oncord, November 4

DFP: I want to start with a very open-ended question. What is your personal statement of faith? What do you believe is the basic message of the Bible and of the Gospel?

Gene Robinson: The story of the prodigal son is as close to my statement of faith as I can come, which is that we all fall short of what God would want us to be and we are all headed back home toward God. God comes running down the road to welcome us back with great celebration, and no one is excluded from God’s extravagant love. I think that’s the message of Scripture, both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures, and it’s my experience of God.

DFP: What is that experience of God?

GR: In a world that tells me I’m not smart enough, skilled enough, thin enough, [or] rich enough, God gets through to me with the message that I am loved beyond my wildest imagination. My worth is given to me by God, not earned.

DFP: What is the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire doing to advance the causes of social and economic justice?

GR: Virtually all of our parishes have a food and/or clothing program for the poor. The Diocese is involved heavily in ministry to men and women who are incarcerated… The Diocese, parishes and individual Episcopalians are invested in the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, which works to secure permanent affordable housing around the state, and we’ve been involved in that for twenty years. By virtue of my election as bishop, New Hampshire has become a leader in the acceptance and inclusion of LGBT people. Many of our parishes have programs to both green up the parish as well as raise awareness for individuals about being environmentally responsible. And many of our parishes have relationships with Anglicans overseas, particularly those in third world countries, and are supportive of development programs related to the Millennium Development Goals. So those would just be some of the ways in which I think we are living out a ministry of justice in New Hampshire and in the world.

DFP: You are the only openly gay sitting bishop in the history of the Christian church. What message do you have for students in the GLBT community?

GR: It is only a matter of time until other gay and lesbian priests are elected to the office of bishop. I believe we are poised as the Episcopal Church, to stand up and say to the rest of the Anglican Communion, you may not understand or agree with us, but we feel we must be the church God is calling us to be at this time. And that means the full inclusion of LGBT people in the life, ministry, and leadership of the Episcopal Church. It’s my great hope that we will make that crystal clear at next summer’s General Convention.

I would also say in addition to leadership in the church, I believe more and more Episcopalians are committed to the notion that the church is for all of God’s children, not just for some.

DFP: Outside of a church context, for GLBT students who may be unchurched, is there a message of inspiration just for their daily lives?

GR: I believe that 95% of the discrimination that LGBT people have experienced has come at the hands of religious communities of all types, but especially the three Abrahamic faiths $mdash; Judaism, Islam, and Christianity $mdash; and I believe it is going to take religious voices from those communities to undo the harm that has been done to them in the name of God. And so what I would say to the wider community is trust that there are voices within religious communities who are working hard to join the fight for LGBT rights, including marriage equality, and though most LGBT people are rightfully suspicious of religious organizations, I believe they can now look to religious communities for support in their fight for equal rights.

DFP: A number of readers have expressed interest in your personal story. You had a wife and children when you came out of the closet, although I know you had discussed your sexuality with her before marriage. Was coming out hard for you? What prompted your decision?

GR: The decision to come out was really a joint decision with my former wife, who was very supportive, and the question really was what does it mean to live a life of integrity? And not to do so sets a very bad example for our children. In the marriage vows, we promised to honor each other in the name of God and ultimately we decided that the best way to keep that vow to honor each other was to let each other go. Twenty-two years later, I still have a terrific relationship with my former wife, and we have successfully parented our two children to the ages of thirty-one and twenty-seven.

DFP: How did you explain issues of sexuality to a four-year-old?

GR:(smiles) Well, I started with the eight-year old. I asked her if she knew what a gay or lesbian person was, and our housekeeper at the time was a lesbian, so she very quickly said, “Yes, most girls like boys, and most boys like girls, but some girls like girls and some boys like boys.” Which when you think about is about as good a definition as you can get! (laughs)

And so I said to her that I had discovered that I was one of those boys that liked boys, and that her mom and I would be getting divorced, etc. etc., and we read a children’s book which was published in Denmark. You couldn’t get anything like that published in the United States back then, which shows how much times have changed. Literally, I had to get this book from Denmark, and it was about two men and their happy life with their daughter, and the daughter’s mom. And we read that book together, and that night after we put Jamie to bed, she called from her room into mine, “Daddy I hope you find a Bill (or whatever the guy in the book’s name was) some day!” …

So then the 8 year-old and I told the 4 year-old. And it just didn’t seem all that weird to them. In some ways I think telling children at that age is easier than telling a teenager, who is not in anyway trying to stick out of the crowd or be strange, and so they never had a problem with it. Their mom got remarried very soon… I met [my partner] Mark soon after [my ex-wife] Boo was remarried, and we dated for about a year and a half before he moved up here, so they saw each of us with partners and… anything that made their mom or dad that happy, they were happy with.

DFP: What is your interpretation of Bible verses in Paul’s epistles and Leviticus that condemn homosexuality?

GR: All of the references, and there are only seven, in Scripture that deal with same-sex behavior are negative. The question is do they answer the questions we are asking today? And I would maintain no, they do not. Sodom and Gomorrah involves homosexual rape. Leviticus talks about preserving male seed. Sperm was considered to contain everything necessary for life, and therefore to do anything with male seed that didn’t lead to procreation was an abomination, including masturbation or birth control, that is, where you would withdraw from the woman prior to ejaculation. All of those were banned and all were punishable by death. The New Testament references seem to be about a kind of relationship that was known in Roman and Greek culture in which an older man would take an adolescent boy under his wing, teach him the ways of the world, [and] use him sexually. We would call that child abuse today. All of those references are negative, but they don’t address what we are asking today, which is faithful, monogamous life-long intentioned relationships between people of the same sex.

And remember that the whole notion of sexual orientation is a construction, a psychological construction, only about 125 years old. Everyone in Biblical times was assumed to be heterosexual, so to act in a same-sex manner was to be acting against their nature. It was only 125 years ago that someone first posited the notion that a certain minority of us might be born affectionate to the same sex rather than the opposite sex.
Therefore for us to act in a heterosexual manner would be to act against our nature. So you can’t take a modern day concept like sexual orientation and read it back into an ancient text as if that’s what they meant.

DFP: Many students at Dartmouth, including most Christians I have spoken with, struggle in a secular atmosphere where many student activities and even classroom experiences can be disrespectful of their faith. What words of encouragement would you give them?

GR: I am an advocate of the separation of church and state, and I believe that anyone’s faith ought to be able to withstand a critique from the culture or from academia or from wherever. I actually think there are many, many ways in which the culture should be critical of us because the history of the church is littered with awful distortions of the faith $mdash; the Crusades, the Inquisition, intolerance in general. I also believe that anyone espousing God’s values is going to be misunderstood and criticized by secular culture because from its inception, Christianity was a counter-cultural movement. Unfortunately, when Constantine was converted to Christianity, whether for religious or political reasons (we don’t know for sure), in a sense we crawled into bed with the power, or the powers, that we were meant to be critical of. So I don’t believe the church lives up to its counter-cultural nature or its counter-cultural mission as much as it should, but when it does it will undoubtedly be criticized.

I’ll give you an example. Shouldn’t the church be critiquing the recent economic meltdown in terms of the values that were bought into by most everyone around the world? Greed, get rich quick, make a lot of money no matter what, executive level compensation, etc etc. You know, the church has something to say about all those things, or should have something to say about all those things. It’s very easy to blame Wall Street for greed, but we were the ones who had our 401k money in the stock market, demanding a greater and greater profit or else we would move to a different mutual fund. So we’re all complicit. What I wonder is whether the church will have the courage to question the culture in that way.

DFP: Many of the students who will read this article are either agnostics or atheists. What is your message for those readers?

GR: Tell me about the God you don’t believe in, and the chances are I don’t believe in that God either. Let me tell you about the God I believe in.

DFP: What is your opinion about the militant atheist writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens who have been topping the best seller charts lately? I am particularly interested in your response to Sam Harris, who says that moderate and liberal persons of faith, like you and me, are just providing cover for the extremists.

GR: It’s interesting; I met and got to talk a lot with Christopher Hitchens in May at the Hay-on-Wye Festival in Wales. My sense is that the church and the God that they rail against is the church and God of 50 years ago. 50 years ago, I would have been right with them. It’s as if they haven’t checked out a church lately…

I think there are two streams within mainstream religion. One is to be intimidated by the Religious Right and to say nothing, and the other is to take the Religious Right head-on. I would be in that latter category, and I believe that a great many mainline denominational people are with me in that. So when I read those writers it’s like there is a time warp. It’s like they are describing a church that I don’t know, and so I feel like they are fighting a war that’s over. And that’s not to say that there aren’t religious conservatives and they shouldn’t be criticized and held to account, but for the most part liberal Christianity is getting on with the Gospel. The things they criticize I don’t see in my own church. And it’s really funny, I just have this kind of creepy feeling like, of course they would think these things, but that church hasn’t existed for a while.

DFP: There’s been a lot of controversy within the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church about you and your ministry. What do you see as the future of the Communion, and in a broader sense, mainline Protestantism?

GR: I believe that we will possibly, as soon as next summer, make it known that we intend to consecrate bishops who are otherwise qualified candidates irrespective of their sexual orientation, and that we will begin the process of developing rites for the blessing of same sex unions. I don’t know how the Anglican Communion will ultimately deal with that, but I feel that that is where we are moving as a church. And I think that for the most part I am very hopeful about the Episcopal Church getting through this intact. There will be some who will leave over this, but I think there will be far fewer than has been threatened, and that new people will come to the church because of that prophetic pastoral stance.

Hanover, November 9

DFP: What is the biggest justice problem facing the United States today?

GR: When we met the other day, I probably would have said race, but we certainly made a big step forward [with the election]. It’s not over. I’m torn between saying racism and the increasing divide between rich and poor. I think there are connections between those two, but obviously each has other dimensions. When we look at who is poor we see a disproportionate number of people of color amongst the poor, but I also think the issue of the divide between the haves and have-nots is… international in scope and has reached huge proportions. It will be interesting to see how the economic meltdown will affect the trajectory of that. We’ve just seen the rich getting filthily richer and it’ll be interesting to see if any of that changes with the economic crisis that we are in.

Twenty years ago, the average executive of a company was making sixteen times that of the lowest paid, and now the average executive is making 400 times the lowest paid. I think that’s just an astounding injustice, and it shows that unfettered and unregulated capitalism can be very dangerous.

DFP: What do you believe is the proper relationship between faith and politics?

GR: My faith shapes my values, and then I take those values out into the public square and argue for them based not on my religion but on the Constitution. So, religion plays a huge role in who I am and what I value, but I think it’s inappropriate to say that anyone else should agree with me because God says it’s so. God may have convinced me of the rightness of those values, but then I must convince others of their rightness based on civil, secular discourse.

DFP: I know you’ve spoken with President-elect Barack Obama. Could you tell me about that conversation?

GR: His campaign sought me out as part of their outreach efforts to communities of faith. I followed up on that and eventually had three conversations with him in which we talked about lots of things. I was particularly wanting to know about his stand on the U.N. Millennium Development Goals and whether or not he thought funding them, not just being for them but actually funding them, was a possibility in his administration. We talked about LGBT rights, and of course we talked about the war. And we also talked about the stresses and strains of being the first and how difficult it is to keep your balance when your enemies are trying to make you into the devil and your supporters are trying to make you into an angel, and you know that you’re neither. This all took place a year ago, in May and June, so it was before he was really on anybody’s radar screen. Hillary Clinton was still the presumed nominee, and he looked crazy except that I saw something genuine in him that really sold me on him right from the very beginning. I pressed him on a number of different matters, then ultimately I endorsed him.

DFP: You
were the only diocesan bishop not invited to the communion-wide Lambeth Conference this summer by the Archbishop of Canterbury. You’ve said his decision caused you much personal pain. What do you think of ++Rowan’s leadership?

GR: Usually I deal with my detractors by remembering that usually their response to me comes out of fear, and I experienced a lot of fear from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference in general. Fear of change, fear of moral ambiguity, fear of “the other,” fear of opening up a discussion of all of human sexuality, and when I remember that my enemies are fearful, it helps me not to hate them back but to come up with a more loving and productive response. Jesus didn’t say we wouldn’t have enemies; he just tells us to love them. And that does not mean liking them, [but] treating them with respect and honor, and that’s what I tried to do at the Lambeth Conference.

DFP: There is a story you frequently tell about meeting a bishop, I believe from India, at the Lambeth Conference who opposes your ministry and asked you for solutions, and you said you didn’t know but that he would always be in your heart. Did meeting other bishops from around the world change your understanding of the opposition?

GR: You have to understand I met very few of them, because I wasn’t allowed in the conference, so this was a very treasured experience for me. He stood and told me how his life and ministry had been affected by the fact of my consecration and how the Anglican Church had been branded “the gay church” and how this made his work more difficult, particularly with other faiths. And the miraculous thing was that he described that without any rancor or anger or blame in his voice. He was simply describing to me what is. And I said to him that I didn’t know an answer that would take away his difficulty and preserve my integrity. I said what I was pretty sure of is that he needs to continue being the church he feels called to be, and we need to continue being the church we feel we are called to be. And I said to him, I will carry you around in my heart. I will always be mindful that what I do and say affects you even though you are halfway around the world.

DFP: What has been the most moving personal story and meeting of your entire ministry?

GR: I don’t know if I can name just one, so I’ll tell you a story of how this all got started. I came out in’86, but I did not speak publicly, like at a conference or to a larger audience, about being gay until’91 or’92. It was at a very large church in the Midwest and I knew the rector there. He had invited me to come, and I made the decision to tell my own story along with delivering a couple of papers on sexuality and homosexuality.

Many years later I met a young woman in a seminary who told me that she was Christian because of me and those papers and talks that I gave that weekend in the Midwest. She was not even present; she was completely unchurched and had wandered into the church where they had copies of those papers… She converted to Christianity and went on to go to seminary and become a priest because of having read these papers that I had presented, and she’s now serving at one of the pre-eminent cathedrals in the country. And it was the first time that I think I understood the power of my story and its potential for bringing people to Jesus. You spend most of your life taking your Christianity for granted, and it never occurs to you that your story could change anyone’s life. And then it happens, and you can never quite be satisfied again with not being a good steward of that gift. Like I was saying today in church, my ministry now brings me in touch with so many unchurched or formerly unchurched people, and while I love my work with faithful Episcopalians, I find it incredibly exciting to be reaching out to people who are beyond the church and having a part to play in drawing them in.

DFP: Do you get tired of talking about Lambeth, homosexuality, or Anglican conflicts?

GR: I was really tired of talking about it at the end of my six weeks in England this summer. I laughingly said to my staff I don’t want to hear the word gay, or Lambeth for a long time.

No, I usually don’t get tired of it at all, because it’s just so important, and I feel so blessed to be able to play this role and use God in this way. But, like everyone else, I have my days and times when I just get really tired. Having the diocese to take care of really saves me from that, because as the bishop of a diocese, I cannot be a one-issue person.

DFP: When we were sitting in your office last week, I noticed a large pair of Incredible Hulk hands on the shelf. Of all the objects on your office walls and shelves, what is the most meaningful?

GR: It is a hand written note that I received, it was actually hand-delivered to me the night before my consecration, written to me by Matthew Shepard’s mother Judy. In it she says, “I know that Matthew will be smiling down upon you tomorrow.”

The reason I do all this and the reason I don’t get tired is I keep remembering all those Matthew Shepards who have either been killed or all the people who sort of have a living death from discrimination or hatred. I do all this to change the world for them, and of course Matthew Shepard was an Episcopalian. His funeral was done by the Bishop of Wyoming, who is a good friend of mine…This year in March, I’m being honored by the Matthew Shepard Foundation. This is the 10th anniversary of his death, so just having that connection to him through his mother and to think about his blessing on what I’m doing is really important to me.

DFP: What did I forget to ask? What do Dartmouth students need to hear?

GR: I think it’s that God is alive and well and desirous of a relationship with each one of us, and that God is knowable and that the church is changing $mdash; not everywhere, not fast enough, but there are churches that are finding 21st century language to put around their experience of God, and where that’s happening, it can be very exciting. Often the church we rail against is not the church that’s there anymore…. A 13th century mystic, Meister Eckhart, said, “God is the newest thing there is.” And that’s what I find exciting about being a Christian.

For more information about Bishop Robinson, check out his autobiography, In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center from God (available from Seabury Books), or read through his Lambeth blog, http://www.canterburytalesfromthefringe.blogspot.com/.

ppearing alongside other stories of vital national interest like lapel pins, bowling scores, and topless teenagers, Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s recent PBS interview and two high-profile speeches have launched him back into the news.

The coverage of the Wright scandal has been non-stop, one-sided, and highly inappropriate. Although Wright has been criticized for not apologizing for his past controversial statements, I do not see this as a problem. After all, most of his past quotes (which I will explore later in this article) were, and remain, true. And the few that were uncalled for are not as bad as the talking heads claim. These stories are destroying the reputation of a good man. If you watched any of Wright’s recent appearances in their entirety, you saw a smart, sophisticated man. The crazy preacher we hear about on cable news? Nowhere to be seen.

So who is Rev. Wright? MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough indignantly insisted that Wright does not represent the black church. Scarborough, like me, is a white, Southern, Irish-American Protestant. His credentials—representing an overwhelmingly white district in Congress—hardly bespeak great knowledge of the black church. Meanwhile, Wright grew an urban church from 87 members to almost 10,000, and was once ranked the second best preacher in the country by Ebony magazine. Never mind the attacks on Wright’s patriotism; this is a man who served six years in the United States Marines, received three White House commendations, and is godfather to a young woman serving in Iraq. He is the author of an outreach ministry that has spoken out against apartheid, runs two low-income child care programs, feeds 5,000 homeless people a year, reaches out to prisoners, and stands in solidarity with workers’ unions. In 2001, the Chicago Sun-Times called him “one of the most intellectually sophisticated and scholarly ministers in the land.”

Yet for speaking out, Wright is accused of milking his precious fifteen minute of fame. NBC’s First Read newsletter called his reemergence “as selfish of a move as we’ve seen in some time.” What is selfish about trying to clear your name after being unfairly labeled an unpatriotic racist? It is as if NBC is saying, “The only way you can avoid being the most selfish person we know is to step back and let us thoroughly destroy your reputation.”

The real scandal, however, has focused not on Wright’s press appearances, but a small handful of quotes from past sermons:

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism. We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism….We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. …We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

When asked about this sermon, Wright pointed out that he was quoting a former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, a white man. In any case, the comments are also largely true. America was indeed built on the slave trade and Indian wars. I won’t call the bombing of Hiroshima terrorism, but did Nagasaki really have to come only three days later? And what of firebombing Dresden, or propping up South American dictatorships?

I do believe that some wars are necessary, and it is a fact of war that civilians will die. This does not mean, however, that we have to ignore those deaths, or dismiss toddlers, janitors, and receptionists as “collateral.” Even now, though we speak of soldiers lost in Iraq, there is little coverage of civilian casualties. Perhaps if we were willing to have that discussion a little more often, we would have a greater appreciation for the sacrifices that are necessary, and avoid more of those that are not.

“ The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. No, no, no. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That’s in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme.”

While I would not ask God to damn America, I am certain that God has already damned many of America’s actions. Our treatment of Native Americans clear into the 20th century, our overcrowded and violent prisons, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay—these events and places are worthy of nothing but damnation.

African-American commentator Tavis Smiley has said that Wright “is standing in a Kingian tradition.” While Martin Luther King, to my knowledge, never asked God to damn America, it is true that he once said, “The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business… of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

“Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary would never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person… Hillary ain’t never had her own people say she wasn’t white enough.”

Now what exactly is wrong with this statement? Of course our nation is controlled by rich white people! This should come as a surprise to no one. The U.S. Senate has three Hispanics, two Asian Americans, one African American, and 94 white people. There have only been two black Supreme Court justices in history, and not a single non-white president. And rich? It’s fair to say that both the oil industry and Wall Street have pull on Capitol Hill. I won’t be quite as hard on Hillary as Wright, though. While she has not experienced racism, she has dealt with sexism. Christ spoke out against both forms of hatred, and any consistent Christian preacher will point that out from the pulpit.

“The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”

Obviously I don’t agree with this statement, but when a community is marginalized and neglected, it risks becoming suspicious and paranoid, causing conspiracy theories to spread. I spent an off term working on hurricane relief efforts in New Orleans, primarily in the Lower Ninth Ward. Many residents shared their theory that the government had purposefully blown the levees to save the rich white neighborhoods. The facts and physics of these theories do not hold up, but when a man has already been neglected by society in so many ways, he begins to see traps around every corner. The Tuskegee experiments were true, he might say, so why not HIV?

“[Obama is] a politician, I’m a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. Those are two different worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do.”

A good number of Washington pundits have said Wright is throwing Obama “under the bus” with this remark, which is just silly. Of course Obama is a politician. He does not play on our fears, and he has displayed a remarkable ability of bringing diverse coalitions together; nevertheless, he is a U.S. Senator running for President. H
e employs strategists, pollsters, and field staff the same as any other politician.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times, normally one of my favorite columnists, said of Wright, “Why—if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks—does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency?” Such criticism assumes that Wright views the world the same way the Washington pundits do: with politics and the White House at the center. But pastors, for all their political savvy, are rarely politicians. They have different priorities. A black woman from Alabama who marched at Selma recently told me that change always comes from movements, never from politicians. I am not sure I completely agree, but maybe Wright does, which would explain why there are some things more important to him in this world than one man’s political campaign.

I do not always agree with Wright, but he is an eloquent and sophisticated man. His recent interviews and speeches provided enlightening commentary on the history of the black church and its role in America. Had the media acted responsibly, this could have been the perfect opportunity for whites to learn more about our black brothers and sisters, to better understand their community as well as a compelling theology. But no, the press instead reduces, simplifies, and mocks, creating a caricature where a man once stood. They tarred Obama unfairly, elevating his pastor to the level of personal spiritual advisor and ignoring the fact that a man can attend a church for its community and outreach, no matter what he thinks of its preaching. Between this and some of last year’s Romney/Huckabee coverage, I am left to assume many reporters don’t know a bloody thing about Protestantism or race. Then again, that is probably nothing new.

hough many progressives are upset with Congress for caving over the Iraq War supplemental bill, it wasn’t all bad. It did raise the minimum wage and allot $6.4 billion in much needed funding for Hurricane Katrina recovery. Unfortunately, that $6.4 billion isn’t nearly enough.

The bill waived the requirement that state and local governments pay 10% of FEMA costs (something that was done immediately following Hurricane Andrew and 9/11), and included, among other things:

?$1.3 billion for further repairs to New Orleans-area levees

?$320 million to forgive Gulf Coast community disaster loans

?$50 million to fight crime

?$35 million for hurricane-damaged public transportation

?$30 million to attract educators

?$10 million for historical preservation

In addition to the hurricane recovery funds, $1 billion in defense spending will help the Louisiana National Guard prepare for future hurricanes. As it stands now, “In a Category 1 hurricane, the Louisiana National Guard has what it needs to do the job,” said Lt. Gen. Steven Blum. “But as soon as it reaches a Category 3, it doesn’t.”

Unfortunately, the bill does not provide funding to protect Louisiana’s disappearing wetlands or to investigate the levee failures (visit levees.org). It also does not address bureaucratic issues. Fixing the bureaucratic mess should be a top priority; red tape may well be the biggest impediment to full recovery. You can allocate all the money in the world, but it won’t do any good if it gets bottlenecked in the system.

The most important example of a program that needs to be fixed is the Road Home program, Louisiana’s official federally-funded, state-administered homeowner grant program. 149,000 homeowners have applied for up to $150,000 each in rebuilding funds. However, the average allocation is only half that amount, and the calculation process for distributing benefits is fraught with error. And, the even bigger problem is that, as of June 25, only 30,305 homeowners have actually received any Road Home money; from October to February, a mere 712 checks were distributed (the pace has picked up a bit since). As Louisiana news station KPLC-TV reports, the Road Home program has been described “as the state’s second disaster.” Although these failures can clearly be blamed on ICF International, the private contractor in charge of the program, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the state of Louisiana have both failed to fulfill their oversight duties.

Amazingly, things get worse: it was announced in May that the Road Home program is facing a $3 billion shortfall, which federal recovery czar Donald Powell faults Louisiana for. The federal government, much like insurance companies, only helps families affected by flood damage, not by wind damage. The state of Louisiana, on the other hand, decided humanity is more important than technicalities, and awarded Road Home grants to all homeowners affected by Katrina. As a result, Powell says it is highly unlikely Louisiana will be given the $3 billion it needs—although only half the shortfall comes from covering wind damage. The other half is, despite Powell’s defiance, the feds’ fault—unexpected costs and mistaken federal figures regarding the number of damaged homes.”

According to Powell, “As elected officials have said many times, the federal government is responsible for this hurricane damage because of the failure of the levee system. And now nearly half of the federal funding is going to homeowners that experienced no levee-related damage.” But since when does the federal government handle only the disaster relief its incompetence is to blame for? What about 9/11, Hurricane Andrew, or Midwestern tornadoes? Why should New Orleans be any different?

In saying Louisiana should not be given the money to pay the rest of its homeowner victims, he is, in sum, saying, “I’m sorry, Fred. I know you need help, and I know your house was under ten feet of water, but because Louisiana decided to help the equally hard-hit John when I told them not to, I’m not going to help you after all! That’s right, Fred, through no fault of your own, I’m gonna screw you over good!” Louisiana can make up a portion of the Road Home shortfall with the money Congress approved this week, but that’s hardly an ideal solution, since that money is supposed to be used for local community rebuilding needs. It is likely that Governor Kathleen Blanco (D-LA) will allow the redirection of funds, but only after lobbying Congress for additional funding.

Even now, hundreds of thousands of people are facing inadequate housing, health care, education, and law enforcement as a result of Katrina—this may well be the most vital domestic social justice issue of our generation. Let’s not neglect it any longer. Please, write or call your Congressman and Senators, asking them to fund the Road Home program, increase oversight of Katrina issues, create a levee investigation committee, investigate ways to reduce the red tape, and help Louisiana’s wetlands.

ditor’s Note: This article is based on two stories written by the author for the Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, WA.

More than anything, it’s the hope that sticks with you.

I took the fall term off to volunteer as an intern with the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana’s Office of Disaster Response in New Orleans. A number of things strike you in post-storm New Orleans: the people are tired, boats still sit in front yards, and tens of thousands of homes still need to be gutted. Worst of all is the governmental incompetence. Yet more than anything, you notice that despite the despair, residents try to remain upbeat. With continued help from the rest of the country, New Orleans will recover.

Helping Themselves

I am often asked, why help hurricane victims? Shouldn’t they rebuild their own city?

The fact of the matter is, they ARE rebuilding their own city, but the task is too immense for them to do alone. The average Gulf Coast resident has a house that needs to be gutted and rebuilt, huge bills he can’t pay, government forms that don’t make sense, questions left answered, problems at work, and health issues, but no one to ask for help. The neighbors, friends, family members, and even church are all busy with the same problems. The people of New Orleans have no choice but to ask the rest of us for help.

That’s not to say they are not doing what they can for themselves. I spent most of my time helping a distribution center in the Lower Ninth Ward, the city’s hardest hit neighborhood. One young man came to us fairly regularly, and always wore the same pair of paint-splattered overalls. Each day, they were a little more covered in paint than the day before. Over the course of several weeks, I watched these overalls slowly go from solid green to almost solid white.

A primary example of people doing what they can is in City Park. The nation’s sixth largest park was thoroughly destroyed, but little has been officially done by the city to clean it up. Unofficially, however, residents have been pulling out their own lawn mowers each Saturday to clean up a few fields so their children can play.

Clearly, the people of New Orleans are doing everything they can $mdash; it just isn’t enough. They are very grateful for the help they get. Out-of-town volunteers are astounded at the welcome: residents will stop you on the street just to shake your hand.

It’s the Little Things

Our distribution center focused more on listening to people than it did giving away bottled water$mdash;free hugs go a lot further than free crackers.

One resident who told us his story, “Ronald,” had been helping rebuild a business. His client owed him $15,000, but fired him shortly before the job was finished and paid him nothing. Ronald talked for about 20 minutes, and when he was done, the deacon he spoke with told him, “I wish I could help you with your troubles, but all I’ve got is a little food.”

“That’s ok,” said Ronald. “All I really need is for someone to listen to me and remind me I matter. You gave that to me.” Another man asked me to sit with him for a moment. He confessed crimes to me, wondered aloud where he’d gone wrong, and what he could do to turn things around. A third resident wanted to yell about the “baby rats playing leapfrog in the street!” He said dogs and cats live better than he does.

These stories are typical. It’s often the little things that give people hope and help them get through the day. These men just needed someone to listen to them. Another man, “James,” loved the tea bags we gave out, donated to us by the Anglican Church in Sri Lanka. James spent each day rebuilding his house, and would sit in the middle of the job site with a mug of tea before work, during his afternoon break, and before bed. He said it was the best tea he’d ever had.

Slow Progress:

Continued Governmental Incompetence

The bad news piles up, and at times, can seem overwhelming. The Lower Ninth Ward did not get its water turned back on until October, 14 months after the storm. Even now, many residents say the water is undrinkable. There are no recycling centers, many neighborhoods remain eerily quiet, and only two of ten hospitals have reopened. A quarter of a million residents have no health insurance, many employers can’t find enough workers, and most restaurants and businesses have yet to reopen. Race remains an issue, as well: white residents are three times more likely to get everything they need from their insurance companies than black residents.

Worst of all, however, is the governmental incompetence. Local, state, and federal authorities are not performing any better now than they were in the weeks immediately following the storm. As the New York Times’ Bob Herbert put it, “New Orleans…was brought to its knees by Katrina, and is being kept there by a toxic combination of federal neglect and colossal, mind-numbing ineptitude at the local level.” I did not meet one resident with anything good to say about official efforts. Visitors are always shocked at the lack of progress and ask why more hasn’t been done; I can’t count the number of times residents told me, “Thank God you’re here! If it wasn’t for you faith-based programs and churches, nothing would ever get done!”

The government – state, local, and federal $mdash; is as slow and as incompetent now as it was during the storm’s immediate aftermath. I did not meet one resident with anything good to say about official efforts. Visitors are always shocked at the lack of progress, and ask why more hasn’t been done. The biggest government nightmare is the federally financed, state administered “Road Home” program. Any Louisiana resident whose home was completely destroyed is eligible for $150,000 in aid. However, any money the homeowner received from insurance or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is deducted from their grant. If they didn’t have insurance, they’re further penalized. In the end, most applicants receive between $30 and $40,000; enough to pay the mortgage but not to rebuild. The real problem: 90,000 homeowners have applied for their grants, but only 97 have actually received a check $mdash; 0.001% of the applicants.

I met numerous people who have yet to receive their FEMA trailers, even though FEMA keeps thousands of them in Arkansas and Mississippi at “staging areas” for the next disaster. One man still without a trailer told me he lost all of his identification in the storm, and immediately applied for and received a new license in Baton Rouge. Unfortunately, when he applied for his FEMA trailer, he was denied because the issue date on his license “proved” that he moved to Louisiana after the storm. He later found old documents at a previous employer’s office but FEMA was still taking a prolonged period to review his case. Many others who do receive their trailers must wait weeks before they’re actually given the key $mdash; they have the trailer, but it’s locked and unusable.

It’s Not All Bad News

Residents and volunteers keep hope alive by focusing on the good news. A central recovery office for the city was finally established in September. The new recovery czar, Edward Blakely, helped recovery planning after the Bay Area earthquake and the’91 Oakland wildfire.

The most visible sign of recovery is the clean-up of the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood next to the Industrial Canal levee breaches. When I visited in March, all that remained of the neighborhood was endless debris and piles of ruined cars. I spoke to veterans of both Iraq and Bosnia who say that the Lower Ninth Ward was the most devastated place they’d ever seen. During the summer, the area was cleaned up and is now an empty field, but that’s of little consolation to someone
who now has front porch steps instead of their house. Nevertheless, to an objective observer, the cleanup is a remarkable and visible step.

Recent weeks have seen productive court rulings. On November 28, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled in favor of thousands of homeowners who had been denied payment by their insurance companies. The next day, a second judge ordered FEMA to resume housing payments for storm victims who had not been told in advance about FEMA procedures.

Perhaps the biggest shot in the arm for the city was the return of their football team, the Saints, to the Superdome in September. Ten blocks surrounding the stadium were closed, but the party still spilled over into downtown traffic. The game opened with a joint performance by U2 and Green Day. More reporters covered the game than did last year’s Superbowl, and I am told the noise from the crowd was deafening. Even the ESPN announcers were caught up in the emotion surrounding the game, a blowout win for the Saints. The next day in the Lower Ninth Ward, no one wanted to discuss their troubles $mdash; everyone wanted to talk about the game. “My grandma was getting sleepy around 8pm, and I told her to go to bed,” said one man. “‘No way,’ she said! She wanted to watch her Saints win $mdash; and she did! My eighty-year old grandma made it to ten-o-clock!” The joy continued all season.

For all the fatigue, there is still hope. The government has dropped the ball on New Orleans, but through the continued help of volunteers, the Gulf Coast will recover. The Tucker Foundation is sponsoring nine Spring Break trips to the region, with several other Dartmouth communities also sending crews. A number of these teams still have room for students to join. Other volunteer opportunities include off-term internships with Gulf Coast relief organizations.

ost analysts expect 2006 to be a banner election year for the Democrats, but a few Congressional seats remain as potential Republican pick-ups. One of those seats is held by Democratic Washington Senator Maria Cantwell.

A May 8 Rasmussen poll shows Cantwell beating Republican businessman Mike McGavick, 46%-41%. Cantwell’s numbers have dropped in six successive polls, with McGavick only gaining since November. According to University of Virginia professor and elections expert Larry Sabato, “in a Democratic year and in a blue state, Senator Maria Cantwell is still rated a narrow favorite…[but] if there is an unexpected and surprising trend toward Republicans in November 2006, this could be one of the shocking surprise upsets.”

Cantwell was elected first to the Washington State Legislature in’86 and then to Congress in’92, but lost her re-election bid in’94. She focused on private-sector work until 2000, when she was very narrowly elected to her first term in the U.S. Senate, beating the incumbent Republican, Slade Gorton. The American Conservative Union gives her an 11% lifetime rating—quite liberal. She is staunchly pro-choice and has been pivotal in the fight to keep drilling out of the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but she has raised the ire of the far left with several moderate stances, including opposition to the Alito filibuster and support for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

McGavick was Gorton’s Chief of Staff, but is best known as the former CEO and Chairman of Seattle-based insurance company Safeco. Since he has never held an elected office, he has no voting record to rate, but Sabato says that he “appears to be a moderate conservative.” I saw him speak at a human rights banquet in northern Idaho three years ago, and he seemed very bright and articulate. Although five high-profile state Republicans were considered more likely Senate candidates than he, his political connections, talent, and personal fortune give him a good shot at beating Cantwell this November.

If the Democrats are to have any shot at kicking the Republicans out of power this year, they must keep Cantwell’s seat. For more information about her campaign, visit http://cantwell.senate.gov and http://www.cantwell.com

’ve rather enjoyed my Sunday mornings for the past couple months. My routine is a pleasant one—get up at nine, have my coffee, go to St. Thomas Episcopal Church at ten, listen to the post-service organ music, grab a Boston Globe from Food Court, and finish with brunch at Homeplate before heading back to my dorm. All in all, between the friends, church music, and hearty meal, I wind up in a very good mood.

Not so much on April 30. The church music and the coffee were as good as ever, but I made the mistake of looking at the Globe’s front page before the comics, which ruined my breakfast—heck, it ruined my whole day. The enormous headline read, “Bush challenges hundreds of laws: President cites powers of his office.” Apparently, Bush claims that as President he reserves the right to break over 750 new laws.

In the December 2, 2005 edition of the Free Press, I wrote that many of his actions have been “borderline criminal.” The Globe’s article showed me that I need to drop the word “borderline.” The Bush administration has long shown utter contempt for the Constitution, but the Globe article demonstrates that their disregard for the law goes farther than previously feared. Sadly, the President of the United States is a felon and belongs in a jail cell more than in the Oval Office.

According to the Globe, “Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution… Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush’s assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government.”

You would think that if Bush felt a particular bill were unconstitutional, he would veto it; instead, he signs it into law while claiming that he doesn’t have to follow or enforce it. After signing a bill, he often files “signing statements,” which the Globe defines as “official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law… In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills.”

The first President Bush signed 232 such statements in four years, and Clinton signed 140 in eight—but the current President has signed over 750 in just five. His statements also go farther in scope than his predecessors’, demonstrating a flagrant disregard for Congress and for Constitutional checks and balances.

Most of his signing statements pertain to matters of national security; he claims that as Commander-in-Chief, he can do whatever he wants with the military. Congress gets no say in the matter. Bush regards national security laws as “advisory” in nature—never mind the fact that the Constitution grants Congress the power to “make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.” Despite Supreme Court rulings that ensure Congress will have oversight authority on military matters, the Globe says that many of the laws Bush wants to break “involve requirements to give information about government activity to congressional oversight committees.” Only his disrespect for the McCain torture ban and the Senate’s recent Patriot Act compromise have received any public attention, but other such disregarded laws include a ban on U.S. troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, a requirement that he tell Congress before using money set aside for authorized programs to fund secret operations (like the CIA’s secret prisons), and a ban on using illegally acquired intelligence information. He must view himself not as Commander-in-Chief, but as Dictator-in-Chief.

Not all the laws the President wants to break are national security related. His signing statements have addressed counter-narcotic efforts, Department of Energy whistleblowers, Department of Education reports, State Department statistics, and executive appointments to agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, amongst others.

This naked power grab is ludicrous, illegal, and criminal. No one is above the law, no matter what office he or she holds, despite Richard Nixon’s claim that, “When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.” The Supreme Court famously proved him wrong in’74’s United States v. Nixon. Indeed, it is the Supreme Court, not the President, that has the final say in interpreting the Constitution—but Bush has, for all intents and purposes, declared himself the ultimate Constitutional authority. Many of his signing statements, such as the one regarding his appointments to the Federal Trade Commission, are in direct violation of existing Supreme Court precedents. The Globe quotes New York University law professor David Golove, an expert on executive power issues, saying that Bush “has cast a cloud over ‘the whole idea that there is a rule of law,’” and that “a President who ignores the court, backed by a Congress that is unwilling to challenge him…can make the Constitution simply ‘disappear.’”

The President’s criminal activity extends far beyond these particular 750 laws: his opposition to the aforementioned McCain torture amendment and the Patriot Act compromise went far beyond his signing statements. When Congress failed to pass Bush’s Faith Based Initiatives program early in his first term, he decided he would bypass Constitutional checks and balances, and set up the office with an Executive Order. This may not have violated the letter of the law, but it certainly violated the spirit. Furthermore, according to Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL), Bush’s Department of the Interior has invited land owners to sue the government, and then chose not to contest the lawsuits, essentially forcing the Courts to rewrite the relevant laws. However, the incident occurred so quietly that it attracted no media attention.

Most famously, the President has violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of’78, which says that the government must obtain a warrant whenever it wiretaps a U.S. citizen. His aides say that often, a wiretap for a suspected terrorist is needed so urgently that they don’t have time to get a warrant—but FISA says that in such cases, the government has up to 72 hours after the wiretap has been placed to obtain a warrant. Congress has even said that they can update this law if Bush finds it insufficient. The only reason for Bush to break it is if he feels it does not apply to him. Again, see Exhibit A, United States v. Nixon, and Exhibit B, common sense.

Finally, the administration broke the law during the March Dubai ports debacle. A’92 law requires that the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) conduct a 45-day review of all transactions involving foreign state-owned companies, but the President’s appointees failed to conduct this review when the government of Dubai attempted to purchase several U.S. ports. Why, according to administration officials, was the’92 law not followed? Because, as a February 23 front-page New York Times article reported, they felt the deal “did not involve national security and so did not require a more lengthy review.” In other words, their personal judgment is more important than the law—an incredibly arrogant (and illegal) position to take.

At least a few White House shenanigans are under investigation—Vice President Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, has been indicted for lying to a grand jury about leaking a covert CIA agent’s name, and there has been re
newed speculation in recent weeks that the President’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, may soon face charges for similar crimes. Libby’s crime has been linked back to his boss, Cheney, so it would make sense if Rove’s crimes are eventually traced back to his boss, as well—the President himself. A third White House official, David Safavian, was arrested in connection to the Jack Abramoff scandals; the administration has also been connected to a New Hampshire elections scandal that has landed three Republicans in jail.

If Bush and his cronies continue to get away with their flagrant disregard for the law, they will put our nation on an even more dangerous path. In my December 2 article, I argued that Congress should censure President Bush. On March 13, 2006, Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) made the same call. That censure needs to happen, and it needs to happen now. Bush cannot be impeached; trying two Presidents in a row (even if the first one didn’t deserve it) would ruin public discourse and destroy any remaining faith Americans have in their system, and the country cannot afford that. Unlike that suicidal path, Bush’s damage is not permanent and can one day be painstakingly repaired; as the historian Robert Dallek has said, our nation survives in spite of its leaders, not because of them.

Impeachment would do more harm than good, but a Congressional censure could help put the President in his place. The only other thing that can be done, given his flagrant disregard for the courts, is for the public to give the minority party control of the House or Senate—or both—this coming November, so that it can investigate illegal presidential activity. That kind of a front page article would brighten anyone’s morning routine.