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Newsgroups: alt.atheism From: shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca (Jeffrey Shallit) Subject: "If You Don't Fight Back, It's Wrong" by Daniel Weisman Message-ID: <C0wnDJ.Fvs@math.uwaterloo.ca> Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1993 17:03:17 GMT Lines: 312

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This article is reprinted (with permission) from Freethought Today, bulletin of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

For more information, write

Freedom From Religion Foundation P. O. Box 750 Madison, WI 53701 USA (608) 256-8900

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"If You Don't Fight Back, It's Wrong"

In June, 1992, the United States Supreme Court declared prayers at public high-school graduations to be unconstitutional, in the Lee v. Weisman decision. This article is excerpted from Professor Weisman's acceptance speech at the 15th annual Freedom From Religion Foundation convention in San Antonio, December 5, 1992, when he and his family were awarded the Foundation's 1992 "Freethinkers of the Year." His talk was punctuated with applause and laughter.

By Prof. Daniel Weisman

Let me share an impression of my day here. We were approached and got to talk to a lot of you. Even the false modesty we build up in academia was inadequate to the kind of expressions people shared with us. A number of people came up to us and expressed with deep sincerity their appreciation for what we did. I can tell you as some of you shared your stories about what you've done, I felt like organizing a "Heroes Anonymous" group here!

We simply got very angry at what was an extremely inappropriate action by a local school board in response to a question we raised.

In 1986 Merith graduated from our neighborhood public middle school. At the graduation a Baptist minister had us stand, bow our heads and pray as a group to Jesus Christ: "We all thank Jesus Christ. He made these kids what they are today."

I had lots of reactions. Most of those have been well-reported in the media. Mostly those reactions had to do with my identity as a Jew, but also as a social worker where there is a commitment in my profession to respond to challenges of vulnerable people, who always tend to be in the minority, whether it is race or religion. I reacted on both levels, and just raised some questions with my local school district. I sent a note to the principal, who wasn't actually at that graduation because of a family problem: "You missed something ... We hope you share our reaction." We never heard from anybody. It's very unusual not to get an answer.

Three years passed. Deborah came up to graduate that year in 1989 and we reminded the local school that we had been upset in the past. They didn't answer us in February, in March, in April. We knew there was a problem. Eventually we were able to get a meeting with the principal, after a school teacher told us they had received our complaint and recognized how uncomfortable we were, and therefore they had arranged to get a rabbi to give the message at the graduation! (This is absolutely true!) We had a meeting with the principal and he basically said, "So sue me." Well, we did! [lots of clapping]

The point I'm trying to make is: I appreciate being appreciated. We all do. But when you're in this position you get pushed. And you have a choice. Either take it, or if it's important enough and it's a reasonable thing to fight about, fight it. If you don't fight back, it's wrong. You don't feel so much a hero as, "What else am I supposed to do?" [clapping]

You do take abuse. You do get negative attention. But you have to live with yourself. Part of the problem we face in having to fight these battles over and over is that people who do believe the way we all do on church and state take it. Some of them take it because they don't have tenure and they don't have options. But you can also join with other people and devise strategies not to take it.

My two biggest disappointments in having taken the case were the lack of support from the organized Jewish community in Rhode Island, and from my own field, social work. The organized Jewish community was embarrassed. Individuals, lots of individuals expressed support, people we don't know, people we do know. In fact, on the flip side, one of the harassing calls we got at eleven o'clock at night was from the principal of the Jewish day school saying, "You don't like public schools? Send your kid here. We'll give you a scholarship." It came from everywhere: the lack of support from the organized Jewish community--who know they knew better; the lack of organized support from my social work profession, where there was no risk to express support. They just couldn't make the connection that I felt was vital for what our profession is about.

I think you know the rest about the case. It shouldn't have gone past the meeting with the principal. It did. It shouldn't have gone past district court. It did. So on and so forth. With the Supreme Court I just got the winning ticket. The Supreme Court, very surprisingly for us, ruled in our favor.

I can tell you during that last spring, we spent a number of ACLU meetings practicing concession speeches. We actually had written concession speeches, and when somebody in the group asked, "What are you going to say if you win?" we all looked at that person and said: "Get a life!"

We did not have anything ready when we won. It was incredibly exciting. Language doesn't capture the feelings I had. When the phone rang I was actually on the same block as the Pawtucket creche, in the same complex, at a meeting there. I got the phone call there and I said, "Two losses on the same block!" But fortunately that didn't happen.

The feeling that you didn't lose an important case is incredible. The second thought: not only didn't we lose, but we actually won! There's no match for such feelings, among the experiences I've had in life.

Let me just share a couple of other thoughts. When Anne called us several months ago to describe what she wanted to do for us, she was very good and asked us to whom the plaque should be made out. In our discussions about it we decided this is the year of family values! This was a family project. [clapping]

This morning both speakers in the morning session, Allen Berger and Craig Phelon, made tremendously complimentary statements about us and I can just mirror them back on both of them, they're both courageous people. Allen describes himself as a "nonbelieving Jew at a Catholic college." That was kind of amusing. And I thought, Hey, I'm a nonbelieving Jew in a public college--in a Catholic state! A distinction without a difference as far as most Rhode Islanders are concerned. That's part of the problem.

* * *

The current agenda as far as I can ascertain of the religious right is to redevelop this country as a Christian nation. It's in their language and it's in the post-case discussion: "This is a Christian nation." The distinction between the majority and a body of law that separates a majority from public policy is lost in their rhetoric. That's the First Amendment, which is critically important and protects us from the abuses that the majority will perpetrate on us.

Remember the Supreme Court decision only pertained to public schools through twelfth grade and deliberately excluded colleges on the assessment that by that age you can't be coerced anymore. And so the separation of church and state is not the issue; coercion is, even though they specifically rejected the coercion test.

I want to show you something. This campus mail came to my office the day before yesterday: "Celebrating the birth of Christ--program sponsored by the chaplain's office" of our public college. Here's what they're doing this month. "Preparing our hearts for Christmas. Roman Catholic Mass, Advent Prayer Hour for Roman Catholics." When I raised this issue among my colleagues, the answer I get is, "The Supreme Court says you can do this, so what's your problem?" People of good will and people who know better are inclined not to fight back. The other argument I get is, "She's not an employee of the college. What's the big deal?" She isn't--she's paid for by the church but she has the imprimatur of the college. It's the same fight.

Craig Phelon said that journalism loses its professionalism when it comes to religion. That may be. In my experience of over three years with the media, I couldn't find that professionalism.

A quick story. NBC came to our house. They called the day before: "We're coming." They showed up with the film crew. They set up at the house, the lights, the whole thing. The woman who was not one of their luminaries, someone I had never seen before, said off-camera, "They just assigned me this case. I don't know what it's about. Tell me what to ask you." Then they turn the lights on.

We were on "Good Morning, America" the day before the case came down. I almost missed my flight, and, by the way I specifically asked not to fly Continental because it's a scab airline, and that's what they put me on. The producer had me on the phone for too long, specifically reviewing what we were going to talk about in our 40-second bite. I gave him a lot of things to talk about. I said there are really two things not to ask, because they're dead-end questions. One is: don't ask me why we sued a rabbi. It was a circumstantial thing and really unrelated to the First Amendment issues of the case, it's just a happenstance, but it will kill the time, actually the five minute piece they had, and you won't get a chance to probe. The second thing is don't ask Deborah what her friends thought, because everybody's asked that, and it's a fairly simple answer. At first, her friends didn't understand it. If they talked about, they came to understand.

We get to "Good Morning, America," the Green Room, the powder room, we meet with the people who think they're very important, we should know who they are. I'd never heard of Joan Lunden 'til I'm sitting beside her. I didn't know who she was! (She didn't like that!) She says to me, "So why a rabbi?" I answered it. She goes to Deborah: "What do your friends think?"

When cert. was granted (when the Supreme Court said they would take this case) it was March of 1991. I was on sabbatical in Seattle. I came home for Passover. We were having our version of a Passover Seder at the house, which might appear very similar to the [nonprayer] breakfast we had this morning. Here's our Passover tradition: Pass the food. So CNN calls the night before. "You are going to be on CNN tomorrow." And we say, "Whoa! Okay, send your camera crew. We're doing a Passover thing but if you come in the morning ... "

"No, no, you don't understand. You're going to Atlanta first thing in the morning."

"You have to understand. It's Passover."

"Okay, we'll do New York, we'll fly you to New York. How about if we send a limo and drive you to Boston?"

I kept saying to the CNN person, "Look, here's my problem. I cooperate with the press, I believe in the media, but it's Passover, we've got the house set up. I've just got in from Seattle."

The person said, "You don't understand, yourself. This is CNN. People die to get on CNN."

"Not me," I said. "It's a little ironic we're talking about a religion case and you're not willing to appreciate an important Jewish holiday."

They finally arranged to do a taping at the house at 1:00 in the afternoon. We live on a little street with houses, the typical New England block in Providence. They closed one end of the street with saw horses, put up trucks with a dish. Neighbors are coming out taking pictures of CNN. It was a nice day, the light was good. They made a studio out of my back porch, a deck arrangement, with incredible wires and all kinds of stuff. They got Vivian and Deborah since it was a woman's production and show. I'm inside peeking out.

They asked them each one question. Deborah's question was: "What do your friends think of this?"

Vivian's question was, "So tell us what happened, tell us the story." After all this effort, Vivian has three minutes for quick review. Deborah told them what her friends thought of it, and then they went to a "panel of experts," and didn't come back to Vivian and Deborah. Then the show was over! The panel of experts was uninformed, but Vivian's mike was dead. They wouldn't let her interrupt with the facts, not just the facts of our case, but what the Lemon Test says. They were utterly uninformed.

C-Span, some of the professional media, the American Law Journal, were excellent. They got to the facts, they were critical, they challenged us. But most of the electronic media industry ought to be really suspect.

* * *

Why does the religious right keep coming back to the public schools? I just finished reading Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. Let me just tell you something about San Antonio schools.

The inner city district of San Antonio has a school called Cooper Middle School. In 1988 they spent $2,800 a year per kid. Ten minutes from town is a neighborhood called Alamo Heights. They spent $4,600 per year per kid. Teachers in inner cities have $27,000 a year salaries, $31,000 in Alamo Heights. The gifted program: $46 per kids, Alamo Heights; $1 inner city. The taxes raised per kid (through property tax): $3,600 per kid, Alamo Heights; $924 inner city. In Texas the range in money spent per kid per year for public education: $2,100 to $20,000. You know who's in the $2,100 and who's in the $20,000. The tax base in this state (the amount of value in property behind each kid): $20,000 is the lowest, and $14 million is the highest.

A funny little side statistic to all this: throughout Texas and throughout the country, poor communities tax themselves at higher rates for education. They're prepared to spend more out of the percent of what they've got, but because the tax base is so low, the disparity is too great. When these people are in lawsuits challenging the inequities on constitutional grounds of equal protection, the defense is a thinly-veiled defense of privilege, of social control by the rich, of the poor, to serve the needs of the people in charge, and to maintain a system that if properly challenged would collapse of its own weight, it is so irrational and abusive.

I don't have any "faith" in conspiracy theory. There's not some room where the people in charge are meeting and arranging all this. I think the system works the way the system works. I would argue that prayer and organized religion in the school is an awfully effective way to divert people's attention from these real problems.

We're living in a period of time when there's some room for optimism, a new administration.

But we've got to be there. We've got to stop every little approach at gaining back the ground we've just won on this little case about prayer and graduation. They'll be back. We don't have the luxury of saying, "I'm not going to fight it, I'll take it."

It's nice to be a hero, I enjoy it, I love hearing you say my name; you can say it all night. It was fun sitting in the Supreme Court hearing eight justices saying "Weisman this and Weisman that" (Thomas didn't say anything), but more important, I can live with myself. I think most people shouldn't be able to live with themselves if they leave these violations unchallenged.

* * *

Daniel Weisman is a Professor of Social Worker at Rhode Island College. He was a plaintiff with his daughter Deborah in Lee v. Weisman. His Ph.D in social work is from Rutgers. He has also worked as a community organizer. Vivian Weisman was not a plaintiff in the suit, simply because she was out of town at the time it was filed. She has a Master's of Social Worker from the University of Chicago and is currently assistant executive director of the Jewish Community Center, Rhode Island.