Last month, in commemoration of Independence Day, I posted a letter titled, The Power of All (Or, Sister Rose), about the holiday itself, and whether the dreams that birthed this new nation are still the ones that guide us. This two-part letter is the follow-up, taking up where it left off.
Read True to Our Pledge Part 1 here.
It was nearly 20 years ago that I spearheaded a nationwide campaign that brought together 10,000 ministers of multiple faiths, people who saw the election of an American of mixed ancestry as a chance to truly begin rewriting our nation’s narrative and detoxifying our shared story. It felt like every lesson I’d learned or inherited throughout my life came together in that work.
And those ministers? Instead of celebrity pastors and televangelists, religious higher-ups and men claiming to “speak for God”, they were regular people doing the real work, showing up not just for every member of their small communities but for all those members’ loved ones, collecting imperfect produce from grocery stores and distributing it to families in need, driving people to the only hospital they could afford, then staying with them to ensure they were cared for. And despite Southern Baptists’ proclamations otherwise, the vast majority of these ministers were women. My Aunt Patricia, a decade my senior, and who I grew up with in my grandparents’ house, was one of those women.
Pat lived her entire life in Birmingham. And from the moment she marched in the Children’s Crusade, where so many kids were arrested, the same year her friend Carole was killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, up through the on-the-ground organizing she did for the Obama campaign, she was deep in the fight. But ministers like Pat didn’t stop with the election. She and so many others, especially women, led the charge for churches to join the Love is Love movement, demanding that equal rights be extended to LGBTQ+ people. This was especially important, given the many “Bible-believing Christians” who’d “thanked God for AIDS”, the same way “Bible-believing Christians”, in the 1800s, claimed that slavery was God-ordained.
So, just as Anglo churches have unfinished business with their African American societal kin, increasingly, faith groups that once taught that “straight is God’s best” are owning their moral indebtedness to the LGBTQ+ community. The same consciousness that fueled both racial justice and equality is driving our defense of democracy, just like it did the recognition of slavery as an abomination.
Back in 2008, my focus was on equipping the equippers, providing clergy with everything from sermon talking points to organizing strategies. It meant preparing them to lead voter registration drives, and educating people on how the citizen is the most powerful office in the land. It meant getting people to the polls on voting day, and bringing them together afterward to celebrate democracy at work—no matter who won. It meant teaching them how down-ballot races actually have greater day-to-day impact on our lives than who’s in the White House. It meant encouraging them, visiting their congregations, resourcing them, and, as needed, providing financial support to help them undertake this work.
Today, we’re in need of the same kind of effort, especially given how the ideological faction that’s backed everything from slavery to segregation has, for the last 70 years, been working to weaponize religion, using institutions meant to foster human regard to erode it. But the only way they’re able to do that is if advocates of humanity allow them to.
For me, this moment in history feels very much like a call to arms, a warning not to underestimate the precariousness of our situation, and to recognize what’s at stake. It means both engaging in the work I’ve done throughout my life, from a 13-year-old boy’s desire to help his hometown choose a mayor who’d stand for all Birminghamians, to a 30-year-old pastor’s efforts to help wealthy congregations take responsibility for how the same racism that enriched them, impoverished others.
But it also means going further, both urging communities of faith to become communities of conscience and challenging the people to stand for democracy. It means grasping that the fight is not just about some of us, but all of us. “There’s a choice we’re making,” that chorus of music superstars sang during We Are the World, “We’re saving our own lives.” And we are. We really are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Then, there’s resourcing. I remember Gunnar Sønsteby, in Number 24, saying to the bank president who, until then, hadn’t grasped the significance of the moment they were living in, “Resistance work costs money, sir, as you can imagine”. He was right. It does. It always has. The United Autoworkers (UAW) provided the funds needed to get Martin and others released from the Birmingham Jail on bail. Individual abolitionists funded the trips into the South that made escapes from slavery possible.
And even the American Revolution itself required funders, from Haym Salomon, a Polish Jewish immigrant who arrived in 1772, and was not only a member of the Sons of Liberty but one of the effort’s greatest financial backers, to Founding Father Robert Morris, who served as the Superintendent of Finance of the United States, and who personally floated the Continental Army. Our own idea for helping with this was to launch what we’re calling a SUGRR (“sugar”) Fund.
SUGRR, which stands for Societal Underground Railroad, is a church benevolence fund focused solely on backing those in the trenches, the people doing the most good with the least resources. Likewise, I’m encouraging other groups that care about these issues to launch their own fund or contribute to an existing one. Our nation needs, as soon as possible, a vast network of faith-based support that can help make up for the massive federal funding cuts and the steep decline in foundation funding, much of which is tied to fear of threatened reprisals by this administration, whether lawsuits or audits disguised as “increased regulatory scrutiny”.
That’s also why church benevolence funds are so important, especially right now. Benevolence funds exist for one simple reason—benevolence. They allow faith communities to rapidly respond to whatever needs might arise, whether a lost job or a local disaster. But, because they’re ministerial in function, they’re also afforded the same protections MAGA Christians, from segregation on, used to inflict harm while claiming religious freedom. We didn’t forge the sword, but we’d be crazy not to use it.
Our particular fund is associated with Circle of Hope, which, itself, is part of the Alliance of Baptists, one of the 30 institutional plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Trump administration for infringing on our religious freedoms. In Part 1, I covered some of the work the group is engaging in, from poverty to sanctuary to honest elections. My challenge to you is this: If you think the work they’re doing matters, help us help them.
Because activists deep in the trenches aren’t just doing amazing things with paltry resources. They’re pioneering the kinds of ingenious innovations that will, if widely adopted, ensure that humanity wins. I see the incredible difference people like them are making in the most pedestrian of ways, and I can’t help but think of others I’ve seen do the same thing, in their own way. Like my late sister, Josie.
Each year until her death in 2017, Josie used money from her own disability checks, plus her part-time job as a recruiter for a long-haul trucking company, to purchase backpacks for kids in her lower-income apartment complex. She’d then collect school supplies from everywhere she could, add in fun things like stickers and animal erasers from the dollar store, then deliver them. Josie saw a need that none of the rest of us could see. Then, she stepped in, however she could, to meet it.
Likewise, when someone set fire to a tent city not far from where Crystal, my only surviving sister lived, she worked with two local churches to collect everything from clothes to new tents for them, then, since this occurred just before Thanksgiving, she personally made Thanksgiving dinner for the entire community, hosting them in a church basement. Crystal saw a need that none of the rest of us could see. Then, she stepped in, however she could, to meet it.
All their lives, both Josie and Crystal, not to mention my aunt Pat, lived far below the poverty line, constantly struggling to keep their heads above water. Yet, when they saw others drowning, they didn’t look away. They waded in. Ironically, it was their tough lives that made them experts in ways that people who’ve never lived like that can even fathom. People like them not only see what the rest of us miss, they’ve long accumulated their 10,000 hours, becoming experts in surviving a society built to exploit them. Lifetimes spent under economic and social pressures that would break others in a matter of days have taught them how to spot chinks in the armor worn by oppressors.
Nor are they at all tempted to give up. They get that the victory goes not to the richest, the loudest, or the ones who claim they’re superior. It goes to the toughest, the ones who’ve already learned how to not just face adversity but overcome it. They, like legendary Harriet Tubman, who took her own emancipation into her hands, before returning 13 times to emancipate others, refuse to yield. Like Sojourner Truth, the first African American woman to successfully sue a socially white man, they’re taking up the battle. And like 60-year-old Amelia Boynton, who, ten days after being beaten unconscious by Alabama State Troopers, was back on the march from Selma to Montgomery, there’s simply no quit in them. They’re committed to standing, no matter what. Seems, the very least we can do is stand beside them.
So, what does this all mean? It’s actually quite simple. We join them, these modern-day Harriets, Sojourners, and Amelias rising up everywhere, the Josies, Crystals and Patricias leading the charge. We commit, finding our own way into this humanity-advancing, democracy-defending, diversity-embracing work, however we can. And we act. Starting today. And we stick with it until the work is done. Whether we’re too young to vote or too old to drive, recognize that if we’re alive in this moment, this is the job. Below are four specific ways we can help get it done:
First, we can reawaken our humanity. It’s not people of faith who’ll save us. It’s people of conscience. Heed yours. The more you do so, the stronger both it and you will grow. One time, I was asked for help by a guy on a Seattle street corner. He was a sunburned Euro-mix from Texas, and of all things, was a working rodeo clown. He’d somehow gotten stranded and needed an additional $18 to get a bus ticket to their next rodeo. I gave him $20 and I asked if he’d had anything to eat. He hadn’t. I gave him an extra $10 for lunch, and he looked stunned, but grateful. Someone asked me later, “How’d you know he wasn’t a scammer?” “I didn’t,” I said, though I don’t think he was. “But I’d rather have helped him and been wrong than not helped him and been wrong.” It was my humanity, not his, that was at stake.
This especially applies to faith groups. If you happen to belong to one, find out if it’s part of the Courageous 30 – the interfaith contingent of denominational plaintiffs suing this administration over the actions of ICE agents. If it is, encourage people to do more than assent. Challenge them to act. Humanity advancing faith groups have immense untapped power that can be brought to bear on our current circumstances. In addition to the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on their side, an incredible amount of jurisprudence, court rulings not intended for them, but must apply to them nevertheless, is at their backs.
And perhaps most importantly, they, unlike the groups that used those powers for evil, have the moral high ground. "The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state,” Martin said, “But rather the conscience of the state.” In other words, it’s the State that’s tasked with making us into a nation that can endure. But it’s people of consciousness who are tasked with helping us become one that should. Howard Zinn said, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.” He was right. It means doing everything from getting active in coalitions like Faithful Democracy to joining the Sanctuary Movement, from standing for trans people to standing against government policies that first create poverty, then dare criminalize it.
I’ve seen people do this throughout my life, from individuals in my childhood who showed me all kinds of kindnesses to the Baptist churches that took in Katrina refugees, from the people of Jewish faith who co-founded the NAACP a century ago, to the modern-day Catholic school with the sign that simply says, “You are welcome here”. This work involves uncorrupting the religious narrative, making faith “good” again, as it were, and being the ones who will bring “Beloved Community” back.
Second, we can be the resistance. The Railroad, both then and now, has never been a membership club. Anyone who helped an escaping slave hide, or gave them food, was part of it, even if they didn’t know such a thing existed. Likewise, the twelve-year-old Anglo girl in 1961, Alabama, who gave water to beaten Freedom Riders and her father, the doctor who patched them up, were the resistance.
Remember that we stand with humanity by what we do, not by reciting a pledge or taking an oath. By being the people Bayard Rustin was speaking of when he said, "We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers. Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable. The only weapon we have is our bodies. And we tuck them in places so wheels don't turn."
The resistance doesn’t just break immoral laws. It shatters them. In the ‘60s, that meant getting arrested for marching, enduring abuse at a lunch counter, or surviving a burning bus. In 2020, it meant defying a president who deployed federal troops against peaceful protesters. Today, it means making subversive benevolence our way of life, remembering that every interpersonal interaction, every social media post, everything we help “go viral”, and even what we add to the cloud of information AI uses, matters. It means finding our courage, choosing “fight” over “flight” in the face of injustice, and doing what needs doing.
Third, we can fuel the revolution. If the resistance has one job, to hold the line until the allied forces of reform arrive, then it’s the reform’s job to both be the cavalry and get there in time. The UGRR held the line for ten long years, from the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act until the election of Abraham Lincoln. While the resistance was at work making slavery unworkable, the reform was doing everything from staging massive marches to holding congressmen up for reelection accountable, from making slavery the single most important issue facing our nation, to launching their own abolitionist political party—the GOP, the Republican Party.
Today’s allied forces are undertaking similar work. Indivisible, the chief organizer of No King’s Day, is doing so via an unprecedented coalition of partners all committed to defending democracy. Get involved. Participate in a march. Work on a “For All” political campaign. Galvanize your company or community. Run for office. Join One Million Rising, a nationwide capacity-building effort focused on training a million people in the tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience and strategic noncooperation, as well as the basics of community organizing and campaign design.
Engage in civic action at all levels, from your neighborhood to your city, from your state to who’s representing you in Congress, from the presidency to the judiciary. Refuse to allow one more theocrat or MAGA-sympathizer to get elected or appointed. Indivisible has a massive list of participating organizational partners across the nation. Join one, or if your group is already doing the work on its own, have it join the coalition.
Use your economic power to create the world you want to live in, by both boycotting companies doing harm and actively supporting those working toward a “For All” future. And, implore the organizations you work for and companies where you have stock to stand for humanity. Increasingly, coalitions of businesses and trade unions are using legal means to not just fight Trump’s anti-DEIA executive order but also sue this administration for harm rendered, like the Chicago organization, Women in Trades, is doing.
And fourth, we can fund the future we want, backing not only the resistance but the revolution, the reformers effecting a complete political overhaul, the kind that got Abraham Lincoln elected. There’s really no over-emphasizing this. Simply put, if we don’t get serious about providing real financial support to those putting everything on the line for us, we’re choosing by not choosing.
If we can’t be on the front lines, one of the most important things we can do is get resources to those who are. For me, that meant cashing in and donating a $10,000 life insurance policy to our fund, in addition to the monthly support being provided by me and others, and a small grant a friend recently directed his donor advised fund to provide. Many of our projects are out of the starting blocks, but they won’t be able to help democracy win in 2026 and 2028 without broader backing. So, sure, if the things we’re attempting strike you as vital, additional support would help. But this is also so much bigger than us.
Just yesterday, Sojourners Magazine published a piece showing how the recent $800 million cut in federal funding for certain nonprofits, plus the downturn in foundation support mentioned above, means that the very groups best equipped to counter MAGA Christianity are also the ones being defunded. They’re downsizing and closing exactly at a time when they’ve never been needed more.
The “theocracy ideology” that’s infected every facet of government is making our nation sick. And like with slavery, humanitarian consciousness is the one effective counter-agent. But it only works if its carriers can spread the cure in time. They need sufficient funds to do this. Likewise, if you have any connections to grantmaking entities, challenge them to invest more, not less, in this direction. Specifically, we can help by:
A. Reinforcing the reinforcements. If your group is affiliated with one of the Courageous 30, chances are, they’re already in need of support to continue engaging in this fight they weren’t necessarily looking for, but one they have no intention of walking away from. Back them. Likewise, with organizations that aren’t congregations, but are working in the “faith for democracy” space, like Faith in Public Life, Faith in Action, Sojourners, Faithful Democracy, and so many others.
B. Watering the roots. There was an aging African American woman who owned a small accessories store and alterations shop around the corner from my apartment in Harlem. She put up a sign letting school kids know that if they needed a meal, to just come in. Imagine the good she could have done with just a $100 contribution to the work, no questions asked, or if people like her were in office. She’s gone now, and her little shop, closed. But there are others like her. Support them, and if you’re not connected to people as close to the work as she was, fund groups that are.
C. Getting supplies to the front lines. In Part 1, we talked about Georgia and Texas, which have recently joined the growing ranks of minority-majority states, and how it’s no coincidence that some of the worst voter disenfranchisement laws in existence are in those states. So, if we’re interested in making sure MAGA ideologues never recapture the presidency or Congress, nor wrest control of the Supreme Court ever again, all we need to do is make sure that the new majorities in those two states are also fairly represented at the ballot box. If we want that to happen, we need to get them registered and get them galvanized.
And this is doable. Because we don’t need to canvas entire states. All we need to do is focus on three major cities—Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. We re-enfranchise people in those cities, which shifts the political direction of Georgia and Texas, which determines who wins Georgia’s and Texas’s Electoral Votes. Which, when combined with already staunchly progressive, inclusive, “For All” states from New York to California, makes it virtually impossible for a Republican candidate to win without the party returning to the values that called it into existence in the first place.
Right now, there are citizens who can’t vote because they can’t afford a “Real ID”. There are activists whose actions are limited, not by their will but by their bank accounts. There are churches doing the hard work of caring for people in poor neighborhoods, ones that could feed a thousand kids with a thousand dollars, yet, they’re trying to do it with a hundred. There are amazing, yet under-resourced political candidates who, even in a system where people backed by the deepest pockets almost always win, are still running.
There are people being arrested for protesting this administration’s criminalization of poverty in places like DC, the next step in the escalation of what’s being done to migrants (Sojourners president, Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, just published a piece about what it’s like being a person of both faith and conscience in a city occupied by federal troops). And, there are people funding their SUGRR work from jobs as baristas and delivery drivers, trucking recruiters and little shops in Harlem. We can’t let our apathy or reticence be the reason they fail. Because that’s also how society fails. It doesn’t matter so much what part of the movement we support. What matters is that we support it. That we fund the future we want.
Bottom line, from reawakening our humanity to being the resistance, from fueling the revolution to funding the future we want, we stay in the work until it’s done. Like Ella’s Song says, “We who believe in freedom shall not rest until it comes.” We stay in the fight until all traces of theocracy have been purged from our government, until new minority-majority states like Texas and Georgia, Florida and New Jersey have legislators that work for, rather than against them, and until every immoral executive order, statute and court ruling has been abolished and reversed. That’s the goal.
“It's quite easy for a people to miss when it’s in the midst of a pivotal moment,” I remember writing in This Land Is Your Land, “But that's exactly where we are – at a juncture where the charting of our destiny is as much in our hands today as it was in the hands of those who founded us.” That feels even truer now than when I wrote it. That’s because, in 15 to 20 years, it’s not just Texas or California that will be non-majority. The entire nation will be. By then, we’ll either have created a societal infrastructure that works for everyone, or we’ll be left with one that works for no one. All or none. That’s what’s at stake. It always has been.
And us? Of all the generations of Americans who’ve ever lived, we’re the ones who get to choose. We have it within us to either finally become the people so many before us dreamed we could be, or we can watch those dreams fade. The latter’s easy. All we have to do is nothing. But the former? We have to want it. It takes effort, crafting for ourselves a future by finishing the unfinished work of the past. It takes learning, finally grasping what “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” truly means. And it takes changing, doing the hard work to finally become a people that’s true to its pledge.
Today is August 30, day 221 under this administration. We have just 445 days until the 2026 elections, 1,176 days until the 2028 elections, and 1,254 days until Martin’s 100th birthday. So, when do we fight? Today, tomorrow, and every day between now and then. Where do we fight? Anywhere and everywhere we see injustice occurring or oppression increasing. And, how do we fight? In every way we can.
My closing song for you is We Are the World. Everything about it, from the message of the lyrics (written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie) to the passion of the performances, to the breadth of musical diversity and unity of heart, makes it especially appropriate for this letter. Finally, the only way we do this is together. So, as with every letter, feel free to pass this along to anyone you think will resonate with it, be encouraged by it, or who needs a reminder that they’re not in it alone.
I'm so impressed by your work Rod. Thank you for your tireless commitment to inspiring our country to live up to its reason for being. Your latest piece motivated me to support your noble SUGRR Benevolence Fund and your 2050 project. Onward to a more perfect union!