same. Let’s talk about the third phase, which is when the priesthood/temple restrictions are abandoned in 1978 and the church returns to the universal approach it had at the beginning.

Paul Reeve: The 1978 revelation chapter is framed by the story of a Black woman, Freda Lucretia Magee Beaulieu, who was born in Mississippi at the turn of the century. She was baptized in 1909 when she was 9 years old. She waited 69 years to be allowed into the temple. Most people continue to think about this as a racial priesthood restriction, and it was, but we don’t realize the full ramifications that Black women were barred from temple admission.

In July of 1978, she’s finally allowed into a Latter-day Saint Temple. In other words, within one month of the 1978 revelation, she’s traveled a thousand miles from New Orleans, Louisiana, to the Washington, D.C., temple to be sealed to her beloved husband, who has predeceased her. And in a talk she gave in 1982, when she was in her 80s, she called that the happiest day of her life.

Mormon leader’s apology for racist remarks does not go far enough

Former President Bush Urges Lawmakers to Reauthorize AIDS Relief Plan

Mariama Diallo
March 03, 2023

President George W. Bush signed a $15 billion global AIDS bill May 27, 2003, in Washington. With Bush, from left, were Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

WASHINGTON —

Former President George W. Bush last week urged Washington lawmakers to continue to support the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an initiative he launched two decades ago against one of deadliest diseases at the time.

Bush made his initial plea before Congress at his State of the Union address in 2003, when nearly 30 million people in Africa had the AIDS virus, including 3 million children under age 15.

"I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean," Bush said at the time.

Fast forward to today: Bush, in Washington to mark his plan's 20-year anniversary, said he made the trip to remind people that American taxpayers' money is making a huge and measurable difference in providing lifesaving treatment to millions of people living with HIV/AIDS.

Check the results

"This program needs to be funded. And for the skeptics, all I ask is look at results. If the results don't impress you, then nothing will impress you," he told an audience February 24 at the U.S. Institute of Peace. PEPFAR is due for reauthorization this year.

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates was in attendance as well.

"HIV is still a huge problem. We've cut the death rates down substantially, but if we don't continue to provide these medicines, then people's viral load goes up, they become infected, and you get that exponential increase that we saw with all infectious diseases, including COVID," Gates said.

The significance of the PEPFAR program boils down to the number of lives that have been affected, said David Kramer, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.

"Over 25 million lives have been saved as a result of President Bush's PEPFAR initiative. … And it was a vision that he [Bush] had to step in and help people that were in real need of help. He felt the U.S. was in a position to do so," Kramer told VOA.

Former President Bush Marks 20 Years of Signature HIV/AIDS Policy

The program has brought other benefits, Kramer said.

"The infrastructure that was set up over the 20 years under PEPFAR and also with the Global Fund [to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria] provided important assistance to health workers and officials in dealing with other crises such as the COVID pandemic."

Bipartisan backing

Since the legislation was signed into law in May 2003, PEPFAR has benefited from bipartisan support in Congress, even though funding for its abstinence programs — a requirement later removed in 2008 — had drawn criticism. Former President Donald Trump unsuccessfully proposed to reduce PEPFAR's funding during his term.

Winnie Byanyima, executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, or UNAIDS, recognizes PEPFAR's impact.

"When he announced PEPFAR 20 years ago, our people were dying, our countries were devastated. There was fear, there was pain and suffering. … So, we come here to honor President Bush, the American government, the American taxpayers for $100 billion that has been put in this program over 20 years and saved lives," she told VOA.

She also said it was the partnerships that formed between PEPFAR, the Global Fund, UNAIDS, civil societies, governments and others that helped to turn the tide.

Former President of Tanzania Jakaya Kikwete, who joined Bush at the event and whom Bush referred to as his "pal," recalled getting tested publicly to encourage others who were afraid to come forward.

"I remember the 14 of July, 2007, we launched this major campaign at a big square in Dar es Salaam. … The best thing is for my wife and I to lead by example, and we should not do it under a tent where no one sees it. It would be under the tent, but let's have TV cameras beam in, blood being drawn, being taken to the labs. Of course, my veins were easy, but my wife's had some problems. They pricked her several times. … I was very sorry for her, but I said, 'That's the price of leadership.'"

Kikwete was the first African leader to do so, a gesture that Bush saluted at the event.

Fight continues

With a worldwide target of ending AIDS by 2030, stopping new infections is a must, especially given 2021 data, Byanyima said.

"We had 1.5 million infections worldwide, most of these in sub-Saharan Africa. We had 650 thousand people who died in 2021 of AIDS-related illnesses. Not one of those new infections, not one of those deaths had to happen, because we have everything we need for prevention and for putting people on treatment," she said.

She pointed out that new infections are being noticed among girls and women between the ages of 14 and 24, gay men, sex workers and young people who inject drugs.

"We know what needs to be done," Byanyima said.

"For girls and young women, we know it's about gender inequalities and opportunities to be in school where it's safe," she said. As for "gay men, transgender women, sex workers … it's the criminal laws that are in place that stop them from coming forth to get prevention or treatment services. We know from our evidence that these laws that are there do not serve any purpose."

THIRD WORLD U$A

Some Disabled People Are Paid Below Minimum Wage. This Bill Would End That.

A group of bipartisan senators and representatives introduced legislation last week that would end subminimum wages for disabled people.

Shruti Rajkumar
Mar 3, 2023,

A group of lawmakers in Congress is vying to end subminimum wages for disabled people, a policy that affects about 122,000 individuals nationwide.

The minimum wage for employees in the U.S. ranges from $7.25 to $15 per hour, and many activists are continuously fighting to increase that amount. But currently, some employers can pay disabled people far below state minimums, with many earning less than $3.50 an hour, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

On Feb. 27, a group of bipartisan senators and representatives reintroduced the Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act, which would end that practice.

“Paying workers less than the minimum wage is unacceptable. Everyone deserves to be paid a fair wage, and Americans with disabilities are no exception,” Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who led the legislative effort, said in a statement. “This commonsense, bipartisan bill would lift up people with disabilities by raising their wages and creating competitive jobs in workplaces that employ both workers with and without disabilities.”

Under Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers can apply for a certificate from the Department of Labor that would permit them to pay disabled employees below the minimum wage. The GAO reported that 1,567 employers did just that in 2019.

Disabled employees’ subminimum wages are determined by time trials that their employers administer every six months to compare their work output and productivity to that of non-disabled employees.

“For employees, there’s an extreme amount of stress. They’re being tested every six months, and if they don’t perform at a certain level, their pay is cut,” explained Jewelyn Cosgrove, vice president at the Washington, D.C., area disability nonprofit Melwood.

Tawana Freeman, a 52-year-old disabled woman, began working at Melwood in 1996, back when the nonprofit had a 14(c) certificate and paid subminimum wages to disabled employees. As a single mother of three children at the time, she remembers feeling immense pressure to perform well for the time trials every six months to avoid pay cuts.

“I was like ‘No, I can’t fail. I gotta prove myself, I gotta make them know that I’m worthy,’” Freeman told HuffPost.

Freeman said her pay was cut several times, forcing her to rely on her family and friends to help her pay her bills. She still works at Melwood, but no longer has to endure time trials and subminimum wages since the nonprofit voluntarily surrendered its Section 14(c) certificate in 2014 after becoming aware of its detrimental effect on disabled employees.

“Oh, I feel wonderful. I don’t have to ask anyone for money. I know what I’m getting … so I’m OK now,” Freeman said. “We feel normal, like we’re regular work people [who] go into work and get paid for our eight hours, and it feels wonderful.”

The History Of Subminimum Wages

Melwood President and CEO Larysa Kautz noted that for a long time, society saw disabled people as untrainable and unemployable. Disabled people, especially those with intellectual, cognitive and developmental disabilities, were seen as inferior because of the way their disabilities present themselves, and subminimum wages were used as an incentive for employers to hire them.

“[Section 14(c) is] an antiquated law that was put in place in the 1930s because frankly, nobody thought at that time that a person with a disability could do ‘real work,’” Kautz told HuffPost.

“It was well-intentioned. It was done because we as a society thought that no one would ever hire someone with a significant disability — or any disability, really, because it doesn’t have to be significant — unless there was an incentive for that employer to do so,” she continued.

Proponents of subminimum wages today believe they are the only choice for disabled people and that without them, these employees will lose their source of income, Kautz said.

But the landscape has changed drastically in the 21st century, with more employment opportunities and alternatives available than in 1938 when the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed.

The U.S. has seen tremendous improvements in assistive technology and other tools that can assist disabled people in the workplace over the past few decades. And in 2014, the Workforce Innovation Opportunities Act ensured that job-seekers — including disabled people — have access to employment, training and support services to help them succeed in the labor market.

“Being allowed to continue to rely on some of these old laws instead of moving into the future and into where we are currently doesn’t serve people with disabilities well. It just gives another reason to discriminate and set them aside and not try to find solutions and break down barriers,” Kautz said.

The Fight To Eliminate Subminimum Wages

There have been attempts to eliminate the subminimum wage for disabled people on a federal level. In July 2022, the AbilityOne federal program, which is one of the largest sources of employment for disabled people, eliminated the use of 14(c) subminimum wages within the program.

But the Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act, which was initially introduced in 2021, would have the broadest impact of any effort to end the subminimum wage.

Eliminating the discriminatory practice would help disabled people reach financial independence and engage in their communities more as they transition to competitive employment and integrated work environments.

The legislation currently has the bipartisan support of Sens. Casey and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.). Despite the bipartisan coalition for this bill, Cosgrove said she’s skeptical that the legislation will pass in the current political environment.

And if it doesn’t pass, it will be up to individual states to eliminate 14(c) certificates.

Some states have started to lean away from the 85-year-old law. According to the Association of People Supporting Employment First, 13 states in the U.S. have passed legislation to eliminate subminimum wages for disabled people, with legislation pending in Virginia and other states.

The GAO also found that between 2010 and 2019, the number of employers authorized under Section 14(c) to pay subminimum wages decreased by half. With a number of states eliminating 14(c) certificates amid this growing trend, Cosgrove believes the subminimum wage policy will be gone in the next five years.

“I think this policy is going to go away, and I think at some point, the political calculus of it being a problem to get rid of it is going to go away as well,” Cosgrove said.

REI Workers Form Union At Ohio Store
This marks the third REI outpost to unionize over the past year.

By Dave Jamieson
Mar 3, 2023

The RWDSU union accused REI of aggressive "union-busting" tactics.

Workers at an REI store near Cleveland voted 27-12 in favor of unionizing on Friday, adding more fuel to a labor organizing campaign at the national outdoor retailer.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union said it prevailed in the vote following a tally by the National Labor Relations Board. The company has a week to file any objections to the results.

The Ohio election marks the third union victory at an REI outpost over the past year, following other votes in New York City and Berkeley, California. The Cleveland store, which is in the suburb of Orange, employs around 55 workers who would be part of the union.

REI said in a statement that it “believes in the right of every eligible employee to vote for or against union representation.”

“We fully supported our Cleveland employees through the vote process and we will continue to support our employees going forward as they begin to navigate the collective bargaining process,” the company said.

RWDSU, however, said pro-union workers had endured “intimidating one-on-one meetings” with managers.

“They have stuck together through a horrendous, relentless, and unlawful union-busting campaign and have come out the other side stronger,” the union’s president, Stuart Appelbaum, said in a statement.

The union said its margin of victory in the election was greater than the results suggested, since the company challenged the eligibility of nine workers to cast ballots. Those ballots were not counted but likely would have favored the union, a spokesperson said.

REI, which is structured as a customer-owned cooperative, is one of a number of high-profile retailers whose workers have recently chosen to unionize amid a wave of organizing. Since late 2021, employees have formed the first U.S. unions at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and Trader Joe’s and are now trying to bargain their first contracts with those companies.

As with those other organizing campaigns, the share of REI’s workforce that has formed unions so far remains small. The Kent, Washington-based retailer has more than 160 locations and nearly 15,000 employees around the U.S.

Despite its progressive image on climate change and other issues, REI has not exactly rolled out a welcome mat for the union. When the New York organizing drive got underway, the retailer released a widely shared podcast that warned that a union could “impact our ability to communicate and work directly with our employees.”

In February, the REI workers in Ohio walked off the job on an “unfair labor practice” strike, accusing the company of trying to delay the upcoming election and surveilling pro-union workers. REI soon agreed to terms for a vote, and workers returned to their jobs.

‘Jesus Christ Superstar’: Ted Neeley on playing Jesus for 50 years

Fifty years after being cast in 'Jesus Christ Superstar,' his name is nearly synonymous with Jesus of Nazareth for fans of the 1973 film.

Ted Neeley as Jesus of Nazareth in the 1973 film, “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures

March 3, 2023

Kathryn Post

(RNS) — In the early 1970s, Ted Neeley was a 20-something rock ‘n’ roll drummer from Texas who never imagined he’d be known for playing the son of God. But 50 years later, his name is nearly synonymous with Jesus of Nazareth for fans of the 1973 film, “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

In 1971, Neeley was cast on Broadway as the Jesus understudy in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s legendary rock opera. Despite mixed reviews (Webber himself called the production vulgar), the propulsive energy of the electric guitar-driven soundtrack and the attention of religious protesters cemented the show as a cultural phenomenon. In 1973, Norman Jewison’s movie version starred Ted Neeley and earned him and two other cast members Golden Globe nominations.

Neeley has played the role on and off ever since.

In a recent call with Religion News Service, Neeley estimated he’d sung the song “Gethsemane” — a climactic number requiring a rock scream that hits G above high C — well over a thousand times.

“Every time I get to sing it, it’s a new experience. I can feel the audience,” said Neeley, now 79. “Every time that I go on stage, I feel I’m in the middle of a magnificent miracle.”

In honor of the film’s 50th anniversary, Neeley and other movie cast members are hosting film screenings of “Jesus Christ Superstar” in theaters across the U.S. Though he’s seen the film more times than he can count, “I always see something new every time we show it,” he told RNS.

Neeley spoke to RNS about performing the show on Broadway, getting cast in the film and how the role changed his life. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Do you remember the first time you took the stage to play Jesus? What was that experience like for you?

Oh yes. It was terrifying. The way it was staged, the director had built what looks like a little triangular mountain, so that the audience could see each person’s face around Jesus during his speech for “The Last Supper.” And it was set up so that I had to be able to be on my knees on that while I was singing “Gethsemane,” which came after. The show went beautifully up to that point. And I sang “Gethsemane,” and I was just amazed because the audience went crazy. And during this applause, I slid down the little mountain onto the floor! And then the audience stopped for a moment. And then this laughter started. And I got up and they applauded again. There were little things that happened like that throughout every performance I’ve done. It’s something that is wonderful. And it actually helps me be able to carry that character the way it’s supposed to be.

Can you talk about the reception to the show when it was first on Broadway?

It was in the ’70s, and we were playing at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York City on Broadway. And every performance, when we went to the theater, they were protesting outside the building. They were doing everything they could to stop us from going into the theater to perform the show. I would say to them, “pardon me, sir or ma’am. If you’ve not seen the show, what is it about the show that you don’t like?” They’d say, “It’s terrible. It’s anti-religious. We hear that Jesus sings. Jesus didn’t sing.” Finally I would say, “Well, please forgive me. But would you come into the theater and watch the show tonight as my guest? After the show, I’ll come out and we will talk about it. You can tell me what you don’t like, and maybe we can change that.” Immediately their expressions changed to, would you really do that? I said “Yes. Because we’re here to entertain you, not to offend you.” Well, after the show, I would go out and there would be people there. The minute I opened the door they literally would go, “We love your show. It’s wonderful!” So basically what happened was the protesting audience was promoting the show because there was always TV coverage of the crowd at that theater on Broadway.

How did you get into character when you were preparing to play Jesus?

I was born and raised in a very tiny Texas town, less than 2,000 people were in the population. And the real source of entertainment was our churches. I was singing in the church choir as well. So I realized later on, I was doing research during my childhood to be able to present this character when I got to be an adult. And of course I studied as much as I could through Tim Rice’s lyrics for all the songs.

Ted Neeley as Jesus of Nazareth in the 1973 film, “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures

I was going for what I learned as a child in church, the man who saved the world and died for that. I did everything I possibly could to present my personal feelings of worshipping Jesus on the stage each night. And it was all music. There’s no dialogue in it at all. And I did whatever I could to present what ministers had taught me as a child and what I maintained in belief for my adulthood.

How did you land the role of Jesus in the film?

Norman Jewison flew Carl (Anderson) and myself to London for a screen test there at Pinewood Studios. Mr. Jewison told us, “You know, I was going for the movie stars because we wanted to have people come and see this movie with the biggest stars I could get. Everybody’s telling me nobody wants to see a rock opera in a movie. But when I saw you and Carl do your screen test together, there was something about the two of you that made me realize if I had named stars playing the characters, they’d be watching the named stars play the characters. But with you, it would be Jesus and Judas.” We were completely unknown.

What was it like transitioning from performing the show onstage to being the lead in the film?

The visionary director Norman Jewison, who produced and wrote the screenplay and directed the film, could have taken it to any desert anywhere. But he chose to take all of us to Israel to the Dead Sea area of the Negev Desert, so that we could feel the true atmosphere of where it all happened while we were making the film. And I have to say he could not have been more correct. No matter where we were, we were walking in someone’s footsteps. If that’s not enough, while we were there, making the film in Israel, I met the beautiful lady who became my wife. She’s a principal dancer in the film, you can see her everywhere, the beautiful brunette. And if you’ve seen the film, the Simon number, you know where they go, (singing) “Christ you know I love you. Did you see I waved?” She’s the lady who does all those high balletic kicks that they freeze frame on in that song. Honestly, being in this film gave me a life completely.

What do you mean by that?

Well, because I met my wife. I’ve been doing “Jesus Christ Superstar” off and on now for 50 years. It gave me a life. We have two children, they are grown up. And I’m still concerned with being able to present the character properly. And yet every performance that we do, people just go crazy. And it’s not just here in America, we’ve been in other countries as well. We were invited to Rome in 2014 to celebrate their 20th anniversary of doing it in Rome every year for Easter and Christmas. They wanted me to come over and be Jesus in that production. And we still are going back over there. When they opened the theaters once again in Rome after they closed due to the pandemic, they were only getting approximately 40% attendance. So the director called me and said, “Ted, can you come back over? I’d like to do a three month test tour to see if people will come see ‘Superstar.'” So we went over, and no matter where we went, it was sold out completely. So it’s amazing. After all this time people still come see this as if it’s the most wonderful show they’ve ever seen.

Do you ever get tired of performing it?

The “Gethsemane” song, literally, I have done so many times. And every time I get to sing it, it’s a new experience. When we begin the show each night, you know, the curtains are down, and the audience is coming in. When the show starts, the first thing you hear is the guitar lick. (vocalizing)

And the minute that happens, you can feel this rush of positive energy from the audience to the stage. And it’s a circle turning, that rush from the audience to us, from us back to them throughout the entire show. It happens every performance.