Walter Brueggemann shares two stories of injustice to illustrate the radical act of remembering. Systems seek to count, or “disappear”, us. Community calls each one by name, and holds it longer than life itself.
Refusing Erasure
by Walter Brueggemann
In my recent exposition of Mary and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem, I noted that they went there to be “registered” (Luke 2:1-5). They were “written down” by the Roman Empire for purposes of taxation; we know, moreover, that the empire never forgets the name of a single taxpayer.
Now in what follows here, I pursue a counter-theme, namely that the empire readily erases the names of persons it finds “unqualified,” unwelcome, or simply inconvenient for the purposes of empire. The dominant culture has many strategies for accomplishing “good riddance” that run from neglect and abandonment, to economic dismissal, to incarceration or deportation, or to even more brutal measures of disappearance and erasure.
Eliminating economic isolation requires creating a way for every person to have a stake. In the East Bay area of California, groups like the East Bay Permanent Real Estate cooperative are doing just that – building the infrastructure to end economic isolation. In doing so, they are attacking the roots of the same system that breeds the violent enforcement of property rights, rather than a sense of the commons.
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