Late last night we arrived in Fayetteville, Arkansas,
at Johnny’s house. Johnny, a college
student and survivor of a brutal gay bashing incident in his teens, has
generously allowed us to stay at his house.
Initially, we were careful driving into Arkansas, not sure of the political
atmosphere. We took off the Drive Out
the Bush Regime banners to keep a low profile.
But as we soon learned, Fayetteville is
the most liberal and least racist city in Arkansas – “A pocket of liberal thinkers,”
and the “Berkeley of Arkansas”, as people refer to this college town. It is a world apart from Jackson, Mississippi. Maybe it was the hundred degree heat, but Jackson felt oppressive compared to Fayetteville.
Jackson was a depressed, majority Black
city under a “State of Emergency”
curfew, invaded by Christian Fascists waving giant posters of mangled fetuses
and yelling about the rapture. Fayetteville, in contrast,
is 20 degrees cooler and lily-White.
It’s full of used and rare bookstores and University of Arkansas
frat boys drinking margaritas.
at Jackson and Fayetteville have in
common though, is that they are both centers of anti-Bush sentiment surrounded
by hostile white mega-church suburbs. In
both places, it seems, many of the most progressive folks find refuge from
intolerance and Christian fundamentalism in the Unitarian Universalist
church. That’s where we start our day.
Most of us have never been to a Unitarian “service” before,
and we find out that it is not your typical Sunday Bible thumping session. The service is led by an older woman named
Rev. Mary McAnally from Tulsa. We sing, people speak about their “Joys and
Sorrows,” and Mary gives a beautiful sermon about the nature of suffering. She invokes poetry and theology from many
traditions, asking why there is so much suffering in this world, even among the
innocent. What about Mi Lai and Hiroshima, she asks, and the Iraqi boy she heard about on
NPR that spends his time swimming in the Euphrates,
fishing out dead bodies? More philosophy
class than religious dogma, this is clearly an open-minded community.
After the service, we make an announcement about who we are
and the bus tour and October 5th. We get
a great response during the “coffee and conversation” period, and make a point
to talk to the Reverend. She is
wholeheartedly united around the politics of World Can’t Wait and has a very
interesting history. When she was 16 she
was made unable to bear children because of an illegal abortion and ever since
has been ardently pro-choice. She
marched and was arrested with Martin Luther King in 1961. She became a communist and later went to
seminary at Princeton. Now she is a poet and a theologian extremely
concerned about the rise of Christian fundamentalism and the reckless
warmongering agenda of the Bush Regime.
She is exactly the type of outspoken religious leader that we need in
order to repudiate Bush and his brand of theocratic religion. While we’re talking, another woman comes up
and says, “You know, I like everything you guys stand for, but it belongs
outside the church, not inside during the service.” Mary immediately comes to our defense,
pointing out that her own sermon was actually deeply political. If we are going to stop the Bush regime from
bringing the Church into the realm of politics, she says, we can’t be afraid to
bring our politics into this Church.
After all, we’re speaking the truth, and that is something the Unitarian
Universalists stand for.
Later in the afternoon, we go to meet up with some activists
at the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and
Equality. We show them the November
2 DVD and talk about possibilities for October 5th as a higher
level of resistance. They’re interested in
the question of global warming and the Bush Regime’s relentless profit-driven
destruction of the environment, particularly since Arkansas is “The Natural State” (official
slogan) and heavily dependent on agriculture.
We have dinner with a local LGBT group called Interweave,
many of whom were at the UU church earlier.
Over Mexican food we discuss plans for the “non-traditional marriage”
between church and state that we will perform on the steps of Little Rock City Hall
in a few days. The Interweave folks are
very enthusiastic about it, particularly given the ban that was recently passed
against gay marriage and the law against gay adoption that was narrowly
defeated.
At night we return to the OMNI Center
to do outreach at a showing of the movie “Vera Drake.” “Vera Drake” takes place in 1930s England,
about a working class woman that goes to prison for performing abortions. What an appropriate movie to watch after Jackson! This is the type of world – a world where
abortion is illegal and disobedient women like Vera Drake are incarcerated – that
people like Bush and Operation Save America want to bring about.