Friday, June 19, 2020

When They See Us - Sermon for Week Ending June 20, 2020

Readings:


Our first reading is from a 1989 newspaper story about the young teenage boys who would become known as the Central Park Five, who were unlawfully arrested for and convicted of a crime they did not commit.  “They were coming from a world of crack and welfare, with guns, knives, indifference, and ignorance. They were coming from the land of no father. They were coming from the wild province of the poor, and driven by a collective fury brimming with the rippling energies of youth. Their minds teeming with the violent images of the streets in the movies, they had only one goal, to smash, hurt, rob, stomp, and rape. Their enemies were rich. Their enemies were white.”
                                                             

Our second reading is from the film, When They See Us, which portrays the true story of the Central Park Five, from Linda Fairstein, the DA who brought the charges against the boys, talking to the police.  “You were going to release those animals and put them back on the street? What did these animals do between here and here? Are there other victims still in the park? Find me that whole group. Every young black male who was in the park last night is a suspect. Let’s get an army of blue up in Harlem. Go into those projects and stop every little thug you see. Bring in every kid who was in the park last night.”

Sermon - When They See Us

The movie I chose to begin the movies with a message series is actually a 4-part Netflix film entitled, When They See Us, by Ava DuVernay, which, as we heard in the readings,

tells the true story of the arrest and conviction of 5 young boys for a crime they did not commit, who would be named in the press the Central Park Five. It is a film that I have refused to watch since it was released over a year ago. I know the story. I remember the story. And I knew it would be difficult. But I have just finished re-reading White Fragility by Robin D’Angelo. There is a chapter called ‘White Women’s Tears.’ And it made me realize how fragile and self-indulgent I was being to refuse to watch a movie about the brutality of racism and white supremacy because it might make me sad, when it depicts real events that black and brown people actually experienced. The film opens on the evening of April 19th, 1989 when a bunch of teenagers from Harlem go to hang out in Central Park. The police chased them, beat and arrested the ones they could catch, and turned them over to family court. Later that night, a white jogger was found in another part of the park raped, beaten, and unconscious. And, right then, the white DA and  the white police captain decided that those boys did it. They rounded them up and interrogated them or over 40 hours without a parent or a lawyer or sleep or bathroom breaks. The timeline for the rape didn’t even match the time the boys were in the park, so they changed the timeline. And even though there was no physical evidence and no DNA match, and the jogger had no memory of what happened, they were arrested for the crime. The DA, Linda Fairstein saw the word Wilding as a description of what the boys were doing in the park, in one of the police reports. Although when questioned, the officer couldn’t say where he had heard the word, she pounced on it to portray these young black and brown boys as uncontrolled animals, and journalists followed her lead. Racist fear and hate spread rapidly. New York real estate mogul Donald Trump spent $85,000 taking out full-page ads in all the local papers with the headline: Bring back the Death Penalty. Pat Buchannan said that New Yorkers should hang the oldest one in the middle of the park as a lesson. Five boys were convicted and sentenced to between 5 and 15 years in jail. Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana were 14 years old. Antron McCray and Yusef Salaam were 15, and Corey Wise was 16.

The film depicts the abuse they experienced in prison, the effects their imprisonment on their families, and the obstacles placed before them when they finally got out. 4 of them served 7 year sentences, and Corey, the oldest, served 13 years. In 2001, a convicted murderer and serial rapist serving life in prison confessed to the rape and beating of the jogger.  His DNA matched what was found at the scene, and he provided other evidence. But the DA refused to admit that she had made a mistake. The boys were exonerated in 2002, and she still refuses to admit she made a mistake. This event happened 31 years ago, and racism is just as strong now as it was then. And it continues to destroy lives.

I watched the video of Rayshard Brooks, in the Wendy’s parking lot in my hometown of Atlanta, calmly offering to walk home, then moments later lying dead in the parking lot,  having been shot in the back by a police officer who then yelled, “I got him!” And I remembered a few years back when I was working as a chaplain. I had just gotten off overnight on call and decided to go directly to a morning meeting. I got there an hour early.  So I reclined my seat and took a nap. I awoke to a policeman politely knocking on the window. I rolled it down, and he said, “Ma’am, you shouldn’t sleep here. It’s a bad neighborhood.” He didn’t ask me to step out of the car. He didn’t ask me if had been drinking, or if I had a weapon. He didn’t grab my body without warning. He didn’t pull out his pistol and murder me because I fell asleep in my car. Why didn’t Rayshard Brooks get that same treatment? Because he was black and I am white. When They see us is an apt title for this film. Because too many white police officers see black people and white people very differently. And they treat us differently. And that has got to change. May we continue to support this movement taking place before us in every way we can until black lives really do matter to everyone. Amen.



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