Michael W. Waters on the removal of confederate monuments and picking up where MLK left off.

Michael W. Waters is a pastor, author and activist leader in the Black community. He speaks with George about the need for confederate monuments to come down, his work on the Poor People’s Campaign, and the racial and economic injustices in Dallas.

Listen and read the transcript here, or click here to watch the full video.

George Mason:
I'm George Mason, host of Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. My guest today is the Reverend Michael Waters, a pastor in Dallas who is going to be talking with us about economic justice, about poverty in America and in Dallas, Texas and how we can address it with our faith.

George Mason:
Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. The intersection of the common good and a good God who drives us toward public well-being and human flourishing. We're glad to be joined today by Michael Waters, the Reverend Michael Waters, who is a pastor of the Joy Tabernacle African American

George Mason:
Episcopal Church, along with the historic Agape Temple African American Episcopal Church. He is the co-chair of Faith Forward Dallas, also a leader in bringing together people of different faiths, religious leaders who are organizing for the common good in Dallas, Texas. Michael, welcome to our program today. We're really glad to have you. 

Reverend Michael Waters:
Thank you.

George Mason:
And Michael is also the author of this book, Stakes Is High: Race, Faith, and Hope for America. Actually a line taken from a hip-hop song, Stakes Is High. Michael, you have been in the news quite a bit in the past year stretching back several years in part as we remember the shootings in Dallas in July of 2015, but most recently you've been out in public calling for the removal of confederate monuments and the changing of names of schools and things of that nature.

George Mason:
You were helpful in the successful taking down of the Robert E. Lee monument at Lee Park and the subsequent renaming of the park. That was a contentious matter in our city. Some people thought suddenly it was contentious and for many people, I think it's been contentious under the radar for a long time. For those who think this was a sudden reaction to the Charlottesville rally, for instance, what would you say to them about the presence of these statues in Dallas?

Reverend Michael Waters:
Well, there is a very vicious history in relationship to these monuments. We know that historically their numbers increase during times of terror. These were not built to honor the Civil War dead who were part of the Confederacy, but they were really about the reclamation of Southern spaces for white supremacy. As a matter of fact, as look on, many of the monuments, etched literally on the monument you'll find words like white supremacy or white virtue and this was a part of the counteraction to the Reconstruction era, the Freedmen's Bureau moving out of the South and really a white individual's reclaiming this notion of the white supremacy in the South and so it happens immediately after the end of the Reconstruction and then returns again during the American civil rights movement putting again a stake in the ground during that time of rapid change saying, "We will not be moved, segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

George Mason:
Forever.

Reverend Michael Waters:
It's part of that legacy, right?

George Mason:
[crosstalk 00:03:45]. Yes.

Reverend Michael Waters:
When you really understand the purpose of these monuments and their placement in front of spaces of power, in front of courthouses and in city squares and in front of city hall, you recognize that they were really a marker to really inform an entire people of their so-called place in society, and so for them to remain says much about how we value those people's descendants today.

George Mason:
Yes. There is always a claim among white Americans that this is simply a recognition of heritage and acknowledgement of history and that to take these down is to deny a period of history that was not all sinful and evil but they were noble people who fought for principles and these sorts of things of civilization, but heritage goes both ways. Doesn't it? In other words, what do those symbolize in terms of heritage for black Americans?

Reverend Michael Waters:
Well, in instance, they were racial propaganda. We know that, right? They told a story of American South that was a falsified truth, right? It was not true. It was a lie and because of that, so much damage continue to happen. I mean, there's a direct correlation between the raising up of these monuments to white supremacy, as I believe they should be rightfully called and the increase lynching that happened all throughout America, really, but particularly in the deep South, which at his height there was a black man, woman, or child lynched every two days in America. 

Reverend Michael Waters:
Imagine if in America today, every two days there was a black person disappeared from their family only to be found hanging from their neck, from the nearest tree. That's the reality, and so we have to really talk about history, the brutal nature of it and recognize when there have been forces who've tried to cast a false vision on top of that real history. I was particularly blessed to study with a gentleman by the name of Glenn Linden as an undergraduate at SMU, one of the leading scholars of the Civil War and he and I had a number of conversations together and later on, when I served as founding director of the Civil Rights Pilgrimage, he came on as the faculty lead.

Reverend Michael Waters:
As we traveled throughout the deep South, there were all these very interesting intersections between Civil War history and civil rights history. For instance, with Montgomery, the cradle of the Confederacy, the capital Confederacy is the same space where only a block down, Martin Luther King Jr.'s first pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, it's right there in that tension, right? One was serving as a corrective, if you will, for the other. All this to say that this is a debate, there really should not be a debate. If you know the history, if you embrace the history, you understand that these monuments should never have been erected in the first place.

George Mason:
I'm uncomfortable with the word monuments to begin with, to be honest with you. I think monuments are things that we erect to call all of our citizens to aspire to live up to those things being represented. These are better probably called memorials to begin with. That is to say they are figures that remember a certain history and they always need to be interpreted but they don't necessarily need to be aspired to. They're our past, not future.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Well, I think a little bit differently. I think a monument really does speak to what a community values and I believe these Confederate monuments speak to what America values, which is whiteness and making whiteness normative. Making whiteness aspirational, making whiteness supreme. I think that's how they function. I think that's how they continue to function.

George Mason:
But that's the very point of why it's necessary for them to come down. 

Reverend Michael Waters:
Exactly.

George Mason:
All right, but it's not just that they come down, it's also that something be put in their place. That is to say something that actually unites the community, that raises the memory of others that have been forgotten because you mentioned lynching and the history of lynching in this country which many people might love Billie Holiday but they don't understand what Strange Fruit really is.

George Mason:
It's a reference of course to lynchings in the South, and here in Dallas we have a history of that as well. I know that you're working not only to bring down these monuments to white supremacy, but also to remember the history of people like Allen Brooks, who in 1910 was lynched right here in Dallas, Texas at the corner of Akard and Elm.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Main.

George Mason:
Akard and Main Street. Say more about that story and about why you think it's important that all Dallas not forget that but actually remember it and recognize it in some public way.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Well, it's a horrific story of a domestic worker who has served families off of Pearl Street for years without incident, who a young white girl goes missing as it's reported and when they find her, they find her with him. Now notice that there's nothing in the story that they find him in any type of inappropriate act, but the assumption is because she was missing and is found with him, there must have been something untoward happening.

Reverend Michael Waters:
He's arrested, he's hailed and on the day of his initial trial a mob breaks in, tie a noose around his neck, pulled him out of the second floor window.

George Mason:
Red Courthouse.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Red Courthouse.

George Mason:
Downtown.

Reverend Michael Waters:
He falls on his head. Historians debate whether that fall actually killed him or not. We don't know, maybe just knocked him unconscious, but he's dragged literally on the ground for half a mile. During the dragging the noose breaks, they re-noose him, if you will, drag him and he's lynched, then it's corner of Main and Akard before a crowd of several thousands. It's about... estimates between five and 8,000 people come to see this man as he is hung.

Reverend Michael Waters:
His body is taken down... Now another part of the history is that the mob is so rabid in their desire to see black blood that they have to shut down the city because the mob then shifts its attention to the railroad to trains and they're looking to pull off any black person from that train and lynch them as well, so unless you know that there's something greater happening here. The reason this is important is that the picture of the lynching is made into a postcard.

George Mason:
Wow. 

Reverend Michael Waters:
That is mailed all across the world-

George Mason:
Unbelievable.

Reverend Michael Waters:
... as an image of Dallas, and so really there's not been any other image that has gone as expansive across the world as an image of Dallas alone as was that postcard at that time and we need to reclaim, if you will, that space, not only in memory of Allen Brooks and many others who've fallen, but to reclaim that space as a way we don't want to return to.

George Mason:
It seems that in Dallas, we have a way of wanting always to move on. The call to heal and to be a city for everyone though, is at times a call that is necessary, and that is to remember and reflect and this is part of our biblical religion, isn't it?

Reverend Michael Waters:
Absolutely.

George Mason:
I mean, we can't be healed. We can't have a sense of forgiveness and reconciliation without a sense of confession and repentance. There is an important public sense of this vital need for us to face our history not so that we'll wallow in it, not so that we'll simply give recognition but so that we will acknowledge that we are the heirs of this and we're going to determine that we won't live that way again.

Reverend Michael Waters:
One of my favorite quotes from Dr. King is that true peace is not merely the absence of tension. It's the presence of justice. 

George Mason:
Nice.

Reverend Michael Waters:
And sometimes the tension serves as a navigator towards the piece you ultimately seek. You have to allow that to guide you into a greater peace, a truer peace for all people but it can't get there accidentally. There has to be steps taken intentionally to heal and to restore.

George Mason:
Well, you mentioned Dr. King, and I think this is a good segue for us and when we come back from the break, I'd like us to explore a little more of the unfinished legacy of Dr. King as he began to move from civil rights that was more about racial justice to economic rights and to the war on poverty. Let's pick that up again when we come back from this break.

George Mason:
We're back with Michael Waters. Good God, conversations that matter. Michael, we were talking before the break about the fact that Dr. King was actually killed in Memphis, Tennessee at the very time when he was there to mobilize people for economic purposes not just for racial justice, but the sanitation workers there. That was a new element in his evolution, in his work because poverty of course has a racial root but it is also something that everyone has to deal with.

George Mason:
In your book, I noticed that you talked about the fact that there is a disproportionate experience of poverty in the black community. That while the black community is something like 13% of the American population, the truth is 70... sorry, 27.4% of black people live in poverty in this nation and over the course of the years 2010 to 2013, white families increased in median wealth from 138,000 to 141,000 and the median wealth of black families decreased from, get this, 16,000 in 2010 to 11,000. That's wealth, not just income. We're talking about wealth accumulation, right? It's an extraordinary disparity between white and black in America today.

George Mason:
You have been trying to lead Faith Forward Dallas to address some of these matters in our state and local communities and you've been in conversation with and have brought the Reverend William Barber to Dallas who is helping in his moral movement to seek to address the issues of poverty in America. The Poor People's Campaign that Dr. King started, you are picking up again in this work. Would you say a few words about the Poor People's Campaign.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Well, I think is essential for the future of this nation, and it's not just for black people. There is an economic assault upon all communities in particular, white Americans. White rule Americans who are suffering under the weight of the economic crisis before them, and even Dr. King alluded to that as well. Dr. King said in his book, Why We Can't Wait, basically that if white poor people ever really awakened to the fact that they were being harmed by the same economic policies as black people, then they could unite together and really change the world.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Dr. King, before he died, he said that what good is it to have an opportunity to sit at a lunch counter but you can't afford the hamburger, and really that shifted this idea to economic justice as a part of the civil rights movement and of course he was failed by an assassin's bullet before that work could really be pushed forward. Dr. Barber and others have been so inclined to pick up this mantle and to really advance it in what is now the 50th year anniversary of the King assassination and individuals across the nation are seeing this as one of the key markers in the struggle today.

Reverend Michael Waters:
As I talked to Dr. Barber this past summer as we were at a conference speaking together, I told him, I said, you can't begin Poor People's Campaign and I come to Dallas because in so many ways, statistically Dallas is the epicenter of poverty and he agreed and I was very grateful that you and others were part of the work of bringing him here and so many were inspired by his presence and I believe are motivated to be a part of the work going forward.

George Mason:
A good bit of this moral movement that Dr. Barber talks about in the Poor People's Campaign is focused on public policy.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Yes.

George Mason:
Now, in much of the white community, the idea of focusing on public policy to address poverty is counterproductive because the idea is the less government you have, the more people can flourish by education, hard work, entrepreneurship, being involved in the private sector where wealth is built and through personal responsibility and activity and the like. How do you address people who make that argument when the idea of government policies that are taxpayer funded are directed toward a kind of economic leveling of the field so to speak. What would you say about that? 

Reverend Michael Waters:
Well, the unique thing about that conversation is individuals only have an issue with public policy helping people when it's helping black people. I mean, think about the New Deal. When you think about what we talked about in terms of the loans that were given in the 1930s, we think about welfare today, which the majority individuals on the welfare roles are white individuals, but truly in rural communities who benefit from these governmental funds.

Reverend Michael Waters:
There's just this notion and it's really sinister that if any other community other than white people have access to these policies or these financial supports that there's something wrong, that they're not working hard enough. Poor people are some of the most hardest working people, I know work two, three, four jobs just to try to climb to poverty line. It's always interesting, but that even goes to laws. There are studies and it's even included in the book. There's studies that show that why communities favor laws that have a disproportionate negative effect upon minority communities, and we've got to unearth those very uncomfortable truths to really pave and move forward in a different way. 

George Mason:
Michael, how do you respond to the fact that when we talk like this, many white people hear that as sort of code language for democratic partisan politics. We're going to have a Poor People's Campaign and that means we're going to try to elect more Democrats instead of Republicans and so it's really just language that is partisan. I think on the other side, there are a lot of code language things that sound very Republican to people who are on the other side. If we talk about these things in spiritual terms, and yet it touches on public policy, somehow it becomes partisan politics.

Reverend Michael Waters:
I think that the kind of reclaiming even the sacred... reclaiming the Bible, the canonized scripture as an instructive on building the love community would be helpful. The idea of jubilee of eradicating poverty in community, this idea of Pentecost and Pentecost is more... I think everyone is so captivated by this supernatural mysterious experience of cloven tongues and they fail to recognize that the true marker of Pentecost was that they shared everything in kind and that they remove poverty from their midst and that when God is truly at work among you, you leave no person behind.

Reverend Michael Waters:
We've had a focus on the scriptures, again, that I think have been less helpful to building the type of communities that we need to have, and so I think that the benefit of Dr. Barber and so many others is that they are drawing forth from the wealth of the prophetic tradition within scripture and they are casting a new vision for how we can all live into that.

George Mason:
It seems that one of the things happening in our political culture right now is that there is disillusionment with both parties in the system. It feels to me at least like there's an opening right now, an opportunity to say that big money and partisan politics don't know labels. They really have to do with institutional kinds of ways of keeping certain people in power and keeping others out of it and there's a rising up, I think, of people looking for another alternative and it seems that this biblical tradition you're talking about that wants to see the flourishing of all human beings and bring people together in a new sense of community rather than the individualism, the dog eat dog, survival of the fittest kind of way, the identity politics of my group versus your group. There has to be a way to draw people together for the common good.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Well, the language being used is the moral center, right? Not the left, not the right-

George Mason:
There you go.

Reverend Michael Waters:
... but the moral center to which we are all drawn, this idea of fusion politics, fusion coalitions. A gathering of a multiplicity of parties and experiences who are willing to collaborate and work side by side for the cause of justice. That it's in the center that the true change and even the revolution will take place. 

George Mason:
You write in your book, I believe that Texas can become a great state. I believe it can become a state where all children are fed. I believe it can become a state where the sick are cared for. I believe it can become a state where laborers are paid fair wages, where affluenza is appropriately diagnosed as privilege and where our diversity is embraced as our strength. However, to get there, we must finally come face to face with Texas racist palpitations.

George Mason:
The hope for our state and for America is partly in facing these injustices and inequities that are deeply embedded in all of this and it seems to me that what you're trying to do is to help us to see them and to be honest about them so that we actually will address them instead of just coding over them and trying to move on.

Reverend Michael Waters:
The sin of segregation is that you don't see one another. You don't see each other as human. You don't see the divinity inside of each other. You don't see the similarities and experience that at the end of the day all people want the same thing. They want to be loved. They want to love, and they want to be cared for. They want to be able to be sustained in life, and so much of our city, so much of our world continues to be segregated in a way where we don't see each other or see one another as an essential part of each other's lives. 

Reverend Michael Waters:
Again, I reference Dr. King so much, but I think his words continue to provide great value for our struggle today and he says, it's important to recognize that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, because we are woven together in this inescapable network of mutuality-

George Mason:
Network of mutuality.

Reverend Michael Waters:
What impacts one impacts us all. The more we begin to remove these unnecessary barriers and really see the oneness of humanity, the more we can be healed and go forth to build a better day.

George Mason:
I think often people think about prophets as people who simply speak about what God plans to do in the future and they fail to see this important point that you're talking about and that is, that the real definition of a prophet is one who sees the truth in the moment, who recognizes what is happening in the world and speaks of it. Seeing and speaking, seeing and hearing from God what is actually going on for the sake of what might happen in producing the vision of God for the world.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Well, that's my hope for this book and very humbly, it was just named the 2018 Wilbur Award winner for non-fiction but the whole point is to uplift the idea that the stakes really are high for all of us and that we must take this moment to serve as a corrective to that history. It's going to take courage, but persons have exhibited courage before us, not only in the scriptures, but even in recent history and so there are footsteps in which we can follow.

George Mason:
We'll close with this quotation from, as you call him the late 20th century urban prophet, Tupac Shakur. Who said, I'm not saying I'm going to rule the world or change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Indeed that's our hope.

George Mason:
You are hope for sparking our brains and for God doing some important work of change in our communities because of it. Thank you for being here, Michael, it's an honor to have you on our program today.

Reverend Michael Waters:
It's an honor to share with you and I want to also thank you for the tremendous work that you do, not only within Dallas but across the nation. It's an honor to call you friend and to serve as a co-laborer with you in acts of peace and justice. 

George Mason:
Wonderful. Well, Michael is a real prophetic minister of the gospel of Christ in our community and throughout the country. Michael has written a book called Stakes Is High. The subtitle is race, faith, and hope for America and it seems that here in Dallas at least every time questions of race or social justice are involved, Michael, you were always ready to be there to show up, to speak up and to help lead for the cause of justice and not just for justice to be done but for peace to be made through justice.

George Mason:
Stakes Is High is a compilation of a number of your writings that you brought together over the past couple of years and it comes interestingly from the title of a song, a hip-hop song by De La Soul in which he talks about the importance of the black experience in America today and I'll just quote a couple of lines from it, if I may. He says, "Let me tell you what it's all about. A skin not considered equal. A meteor has more right than my people. Neighborhoods are now hoods cause nobody's neighbors, just animals surviving with that animal behavior."

George Mason:
Tell me about the interaction for you between hip-hop as a musical genre, it's lyrics, it's culture and all of that and your call as a minister of the gospel. How do those two things come together for you?

Reverend Michael Waters:
Well, I'm a part of the hip-hop generation and the hip-hop generation is shaped and formed by hip-hop culture. The music, the visual images, the fashion, even the world view and the theology. As someone who came of age really during the golden era of hip-hop, hip-hop became more than just music on the radio or videos on the television screen, but really helped to shape and give voice to the experiences that many of us were having and continue to have today.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Chuck D from Public Enemy once said that hip-hop was a CNN of the hood and in many ways, I believe that's true, that there were some things happening to us and within our communities that were not as widely known within mainstream and so you had these urban profits, if you will, who were speaking about racial politics, who were speaking about mass incarceration, who were speaking about the war on drugs and how it was impacting urban communities in such a way that ultimately the world had to take notice.

George Mason:
Throughout the book, Stakes Is High and in your ministry here in Dallas, we hear you talk about how much of American culture is racialized. 

Reverend Michael Waters:
Sure.

George Mason:
About the challenge of being black in America and how difficult it is for white Americans to see that and recognize it. When white Americans hear someone say everything is racialized, they might hear that as why does it have to be?

Reverend Michael Waters:
Sure.

George Mason:
Why can't we get beyond racialization of every issue that comes up, but you have a different take on that.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Well, that's because... I mean, when you consider the infrastructure of America, the American enterprise, it is wholly built upon these notions of race. That's really what gives shape to our nation and to our communities, even our city. One of the things that I've recently been getting into more and more is researching the redlining maps of major cities, particularly as we've been touring with the book. In every city that I've gone to and put on the screen, the redlining map of that city. There are two assumptions that I can make right away, and I ask the audience to confirm it and a 100% of the time they confirm it.

Reverend Michael Waters:
I said, where you see the red lines on this map, one to two things are happening. One, this is either still the space where poverty is most rampant within your community and has grown off from that or it is the space where gentrification is happening most rapidly. In every single city that I've gone to most recently, Seattle and Charlotte, to a [T 00:32:08], they've said, this is what's happening. Our neighborhoods and the communities and realities that are being faced is really about intentionality in terms of who would be included and who would be excluded in the American enterprise and so it's something we have to talk about.

George Mason:
Let's talk about redlining a little more. I think that's a phrase people here-

Reverend Michael Waters:
Sure.

George Mason:
... but not everyone knows exactly what's meant by redlining. Want to say word about that.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Sure. Well, in the 1930s, as we're going through the Great Depression, United States has this plan basically to make sure that white families do not lose their homes to foreclosure and so they began all these acts to provide resources and finances through the banking institutions, primarily not just to white families, but really to a white families from a kind of Western European Protestant background to make sure that they remain in their homes. They literally map out on major cities color coded areas that would be more favorable for investment. For instance, if you lived in an area that was colored in with blue, you could receive a 100% of a home loan, you could receive a business loan, and that will provide economic thrust.

Reverend Michael Waters:
If you were in a green area, for instance which usually were the less desirable whites, okay, that's going to be Jews. That's going to be those from an Eastern European background, you may get 80% of the loan. You won't get a 100% funded but you get 80%, still decent. Okay, in order to provide economic thrust. If you were in say a yellow area, that's going to be the most diverse area there. That's going to be the most impoverished whites. It's going to be the Latinos, blacks, Asians in that area. Upperly mobile, if you will, blacks, Asians, and the like, and you can receive maybe 50% of a loan, but if you were in the red areas. The neighborhoods colored in red, you could not receive any home loan. You can not receive any assistance with business.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Basically through an act of a U.S. government in collaboration with the banks, you are ensuring that generations upon generations are living in poverty because home ownership is one of the initial assets for wealth building. Even for a city like Dallas today, we lead the nation in single household rental properties but we also lead the nation... have been high in the nation in terms of childhood poverty and we lead the nation in concentrated areas of poverty, and so you have to see that the landscape of Dallas and so many major cities was crafted out of this racialized policy that continues to impact us today.

George Mason:
It's really difficult I think for many people today to recognize what really happened in the 1930s with this, because we know such a thing could never be accepted today. In other words, you wouldn't have people sitting down around a table today saying, let's look at neighborhoods and be very deliberate about color coding what's possible for who can live where and who can get... I mean, that would be outrageous in our minds today and yet, and yet we are critical to some extent of those who live in these neighborhoods that are legacies of these very policies as if, why is your neighborhood not generating wealth and positive education, and why is it filled with crime and these sorts of things. It sort of feeds on itself, doesn't it?

Reverend Michael Waters:
Absolutely.

George Mason:
We don't accept responsibility for the legacy of how it happened, but then we blame actually the neighbors who aren't succeeding in those places.

Reverend Michael Waters:
The really great challenge is that now 50 years after the kind of report, we're recognizing that many of the Civil Rights Acts, many of the initiatives of the civil rights movement have either been stunted or reversed. Associated Press just two weeks ago confirmed a study of over 31 million home loans and identified that redlining as a practice is continuing in America today. It's so important not just to see this as something that happened in the past and leave it in the 1930s. This is something that has been affirmed to be happening today and it's something we must address.

George Mason:
When we come back from the break, I'd like for us to talk about how you as a pastor and as a Christian, view these things not simply in terms of our culture and political life but as a part of a biblical tradition and a Christian prophetic tradition. What's the implication of this for you as a human being and for all of us that's rooted in our vision of God and our understanding of what the world is intended to look like. 

George Mason:
Thanks for the beginning of this, we'll be right back and continue.

Speaker 3:
Faith Forward Dallas at Thanks-Giving Square is a broad and diverse coalition of Dallas's faith leaders dedicated to service, hope, and a shared vision for North Texas. Faith Forward Dallas creates and supports a community of respect and compassion for all. Sharing in the mission of the Thanks-Giving Foundation to heal divisions and enhance mutual understanding. 

George Mason:
We're back with Michael Waters, Reverend Michael Waters. A pastor here in Dallas, and a civil rights leader in Dallas as well. Michael, we were talking about the connection between your work prophetically in the community and your work behind the pulpit as well. The connection between your calling as a Christian minister and the work you do outside the church as the church. Say something about that connection for you. What drives you? What motivates your vision of the world?

Reverend Michael Waters:
I think there's two things that link together in my experience. One is my family. I come from a legacy of service. Fifth generation ordained minister for those who were not in ordained ministry, not only did they serve the church, but they served in education from professors in college to those who serve in elementary school principals and the like. Individuals who were engaged in business, but had a idea of community building through business and even those who were activists, those who marched, those who worked in the public realm. That has been a gift. That has been an inheritance, I believe, passed down through our family, this idea that life is best lived in service to others and so that's one thing that I embrace, and I hope that I'm just a part of the ongoing chapter in the narrative of our family.

Reverend Michael Waters:
The next part is just our rooting within the AME Church. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is the oldest historically black denomination in the Western hemisphere and it was really the beginning of the civil rights movement in America. When Richard Allen and others left the St. George's Methodist church in Philadelphia to really begin a new church, it was because they were being treated as second class citizens within the church.

Reverend Michael Waters:
They were not black separatists, but they were one who wanted to affirm their humanity in the presence of God and so they began this movement really, that has birthed such leaders as Rosa Parks and others as part of that continuum of faith and justice, and so my connections denominationally are with that legacy and understanding that work even to Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama and the work there and my family. Those things come together to really guide and push my understanding of our call to serve and to work in the world to bring about peace and justice. 

George Mason:
When I reflect upon my own sense of call, it was initially a call that I think was rooted in my commitment to Jesus Christ and the gospel of salvation but initially it was more about wanting people to have a personal experience of their faith and a confident assurance of what would happen when they die. Over the course of years and the more you wrestle with the actual biblical text and understand the history of the faith both, the faith that comes to us from the story of Israel and in the early church, it becomes so much clearer that God is coming to us and wants to bring a heaven to earth more than just deliver some people from earth to heaven.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Absolutely. 

George Mason:
That our faith is about... it's rooted in the story of Israel in fact, that has those who are marginalized and oppressed by other human beings being heard in their cries and being delivered for freedom sake, and then even in the New Testament where you have this recognition that one group, those Jews who believed in Jesus had to sort of give way a privilege in a sense to the gentiles and recognize that all the barriers of distinguishing between people, Jews from gentiles, males from females, slaves from free, all of these barriers had to fall and it really changes your view, doesn't it? Of what is our work about, that somehow this work is a prophetic work of God wanting to see that we can look at each other and in all of our differences, see the humanity of each person being a child of God and flourishing.

Reverend Michael Waters:
These things are hidden in plain sight. I mean, it's Jesus saying the kingdom of God is at hand.

George Mason:
Yes.

Reverend Michael Waters:
It is the prayer taught to all of us, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It is the names of God as Emmanuel, God who is with us. It is the [Johannah 00:42:37] in gospel text that tells us that the Christ came and tabernacled among us. There is this intimacy in relationship with God and with each other is Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane. That you would be one together as I am one with God in heaven and that's the urgency of this moment. It's not this escapism, it's not this race to heaven. It is a recognition that we begin the work of eternity while rooted in time.

George Mason:
Wonderful.

Reverend Michael Waters:
... and that part of our work is to bring about healing and restoration today. I think it's always important to think about Jesus's inaugural texts and his inaugural message in the Luken gospel. He reaches back forth the prophetic text of Isaiah and says the spirit of Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to be connected in intimate forms with those who are vulnerable and recognizing that that is the truest testament of our Christian call.

George Mason:
Wonderful.

Reverend Michael Waters:
If we are really fulfilling God's work through Christ in the world, we cannot do that separate from the persons who are most vulnerable in the world. 

George Mason:
I think that you may be sprang upon the public scene for many people. In July of 2015, when the shootings took place in Dallas of police officers and as co-chair of Faith Forward Dallas, you had already been at work with Rabbi Nancy Kasten and Imam Omar Suleiman and you all were able because you had been talking to each other to step into that public sphere and to be leading in prayers and words of unity and comfort to the city. That tragic event that took place in Dallas, it was not outside of your personal experience. You didn't just come along afterward. You were actually there. Tell us what brought about the march and the rally that then turned tragic that day. 

Reverend Michael Waters:
Absolutely. Well, unfortunately we had been meeting for rallies and for marches because of the number of individuals who were very publicly killed in encounters with police. This had been going on for a few years prior to July of 2015. We were there particularly on that night, July 7th, because of the harrowing week we had experienced in witnessing the brutal deaths of Alton Sterling, and Baton Rouge, and Philando Castile up north, and those images arrested us, tormented us. I was really heading out of town for a conference and I received a call from those who organized and it said if you would, we need you to come and share a word.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Honestly, I thought that we'll be a few persons gathering. It was after Alton Sterling had died. Probably won't be a large group. We'll share some words and then we'll go back to organizing at a later time. Well, before then the march happened, the images of Philando Castile came and what was anticipated initially to be very small group swelled to become much larger, and the energy present there was one of great sorrow. There was anger, but there was just a heaviness in that moment. I was invited to speak and I shared some words and afterwards the organizer said we need to march the people, and I understand that. The people were there. It was a very positive presence there.

Reverend Michael Waters:
People were invited to get involved in movement, to join organizations, to donate their support in other areas. The police said, we will march you, we will support the march and there was immediate collaboration. A lot of people don't know this from July 75th.

George Mason:
That was a remarkable thing. [crosstalk 00:47:01].

Reverend Michael Waters:
Yeah, there was an immediate collaboration between the organizers and the police to make sure everyone was safe. The police said, there's too many of you to just march on the sidewalk, we'll move you into the street. The police were phenomenal in pausing the march to make sure the intersections were clear and we went to the Red Courthouse and there, I guess the preacher in me recognized that we had not had a moment of silence, a moment of prayer during our time together. I invited the crowd to have that moment of time to reflect and to pray and then it kind of offered a benediction and with the instruction of police officers disperse individuals, and it's literally as in... individuals were on their way home that the gunfire began and it was chaos, and I also wanted to make the statement because it's very important.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Our gathering was multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith, multi-generational. There were individuals with babies in strollers there and so many times that part of the narrative is cut out, that as these bullets are raining down, of course on police but we didn't know it at the time, individuals were grabbing children and drawing them close and covering spouses and trying to help elderly to make it to the side and so this was really an attack on everyone, even as the police were targeted and it was not a reflection of the spirit of those who had gathered that evening.

George Mason:
In the immediate aftermath, there were a tremendous gatherings, both at Thanks-Giving Square and then at the Meyerson. Was it the Meyerson?

Reverend Michael Waters:
Yes.

George Mason:
I think when presidents Bush and Obama were there. There was an outpouring of attempt to bring people together of goodwill and healing and prayer and the like. We also saw though, I think the impact of what happens when law enforcement is targeted in this way.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Sure.

George Mason:
It's interesting how that brings the community together and yet when Michael Brown is shot down and when Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile, and Eric Garner and the pastor and eight others at Mother Emanuel are shot, there isn't the same level of community being brought together. I noticed that this is what got everybody's attention more or less to say, all right, we need to come together now.

George Mason:
It's interesting to me that... the immediate aftermath, I began to see signs being put up in the front yards of people in my neighborhood, Back The Blue, and you want to back the blue too but I've often thought if we really want to do this right, we... Back The Blue and Black Lives Matter should be right next to it.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Absolutely.

George Mason:
... because both of those things are true. I think you say something interesting in your book here. Mine is not an indictment of all police officers. There are many men and women who put their lives on the line for the public good each day. Some I have been blessed to call mentor or friend, many officers themselves have lost their lives. I honor their memories and ultimate sacrifice even as I offer gratitude for those who continue to work with great integrity to keep us safe, but then you go on to say, there is a radically motivated culture of fear that over assigns threat to blacks especially but not exclusively to black males even when no justifiable threat is present.

George Mason:
The challenge here is really to be able to do both things at once. Isn't it?

Reverend Michael Waters:
Absolutely.

George Mason:
To be able to say that we want to be safe in our communities but we also want to see concrete demonstrations of respect for black Americans too. Your work is not just an advocacy for one group of people, but it is for the whole community.

Reverend Michael Waters:
And so the challenge is that as we mourn the deaths of these officers, we're very sensitive to the deaths of individuals within our own communities, and I'm going to say this, is because I know we often speak of the Michael Browns and the Philando Castilles, the Alton Sterlings because those are the ones who have risen to the national consciousness. Very rarely do we talk about the Santos Rodriguez, the [James Harrisons 00:51:48].

George Mason:
Good.

Reverend Michael Waters:
The [Fred Radford Jr.s 00:51:49], the Jordan Edwards. Those who are closer into Dallas and North Texas and so I have a relationship with both. I have received police officers. I've been invited to pray in their gatherings. I've been a part of collaborating on safe community programs. At the same time I've received the family members of those whose lives have been taken in these encounters with police who were still fighting for justice and justice has not come, and question is how do you navigate both spaces. I don't believe the fight is mutually exclusive-

George Mason:
Good.

Reverend Michael Waters:
... because at the end of the day, it's all about the sacredness of human life.

George Mason:
There it is.

Reverend Michael Waters:
If you really hold human life sacred, all lives matter but all lives can't matter until black lives matter as well and we recognize that that's not happening and so we have to show, we have to shine a light on black lives, particularly those that are treated as expendable and recognize it until we lift up the value, the sacredness, the divinity, even within black life as we do in other lives, then we truly cannot celebrate the whole of life in America. We've got to do it, and it's hard work but the blessing, if you will, of the anniversary of July 7th, was that because of our work as Faith Forward and what we've attempted to do, we were able to center the pain of both communities side by side.

Reverend Michael Waters:
We had police officers standing beside the family of Jordan Edwards, and we lifted up that pain together and challenged our community to address both. The officers, which is amazing. A lot of people don't know this, but the officer's invited myself and Imam Omar to speak at the police memorial.

George Mason:
Beautiful.

Reverend Michael Waters:
... on the anniversary of July 7th, and there we called the names, not only of the five officers fallen, but those who have been failed to police brutality because we've got to hold them together, even intention together in order to work for a better day.

George Mason:
Well, Michael, thank you for being our guests today. It's been a pleasure to have this conversation, and I hope many people are helped and encouraged by it. Thank you for your work for peace and justice in our community.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Thank you.

George Mason:
God bless you.

Reverend Michael Waters:
Bless you.

Speaker 5:
Good God is created by Dr. George Mason. Produced and directed by Jim White. Guest coordination and social media by Upward Strategy Group. Here's grateful appreciation to [Evolve Technology 00:54:31] for location production facilities. Evolve Technology for home audio, video, and lighting design. Enjoy more, think less with Evolve. See their great work at evolvedallas.com. Thanks to Wendy Krispin Caterer for guest parking accommodations.

Speaker 5:
Good God, conversations with George Mason is the podcast devoted to bringing you ideas about God, and faith, and the common good. All material Copyright 2018 by Faith Commons.

Speaker 3:
Faith Forward Dallas at Thanks-Giving Square is a broad and diverse coalition of Dallas's faith leaders dedicated to the service, hope, and a shared vision for North Texas. Faith Forward Dallas creates and supports a community of respect and compassion for all. Sharing in the mission of the Thanks-Giving Foundation to heal divisions and enhance mutual understanding.