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Leah Atkinson Bilinski of Fauntleroy spoke at a Jan. 26 rally

At a rally Jan. 26 at the federal building in Seattle, Leah Atkinson Bilinski, pastor of Fauntleroy UCC in Seattle, shared the following words about her experiences Jan. 22 and 23 in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Leah Atkinson Bilinski at a PNC-UCC Annual Meeting

I bring greetings from Minneapolis and St. Paul. I bring you greetings from the 650 faith leaders who dropped everything to travel to Minneapolis last week when the call went out that our presence was requested. I bring you greetings from Minnesota faith leaders, community organizers and activists. I bring you greetings from the people of those great cities who are not okay tonight, who haven’t been okay, who won’t be okay until they are all okay, until we are all okay.  A great and mourning cry has risen in Minneapolis St. Paul, and it is still rising as the cities mourn and warn and call us to witness.

I want to talk to you briefly about the importance of witnessing because I witnessed many things in Minneapolis.

Last Thursday, I completed an ICE watch patrol with a busload of pastors in a neighborhood just four blocks north of the site where Alex Pretti was murdered. As I completed that patrol, several SUVs of ICE agents pulled into the parking lot behind me. They surrounded a van with a pregnant mother and her children while faith leaders began blowing whistles and getting their phones out to record. In less than a minute they were gone, leaving the woman and her family shocked and scared. We’re not sure whether they left because she managed to produce the right papers to appease them or because of the ruckus faith leaders can make when we know that something is wrong, but in less than 60 seconds of arrival, the agents jumped in their vehicles and left. 60 seconds: that’s how quick these things happen. I am so thankful for those who witnessed what happened,but here’s the horrifying thing: I didn’t. I was right there, it happened maybe 300 yards behind me in a strip mall parking lot, and I missed it because I was facing the wrong direction.

I am so tired of living in a country that is facing the wrong direction. A country where people either reason the suffering of others, deprioritize it or seem to have no time for it. A country where a white hotel clerk in downtown Minneapolis can watch tens of thousands of people march by in negative 19-degree weather protesting ICE but tell us he sees nothing wrong in his fair city. Yet hours before, as I sat in a church in an immigrant community, a woman was carried in with injuries from a completed ICE abduction a block and a half away.

We have got to be better witnesses to what is happening around us, and those of us of faith have got to be better witnesses to the teachings we’ve been entrusted with.  White Christian nationalists don’t get to own my faith, and I will not stand by while they preach belief in Jesus but don’t preach what Jesus preached – to love our neighbor, to lift up the lowly, to let the oppressed go free, to love God by loving our neighbors and to honor the dignity of every person. These are teachings that people of many faiths and often times no faith share because they are teachings rooted in love and kindness rather than fear and scarcity mindsets.

It is time for us to witness to what is going on, facing it head on with eyes, not lies. It is time for us to witness the suffering of our neighbors in greater ways, linking arms to face in all directions so we do not miss what is happening right behind and beside us. 

Minneapolis and St. Paul are leading the way.

As much as I sought to be there as a witness to my faith, I’m here to say that so many more there witnessed back to me, showing us resilient hope, beauty and the power of strength found in community.

People like the woman who showed up late to a gathering because she was delivering breast milk to the three-month-old infant of a mother who’s been detained.

People like those preparing meals for the thousands who can’t leave their homes and stepping in to take on shifts for those who can no longer work theirs.

People like the volunteer ice patrol drivers watching, always watching, and the parents and grandparents and single folk standing on street corners to make sure kids get to school safely because it’s not safe for their parents to walk or drive them anymore. 

People like the Latine families in hiding who gave those of us going to the ICE Out march stars on sticks to hold high in the march so that they might be present there, too.

People like all the local faith leaders and community leaders who were exhausted from the week turned up again to be there when Alex Pretti was killed, with out-of-state faith leaders changing their plane tickets to provide them with support.

Lord, I and the other pastors I was with wished that our plane wasn’t already an hour into the air when that happened, that we too could have turned back.

Their witness is powerful in Minneapolis St. Paul. As our country falls apart, I want to ask, to what will we witness, Seattle? To what will we witness, Washington state?

On one of the many rideshares my group took while in Minneapolis, we got talking to our Somali driver. Overwhelmed with emotion at us having come all the way from Seattle, he asked, “You did that for my family? You did that for all the immigrants here? I want to tell you this;” he said, as he stopped the car and turned around in his seat, “I want to tell you that your witness matters. What you have come to do matters. Five years from now, a hundred years from now, my community will remember what you did. I love you. I love you. I’m telling you that I love you.”

I share that witness of love with all of you today because they are words for you too! Our love and the ways we show up in this world for one another matter. It matters to our neighbors; it matters to God or whatever you think of as the Sacred in this world. It matters to the future of humanity. Do not underestimate the power of your witness in such a time as this. May we be blessed to face in the right direction.

 

 

 

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