Dear Alfred,
On Monday afternoon, we ascended the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court—clergy and people of faith, one of us for each of the nine justices responsible for deciding our nation’s most critical cases.
The Rev. Dr. William Barber II had just been arrested on the street in front of the Court alongside nearly 80 other Poor People’s Campaign activists. And across the country, hundreds more were participating in nonviolent direct action to call for higher wages, union rights and fully-funded anti-poverty programs.
We climbed the steps knowing that over the last five weeks, more than 2,000 people have been arrested as part of our revival of the Poor People’s Campaign, challenging systemic racism, poverty, the war economy and ecological devastation.
We came to the Supreme Court to pray for the judges, who earlier in the day put a legal stamp of approval on voter suppression in A. Phillip Randolph Institute v. Husted and who, any day, are expected to rule in Janus v. AFSCME, a case that could make it easier for anti-worker extremists to rig the economy further by dividing working people.
We formed a circle, held hands, bowed our heads, and then we prayed. We prayed to say to our nation’s capital and to the nine justices of this nation’s highest court that everyone’s life is sacred, that everyone has a right to live, to living wages, to love, to vote and to thrive. We cited sacred texts to say we are all each other’s keepers, and that workers who are exploited cry out.
“We are here, God, because another law came down today, a law that denies the very fundamental rights of your people—the right to be free,” we prayed. “And when our rights to be free are violated, our voting rights, our housing rights, our labor rights, our education rights, we moral leaders, with you on our side, in front of this Supreme Court, do declare that we will continue to do your work.”
We prayed over the voice of a Supreme Court police officer booming over a bullhorn, threatening us with arrest if we did not stop.
And we continued to pray as the same Supreme Court that in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission upheld discrimination against the LGBTQI community under the guise of protecting religious freedom, arrested the nine of us for praying on their steps. One by one, we were placed in handcuffs, our religious collars and robes removed. We were kept in cuffs for nearly six hours, and then placed in cells without pillows, blankets or mattresses— but overrun with roaches, where we have been held overnight. We have not slept in jail, but instead we have continued the work of the Poor People’s Campaign, preparing for the great work ahead of us.
Can’t make it?
Forward together, not one step back,
The Faithful Supreme Court Nine
The Rev. Liz Theoharis
The Rev. Graylan Hagler
The Rev. William Lamar
The Rev. Jimmie Hawkins
The Rev. Hershey Mallette Stephens
Pastor Rob Stephens
Roz Pelles
Shailly Barnes
Noam Sandweiss-Back
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