A Moral Revolution During the Summer—A Call to Conscience: Forward to Action?
By Quardricos Bernard Driskell
It’s the summertime. As Ella Fitzgerald as ‘Bess’ sung, “Summertime, and the livin is easy.” For some of us, we are taking it easy. Others are busy with life—job, family, health. However, if the alt-right, extreme conservative partisans and ideologues triumph in November—it jeopardizes the well-being of you, your families, your congregants, and friends and indeed our democracy will rise dramatically.
The extreme political right and left are inflamed and will vote. They represent, at best, about 30% of registered voters. It is that other 70% that irregularly or never votes in off-year elections. Why? They see that career “politicians” who kowtow to the rich and powerful and do little but get re-elected mostly inhabit Washington.
Many non-voters are ages 18-35. Most are completely turned off by voting, sometimes to the tune of “the h– with it; we’ll fix it after it self-destructs.” That disgust needs to be channeled into voting, as if their personal futures depended on it, as they do.
This is why I am glad the AME Church issued a day of action to speak truth to power in Washington DC to black pastors. Bishop Reginald Jackson, during the press conference, was spot on when he observed that telling Millennials and post-millennials that voting is good for them, folks died, yada, blah blah is a non-starter. He said, “you have to give them a reason.” I would add that you have to talk with them rather than at them. Campaigns don’t talk to the ‘hood.’ Good campaigns and candidates bridge that gap. This is where our churches could bridge the gap as well.
Many may feel powerless; we are if we accept slander of our views and hopes as “identity politics” and allow the other side to vote while we stay home. Indeed, voting will—as we have already seen evidence of—only get harder if our present political climate continues to degenerate. It begs the question, however, of what took the Black church so long to finally speak and counter the Black pastors that met with Trump at the White House?
As one older Millennial Neosho Ponder, a member of Reid Temple AME Church said, “I am just glad the church is out there. They have never been out here like this, not on this level. Plus, it was also good to see a lot of young adults involved too.” Bishop Jackson addressed this directly and very candidly admitted that the Black Church hasn’t lived up to its social justice and freedom ethic in years. “The church has left the building and the church has to go where the people are… We forget that 96% of Jesus’ ministry was outside the church,” he said.
Watching CNN or MSNBC doesn’t connect the dots between what matters to Generational Z and what their vote gets them. Campaigns and Democratic campaigns need to talk to people who they know, by greater likelihood, will not vote. Likewise, this is who your churches and Get-out-the-vote engagements need to be targeting. It is not enough to hold voter registration drives. You’ve got to also take them to the polls.
Most of the poor and marginalized don’t care about Russia, Nancy Pelosi, the Russia Investigation, Paul Manafort, congressional gridlock, Donald Trump, Jr’s consorting with Russians, or even his tweets. It’s not that these things don’t matter; they just don’t register to the extent Democrats (and some Republicans). Moreover, the reality is we will need this demographic of non-voters to win elections.
Dare I say, our role is to identify and support servant leaders. Bishop Jackson gets it. I wonder if the rest of the denomination gets it and will follow.
This is a “moral revolution”—a call to conscience. It’s time to stand up for the many and not just the privileged few as Washington is doing right now. It’s time to show people the fallacy of what “Christian conservatism” is and espouses. The AME’s church leaders have done so by their activism in Washington. What will you do?
Summertime! Enjoy it because in three months we got some work to do if a change is to come. Wait, we got work to do now.
The Rev. Quardricos Bernard Driskell is a federal lobbyist, an adjunct professor of religion and politics at The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management, and the pastor of the historic Beulah Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. Follow him on Twitter @q_driskell4.
