Labor day letter to Metro Council

Dear Metro Council Members:

                I want to instill in each of you the perception that on your collective council rests the opportunity for Baton Rouge to lead the USA in establishing civic morality. I have been writing to you for more than a year now, without realizing that was my message to you: you have a unique opportunity, because a well-grounded idea (that holds up in scholarly literature) that is originating here from concerned citizens. The important consideration is this:  the civic people of Baton Rouge are 1) too busy trying to live decent lives, 2) too subjugated by erroneous political influence, and now 3) too wounded by the floods, to succeed without your excellence. But first, you must understand the proposal and iteratively collaborate together.

Current events

                Based on the evidence, Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital city, is already at the leading edge of reform of the USA. The 65% of citizens who want a civic culture rather than to resume the war for dominant opinion must not be bemused by the ministers, politicians, and newspapers who want to go back to before. It’s not that those entities are evil, but they each have an agenda which does not empower civic morality. Ministers promote churches for spiritual achievements but sometimes for power; politicians try to attract votes; newspapers promote their business plans; and many persons want it all and want it now, with no regard for civic morality. With an outgoing mayor, you are in a pivotal position to match the city’s leadership with its civic citizens’ performance after the floods and carry what you establish into a possible better future for Baton Rouge. If you don’t like our ideas, try something else, such as Character Counts[i] to build your teamwork. However, our proposal seems real: forty-five people collaborating at EBRP library meetings since June 21, 2014, have iteratively collaborated for a possible better future for the USA.

                In the summer of 2016, Baton Rouge civic persons strongly resisted President Obama's honest, divisive leadership from his Chicago days: Marxist-Alinsky organizing (AMO). The AMO approach to perceived injustice is to create civic disruption by passionate recruits who may erroneously escalate expression to violence---leaving AMO innocent of the damages to the recruits. I wrote to you under this label about the out-of-town influences long before AMO showed up plainly after Alton Sterling's police resistance. Louisiana police and citizens did not allow destructive AMO action to gain local momentum despite visits from national AMO groups to take advantage of wounded local police. Louisiana citizens put Louisiana citizens first despite divisive leaders.                 Unfortunately civic citizens have, so far, neglected Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, the would-be arresting-officers dispatched by 911 to protect public safety from a previously controllable citizen turned aggressive: the officers and their families are people, too. Civic citizens are wounded, regardless of skin-color. Yet civic Louisiana citizens came forward again, during and after the floods: Baton Rouge must not let AMO creep in.

Integrity rather than unity

What Louisiana civic citizens have, the USA needs: Integrity. I'm talking about both fidelity to the-indisputable-facts-of-civic-reality and wholeness—two kinds of integrity. Now that there is evidence that neither the opinionated President of the USA nor a fervent Chapter XI Machiavellian[ii] governor of Louisiana can dissuade a civic culture, the people who want civic morality must not allow emotionalism and god-wars to creep back in. Let each person's pursuit of spiritual salvation be a personal practice—in hearts, closets, homes and churches--rather than an object of public debate. No one will go to a civic forum to debate the god they hold in their heart and mind and hopes. Let me repeat that: No one will collaborate with the public about their personal god: Belief in one’s god is not a civic issue.

Just one study of the factional divisions of Christianity alone is sufficient evidence that integrity cannot come from religion. See the table of comparative doctrine[iii] and the demographics of the factional, competitive “Christian majority”.[iv] Click on the 14.7% to see how divided “Mainline Protestant” is and on 6.5% for “Historically Black Protestant” divisions. Also, I tabulated most of the data for a comment on The Advocate online.[v] Citizens cannot possibly establish civic integrity based on religion. Yet even the 20.8% Catholic does not equal the 22.8% “nones,” the most oppressed, most major minority in America. In fact, compared to the fractionated Christian groups, the “nones” comprise the majority. Let me repeat that: Civic morality cannot emerge when the majority population, 22.8 % suffers the tyranny of factional religious groups. The "nones" are carrying the cost of the god-war! Religion must be a private practice in order to be precious to civic morality.

Ideas like, "In spite of what has happened with the flooding, we can't lose sight of those issues that were before us before the flooding happened,"[vi] must be faced with the-indisputable-facts-of-civic-reality rather than "spiritual" emotions based on the past. Baton Rouge cannot be led by slogans and symbols and factional, competitive Christianities posing as a 70% majority. “Togetherness” cannot pose as integrity. That charade must end after more than 1700 years of pretense. The Metro-Council can start the reform, and that is possible because a viable civic plan for the willing has been imagined here and nowhere else.

BRPD residency proposal in the light of history

Each of you must be disappointed that you did not put to rest the BRPD residency proposal. I am disappointed. You should be a team that is iteratively collaborating for a possible better future in Baton Rouge. Your office is not specified to represent a divisive faction in the war for dominant opinion. The duty of your office is to iteratively collaborate, as representatives, for a better future in Baton Rouge. It matters not what has been assumed before; what matters is that you take on that duty now. The idea is not to lead civic working people into the misery of their impressions and emotions, but to collaborate for a better future the decent people could not imagine in their dedications to their lives and their loved ones. A future not one of you can imagine alone but together you can create.

I propose that you consider the history of the racial divide that so dominates your meetings. That divide shows that not only blacks, but the USA itself is a victim of institutional slavery. No one is privileged in the subjugation to slavery. (That does not imply that there are no elite citizens, another subject altogether.) Baton Rouge, according to my fifty years here, has the unique opportunity to turn the bad to the good, because of the civic people who live here.

I have prepared a brief timeline of institutional slavery for your consideration. You can easily, check these facts by using Wikipedia, or ask a willing historian to confirm/deny my report. Based on years since 2016, or “years ago”:

3800 Code of Hammurabi (Babylon) took the institution of slavery for granted
          Slaves were an African commodity supplied by victorious, warring chiefs
1700 the Bible canon, ordered by Emperor Constantine from the Church, established Christian slavery
560 papal bull granted Portugal a monopoly on African-slave trade to some Americas
520 papal bull granted Spain a monopoly on African-slave trade to other Americas

500 the Reformation: but Protestantism never reformed the Bible canon respecting slavery
410 James I, English King, a Protestant, issued the First Virginia Charter under the discovery doctrine

258 colonial black church was founded, perhaps from Methodism, a British sect
242 Loyal, colonial-British-subjects realized they were English slaves and demanded liberty
228 Independent Americans, former British subjects, took charge of their destiny, ending slave trade in 20 years, but not slavery

        The founders knew they, not England, had responsibility for every person in the USA

        The-indisputable-facts-of-reality respecting slavery[vii] were well known and accepted, except in Bible disputes[viii]
150 Christians in the North won the Civil War to refute[ix] Bible passages that defend slavery
  52 Traditional black church demanded civic liberty (civic being ineluctable human connections)

  47 James Cone, Congressional Black Caucus, and Saul Alinsky created black power and black liberation.[x] Unfortunately, some black groups seem to want separation from the USA rather than reform.

    0 Some traditional-black-church perhaps emphasizes victimization rather than opportunity

        Some theologians imagine Bible references to slavery are the word of a black god: slaves are white
        Yet many black citizens join the USA's opposition to emphasis on victimization.

        James Meredith, 83 thinks the black race has failed its responsibilities and duties.[xi]

This timeline shows that Constantine would have helped prevent victimization of the USA by not canonizing a Bible that seems to condone slavery. However, slavery---chains, whips, brutality and rape to slaves and burdens to slave-masters---was always wrong according to the-indisputable-facts-of-civic-reality. The Bible may be absolutely correct on representing spiritual-salvation-morality, but the Bible is no basis for civic morality. Civic morality comes from people of integrity. Borrowing from Abraham Lincoln, justice comes from the people, not their gods. Finally, reliance on Bible passages misled 1850s Christian churches in the South to divide the USA over skin color, and it seems Bible passages influenced some black Christian churches since the 1960s to divide the USA over skin color. Baton Rouge can lead reform of divisional influences and establish civic morality.

Conclusion

A civic culture can be established by focusing on the-indisputable-facts-of-civic-reality, with most persons cultivating private concerns such as salvation of the soul in privacy. There will always be dissidents to a civic culture---criminals and lesser offenders, but most religious people want broadly-defined-civic-safety-and-security. The Baton Rouge Metro Council is responsible for security of lives, not salvation of souls.

Comprehending this proposal is not easy. After all, it is a proposal to reform life in the USA toward civic morality rather than dominant opinion. And you are the first to have the opportunity to apply it to civic decisions for a city---there’s nobody you can mimic. There is so much more in this proposal, but this is enough for now. I would appreciate communication with each of you so as to iteratively collaborate for a better future in Baton Rouge and beyond.

Best wishes for Baton Rouge and our possible future,

Phil Beaver

Agent for A Civic People of the United States, Baton Rouge.

1624 Leycester Drive

Baton Rouge, LA 70808

225-766-7365

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[i] See online at charactercounts.org/program-overview/ . Based on a study I did a couple years ago, I prefer “appreciation” to “respect.” It is a mistake to respect criminal behavior, and misbehavers know appreciation, when they reform, is sincerely earned. Also, if you use only one idea from my writing I hope it is iterative collaboration:  discussion of an issue based on differing experiences and observations to arrive at a possible better future neither party alone could have imagined.

[ii] Online at http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince11.htm . Scroll down past the index.

[iii] Online at religionfacts.com/denominations-beliefs .

[iv] Online at pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/

[v] Online at theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/faith/article_22b6cbc8-6c98-11e6-a5f1-c34e2582ed4e.html?sr_source=lift_amplify . See my fourth comment, and click on “more.” The critical table is copied as follows:

	All citizens, 100 %		%
	No religion (the majority among the groups)		22.8
	Catholic		20.8
	Baptist evangelist		9.2
	Evangelical		4.9
	Other non-Christian groups under 1%		4.7
	Evangelist groups under 1%		4.6
	Black Baptist		4.0
	Methodist tradition		3.9
	Pentecostal  evangelist		3.6
	Traditional groups under 1%		3.0
	Other Christian groups under 1%		2.6
	Baptist tradition		2.1
	Lutheran tradition		2.1
	Jewish		1.9
	Restoration  evangelist		1.6
	Mormon		1.6
	Black Christian groups under 1%		1.5
	Lutheran evangelist		1.5
	Presbyterian tradition		1.4
	Episcopalian tradition		1.2
	Black Pentecostal		1.0

[vi] See online at  theadvocate.com/louisiana_flood_2016/article_37031b66-6bbe-11e6-82b0-a7c638a9ea80.html?sr_source=lift_amplify

[vii] Chains, whips, brutality and rape to slaves with burdens, especially guilt, to slave-masters

[viii] Both Old Testament and New Testament passages represent slavery as an institution of the Christian god. Each person must choose between believing Scripture or observing the-indisputable-facts-of-reality.

[ix] Disbelieving Scripture does not negate the possibility that there is a god.

[x] For Jeremiah Wright, the advice is to trust a god rather than government, but cultural history shows that justice comes from a civic people, not gods.

[xi] Online at abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/civil-rights-marchers-us-address-inequality-40832483 from July 24 . "Citizenship is what the March Against Fear was about," [James Meredith, the marcher, now 83] says. "Citizenship. Not only rights and privileges are part of citizenship. Duty and responsibility are an equal part, and that's the part the black race has failed to pay any attention to."