God has told you what is good,
And what God requires of you
Only to do justice
And to love kindness
And to walk modestly with your God (Micah 6:8)

On Monday June 1, as a peaceful group gathered near the White House to protest the murder of George Floyd, Trump chose to show domination. Earlier that day he had given governors a lesson in despotic rhetoric, “You have to dominate or you’ll look like a bunch of jerks, you have to arrest and try people. You don’t have to be too careful. It’s a movement, if you don’t put it down it will get worse and worse.” While American cities have been filled with cries of anguish and calls for justice, Trump rebuked the governors, “The only time it’s successful is when you’re weak and most of you are weak.”

After a week of coast to coast protests and now right under the window of his fortified White House, all Trump could come up with was berating governors and blaming them for the volcanic eruption of horrific endemic racism and police brutality. Domination, show of force has been Trump’s mantra of “law and order.” He believes that this slogan helped propel him to the White House and has worked to get rid of Obama-era initiatives to demilitarize local police departments.  All Trump wanted on Monday was to get rid of the protesters who have called for justice.

We saw on our screens how police officers on horses, rained a tsunami of rubber bullets and tear gas on the protestors, so that Trump could stand in front, not inside, a church, holding a Bible like a person holding a book written in foreign language, upside down.  Holding what he described as, “just a bible,” there was no clergy in sight to tell him, “You are holding Micah upside down.” There was no clergy of any denomination to tell Trump that he has also turned the presidency and this nation upside down. He used the bible and the church to step on justice and promote domination. And the words of the prophet Micah, like the cries of the protestors, so easy to understand, are a foreign language to this president; to love kindness is impossible for him to comprehend or follow.

Marx famously once said that when history repeats, the first time is as tragedy, the second time as farce. It is not clear what Marx would have to say about history repeating the third or fourth or fifth time, some sort of combination of tragedy and farce. When it comes to outrages against African Americans, we as a nation have been here too many times to count, holding Micah upside down.

In May 1940 the African American religious thinker addressed a Chicago meeting of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. He was thinking of the treatment of African Americans in World War I, thinking about what would happen if the United States became involved in the current war. He was of course disappointed, black Americans would serve, but only in a Jim Crow military:
“It was not until the last war that the Negro became aware to some degree, of his citizenship. Persona was conferred on him by the dominant social group—he was made to feel he counted—that the future of democracy was dependent upon him. For one breathless, swirling moment he became conscious of being a part and parcel of the very core of the nation…But when the troops were mustered out and like a tremendous octopus, American society sought to place the Negro back into his place of anonymity—there was wild resentment, expressing itself in rioting, etc. in northern cities. This rioting was a sign of life , of an awakening citizenship.”

Thurman was a pacifist, but he knew that fighting for citizenship was messy, that rage was an unpleasant emotion, but without rage as a catalyst effective change was very difficult. And Micah in that America had to stay hidden in the pages of the bible. Thurman believed in non-violence, but he also knew that not everyone was a student, as he was, of Mahatma Gandhi. The looting that has occurred over the past week is the penumbra of the rage that has enveloped the county the past week, and yes, it is counterproductive at best, but let us keep the focus on the rage of black Americans that once again, they are being deprived of their life, liberty, and basic rights as citizens. It is a reminder that this is not an academic issue, or a political matter for focus groups. It must be addressed now.

The protests are not about Trump, but of course he has made the protests about himself. Trump is of course a malevolent buffoon, but the problem is far deeper. The Democrats have never made the issue of police brutality as central to its platform as it needs to. Biden’s record in such matters is checkered, but his statement on Tuesday was eloquent. The power of the police, the nature of policing, the nature of incarceration has to change in a fundamental way. Law and order comes from the recognition, as Thurman liked to say, of the infinite worth of every person. Metaphorically, Biden opened the book of Micah, “And what God requires of you Only to do justice.

Let us turn from the worst president to the first president. In 1790 the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, the Touro synagogue wrote to George Washington, congratulating him on becoming president. He wrote back, quoting Micah 4:4 “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

It was a remarkable letter. The United States, having just passed the Bill of Rights in 1790, was the first country in the world to give Jews full citizenship rights. And Washington’s citing Micah to the Jews of Newport, is still what America means to Jews. We all have the right to our distinctiveness, to Micah’s vine and fig tree, and we have the right to be safe, and the right not to live in fear.

Of course, Washington wasn’t writing this sort of letter to African Americans. He was a slaveowner, and that was his sin, and the sin that accompanied the birth of this great country. And we all know what we have done, and still have to do, to atone for this horrible crime. But every person and every people living in this country has the right to sit under their own fig tree and vine, to their own distinctiveness, the right to be safe, and the right not be afraid of the forces in their country supposedly there to protect them. And that is exactly what African American want, a right to be safe. Washington made a promissory note about the right to be safe in America. This generation is demanding that very right, right now, for black America. The disturbances this week, as Howard Thurman suggested, are a sign of life, of an awakening citizenship. Let us, pick up Micah, walk humbly, kindly, in justice, and do what God requires of us.