Advocacy update for February 13, 2024

Advocacy through the lens of Becoming Beloved Community

As a journalist, social justice advocate, and member of many teams and leadership bodies in our diocese since 1988, I’ve been writing public policy articles for diocesan publications from time to time for decades. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, I began providing weekly policy updates to the diocesan e-News as a member of the Becoming Beloved Community Leadership Team. This article is a review of the spiritual basis and sources for that reporting. I’ve organized it according to the disciplines of the Four Way Path of the Episcopal Church’s Becoming Beloved Community mission. I’m sharing this overview on Lincoln’s birthday, half way through Black History Month. 

It summarizes the evidence that gerrymandering is a major factor in corruption and injustice. I invite you help pass a constitutional amendment in Ohio called Citizens Not Politicians to stop gerrymandering and create fair and representative districts. Here are links to learn more and volunteer:

• Fair Districts Ohio Redistricting Toolkit including redistricting basics, slide decks, talking points, recordings, and additional resources.
• Here’s the link to volunteer and get trained as a petition circulator or speaker.
• Request speakers for your church, civic group, community council, etc.

National and state context

In the months after George Floyd’s death, white Americans within and beyond our church dove into far more intensive study of the history of white supremacy in the United States. Sequestered at home but learning how to connect across the diocese by Zoom as part of the BBC Community of Practice, many white Episcopalians engaged in soul-searching examination of their own assumptions and patterns of life.  

Several of our congregations had started to follow the Episcopal Church’s Sacred Ground curriculum in 2019. In 2020, book studies sprang up on works like Ibram X Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist and the Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers’ The Church Cracked Open. But in Ohio – just as in Florida and other states – backlash against this nationwide examination of conscience accelerated at every level, from local school boards to the State Legislature. In Ohio we battled legislation and administrative moves to curtail diversity, equity and inclusion training in state agencies and public schools and universities, and to shut down students’ opportunities to contrast our nation’s stated values with the continuing impact of racism and white supremacy.

In short, some Ohio leaders are portraying anti-racism work, like Becoming Beloved Community, as the real danger to the mental health and education of young minds. They are doing this instead of welcoming white Ohioans’ commitment to examine the violence and psychological harm of racism, so we can take responsibility to change our actions to stop it.

Let me document this deliberate misdirection.

Some of the most powerful Republican leaders in the Legislature have introduced bills, including SB 83, to ban the teaching of “divisive concepts.” SB 83 faces only one more hurdle – passage by the Ohio House – to be sent to the Governor to be signed into law. SB 83 would essentially ban mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at Ohio’s public universities and prohibit faculty from endorsing “controversial beliefs or policies” – defined as “any belief or policy that is the subject of political controversy, including climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion,” allowing students to “reach their own conclusions about all controversial beliefs or policies.” Faculty and universities “shall not seek to indoctrinate any social, political, or religious point of view – ” in other words, they would have to present “both sides.”

At the K-12 level, the State School Board adopted an anti-racism resolution in the summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd. The School Board’s resolution and call to action was based on diligent examination of data from the state’s 600+ school districts, which documented systemic racism and revealed the need for better DEI training and protections for students harmed by this racism.

After months of attacks on the School Board’s resolution, the Ohio Senate confirmed three new members, appointed by the Governor, who joined a 10-7 vote in October 2021 to repeal the anti-racism resolution. In its place the new Board adopted the “Resolution to Promote Academic Excellence in K-12 Education for Each Ohio Student without Prejudice or Respect to Race, Ethnicity, or Creed,” which condemns any teachings that “seek to divide.” Two members of the Board – one of them the Board President – who voted against the repeal faced extraordinary pressure to resign under threat that the Senate would vote to remove them. Both resigned.

In November, 2022, Ohio voters elected enough new school board candidates to block curriculum changes proposed by the newly-appointed members. In 2023, the Legislature folded a bill into the biennial budget. This rider removed the authority of the Ohio School Board over curriculum, instead giving it to a new bureaucracy in the executive branch with no elected officials, thereby weaking transparency and public oversight. A stand-alone bill stripping the School Board of most of its powers had faced huge public outcry and had failed to advance through the normal legislative process.

In short, those who are in charge of Ohio’s public policy and curriculum are working to stop the examination of history and current events through the lens of equity and justice. The work they oppose is the core of Sacred Ground and Becoming Beloved Community. They seek to purge from Ohio’s public schools and universities the thoughtful and serious examination of US history and current events that our church is undergoing. Our elected leaders are attacking Ohio citizens like us, who are engaged in the quest to overcome racism, for teaching “divisive content.” 

Historian and theologian, the Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks, named what is going on as white “Christian nationalism” in his keynote address to the Annual Meeting of the Ohio Council of Churches, hosted by the Church of the Redeemer in Cincinnati on Nov. 29, 2023, with the Very Rev. Owen Thompson, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, as one of the panelists. To live into our Baptismal vows we have to name what’s going on and strive to stop it. We have to proclaim Jesus’ love and non-violence and follow the example of his compassionate deeds and teaching, such as in Matthew 25.

Here is a summary of current advocacy work in the light of the Four-Fold Path:

Telling the Truth

Several U.S. Supreme Court decisions weaken protections enacted almost 60 years ago against racial discrimination in voting rights:

• The Justices’ 2019 refusal (in Rucho v Common Cause) to define what degree of gerrymandering is unconstitutional,
• Other rulings undermining the Voting Rights Act protections for Black voters, 

followed by Congress’ failure to restore nationwide protections against gerrymandering and voter suppression, mean that major decisions on civil rights, voter access, and many other policies affecting the safety of Black Americans are now made by state legislatures and courts.  

Because of these changes, it’s essential for Episcopalians committed to Beloved Community to pay attention to state policy. As the BBC team member tracking it, I am striving to provide a framework from our faith and history that Episcopalians can use to inform and galvanize their advocacy for racial justice.

The lens of Sacred Ground and the four disciplines of Becoming Beloved Community illuminate these trends with inexorable clarity, like the overhead floodlight in a surgical theater.  

Many of the policies being passed by our legislature and signed by our Governor conflict with the views of the majority of Ohioans, as documented in the annual Ohio Pulse Poll conducted by Baldwin-Wallace University. Ohio’s public policy is shaped at the Statehouse by a veto-proof supermajority in both houses of our legislature.  

Corruption is part of the problem, as made evident in the massive FBI bribery case over HB 6 which led to the conviction of former House Speaker Larry Householder last winter and the federal and state indictments of former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Chair Sam Randazzo. Ohio is rich in fossil fuels and a center for fracking.

Despite the rigorous documentation of this corruption by the FBI and investigative journalists, it continues with impunity. For example, the legislature has passed several bills impeding renewable energy (which mitigates climate change and reduces deadly air pollution to which poor people are disproportionately exposed) and promoting fossil fuels, like a law passed during the 2022 Lame Duck session that classifies natural gas as a form of “green energy” which could qualify for renewable energy credits.

To distract voters from this corruption, its architects are working to ramp up fear and anger in the ideological base that determines the primary winners who go on to win the general election in the gerrymandered, non-competitive districts. The incendiary issues they use include the fear of “white replacement,” the fear of losing gun rights, perceptions of voter fraud, and equal protections and rights for LGBTQ+ people. We’re seeing the impact of this demagoguery in increasing alienation between urban and rural Ohioans. Our denomination serves both, and needs to step forward as a source of clarity, neighbor-love, reconciliation, and trust-building.

The Republican supermajority in both the Statehouse and the Ohio Congressional delegation has been preserved since 2022 by partisan gerrymandering under which five successive state legislative district maps and two Congressional district maps were found unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court for violating specific rules of Ohio’s constitution which ban excessive partisan advantage. These rules were passed in constitutional amendments by over 70% of Ohio voters in 2015 (rules for creating fair state districts) and 2018 (rules for creating fair Congressional districts).

The Senate President and House Speaker defied the Ohio Supreme Court rulings and continued to run out the clock, producing barely-revised maps right at the deadlines, allowing minimal public review, and passing each plan on a party-line vote until a federal panel of judges ordered the state to use one of the unconstitutional plans so that the 2022 election could be conducted. Ohio’s 2021-22 redistricting was conducted with breathtaking cynicism and the frank exercise of power for corrupt goals.

In addition to the efforts of our elected leaders to stop anti-racism work, our legislative leaders are passing laws which oppress, terrorize and even threaten the lives of Black Ohioans and other minorities, particularly LGBTQ+ children and youth. We are witnessing a reprise of the systematic campaign after the Civil War to kill the protections of the 13^th and 14^th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, including equal access for Black people to voting, fair representation, and physical and mental safety. Here are just a few examples:

• Creating new barriers to voting that disproportionately affect poor people and people of color, like imposing new ID requirements and allowing no more than one drop box site per county, as well as attempts to curtail when and for what drop boxes can be used.
• Eliminating common-sense gun safety provisions and prohibiting cities from passing their own to try to prevent the violence that is terrorizing Black children and youth, many of them bystanders, through the proliferation of guns. Terrible milestones in the last three years include passing a Stand Your Ground law that allows people to shoot in “self-defense” in a public place (such as Capitol Square during a protest) if they feel threatened, and allowing local school districts to arm school staff with just over 20 hours of safety training, in place of the over 700 hours required before. Data on the disproportionate punishment of students of color suggest they will be most at risk if armed teachers feel threatened.
• Successive cuts in income tax rates which almost exclusively benefit wealthier Ohioans while reducing the state’s revenue.  This means that vital programs like childcare subsidies, school meals, and affordable housing have to struggle even harder for funding as some state leaders – particularly in the Ohio Senate – try to enact more onerous eligibility requirements.  The General Assembly is now discussing proposals to eliminate the state income tax entirely.
• The state’s laws severely restricting abortion access (now overruled by the constitutional amendment protecting reproductive rights, which voters passed in 2023.

Here is another shocking case in point from 2023. The Ohio Legislature authorized a special election in August to make it significantly harder for a citizen-sponsored constitutional amendment to qualify for the ballot and to pass. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose told supporters that the goal was to prevent passage of the reproductive rights amendment in November. Other likely targets include redistricting reform and a raise in the minimum wage, which citizens are striving to place on the November 2024 ballot.

Many Episcopalians worked with enormous dedication to educate their neighbors on what was at stake and how to make sure their vote counted. The special election proposal to raise the obstacles to citizen-sponsored amendments was resoundingly defeated by Ohio voters who turned out in unprecedented numbers for an August election. 

In November, over 56% of Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment restoring reproductive rights including abortion and explicitly protecting the right to contraception. The campaign against reproductive rights included the claim that allowing abortion is a form of genocide against African-Americans, but Washington Post exit polls showed that 83% of Ohio’s Black voters voted for reproductive rights in November, 2023.

Resources for Truth Telling

We are really fortunate to have excellent investigative reporters in Ohio’s secular media including USA Today (whose Statehouse team report for the Columbus Dispatch and Cincinnati Enquirer), the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and public radio. Thanks to the free Daily News Clips newsletter provided by Innovation Ohio, I am able include hyperlinks to these sources, as well as national and international publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Guardian. I also include links to draft legislation, bill analysis by the non-partisan Ohio Legislative Services Commission, and court rulings. These hyperlinks enable Episcopalians to read these sources for themselves and draw their own conclusions. 

The daily “Letters from an American” blog by Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson is a profound resource for putting current events into the sweep of over 200 years of struggle to extend the full promise of civil rights and economic justice to all Americans despite our history of white supremacy.

I was approved by the Episcopal Public Policy Network as the liaison (Ambassador) for the Diocese of Southern Ohio, so I get invited to the Office of Government Relations’ mostly monthly Zoom conversations with Ambassadors, and review action alerts and educational events on the issues we’re covering, including gun safety, voting rights, and racial justice. I’ll say more on Episcopal resources for action under the discipline of Practicing the Way.

Proclaiming the Dream

The Baptismal vows are the bedrock of this discipline, particularly proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ (love in action). What will a community look like when everyone in Ohio is welcomed and treated as Beloved? Here are concrete examples:

• Food security including nutrition that promotes optimal development and lifelong health
• Housing security
• Safety from violence and environmental hazards
• Excellent education available and affordable to all Ohioans
• Timely, effective, and affordable physical and mental health care
• Economic self-sufficiency through living-wage jobs
• Equal protection under the law, including for People of Color and LGBTQ+ people.

Repairing the Breach

This includes keeping track of proposed legislation and regulatory decisions, and alerting Episcopalians and community partners of upcoming legislative hearings as well as deadlines for public comments on proposed regulations. The weekly posts frequently include updates on bills, their implications for racial equity, and instructions on how and when to submit testimony so it will be shared with committees and become part of the official record.  

Most of the action alerts I’ve done since 2020 have focused on state policy, because, as I mentioned above, this is the battleground for civil rights in the United States right now. But I include news from other states such as curriculum wars and redistricting battles because they illuminate and also affect what can happen in Ohio. Examples include two dramatic rulings in 2023: the 5-4 decision in Allen v. Milligan, a case from Alabama which preserved some of the Voting Rights Act protections against racial gerrymandering, and Moore v. Harper, the Court’s decision in a North Carolina case which rejected the “independent state legislature theory” which would have eliminated the power of state supreme courts to rule on the fairness and constitutionality of redistricting plans created by legislatures, even if voters had given their courts that power, as Ohio voters did over the last decade.

Following the direction of Canon Jason Oden, I am working to build advocacy teams based on various kinds of affinity, whether geographic (such as Central Ohio or Southeast Ohio) or on goals, such as protecting voting rights or reducing the barriers to affordable housing. Two examples:

• Recruiting and train faith-based advocates for the Citizens Not Politicians campaign to collect the required signatures to put a new constitutional amendment before voters in November to reform redistricting again to end the inevitable conflict of interest when elected officials with majority power (of either party) control it.
• Regional gatherings to pool wisdom so we can work and advocate more effectively for social justice goals, such as the Jan. 13 Abundance food security summit for Greater Cincinnati congregations at the Church of the Advent in Cincinnati.

Success in passing the Citizens Not Politicians amendment to stop gerrymandering and create fair districts will build confidence, hope, and commitment among Episcopalians to persevere against the many forms of lying, intimidation, and even violence that endanger the Common Good and Beloved Community in the United States in 2024.

Practicing the Way

The Episcopal Church defines this discipline as formation. The first, and essential learning is for us to consult and listen to the people directly impacted by these policies. Episcopalians are best able to do this by collaborating with them in planning and providing community services, working in interfaith and secular community coalitions, and serving on or advocating to leadership groups like county commissions, city or neighborhood councils, school boards, and foundations.

Matthew Desmond’s new book Poverty, by America could be a revelatory book study for our diocese. A Princeton sociology professor who has given the Taft Lecture at Christ Church Cathedral, this Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Evicted compiles the evidence that we have the knowledge and tools to end poverty in the United States at a very reasonable cost, but that we prioritize benefits for the wealthy instead.

The Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations provides action alerts, background on key issues, and essential advocacy resources including the General Convention Resolutions and the Resolves of Executive Council, which are easy to find by keyword. The OGR also offers webinars, podcasts, and training on vital matters such as civil discourse and confronting misinformation and disinformation.

I am striving to connect Episcopal and interfaith readers to resources they can use as they discern what policies will close the gap between the Justice proclaimed by our branch of the Jesus Movement and the current state of inequity and oppression. These resources include statewide non-partisan advocacy non-profits who often provide webinars or other training and who publish policy analyses on their websites:

• League of Women Voters Ohio
• Common Cause Ohio
• Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense Ohio Chapter
• The Ohio School Boards Association
• Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO, where Episcopal deacon and social worker Douglas Argue is managing director

and faith-based nonprofits including

• Hunger Network in Ohio (Zach Johnson of Logan and I serve as Episcopal representatives on the board), 
• Ohio Council of Churches (the Rev. Melanie Slane is on the board)
• EquaSion and its “A Mighty Stream” interfaith racial justice coalition in Cincinnati (The Rev. Melanie Slane is a leader in this coalition, together with longtime racial justice leader Chip Harrod, former executive director of NCCJ in Cincinnati and also an Episcopalian.)

Advocacy briefings are compiled by Ariel Miller, a longtime community advocate and member of Ascension & Holy Trinity, Wyoming. Connect with her at arielmillerwriter@gmail.com.