Rev. Joseph Boyd

It seems we are on our way to confirming our next president. Reports have shown that this election has brought the greatest voter turnout in American history, in large part due to the efforts of members and friends at this church, and people throughout the country who have made the vote more readily accessible to our people. This election was and continues to be a test of our democracy. The results have been pretty close in some counties. Locally in the Mahoning County, a geographic place long associated with democratic leadership that supported worker unions, went red for the first time since Eisenhower was elected president. It was by a narrow margin of less than 2%, but noticeable.

 I know for many this has been an incredibly stressful week full of uncertainty. Even with the latest projection looking fairly solid, I know there is still great uncertainty. But I also know there has been celebration – street parties and noise makers in New York City, crowds gathered in our nation’s capital in Black Lives Matter plaza, to celebrate the end of an administration that directly attacked their lives and the lives of those they loved.

 During the election I was asked to be a Peacekeeper, a member of the clergy who would be present in a stole, and make it easier for people to vote through presence, giving accurate information, and offering encouragement in the face of voter suppression. I was present for hours at the Mahoning Board of Elections. I found I was not the only one offering voter protection. I was there with other clergy, as well as organizers from Massachusetts and New York who drove in their car to Youngstown, due to the high percentage of people of color in our community who had a right to exercise their vote. On Election Day, I was called to a polling site outside Warren, Ohio, where a group of white men had gathered in trucks with confederate insignia, and shined their headlights on voters waiting in line. I went with a fellow clergy person, and by the time we arrived the polls were officially closed at that site. We drove into the parking lot anyway just to make sure that there were no voters still waiting in line, and as we drove in we only saw about 15-20 trucks with their lights on and men standing outside. After we confirmed that there were no voters waiting in line and no polling staff, we drove away. As we drove over, we had no idea what we would encounter, but we had received training and had a game plan. The basic aspect of the training was to accompany the voters. Offer your presence and encouragement to the voters, instead of directly confronting intimidators. That would be sufficient in most circumstances, and there were other pieces of training in case that wasn’t possible. But we were trained to keep our focus on the voters, not on intimidators.

 I think this is good training for all of us at this moment. Where are we called to offer our attention, and to whom? It is easy to give our energy and attention to intimidators because their goal is to get our attention. But giving them attention at the expense of those we wish to encourage is a grave mistake. I think it is great training for all of us during this time. Who do we wish to encourage and offer support right now? That is who should be getting our attention and energy.

I think a real democracy is one where we value and encourage every day, ordinary people to make decisions about their own lives. As our democracy stands now, we have these values in writing and through lived examples during the Civil Rights era and in the years that followed. But I think we can do better.

 I think the base of this is valuing every day, ordinary people. This sounds simple, and it is actually. But in practice, I think we have de-valued personhood. In the well-known Citizens United ruling when corporations were given the same rights as people, I think this is a symptom of an even greater missed opportunity for ourselves and this nation. We have lost sight of the intrinsic value of a person, simply because they’re human and alive. We have all these qualifiers of race, class, education, job success to judge whether a person is truly valuable. We have confused economic value with intrinsic value, and as long as this goes unquestioned and unchallenged, we will perpetuate pain and injustice regardless of political party.

These were some of the thoughts I had as we approached these white men in trucks, waving a flag that represents oppression. I wondered if they felt a sense of intrinsic value, or if the only value they had left according to our nation’s standard is the color of their skin. If that is the case, I and we have done those men a great disservice.

 I think many people in this nation feel lonely, forgotten, and without intrinsic value. It must feel lonely to find value in the last place our nation has allowed: hatred and bigotry. It is our collective responsibility that we have a nation where the only way some people can find value is by making someone else less valuable. This is the shadow side of a competitive culture that confuses economic and racialized value with intrinsic value.

 I think recognizing intrinsic value; value because you’re alive, is synonymous with being a person. This idea is not novel, but we have yet to fully embody this principle.  If we did, our economic system would be very different. Our political system and our political parties would be dramatically different. The way we engage with our families, our children, and our work would be dramatically different. Practicing embodying intrinsic value, and encouraging others to see their intrinsic value is joyful effort.

Sometimes people, who are unfamiliar with church, often ask me a simple question when they find out I’m a minister. They ask some version of: What do you do at church? I usually give a variety of answers depending on my mood, but a common one I offer is: we practice being a person. That usually starts a good conversation. Often the reply is “well that’s silly, aren’t we all people, aren’t we all persons.” Then I say: Exactly – imagine living in a city, a nation, having a workplace and a family that strongly followed that. It would make our effort joyful, if the only response that was needed in deciding whether we should care for the needy or offer rights and equal opportunity was of course, because we’re all people, and that is a person. I strongly believe we don’t practice to be anything exotic or special at this church. We just practice being a person, and part of being a person is feeling our intrinsic value, just because we are alive.

I think without this practice, we fall into a trap. We fall into a democracy where there are always winners and losers. Of course there is a lot of complexity in being a person. I am not the same person as you, and we probably have some different interests. But imagine if intrinsic value was our guidepost of how we would relate to one another, how we make decisions together. Of course there still will be persons out there that wish to cause harm and limit someone’s sense of personhood, and in those instances we are called to be Peacekeepers; to keep our intention on those who are threatened while treating the threatener as a fellow person. When we do this, there is an innate harmony, even in times of great confrontation.

I have witnessed and experienced how transformative it is to realize our value doesn’t need to come from our success or lack thereof, our accomplishment or lack thereof, our circle of influence or lack thereof. It comes because we are alive and we are a person, and that value is innate, it’s part of us, it’s our birth right.

I’ve been reflecting a bit on the last four years, and the image of children being separated from their parents and being put in cages is an image that stays with me. We still operate as a country as if decency is a privilege. It is a privilege to be born at a certain time in a certain place; we as a people have solidified this understanding of personhood, of citizenship in this democracy through mass complacency. The idea we have currently of citizenship does not reflect my understanding of being a person.

But I’m encouraged by communities like this where we can question the past, even acknowledging our own complicity, and practice being persons together. I’m heartened that we are teaching our youth the true definition of personhood, an intrinsic value they have because they are alive. This intrinsic value is not like a savings account, where we save all the value up for ourselves. It’s the opposite actually. In sharing this truth of personhood, this truth of intrinsic value, our own sense of value grows more real and palpable.

Who knew that transformation is a process of truly becoming ourselves. There is no limit to this intrinsic value. We still live under a scarce worldview in this country. In the wealthiest country in the world, our everyday, ordinary people feel like they never have enough. The common, everyday person in this country feels like they need to work themselves to the bone just to show their families and their community that they are worthwhile. And even then, so many of us have the aim of just getting by, using all our energy to get by without time to truly be a participatory citizen: thinking, questioning, righting the wrongs of the past to allow more people to recognize their personhood. We have made true citizenship a privilege in this country, something for groups of people with enough time, education, or resources.

There is a reason why there is so much voter suppression, and roadblocks for true engaged citizenship in this country. It makes our democracy simple and more predictable. Democracy is the messiest and most unpredictable form of government. It’s anxiety producing, it’s nerve racking, and there is lots of uncertainty. Many of us have experienced that firsthand this week. It makes me think this might be the closest to real democracy we’ve ever got to as a nation: it’s proof that so many people cared, maybe for the first time. Real democracy is like that: it’s a ride, and it’s alive, and it rarely conforms to our idea of reality. Our ideas and projections are just that: ideas and projections. Democracy is a living breathing enterprise that is not limited to this.

I think becoming a person is not too dissimilar from a nation becoming a real democracy. In spite of all the roadblocks, violence, and oppression, there is a kind of freedom that can’t help but rise. Personal agency is electrifying, unpredictable, and awesome to behold. It is not tamed sufficiently by the control and tampering down of the past. Democracy is slippery, alive, and full of blood. Democracies like persons are born, and like persons can die. Like a person, a democracy can find its footing and arise like a phoenix from the ashes. It can rise in a person who in great fear and trepidation casts a vote that will decide their life. After the vote, democracy is not over, if it actually is to become real. It must protect and encourage personhood, of individual lives, if it is to truly rise to its promise. I’ll close by reading again Maya Angelou’s poem about her experience of rising into her person: