The perseverance of Opal Lee: The 'grandmother' of Juneteenth shares a lesson for today

At 98 years old, Opal Lee is still spreading a message of 
patience and love. (Photo by Shayan Asgharnia, TX Monthly)

As a child, she went to school and spent her summers working near Texarkana. Her first job was taking care of the slop jars. As an adult, she raised four children, paid for her college education, and became a teacher.

But at age 89, she set a goal. That goal would send her walking and talking to all sorts of people. She even met with U.S. presidents. And in 2021, she became the "grandmother of Juneteenth," reports Hanif Abdurraqib for Texas Monthly. But Opal Lee isn't finished. At 98 years old, she still believes she has work to do.

The story of why Opal Lee decided to make Juneteenth her life's legacy began in Marshall, Texas, when she was 12 years old. Her family bought a house "on East Annie Street in the Historic Southside neighborhood of Fort Worth," Abdurraqib writes. "On the night of June 19, 1939, a white mob gathered, demanding that the family leave. Lee and her brothers took refuge at a friend’s house a few blocks away while her parents fled under cover of darkness. The mob trashed the home and set it on fire."

When Lee watched President Joe Biden sign Juneteenth into a federal holiday, some might say her work was finished. Abdurraqib explains, "She had actually done the thing she’d set out to do. She’d taken an inciting moment of rage and grief and dedicated her life to healing the wound it had created. … But Lee, who has lived through, endured, and fought for so much … has something unique to offer in an era of renewed crisis."

Lee's tenacity and spirit have led her to change many lives, but her advice is simple: Patience. "The road is long, and you travel on it because the alternative is untenable," Abdurraqib writes. "And you do whatever you can along the way, and you hope some people will maybe join you."

Lee's travels brought her home. She lives in a house built on her family's East Annie Street plot. Abdurraqib adds, "On the front door is a purple wreath. In the center of the wreath is a quote from Lee herself: 'If people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love.'" 

Lee's background in Texas meant she was introduced to Juneteenth celebrations early in life. It was part of the region's culture. Once the day became a national holiday, its celebrations and somber remembrances joined together to make the day especially meaningful for black Americans. PBS offers a "beginners guide" for Juneteenth here. 

Opinion: Addressing white rural rage may mean using a broader scope of understanding and asking better questions

The book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman has continued to stir debate. The Rev. Daniel Schultz shares his insights on the book's controversial themes in his opinion for Raw Story. An excerpt of his opinion is shared below. To read his entire opinion, click here.

To begin with, the book faces two primary objections. "First, Schaller and Waldman may have misrepresented or misunderstood scholarship on the rural context. Second, their thesis — that white rural voters pose a unique threat to American democracy — may be overstated and undersupported.

"I've known of Schaller and Waldman's work for a long time and know Tom himself at least a little. So, I was surprised to see the vehemence and breadth of the pushback on the new book. I was equally surprised to see other folks I know strongly defend their thesis. The authors got their own word in at The New Republic."

Natilyn Photography image, Unsplash

It's time to consider that rural voters may be voting for race. "While I was groping around for what I did want to say, Noah Berlatsky ... just went ahead and nailed it: 'Democrats struggle not with rural voters in general, but with white rural voters in particular. And white rural voters do not vote for the GOP because they are rural. They vote for the GOP because they are white.'

"That's pretty much it. As one scholar argues, if you control for other factors, the difference between rural and urban voting patterns essentially disappears. Race is a much stronger predictor than things like income, religion or place of residence."

Social life and an unwillingness to 'rock the boat' motivate rural voters. "There is one factor particular to rural areas that deserves consideration before we look at potential answers to the 'rural problem.' Rural folks traditionally don't move around as much as city folks. Deep roots feed social capital through rich networks of relations, neighbors and friends. . . . But those same roots provide lots of incentives not to rock the social boat."

"There's a need to start asking better questions. "I don't say these things to valorize or demonize rural areas. It's just that knowing them helps us to ask the right questions. . . . The usual hot take is that they've been hoodwinked by Republicans into voting on culture rather than cold hard cash. But that doesn't give them much credit. They're not fools." 

"Democrats and progressives will need to do a lot less writing off rural districts as hopeless and a lot more intentional work on developing solidarity with them. . . . It would help if there were a leftwing media ecosystem to push the good news coming out of those developments."

'Try that in a Small Town' a missed opportunity, small-towner writes; W. Post writer calls it 'a fantasy of violent retribution'

Jason Aldean in 'Try That in a Small Town' (YouTube)

Either from their lyrics, curious catchiness or infectious beat, some songs and accompanying videos can bring people together. Jason Aldean's latest song 'Try That in a Small Town" isn't that sort of tune, writes Skylar Baker-Jordan in an opinion piece for The Daily Yonder.

"Jason Aldean broke onto the country scene in 2005 with his top 10 hit 'Hicktown.' Subsequent songs, such as 'Amarillo Sky' (about the plight of farmers) and 'Flyover States' (an ode to the heartland) cemented his reputation as a preeminent troubadour for rural America," Bakr-Jordan writes. "So how did his latest offering, 'Try That in a Small Town,' get it so wrong?"

The song dropped quietly enough in May. The video followed on July 14. "The backlash was swift and severe, with Country Music Television pulling the video mere days after it debuted. . . . Lyrics like 'cuss out a cop, spit in his face/stomp on the flag and light it up, Yeah, ya think you're tough,' Aldean and the songwriters position big cities as crime-ridden hellholes where people 'Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store.' In a small town, though, you can 'see how far ya make it down the road' because 'round here, we take care of our own.'" (The gun angle is explored here.)

Taking care of neighbors is great, but the lyric implies that rural areas are more kind, Baker-Jordan writes: "By pitting urban versus rural, he is not so much extolling the values he grew up with as he is exacerbating the divide already present in our nation. Rather than acknowledging that crime – which happens in rural communities too – is the problem, he blames cities." (Republican presidential candidates are playing the song at events, NBC News reports.)

The video's major location is "a courthouse where an infamous lynching occurred in 1927," but "the production company behind the video denies this was intentional," Baker-Jordan reports. But it "only adds to the problematic nature of the song," which "excludes people of color. . . . Black people live in small towns. Gay people live in small towns. Progressives live in small towns. They have never been the sole purview of conservative white men like Aldean." UPDATE, July 25: Black Lives Matter images in the video have been removed.

Columnist Paul Waldman of The Washington Post calls the video "a fantasy of violent retribution against outsiders — those who would bring the supposed lawlessness of the city to the small town. . . . Were it not for Aldean’s recent political feuds with other artists and the provocation in the video, the song might have simply been cast on the gigantic pile of country songs about small towns. There might be no theme more ubiquitous in the genre: what makes rural life worthwhile, what people in rural areas enjoy and how they live their lives. Some of this music is earnest — even sentimental — about finding pride and meaning in the place where you come from."

That's the sort of song Baker-Jordan wishes Aldean would write. She calls the song "a missed opportunity. . . . Aldean could have produced an anthem that extolled the values of neighborliness and collectivism, which I would agree our nation needs to return to. . . . [Instead] Aldean recorded an anthem dripping with disdain for half the country and filmed a music video at a site of a racist hate crime. . . . I don’t come away from that song feeling like he cares about me. I come away from it feeling like he’s attacking me. And I’m from a small town, too."

Even in death, the Rev. Tim Keller challenges Christians to think broadly and widely – and to not blend politics and faith

Keller’s passing leaves a void.
(Photograph by José A. Alvarado Jr, Redux)

How can we begin to fix a world so fractured? The life, faith-filled words and writings of the late pastor Tim Keller, who died at 72 Friday, may provide a "blueprint" of what healing might look like, suggests Michael Luo in The New Yorker. He says Keller was "perhaps the most gifted communicator of historically orthodox Christian teachings in the country," and in The New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks calls him "one of the most important theologians and greatest preachers of our time," two things that rarely coincide. 

Luo recalls a visit to Keller's Redeemer Presbyterian Church when he was the Times' religion reporter: "He stood well over six feet tall. . . . His mannerisms and tone were that of an English professor. With a sheaf of notes on a music stand, he preached a thoughtful disquisition on Jesus' healing of a paralyzed man, drawing on readings from C. S. Lewis, the Village Voice, and the George MacDonald fairy tale The Princess and the Goblin." Brooks recalls, "Tim could draw on a vast array of intellectual sources to argue for the existence of God, to draw piercing psychological insights from the troubling parts of Scripture or to help people through moments of suffering."

Keller had a résumé that resembled that of perhaps no other Christian minister in America. "Early in his career he pastored a church in the small town of Hopewell, Va., where only 5 percent of the high school graduates went on to college," Brooks notes. Luo reports, "In the late 1980s, officials with the Presbyterian Church in America, a relatively young denomination based in a suburb of Atlanta, began searching for a pastor to start a congregation in Manhattan. . . . Only after two other candidates also declined did he agree to take the job. His limited preaching experience in a small-town church in the Bible Belt made him an unlikely fit for New York City. Within three years of its founding, however, Redeemer had swelled from 50 people to 1,000. By the mid-aughts, it had become a beacon, around the world, for pastors interested in ministering to cosmopolitan audiences." By 2017, it "had more than 5,000 worshippers across multiple services every Sunday, making it one of the largest Protestant churches in New York City. Keller also was a best-selling author, publishing more than twenty books, including 2008's The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, and writing regularly for major publications such as the Times, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker."

Keller avoided blending religious teaching and politics, Luo reports: "In a 2017 Times op-ed, Keller explained that he had come of age in the early '70s, when 'the word evangelical still meant an alternative to the fortress mentality of fundamentalism.' But the meaning of the term had changed radically, no longer describing a set of historic Christian doctrines. 'Evangelical used to denote people who claimed the high moral ground,' he wrote. 'Now, in popular usage, the word is nearly synonymous with hypocrite.'. . . He expressed optimism for a future shaped not by white evangelicalism, whose core was aging and declining, but by a more diverse, global cadre of leaders who defied political categorization." In a later Times op-ed, he warned that Christian faith should never be aligned with a single political party."

So now, as the prophet Isaiah quoted God, the question is "Whom shall I send?" Keller left some words to live by, including a farewell essay in The Atlantic. "One of his final projects, completed earlier this year, was an 83-page white paper called "The Decline and Renewal of the American Church," Luo reports. "It offers a wide-ranging set of prescriptions for what he viewed as the profound afflictions of the evangelical movement. . . . The document is an exhaustive blueprint, but the question now is who will carry it out. Keller's passing leaves a void in the nascent movement to reform evangelicalism, and today's social and political currents make the prospects for change seem dim. . . . Keller observed that, in the past, significant revival movements in Europe and North America often began with 'pace-setting individuals'––in other words, people like Keller. Yet he was careful to add that 'ultimately no one can control' what would capture the imagination, fortify the spirit, and become 'an organic, significant movement.' In his view, this was the role of the divine."

Substations beware: 'Accelerationists' see power grid attacks as way to create chaos, end contemporary society

Photo from TPM via Getty Images

If all forces result from interactions, the cross-mix of technology and capitalism has supporters and haters. Hunter Walker describes one of the latter in Talking Points Memo: "The first chapter of the black-and-white PDF magazine begins with an ominous warning. Over four dense pages, the anonymous writers paint a picture of 'an anti-tech revolution, beginning with the annihilation of the U.S. energy grid,'"  "'Hospitals would fail. . . the collapse of the system. . . . chaos, agony, and death.' . . . Along with a depiction of a widespread blackout, it included a precise list of the locations of 'The Most Critically Important Electric Substations in the U.S.'"

Walker writes, "This apocalyptic brand of extremist rhetoric — and the focus, specifically, on targeting substations — is part of a growing phenomenon . . . . Experts have attributed the wave to the digital spread of right-wing accelerationist ideology, which aims to hasten societal collapse. . . . It is easy to dismiss these writings as digital bluster, but law enforcement and academic experts have repeatedly attributed the frightening online rhetoric to the real-world rise in assaults on power stations."

Over the past 10 years, the pairing of anti-capitalism ideologies with an actionable plan has evolved. "The electric grid has increasingly come into the crosshairs since an April 2013 sniper attack on a Pacific Gas and Electric substation in Metcalf, California," Walker reports. "Since then, the idea of shooting attacks on the power grid has gained traction. . . . The proliferation of extremist materials online is a challenge for law enforcement. According to the Department of Homeland Security, there are over 79,000 substations that play a vital part in the nation's electrical grid. Many are in remote locations and are privately owned, which means they have varying standards for security."

"Relatively simple shooting attacks from far-right white supremacist terrorists have emerged as a major threat to the grid," Walker writes. "Thirteen individuals associated with the white supremacist movement faced federal charges related to 'planning attacks on the energy sector' between 2016 and 2022, according to a report from the George Washington University Program on Extremism. . . There is a consensus among federal law enforcement agencies that white supremacists have become the top domestic terror threat."

Michael Edison Hayden, spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, told Walker, "Thinking about how the power lines function. . . it is the central nervous system of contemporary society, and that's why it's so important to accelerationists. . . . As they see it ... the system that is oppressing them cannot function … without power. . . . Things around gender and sexuality right now are animating extremists on the right more than race. . . . That reverberates from the White House when Trump was there all the way down to accelerationist cells." Walker adds, "White supremacists are not the only adherents of accelerationism. There are anarchists and some on the far left who could be described as accelerationists."

Conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod may respond to white nationalists by excommunicating them

Rev. Matthew Harrison (Photo by Erik M. Lunsford, LCMS)

"This is evil. We condemn it in the name of Christ." So said the Rev. Matthew Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, in calling for the excommunication of unrepentant white supremacists in the church’s ranks.

Amid congregational disturbances and online threats to church leadership, Harrison is "rebuking an extremist effort to exert influence within the conservative Lutheran denomination," report Jack Jenkins and Emily McFarlan Miller of Religion News Service. "In a recent letter . . . Harrison said he was 'shocked to learn recently that a few members of LCMS congregations have been propagating radical and un-Christian views via Twitter and other social media . . . . He noted far-right members were causing 'local disruption' for congregations and alleged that LCMS leadership and deaconesses had fallen victim to online threats."

Merriam-Webster defines "alt-right" as "a right-wing, primarily online political movement or grouping based in the U.S. whose members reject mainstream conservative politics and espouse extremist beliefs and policies typically centered on ideas of white nationalism." In his letter, Harrison adds a more detailed view. "Harrison went on to rebuke the 'horrible and racist teachings of the so-called ‘alt-right,’" listing ideologies such as "white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, death for homosexuals, even genocide," RNS reports. "He noted that while the LCMS is 'not a top-down institution,' he would work with local pastors and district presidents 'to address this matter wherever it arises among us and reject it.' Citing Scripture, he called on those spewing hateful ideologies to repent."

RNS explains, "The letter comes in the wake of an article published this month by anti-fascist group Machaira Action alleging the 'rise of a white supremacist faction within the Lutheran faith.' The post singled out Corey Mahler, who has reportedly been active in far-right circles and has posted about whiteness and 'white genocide' on Twitter. Mahler also identifies as a Christian nationalist. . . .
Asked whether Mahler would be excommunicated, a representative for the church he allegedly attends in Tennessee said the matter was being handled internally but declined to comment further."

Harrison's letter also addresses "a recent controversy over a new edition of Luther’s Large Catechism," RNS reports. "Earlier this year, the president asked Concordia Publishing House, the denomination’s publishing partner, to pause distribution . . .  citing an 'online disturbance.'" The disturbances came in the form of Amazon reviews of the new edition. "A one-star review complains, 'Women, forbidden from teaching according to Scripture, are afforded extensive opportunities to do just that in this sorry compilation.'. . . Others slam the accompanying essays as 'woke' and accuse them of promoting pedophilia."

In response to the harsh reviews, Harrison responded with a written update. “I have had time to re-evaluate the controverted sentences and found that while some things might have been expressed more clearly, nevertheless, there is nothing in the content of the volume promoting critical race theory, confusion of sexuality issues, or any theological position at odds with biblical and confessional Lutheranism."

FBI offers rewards on top of those N.C. officials offered for intel on substation saboteurs; security a national concern

Rural substations are particularly vulnerable.
(Photo by Kate Medley, The New York Times)

The FBI is offering $25,000 apiece "for information that leads to the arrest of whoever shot up two electric substations in North Carolina on Dec. 3." Soon after the incidents, "A $75,000 reward was posted jointly by the Moore County Sheriff’s Office, the state and county governments for . . . information 'leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible'," Jonathan Bym reports for The Pilot in Southern Pines, N.C. "Along with the attacks in Moore County that left approximately 45,000 Duke Energy customers without power, a shooting that occurred in Randolph County that damaged an EnergyUnited substation in the western part of the county on Jan. 17 is also being investigated by the FBI."

"The authorities have not arrested anyone or identified any motive," reports Michael Levenson of The New York Times. "Over the last three months, at least nine substations have been attacked in North Carolina, Washington State and Oregon, cutting power to tens of thousands. . . . After those attacks, federal regulators ordered a review of security standards for the electrical system. . . . John Wellinghoff, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said that smaller substations in rural areas remain protected by little more than chain-link fencing, security cameras and lighting. That leaves them vulnerable to rifle attacks. . . . Larger plots against a 'finite number' of substations nationwide, which, if disabled, would knock out power in half the country." Wellinghoff pointed out, "Lives are at stake," because of threats to heating and medical equipment.

Attack motivations could be a complex blend. Lewis reports: "From 2016 to 2022, white-supremacist plots targeting energy systems 'dramatically increased in frequency,' according to a study released in September by researchers at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. The study attributed the targeting of the energy sector to the rise of 'accelerationism,' a term white supremacists have adopted to describe their desire to hasten the collapse of society. . . . While most of the warnings have focused on right-wing extremists, a man who was convicted of firing a rifle at a Utah substation in 2016 told a confidential witness that he wanted to 'destroy industrial capitalism.'"

Manny Cancel, chief executive of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a clearinghouse for information about threats against the electrical system, told Lewis that cyberattacks were more likely to cause widespread outages than guns and explosives. Cancel noted to Lewis: “I do think there is a level of protection, of resilience, that’s built into the grid." The question is “Is there more that we should do?”

 

UPDATE, Feb. 7: Two Neo-Nazis, including the founder of Atomwaffen, have been accused of plotting an attack on the Maryland power grid, report Rachel Weiner, Jasmine Hilton and Dan Morse of The Washington Post. "The charges come amid a spate of sabotage targeting power stations across the country. . . . Most of the cases remain unsolved, but authorities and experts say they follow increased interest among white supremacists in targeting electric infrastructure."

Human-rights group names 900 Republican state legislators in 'far right' groups, but that adjective doesn't fit some

"Nearly 22 percent of Republican state lawmakers nationwide have joined at least one far-right Facebook group, according to a new survey by an advocacy group that tracks bigotry and attacks on democracy," Daniela Altimari reports for Route Fifty. "The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights found 875 legislators representing all 50 states who have joined white-nationalist, paramilitary, QAnon, anti-immigrant, 'Stop the Steal' or other groups tied to the far right. The Facebook groups that the report focuses on are active on a range of issues, and not all of them embrace racist or nationalist ideologies." The listings also include organizations such as Right to Life, No Left Turn in Education and groups opposing mask mandates.

The report examined all 7,383 state legislators who served in 2021-22. Three Democratic legislators joined such groups, but no Libertarian or independent lawmakers had. For the purposes of the report, the IREHR defined "far right" groups as "those advocating for changes that would significantly undermine political, social and/or economic equality along class, racial, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, immigration status or religious lines, Altimari reports.

Rural Arizona district's senator cashes in on shift to the far right, becomes a face of her party's 'radicalized wing'

Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers of Arizona has found fundraising success in espousing extremist political views. Her trajectory shows how political and financial incentives may sway some politicians to cater to conspiracist beliefs with inflammatory populist rhetoric, The Washington Post reports.

She could also be a sign of things to come: the latest round of redistricting made many districts safer, so Republicans may increasingly get challenged from the right, The New York Times reports.

Wendy Rogers
(AP photo by Ross Franklin)

Rogers, 67, made a splash on the national scene after a speech in late February at a white nationalist conference in Orlando. She called for graphic violence against "traitors" to make examples of them and called the coronavirus vaccine a "bioweapon," report Beth Reinhard and Rosalind Helderman of the Post.

The Arizona Senate voted 24-3 to censure Rogers after the speech, but she criticized "elites" for trying to silence her and has refused to apologize. Rogers "has found a rising national profile as a face of the radicalized wing of the GOP," the Post reports. Her "trajectory shows the political and financial incentives of going to extremes. After losing her earliest races as a mainstream Republican, she moved further and further right until she beat an incumbent by campaigning as the more conservative choice. Now, after a year of fanning bogus allegations about election fraud and other false claims, she is the most successful fundraiser in the Arizona state legislature."

Her increasingly extreme views gained her a re-election endorsement from former President Donald Trump and attention from his supporters, but she hasn't always taken such stances. The retired U.S. Air Force pilot ran and lost five times for state House and Senate seats with more centrist messaging that promoted her as a veteran, small-business owner and mother of two, the Post reports. Then in 2020 she essentially district-shopped her way into qualifying to run in the more conservative, more rural area around Flagstaff.

"Republicans who have watched Rogers over the past decade wonder if her views have changed or if she is merely opportunistic. Either way, Rogers’s MAGA-charged rants helped her achieve a long-elusive victory at the polls," the Post reports. "Her shift to the far right has coincided with an outpouring of grass-roots, small donors. Nearly 40,000 individuals contributed to her campaign last year, of which only a handful gave the $5,300 maximum. That means Rogers can keep dipping into this large pool of donors in 2022."

Rogers has made election reform her signature issue, promoting the false claim that Trump lost Arizona in 2020 because of vote fraud. She has sponsored a dozen voting-related bills that experts said would wreck the electoral process and other state Republicans said they couldn't endorse, Reinhard and Helderman report. The bills won't pass, but Rogers is arguably measuring success in attention and fundraising, not how many bills pass or what they do.