 I'm very happy to introduce our guest speaker. His name is D.K. Thompson, and he is a Samoan American clergy activist. Theologian husband and father of four girls. He is an alum of the conomical, theological seminary in American Samoan as well as Columbia University Union theological seminary in the city of New York. Right now he is currently getting his Ph.D. at Boston University School of Theology. His scholarly work accentuates the theological discourse, indigenous culture, wisdom, social ethics, ecology, and social justice issues of Samoan and Samoans and diaspora. His ministry encourages people to be changed agents in the world by invoking a more social, conscious Christian ethic and theology. I'm very happy to give a warm welcome to our speaker. Well, first of all, a huge thanks to Jelissa and also the steering committee of the Martin Luther King Jr. 2008 week of remembrance and reflection. It's always an odd thing listening to your own bio, you know. It's really, you know, not all that fancy when you're sitting down there listening to your own bio. I'm just a student just like the rest of you in this room right now, but at a different level in academia. So, like you, I'm here to share stories. I'm here to learn alongside you and also hopefully offer you something today on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I'm going to go into the lecture, but eventually throughout the lecture I have some texts here that I did bring with me. One of them has not come out yet, and it's by an ethicist and historian by the name of Dr. Gary Dorian, who documents the Black Social Gospel and that legacy and how influential it was on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. So eventually I'll pass that around so some of you can sort of take a look at some of these texts that I draw from in designing and going through this lecture as I prepared for this week. The Woke King. Reimagining Martin Luther King Jr.'s beloved community in the Donald Trump America. From the introduction of his 2015 book, The Radical King, a thematically arranged compilation of Dr. King's speeches, essays and sermons, Dr. Cornell West writes, The FBI transcript of a June 27th 1964 phone conversation reveals Malcolm X receiving a message from Martin Luther King Jr. This message supported the idea of getting the Human Rights Declaration of the United Nations to expose the unfair, vicious treatment of black people in America. Malcolm X replied that he was eager to meet Martin Luther King Jr. as soon as the next afternoon. If they had met that day and worked together, The Radical King would be well known. In a speech to staff in 1966, King explained there must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. If he had lived and pursued this project, The Radical King would be well known. On April 4th 1968 in Memphis, the last day of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. phoned Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta with the title of his Sunday sermon. Why America may go to hell? If he had preached this sermon, The Radical King would be well known. From a theological perspective, these are the kinds of questions I pondered as I prepared for this lecture. Unfortunately, the way we envision a more radical Dr. King is constructed largely from presuppositions and assumptions on where Dr. King's intellectual and pastoral legacy was heading. This brings me to the central theme of this lecture. Dr. King was a champion of civil rights and the advancement of people of color in America and the whole world for that matter. He believed in the beloved community, a global vision of unity based on the principles of love and justice through a universal ethic of nonviolence. However, King's beloved community was not some utopic vision of humanity in everlasting peaceful accord. Dr. King was cognizant of the violent world he sought to transform. For King, it was evident that human experience is forever cloaked in a garment of conflict and struggle. Given this reality, King sought to mediate such conflict and human indifference through the teachings of his faith, whereby peace could be achieved through nonviolent means in effect creating a beloved community that would result in reconciliation and the redemption of humanity. Had he stayed within those confines, had he remained Martin Luther King Jr., the champion of civil rights and desegregation of America, we can only assume that King would still be alive. And as I mentioned earlier from Dr. West, the radical King would be well known today. However, from a historical perspective, that is obviously not the way America works. From its inception, it has been prefaced by a religious understanding that commands moral authority over all other religious beliefs. It has been shaped by ideological notions of manifest destiny that has allowed white supremacy to flourish in both the private and public discourse of American society. In the 20th anniversary preface of his book, Martin and Malcolm and America, A Dream or a Nightmare, my mentor and the father of black liberation theology James Cohn writes about his personal experience during the tumultuous era of the 60s. For Cohn, Dr. King and Malcolm X had an equally significant impact on the black freedom movement. Cohn writes, no one could name white supremacy like Martin and Malcolm. That is why we still need them in the 21st century. If we do not name white supremacy, we cannot destroy it. If we do not name it, we cannot get beyond it to what Martin called the beloved community and Malcolm called freedom for all human beings. During the 60s, Dr. King and Malcolm X were seen as opposites in the struggle for justice. This was far from the truth. They were one and the same cut from the same cloth voicing both the pain and frustration of a people under oppressive systems of power. As Cohn reflects on choosing between Martin and Malcolm in the 1960s, he states, everyone was forced to choose sides but I could not. They, Martin and Malcolm were like my left and right hands, both necessary for the full expression of my humanity and for my struggle to find my voice in the black freedom movement. Two freedom fighters expressing the experiences of their people. Cohn states, Martin and Malcolm illuminate the two roads to freedom that meet in the African American search for identity in the land of their birth. The question for us today becomes, is racial injustice an issue of the past? Fast forward almost 50 years from the day Dr. King's legacy was cut short to 2018. We find ourselves now more than ever in a cloud of disillusionment because we in this country have somehow convinced ourselves that the issue of race is a non-issue because of integration, progress and economic opportunities that have become a reality for people of color rather than fantasy. Such simplistic categorizations of progress and equality in this country are exactly the types of arguments that have allowed white supremacist laws and tendencies to flourish. Only today it has matured to new levels and reached new heights. Dr. King's legacy in the 21st century has been manipulated, co-opted and reconfigured to fit a certain narrative. Americans choose between the nonviolent prophet who believed in the American dream of little black and white boys and girls playing together and the radical preacher who named America for what it truly was then and is today. A burning house whereby King himself admitted to Harry Balafonte he and others had integrated their own people. From within the nation's traditions of law and order white supremacy became legalized, legitimized and normalized. It transformed itself over the years into laws that perpetuate violence upon black and brown bodies through the policing of inner cities, mass incarceration of nonviolent offenders and racial profiling of mainly black and brown young men. Immigrant communities live in fear from ICE laws and tactics that target the innocent and basic civil rights of people in this country are being uprooted. The state of this nation is unstable and the image of American democracy and freedom remains 50 years on. A distorted image that many in Washington at this very moment are fighting to maintain. But there is hope. In the midst of all the distress there is hope. In my role as a member of the clergy I have often, oftentimes witnessed older generations of Americans denigrate the agency and passionate voices of today's young people or as some might call them or you millennials. But many of us forget that there was a time when even Dr. King was criticized for the way he chose to mobilize people of the civil rights movement. I believe it is the young people of today who call our attention to what Dr. King in an essay about W.E.B. Du Bois describes as a pathetically ignorant America. Their cry for justice is dismissed as urban rage, blind passion and divisive in nature. Their protest cries may no longer be we shall overcome, black power or equal rights. They are the rally cries of this generation to resist that black lives do matter and we must all stay woke. They call our attention to many of the complex and insidious methods that perpetuate violence, racism, misogyny, homophobia and white dominance. As a clergy the legacy of prophetic witness is a profound expression of faith. I think this generation as a collective embodies Dr. King's radical legacy is what West calls prophetic fire. Through their activism, protests, art and culture this generation is having to do the difficult work of radical activism that I and many others believe Dr. King was heading towards before his life was cut short. This movement of young people are putting into practice Angela Davis' definition of radical which is simply grasping things at the root. So my use of the term woke or stay woke here is intentional in that I see the socially conscious resistant movements like black lives matter standing rock water protectors, women's movement, climate warriors, doctor defenders and so forth as a continuum of Dr. King's prophetic legacy. This generation is doing what Christians call bearing the cross. They demonstrate what West describes as radical love which is self-denial and the affirmation of life even within the consciousness of impotence. I hear in them the voices of Dr. King, Malcolm X and others that sought to dismantle the vices of white supremacy in America. This generation compels us to face our own ugliness for what it is a nation that has put profit and privilege before justice and love. This generation challenges us to look at the vision of Dr. King not in naive or unsophisticated ways rather as a vision that sought to uncover the complexities of racism and greed in the context of America as part of a global phenomenon of racial and class inequality. In his yet to be released book Breaking White Supremacy Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel Gary Dorian explains, King soared on the wings of a movement that he championed with distinct brilliance. He succeeded because he uniquely bridged the disparities between black and white church communities between middle class blacks and white liberals between black nationalists and black conservatives between church communities and the academy and above all between the northern and southern civil rights movement. King spurned his access to the establishment in order to stand with the poor and oppressed struggling against intertwined forms of racial, social, economic, cultural and imperial oppression. Friends, this King has long been lost to us. However, it is this generation of woke resistors who remind us that Martin Luther King Jr. had a revolutionary vision of justice. They remind us of the woke King. Why do we need to be woke in the 21st century following one of Dr. King's great speeches in his latter years? We have two Americas, the other America and from a clergy perspective, the other Christianity. In 1970, English television host and journalist David Frost asked James Baldwin, are you a Christian or Muslim? Baldwin answered, no, I'm trying to become a human. Friends, today that is the biggest struggle we face as a society and in particular as people of faith. There are still groups of people trying to become human beings. It has become extremely difficult as of late because fear has taken over our definitions of what humanity looks like. Our images of humanity have been shaped by certain political views under the guise of faith in God. In other words, faith has a profound impact on the way Americans think about themselves and others. And more recently, it has a profound impact on the way that we vote. In the last two presidential elections, Christian identity has had a significant impact on these results. Barack Obama's sacrificial denouncing of Jeremiah White writes, his pastor of 20 years who officiated his wedding and baptized his two daughters opened the White House doors for America's first black president. By doing so, Obama stayed clear of undermining America's founding document, not the Constitution, rather the Bible. Better yet, an accepted interpretation of the Bible that upholds American Christian morals and values without uprooting the status quo of American politics and government. In the case of Jeremiah Wright, his message did not fit the image of a black man that white America, if they were to cast their vote for him, could support as president. Of course, we all know that move paid off. The Trump campaign was no different. Through strategic planning and careful consideration for the religious identity of American voters, the Trump campaign focused on white Americans. Trump rallied white aggression by way of their religious identities as Christians. More than any other group, white evangelical Christians were the key. The strategy was simple. Uproot the establishment and status quo, or drain the swamp as he put it, by peddling fear especially to his main base of white evangelical Christians who carried him all the way to victory in key states with 81% of their balance cashed for him. Now some of you may be asking, why does this matter? We are in a political, social, religious climate now where there are investigations going on because this predates Trump. In reality, Christianity in America has two identities. And Dr. Keane prophetically named these two identities from the perspective of the American reality in two-fold. There are literally two Americas, stated Keane. One America is flowing with milk, with the milk of prosperity and the honey of equality. That America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, freedom and humanity for their spirits. That America is made of millions of young people who grow up in the sunlight of opportunity. But there is another America. And that other America has a daily ugliness about it that transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair. People who have experienced oppression have perspective on this notion of dual identities. I personally am from a post-colonial context myself. And I often speak for the rights of Indigenous people in the Pacific where I'm from. In truth, all Indigenous people have a commonality, a shared experience, a bond formed out of the depths of deep pain and oppression from colonialism. On a personal note, for years, I, as in my people, were not sure of our beginnings, our words and our traditions. We learned from the history books in the language of our colonial oppressors. It was the historians that told us we were very pleased that Europeans and Americans had visited. They told us that we begged for their books, clothing, and that we were more than eager to abandon the ways of our ancestors. Later, I realized historians were a huge part of the colonizing horde. One group colonized the mind, the other group colonized the spirit. In matters of the spirit, God was far from innocent. The victory of Jehovah over Indigenous people, gods, and spirits was seen as a victory of their God, the Christian God, over the divine conceptions of island cultures. Local gods were seen as mere natural objects and idols that should be destroyed. These were the images my ancestors had to live through. They wanted us to be ashamed of who we were, if not totally erase our former selves from memory. Then, and only then, could the domination of Native Pacific people be a more effortless colonial project in comparison with bloodier attempts in Africa and the Caribbean. I had to choose whether or not I would be defined by such experiences. I had to decide whether or not this was the Christian message that would define my ministry and my path in life. Through deep discernment and a process of deep reflection, I came to see the other Christian message, the one that mirrored the teachings of a poor Palestinian Jew rather than the policies of empire and government. How do we identify true claims of faith from blind faith? I think Reverend William Barber, who leads the newly revived Poor People's Campaign in America, who recently addressed the Christian Right or Evangelical Christianity that has been so powerful in his home state of North Carolina, said it best. We cannot let narrow religious forces hijack our moral vocabulary. Forces who speak loudly about things God says little about are saying so little about issues that are at the heart of all our religious traditions. Truth, justice, love, and mercy. The movement we have witnessed, the movement we most need in this country, is a moral movement. Reverend Barber's moral movement speaks to a fundamental problem in this country. We live in a morally bankrupt, impoverished, and broken society. But what informs our morals in this country, and in most countries, in most societies, culture and our God talk, or theological understandings, these things are at the root of our moral sensibilities. Now, I'm a theologian, and I know in this particular space and context, many of you are asking what exactly is theology, right? James Cohn defines it as faith seeking understanding. It is a lifetime of seeking and loving God with your mind. Once theology must determine whether or not it is strong enough and deep enough to allow for critical reflection. It asks, how do we know God? In addition, I would add that theology is not knowing exactly who God is, and having absolute answers, rather, theology is also determining who God is not. Christians who are concerned with truth need to look at the rhetoric of so-called Christians, like Trump, Roy Moore, and others. It's difficult not to agree with James Cohn who says, whites turn Jesus' gospel of love and liberation into a gospel of white supremacy. It's troubling what is taking place in this country, especially from a Christian perspective. The Christian message of love and community has been co-opted by those who seek to divide this country along racial, class, political, and economic lines. As a Christian theologian, I ask a simple question. What similarities are there between the policies of this president and the teachings of Jesus? I've yet to answer this question as a theologian, clergy, and as an American citizen. As a Christian, I'm hopeful though. But I'm reminded of Dr. King as he confronted white supremacy during the turbulent era of the 50s and 60s. Though his vision of a beloved community frightened many white conservatives, it also challenged liberals and pastors who remained silent. In his eulogy at the funerals of the four little girls murdered as they attended Sunday school in Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. King spoke for them, as he called people, to not merely be concerned with who their murderers were, rather to also be concerned with the system, the way of life, and the philosophy which produced these murderers. Dr. King was determined to not have them die in vain. For God, as he stated, has a way of ringing good out of evil. Unfortunately in today's society we have a lot of bad theology. What is bad theology? It is any theology or understanding of God that produces a philosophy of hate, division, and dehumanizes the other. Bad theology is a theology that preaches love for people and community but endorses those who are adversaries of the rights of others to live in peace. From the Christian lens, Cohn argued, for the validity of social context in that there can be no separation of our questions about Jesus from the concreteness of everyday life. Christ in the struggle for freedom is not merely a theoretical question but it is practical as well. The Christ within history then is also within the experiences of people today. As absurd and confusing those experiences may be, I contend that our interest in Jesus' past cannot be separated from one's encounter with his presence in our contemporary existence. The truth of the matter is that any theology that is ignorant of the oppression, victimization, and alienation of any people is in essence defending it. Friends, I have come to just about the end of this rather short conversation. But my goal today was to break down this image of king as a one-dimensional, pastor and activist, sanitized and revised by American history writers. To ask us all to look closer with more focused eyes and ears to listen to the voices of today's generation so that we may catch snippets of Dr. King, mobilizing them to be freedom fighters in their own ways. I wanted us to see America and her religious identity through two separate lenses of interpretation to gain perspective. And my aim was to ask all of us to do the difficult work of challenging our own God talk, but also naming religious rhetoric that is divisive and dangerous. I hope and pray that our time here together has been worth it. But still the question remains, what does MLK's beloved community look like in America 2018? I think we as Americans, legal and not, white and not, gendered and not, Christian and not, need to start with the realization that we have yet to fully embrace Dr. King's vision of a beloved community. But I think we can begin the process by taking advantage of the unfortunate circumstances of events that we are in these days. We can do this by interrogating laws and policies that promote violence upon communities of color or demonize people because of sexual identity, religion, race, or legal status. It also means interrogating the politicians and religious leaders who got us here. We can get closer to King's radical notion of community by holding those in positions of power accountable to all people and not a select few. But I would also like for us to remember the religious identity of Dr. King. Walter Fluker explains, Martin Luther King Jr. was a southern black preacher. King identified with a southern tradition, but he was able to articulate more than one moral tradition in his public presentations. In other words, Dr. King was a product of a certain community, but he also knew that he was accountable to Christians and people in a very global sense. I think Dr. Fluker is right as he says, we Americans seem to have difficulty balancing different moral perspectives in terms of social transformation. I'm seeing more and more a tendency toward a monolithic view of faith. We have difficulty listening to the stories of others with integrity and empathy. Envisioning King's legacy in our current social, political and religious climate requires a King-like dedication, friends, to justice and love. It means not being content with the way things are and doing everything possible to bring about change and understanding. As a theologian, for me, this takes place in ways that create newness and fresh perspectives that give language to a people's pain and suffering, as well as the joy and freedom. King's beloved community in 2018 are no resemblance to King's vision in the 1960s. But his passion for justice, his passion for love in the latter years of his life give us examples of what that may look like for us today. We saw it as he stood in solidarity with Appalachian whites in Virginia and Mexican farm workers in California fighting for better wages and working conditions. We saw it through his circle of friends as he laid the foundation for inter-religious dialogue between Muslims, Buddhists and Jews like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. And we saw it as he took a stance against Vietnam despite criticism from white allies and his own African-American community. There's no doubt in my mind had he been alive today, the Woke King would have been known in the literal sense. However, the Woke King can inspire and motivate us towards freedom intellectually, theologically, spiritually and culturally if we allow his legacy to speak to our common struggles for justice, love and reconciliation in 2018 and beyond. I thank you all for your time and I thank you for joining me in this conversation today. Thank you so much for preaching to us this morning, the truth. You mentioned William Barber's movement that started with Moral Mondays in North Carolina and is really galvanizing a lot of momentum right now as he's going across the country and continuing forward with what MLK was doing in terms of bringing people together around the intersections of oppression. Can you speak to that movement that's happening right now? I know that in Seattle tomorrow Barber is going to be in Seattle and really introducing people to the movement so if any students want to show up there and hear about this, if people kind of speak to that, I'd be great. Just a little bit of background, while I was in New York City at Union Theological Seminary, William Barber is a visiting professor there. Just about two years ago I had a, as with many of my colleagues, had opportunities to talk and work with William Barber and others on campus about the Poor People's Campaign. So I think the most sort of unique thing about Reverend Barber's Poor People's Campaign is that it's not such, it's not a simple movement where things are focused on just race, right? And so Reverend Barber's movement focuses on all economic disparities, social disparities, things that people in different classes from different ethnicities experience. And so this coming together of the Poor People's Campaign, which is really gaining momentum, especially in light of the last year and a half or so, is a movement where churches, faith communities, communities of color, different inter-religious communities of Buddhists and Muslims and people who are also not adherents of a particular type of faith can come together and gather and sort of be a part of something to inspire change. They were huge presence a few months ago during the what is it, the Charlottesville supremacist rallies there. And so what's important about Reverend Barber's movement is that they plant themselves intentionally in certain spaces to show that there is solidarity within these different communities. It is funded on this very basic notion of us getting, you know, getting right morally, right? I think Reverend Barber is the one that always repeats this, is that we are living in a society where we are part, right? It's as simple as good or bad. And these things have become sort of a little gray and difficult to discern among average people like yourselves, right? It's because politics and all of these other, you know, sort of insidious ways of, you know, getting people to think a certain way have, you know, been a sort of cloud over the way that we think and the way that we view each other. So I think, you know, Reverend Barber's movement is one that is gaining momentum and I think that it's great for us, especially in, you know, Trump America in 2018. Thank you for that question. Press the button underneath. Press the button underneath. Press the button underneath. Okay, there it is. Okay. Yeah, well, this was a speech that was never, it never happened. I think it was a day later or the following week where Dr. King was assassinated. But I think the title of the speech is important for us to sort of view this radical, woke king, and I think it's important for us to sort of view this radical, woke king, and I think it's important to sort of view this radical, woke king, that, you know, king was really coming to consciousness about what it meant to be a person of color in America. Not only a person of color, but to be loaned to a certain economic class in the United States. And obviously the title of that sermon was Why America May Go to Hell, right? And it's important to know that, and sure a lot of you have been hearing this throughout the week, that the latter king was very unpopular, right? With his own allies, with his own community, just because he was starting to sort of connect these things to the way, you know, systemically how America has designed and has been designed to, you know, oppress and marginalize people of color, and especially poor whites. King was an advocate of the Asian whites in Virginia in trying to mobilize them also in their living conditions and get better wages there. But it was definitely a sermon that never happened. I would have loved to hear that sermon to be honest with you. Kay, and I'm a part of the emotion as well. My question was, in your perspective, what do you feel like agents of racial injustice could do to be more of an ally with the targeted group? What do the targeted group do to be... Yeah, so that's a good question and that's an important question. As a pastor, one of the things that I've tried to do and embody in, when I go around preaching nowadays is that I'm very intentional in the language that I use, right? So racism, right, is racism, right? I think we've been far too long sort of in this space out there where it's become difficult for us to say that that's racist, right? Or that's misogynistic or that is, you know, that's homophobic, right? There are so many things that keep us from coming to concrete decisions in our lives. And for me, for those who are agents, right, if I'm understanding your question of racial injustice, I think there's hope there because a lot of people are misinformed, right? And it's about re-educating people. It's about really getting in there and having those conversations with them. As Jelissa mentioned, I attend Boston University which is where Dr. King received his PhD while he was there. It's very interesting to me, right? Is that, you know, you have this legacy of Dr. King in white school, you know? And so, you know, that's something that was important to me when I said, you know, I'm just going to plant myself into this white space. When I'm in Boston I'll go, you know, with my family once in a while and I'll go to Cambridge and visit an all-white, you know, congregation, you know? So I've personally, that's what I do is I've embraced this ethic of intentionality, right? To be in some, in certain places because I don't believe all whites, you know, who are uninformed are deplorable. I don't believe that, you know, people of different religious identities are, you know, any less important for, you know, the fabric of this country than Christians are. And so these are the things that I've been, you know, trying to do on my own. Obviously, you know, everyone has their way and it's about sometimes putting yourself in a zone of discomfort. But this is the way that I do it and I do this as an activist and I do this also in my personal time. I don't know if that answers your question. How do you deal with people who as a, you know, good Christian how do you deal with people who take to heart the exclusionary messages from the scripture? Because they are there and that's something that's always, it's something I always wrestle with talking with people who are interacting with people who are who take those messages to heart. How do you respond to that? Exclusionary messages can you give me some context? Things like the kind of, the messages condemning things like homosexuality in the Bible, that's what comes to mind most readily. Okay, you're trying to get me in trouble, huh? No way! I'm still a pastor, I can't get revoked anytime. I'm not worried about that. I say for people who read sacred texts that there's a context to those sacred texts. It's just like anything that we read today, there's a context to those texts. I cannot interpret a text that's written today in 3,000 years for that message to maintain its integrity in the same way that we do the Bible. It's, you know, the Bible is full of messages and contradictions. And this is coming from a theologian, right? But as a theologian is what I try to take out of these sacred texts and I'm sure others do in different religious traditions is I take out the core message. That's what maintains the integrity of anything. It's the same way that we read into this Constitution of the United States. We know that that document was not made for half of us in this room. It was not made to protect the rights of half of us in this room. But in some way, we have taken this document and formed movements around it to make sure that this document holds this document is held accountable to people of color in this country. And I would approach the sacred texts of the biblical scriptures, the Hebrew texts and the New Testament in the same way. Things look different, right? And I got to say this that we have been highlighting the legacy of Dr. King throughout this whole week but I was talking with my cousin, Pastor Lena Thompson, who's also here. Many of us are not aware that Dr. King was also misogynistic. Dr. King was also harmful. Dr. King was a man of his context that focused on a certain movement to make sure, so he dealt in sort of steps. And this is how movements sort of work. A lot of women were not allowed to be at the forefront of the civil rights movement. Bayard Rustin, who was a gay man who organized the march on Washington was not allowed to take credit for that movement because it made tarnish the image of the civil rights movement because of his gayness. So we have to really look at reality and deal with history as we have it. Unfortunately there are those who revives this history but I ask people to do the same work with the biblical texts and in the way that we live today and the way that we lift up these powerful figures in our history. What do you think that religion plays a good part in ancient politics as a theogen? In ancient politics can you define ancient politics in some context? So I can answer your question. The way that ancient society used to play out in political roles like the old governments might commit. Well I think we live in the 21st century and with all societies we progress towards laws and legislations and policies and governments and systems and frameworks that serve the better interests of everyone. I don't think that the way we function right now is very ancient according to American history. It's an ancient way of functioning because it still functions under very oppressive systems and white supremacist exception privileging certain classes of people. So I think it's up to people to design government and to make sure that those governments serve them alongside everyone else. Is there a chance to ask the theologian all your God questions before my time is over? Hello, my name is Deshaun. Thinking about back historically how we had two separate Black Wall Street and White Wall Street and one of the things that made one of the marches and the movements a lot of various successes because financially we could fund our own movement. Would that not be in the play right now? What would be some suggestions? Because I think that's the way to bring the attention to them is when we stop supporting those things that keep us suppressed. So when we stop supporting those things and become financially stable on our own as a society as a separate group I think that's what makes them hear the difference and react to those changes. So in reaching back to that are there any suggestions that you have in regards to how do we become now again a financially stable society in that movement? That's an amazing question. I would sort of real quickly address that racism is profitable right? It's profitable for white supremacy. It's profitable to be in control of the certain systems that are designed to make sure that you don't economically prosper in this country right? The second part of that I would say go watch Black Panther everyone in this room go watch Black Panther it's about supporting your people. It's about me as a Samoan person right? Going into the Black Lives Matter movement in New York City and standing in solidarity within supporting Black owned businesses alongside Samoan owned businesses supporting Asian businesses and clothing companies alongside you know Black clothing companies and businesses and this is not to say right that this is in any way shape or form divisive. We know that white privilege exists in this country. We know that white supremacy is insidious and is designed to make sure that we fail so what we gotta do we gotta pull up the bootstraps and make sure that we go into those spaces and support our people no matter what differences we have with each other the larger and bigger picture right is that we prosper you know and we not only think of times of today but we have to be visionaries like Dr. King once right and imagine 50 years from now where would you know the African-American struggle be for freedom and Malcolm X right and W.B. Boy's right or Cesar Chavez or Gandhi in India you know they were visionaries that thought way ahead of their time to make sure that people had opportunities and lived in an equal society so you're very right on point today you actually answered your own question you know what I mean it's about just supporting each other and being there for each other no matter you know whether you're black you know Asian or Latino it really is about standing in solidarity with each other as we do when we're out there on the streets protesting and demonstrating I've got a lot of questions but well I'm not going to offer commentary about that because I'm not an African-American but I will speak from the San Juan perspective that can give you sort of an idea right assimilation is a huge part you know part of colonialism and part of white supremacy is not only exclusion but it's also speaking to my cousin about this also it's also belonging right it's also belonging to the dominant racial category it's also belonging belonging to the dominant economic class system right and we see this today in our administration we saw this a couple of days ago you know you have Latino you have black you have you know also Pacific Islanders right who support a very divisive administration and it makes you sort of wonder and think about what motivates that so you're going to always have those characters and those individuals in the struggle but do not let those instances discourage you from the larger and bigger picture which is all of your people everyone so I think this notion of strength in numbers and people coming together in solidarity has done well for all of us and will continue to serve us in very well purposes as we move forward but I will not for commentary on the African-American experience but in my cultural context of San Juan there's a lot of brown noses out there and there's a lot of them out there that sort of you know think that they belong to a certain category you know because they want to belong there because it means a certain status it means a certain way of living in privilege so I don't know if that answers your question yeah thank you oh okay my name is Shawan I have a question I think about symbolism and I think about the Bible even like the flag that they use to represent this country and historically what are associated with those things I think of how many of my people were lynched under the representation of that flag that who you know hung from trees, tarred, feathered under the representation and interpretation of those scriptures and it makes me wonder do you reconcile this in your mind that you know you should I don't know like follow I guess like this Christian God or whatever but it's the very same symbol that's been used to dehumanize and demean and break the spirit of not only my people but yours what? yeah um test that was a brilliant question slavery, colonialism all of these things Christianity has been the sort of Christianity has not been good to my people has not been good to the African-American people has not been good to the Latin American experience and the Caribbean it's pretty much been a very destructive force in the history of humanity and society but part of the hope in me is the sort of the message that I take out of this Christian gospel I'm conscious that this message has been used in a certain way to promote dominion and power over certain people I can give you a good example James Combe wrote a book called the cross and the lichentry right so for the black American experience um you know this gospel right of pain and suffering you know that leads to liberation and freedom and reconciliation right was something that carried you know people who underwent slavery throughout 3-400 years so in this very weird and absurd way the gospel was in terms you know as far as the gospel of white people was oppressing them but it was also proving to be this religious faith identity that gave them hope in the sacrifice of Jesus for resurrection so I would say with all religious identities there is a certain way that those texts have been designed there is a certain way that those texts have been interpreted one theologian says that the gospel of Jesus stopped being the gospel of Jesus when the state endorsed it in the 4th century once the Roman empire endorsed it it ceased to be the gospel of Jesus now dominion and suffering and oppression under this guise of the gospel of Jesus because religion mobilizes people it brings people together in spaces that politics can't do and once you do that it sort of becomes this tool of governments and colonial powers and slave masters so I mean not to interpret anyone's faith but for me there is hope even in that very painful history of the Christian gospel because it's the history that's painful for me the way that that history has been interpreted the way that that history and the way that those texts became very very oppressive to my people but I like to center on as I said the core founding principles of Christianity which is love, justice, community nurturing, faith in each other equality and things like that I don't know if that answers your question because I feel like it's a very deep question in 10 or 15 minutes of commentary will hardly do it in justice but I try to focus on what's good in faith