“In considering the state of American democracy, (the organizers of this event) asked, ‘Do we host a funeral or a conference?’ We are Christians who believe in resurrection, so we opted to host this event.”
That’s how visiting professor Adam Brett kicked off the Vision for Liberating Our Democracy conference Feb. 26-27 at United Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia. The event specifically looked at “examining the religious and racialized roots of American democracy.” More particularly, the conference sought to highlight the forgotten impacts on American democracy by Black and Latino communities and especially the indigenous culture of the Haudenosaunee (often known by the French name Iroquois — which is considered pejorative by many because it literally means “black snakes”).
Attendees received a traditional indigenous thanksgiving blessing from Tadodaho Sidney of the Onondaga Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
Maya Wiley
Attorney Maya Wiley, president and CEO of Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights — as well as a former candidate for New York City mayor and a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNow — delivered the opening plenary address on current threats to democracy and human rights.
To establish the basis of the existential threat to democracy, Wiley pointed to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeseth’s invitation to pastor Doug Wilson to lead a worship service at the Pentagon. Besides the violation of separation of church and state, Wilson’s public statements on gender establish him as a person rooted in misogynistic authoritarianism and white supremacy, she said.
Wilson has said, “The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. … True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity.”
Wilson has also called for the repeal of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote. In a 1996 booklet, Wilson wrote: “Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.”
Based on the implementation of such ideology, Wiley passionately asserted that President Donald Trump’s oversight has moved from an administration to a regime. She made the distinction that an administration governs within the bounds and dictates of law and grants the freedom to challenge and dissent. By contrast, Wiley described examples in which the current political climate suppresses dissent.
She asked, “What is democracy and, why should we fear competitive authoritarianism?” She answered: “I would posit that what democracy is … the way we find to cross our differences — the problems we must solve — and figure out how we solve them together.”
Betty Lyons Hill
In a subsequent panel discussion, Betty Lyons Hill or Gaen hia uh of the Onondaga Nation and executive director of the American Indian Law Alliance said that, despite the name of the organization she leads, she does not refer to herself as Native American because “America” is a colonial term. Hill said indigenous culture and government structures influenced the formation of the United States Constitution. For instance, in 1988, Congress passed House Resolution 331:
To acknowledge the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations to the development of the United States Constitution and to reaffirm the continuing government-to-government relationship between Indian tribes and the United States established in the Constitution. Whereas the original framers of the Constitution, including, most notable, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, are known to have greatly admired the concepts of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy; Whereas the confederation of the original Thirteen Colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself; … be it resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That — 1)the Congress, on the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution acknowledges the contribution made by the Iroquois Confederacy and other Indian Nations to the formation and development of the United States; ….
Shifting to the current political climate, Brandon Paradise, associate professor of law at Rutgers University, suggested that focus on Trump distracts from the bigger systemic issues of racist authoritarianism. Referring to Martin Luther King’s vision of a healthy, just and vibrant society, Paradise said, “Trump could disappear tomorrow, and we would still be far from the ‘blessed community.’”