Marches and demonstrations by angry citizens in Washington have been around since shortly after our Republic was established. It was then a marshy piece of land carved out of Maryland and Virginia. Only the Maryland part became the District, Virginia never ceding its part. May of the broad avenues we see were canals and small rivers.
In 1894 unemployed workers took to the streets, as they did again during the 1930s. The suffragettes marched in 1913 and the Klan in 1925. Violence occurred from time to time but only since the riots in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination were huge concrete blocks put up to restrict traffic.
Now there are fences in front of places I used to play as a child. The Capitol grounds are not as open as they were before. Although the demonstrations against the Vietnam War and for voting rights in the 1960s were certainly divisive, there is a new kind of anger which is destroying who we are – or who we thought we were.
Prayer for the Day
Unfolding God, who comes to us in summer heat,
Who removes the film of intolerance from our eyes;
Redeeming God, who comes to us in the silence of the night,
Who opens our senses to the world all around;
Seal your truth into the center of our bodies,
Shape us and mold us into your vessels.
In the name of the One who shows us how to live,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s capacity for injustice makes democracy necessary.
- Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian (1892-1971)
We have forgotten that democracy must live as it thinks and thinks as it lives.
- Agnes Meyer, writer, journalist, social worker ((1887-1970)
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh,
My adversaries and foes – they shall stumble and fall.
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear,
Though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.
Psalm 27: 1-3