From Nazis and confederates to hate groupsFrom Nazis and confederates to hate groups

We need to set higher standards if we are to have a future on Earth

I have been moved by the book Conductor by Caleb Franz, which is the story of a brave man named John Rankin who deserves a higher recognition for his historic importance. For many he was the father of abolition. The man who was instrumental in the Underground Railroad, the preacher who told other preachers that justification of slavery was not okay. It was not alright for the preachers to ignore the brutality and the violence at the heart of the slave trade. No person was better off as a slave. No justification was acceptable for people who would buy sell and abuse other human beings.

Reverend Rankin saw through the hypocrisy. He saw how some preachers chose to keep their parish and avoid attack by justifying slavery. But Rankin, who came from Tennessee, had a parish in Kentucky, ended up in Ohio in the town of Ripley where his home would be a beacon across the Ohio River for the Underground Railroad. He had seen the evil of slavery; he was not impacted by the lies and the statements that justified the crime. Just as we cannot let the narrative change around the holocaust, the Nazi’s, the confederate secession, the January 6 insurrection or the Epstein pedophiles.

Rankin knew the constitution said all men were created equal – not men of a certain color. He put himself, his family, his parish in jeopardy because the racists wanted the white man to be supreme in everyway even though their behavior put them on the lowest rung of humanity. Rankin was attacked, his family was attacked, but he would not back down.

At the same time Elijah P Lovejoy was murdered in Alton, IL and his press destroyed because, like today’s Republicans, the racists could not stand a free press and freedom of speech. It was a risk that was taken by the abolitionists – and it is a term that is not adequate – they wanted to abolish slavery, but they stood for so much more, like the protestors in todays invasion of American Cities by ICE, by trump, by racists, and narcissists who do not want a free speech , who want to manipulate the media, and intimidate those who have higher values and care about the planet and all its inhabitants.

On the 80^th anniversary of American Independence William Lloyd Garrison another voice for freedom who desired the end of slavery printed in his newspaper – The Liberator – “Slave hunting at the point of the bayonet – civil liberty prostrate before military despotism – Massachusetts in chains, and her subjugation absolute – the days of 1776 returned.” It does not take much to recognize the parallels and the need for actions.

Our nation has struggled with its most basic principle since we began. The refusal to stand up to slavery, to the racism of the Indian Removal and the Trail of Tears, Bloody Kansas, Dred Scott, Caning of Charles Sumner, the Japanese interments, the Chinese exclusion acts, the KKK and other organizations fighting reconstruction, the Jim Crow laws, fugitive slave act, the Nebraska Act, the Mexican American War, Civil War, the Tulsa Massacre, The Wilmington massacre of 1898, the civil rights conflicts, racial profiling, the fights over DEI – it does not stop. We have been a nation in civil war since the beginning and thus we can never sell out our values. We must continue to fight for what is right.

We lost another brave champion who saw value in all life and lifeforms - Jane Goodall is gone, but her inspiration is not – think about these quotes:

“The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.”

“What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

“Caring for others, whether human or animals, is what makes us fully human.”

“Hope does not deny evil but is a response to it.”

“Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion.”

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”

Here the message she wanted us to have after she was gone: “You have it in your power to make a difference. Don’t give up. There is a future for you. Do your best while you’re still on this beautiful Planet Earth that I look down upon from where I am now. God bless you all.”