As I write, the visit of the Klu Klux Klan is about a week behind me, and I am about to leave Charlottesville for two weeks of vacation. (My family and I are driving up to Maine to visit for the first time since we all left more than a decade ago.) Bu the time you read this I’ll be back, and we – individually, as a congregation, and as a city – will be getting ready for the “Unite the Right” rally, which will then be a couple of weeks away. Folks are already predicting that this will be a memorable time in our personal and collective histories – “the Summer of 2017.”
There are people asking, “how did we get here?” Charlottesville has always seemed like an oasis in a sea of intolerance – a blue island in a red sea. Our congregation, our Unitarian Universalist Association, was solid in our commitment to undoing racism, and, as we say in our Mission Statement, having, “a lasting influence on local, national and global programs that promote equity and end oppression.” From our liberal/progressive haven, we were “fighting the good fight,” and we were seeing signs of success.
Then there was the election of 2016, and all hell seemed to break loose. The country became unrecognizable, and even our city seemed fractured in a way we’d never known it to be. Our own beloved Association was challenged to wrestle with its own participation in, and perpetuation of, the systems and structures of the dominant white supremacy culture. We wrestled with it within our own walls – and hearts – as well. And suddenly, it seemed, there were torch-carrying rallies beneath the statue of Robert E. Lee … and then the Klan came to stand with “Stonewall” Jackson. Seemingly out of nowhere, our haven, our island, our oasis, our Charlottesville became a place of pilgrimage for the alt-right, a battleground in the struggle for the soul of our nation. So people are asking, “how did we ever get here?”
Or, rather, some people are asking that. Leia has a sign on her door that asks “which ‘we’ are we talking about?,” because often – perhaps even most of the time – when something is said about “we,” about “us,” and it is said by a person who identifies or is identified as white, that “we” is primarily about folks who look more or less like us. We have been surprised by the raw ugliness of the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of our country. We have been shocked to see the racial divide within our city. We have been stunned by the idea that our institutions’ practices are patterned on the culture of white supremacy (even though it is the culture “in which we all swim”). We – those of us who identify or are identified as white – wonder how we got here. People of Color wonder how it took us so long to notice.
Yet whether where we find ourselves is a surprise or a reflection of a daily, lived reality, this is where we are. Two weeks before I’m writing this, 40 or so Klansman came to Charlottesville and were met by more than 1,000 people voicing their opposition; in about two weeks from when you read this, an expected 400 or so white supremacists from around the country are descending on our city, and they’ll be met by … at this point I have no idea. I am certain, though, that they will be met, that people won’t stay away, and that not everyone who will come out to meet them will have “peace and love” foremost in their hearts, their minds, or their mouths. I am fairly certain that there will be violence of at least a vocal, verbal kind. I expect there will be incidents of other kinds of violence as well.
There will also no doubt be confusion. “Chaos” may be a better word for it. It will be hard to discern who is who and what is what. Case in point – the day before I sat down to write this column the local Black Lives Matter group posted a photograph of me at the KKK rally, praising me, saying, “Rev. Wik stood in front of these two Confederate dudes who were trying to enter in the Klan pen to join their white supremacist friends. Rev. Wik just stood there, wouldn’t let ’em through.” Yet that’s not what happened. That is a misunderstanding both of who and what those two men (and their wives) were there to do, and what I did.
A group from with the Charlottesville Clergy Collective response volunteered to wander around Justice Park and serve as de-escalation intervention teams. I was teamed with Heather and Shannon Garrett Redmond, and if you ever need to go into a tense situation let me recommend going there with these two women. Before the clan arrived we noticed these four individuals, the men wearing confederate flag hats, and noticed that others had seen them, too. Soo, a crowd I estimated to have been at least 100 people strong, had surrounded these four, hurling invectives at them loudly, violently. There wasn’t just anger and rage in their voices, though – both of which I would not only have expected but would, if anyone particularly cared for my opinion, have said were absolutely justified and appropriate. I felt bone-chilling hatred being directed from, as I said, at least one hundred people toward these four. Shannon, Heather, and I put ourselves between the crowd and the couples. When someone started shouting at me the question, “Why are you protecting them?” I responded, “I’m not. I’m protecting love.”
We were also trying to convince these four that this wasn’t the time nor the place to press their cause. It turns out that they were not there wanting to “join their white supremacist friends.” I, personally, would identify their “support of southern history” as part of the white supremacist agenda, they themselves said they were there to protest the clan. They believed that there is, in their hearts at least, a distinction between their “love” of the south and the brutal bigotry of the Klan. That is a philosophical and political perspective that can certainly be debated. (I, myself, would be on the side of those who said that if there is a distinction it is only one of degree, not of kind.) Nonetheless, in that moment I was not there, standing firm, preventing a small group of racists from joining a larger group. I was there, as I said, trying to demonstrate my support for Love.
On August 12th we all – of whatever race, gender, class; as individuals, as a congregation, and as a city – will find ourselves facing a situation of righteous anger, violence of various kinds, and great confusion. The plans for the response(s) to that day are still in the works as I write. I guess that they will still be at least somewhat in flux as you read this. And, as I said in my sermon before the Klan’s rally, I cannot tell you what the “right” way to respond will be. As with so much else, our faith tradition trusts us to listen to our innermost selves to discern the truth as we can best understand it at any point in time. Yet both our Unitarian Universalist faith, and the Unitarian and Universalist traditions that gave it birth, are unyielding in their commitment to Love.
I hope that in this “Summer of 2017” you have been able to experience examples of that Spirit of Love (which is known by so many names yet which is, of course, by no name fully known). I hope, too, and perhaps even more, that you have had opportunities to be a living channel for that Love and, so, to have provided examples of it to others.
Pax tecum, friends …
RevWik