Common Good Collective

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This Reader is an expression of Common Good Collective, a vision for an alternative way, rooted in the act of eliminating economic isolation, the significance of place, and the structure of belonging. Whether you come at this from a place of economics, social good, or faith, we hope these reflections help orient your day in fresh, provocative, courageous ways. And most importantly, we hope these lead you into the sharing of gifts in particular communities—into co-creating a common good.

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Leaving Egypt and Pharaoh, Reader, Structure Of Belonging Permalink

When Your Enemy Becomes Sick

CGC contributor Greg Jarrell offers this reflection on an ancient tradition of prayer as it relates to our current political moment. Some prayers, he says, demand that we name our enemies. Only when they are so named can healing happen.

 

When news broke last week that the president was diagnosed with COVID-19, I tweeted that the psalm of the morning ought to be Psalm 109. It was not in jest. While people had varying reactions to the news, the imprecatory psalms give Christians guidance on how to pray.

First, Christians must identify Donald Trump as an enemy: He is an enemy of justice and an enemy of God’s reign in the world. This is not a comfortable arrangement for most white Christians, for whom our society generally works, at least on the surface. If a Trump presidency can be said to have any positive residuals, one is that it has stripped away the veneer that we are all somehow on the same side. For better or for worse, he has made that plain. We are not united in any meaningful way, and the word for people on the other side of that division is “enemy.”

So what to do with enemies? Obviously, there are multiple ways of approaching enemies, and there are multiple attestations of how to think about this in the Bible, including the imprecatory (or “cursing”) psalms, which find expression outside the Psalms as well. The best-known of these is Psalm 109. I think the key for interpretation of that psalm is the last verse, 31:

For God stands at the right hand of the needy/ to save them from those who would condemn them to death.

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Community Safety at the Polls

CGC contributor Courtney Napier offers this look at how people in North Carolina are working to be sure that polling places are safe and welcoming. In an uncertain moment, with questions of legitimacy coming from the highest offices in the land, local people are working to ensure a safe and fair election.

 

“Where I live, I’m swimming in a sea of Trump signs,” Andrea, a mother from Randolph County, North Carolina, told Scalawag. “I’m worried about going to the polls and being harassed more than I am COVID-19. I’m going to mail in or drop it off at the board of elections.”

Alongside widespread concerns with the processing of mail-in ballots, North Carolinians and voters across the South are preparing to reckon with a new threat on Election Day: Right-wing, armed poll-watchers.

Intimidation at the polls has returned to a growing list of previously-banned voter suppression tactics in recent years, following the national conversation around the kinds of voting fraud that President Donald Trump alleged affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential race. But the conversation first began in 1981, when the New Jersey Republican State Committee and the Republican National Convention targeted Black voters by assigning armed, off-duty police officers (then referred to as the Ballot Security Task Force) to polling places in their Newark and Trenton communities, and sending mailers to voters threatening penalties for voter fraud.

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Evaluating Healthcare Fault Lines in Florida

Timothy Loftus, third-year law student and fellow in the Center for Ethics and Public Service, and the Rev. Nathaniel Robinson III of Greater St. Paul A.M.E. Church in West Coconut Grove.

In Miami, a broad coalition of neighborhood organizations, churches, and the University of Miami Law School has developed to protect at-risk communities during COVID-19. Using data, community organizing, and public health, the coalition has developed a wide net of neighbors helping neighbors to guard one another’s health.

 

It is a worship Sunday at Greater St. Paul A.M.E. Church in West Coconut Grove, and the Rev. Nathaniel Robinson III stands at the pulpit and addresses the congregation. He reminds them that the coronavirus, which has now killed more than 200,000 people in the United States, is still having a detrimental impact on the small African-American community where they live.

“Many people have lost their jobs. Many have been furloughed or are working fewer hours,” said Robinson, delivering his sermon via the internet, as the historic church entered its sixth month of virtual services to help stop the spread of the virus.

Rising unemployment is not the only consequence of the pandemic to hit West Grove residents hard. The community has also experienced higher COVID-19 positivity rates, mirroring nationwide data that show Blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities test positive for the virus at higher rates than whites.

But Robinson didn’t need statistics or public health experts to give him that information. When COVID-19 was just starting to spread across the U.S., he knew that West Grove would be one of the many marginalized communities that would bear the brunt of the pandemic. “Many of our residents are the janitors who clean up, the cashiers who bag groceries—they were among the first to get the virus, along with those with preexisting health conditions that made them especially vulnerable,” Robinson said.

Now, a University of Miami School of Law initiative, using data as a weapon, is helping to reduce COVID-19 positivity rates in West Grove as well as address and remedy the health disparities laid bare by the pandemic.

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Caring For Our Grieving Communities

Community care is grounded in materiality, through practices of mutual aid that care for the physical needs of neighbors. But community care does not stop there. Some of the most important work neighbors do with one another happens in conversations, where grief is expressed and care is offered. This week, we highlight a few ways that local communities are caring for one another’s grief in the midst of trauma.

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