I have been a Presbyterian Minister for 25 years.
As a Presbyterian pastor, Zach Wilson doesn't have to wear all that priest stuff. Protestant churches are much less uniform, obviously, than Roman Catholic Christians. Doesn't have to wear the cacic, or the chasable, or the stool, nothing's required.
I would wear a collerature with a tie, most of the time, not always a tie, but put the most part to that like ties.
And then how often would you wear the coller? Never. Really? This pastor's act means when immigration and customs enforcement took over his city. I'm the co-executive Presbyterian of the Presbyterian, the Twin Cities area here in Minnesota.
So now we had one church who had a Sudanese refugee family, and the 22-year-old son was abducted. And spirited off the Texas with an hour's, and he was legal.
“The Presbyterian kicked in ten grand, and we were able to get him back, right?”
Amazing.
But most people cannot marshal those sorts of resources, and there's a lot of making sure people have money to deliver these people's homes because people are kind of shut in.
Why can't people leave their homes? Because brown people are just being picked up. And even if you're a native, born American, if you have brown skin, it doesn't feel safe. The school district has started allowing distant learning for kids who don't feel safe. And so this is done what it's supposed to do, which is terrarians people in making them afraid of going about their business.
And you're wearing your collar right now. Yeah, I've been wearing it around. It's very weird. I don't really like it. But I am just, if I happen to end up in a place where it matters, then I have it on.
“And I think part of what the collar does is provide some measure of protection, or at least the feeling of protection.”
Partly for the visual, partly because there's some moral authority that people know that if you're wearing a collar, you have a community behind you. Now, anybody can buy one of these. It's not like you need a license, just like anybody can buy all the stuff. The ice agents are wearing cosplay paramilitary around my city. When did you order this collar? I ordered it that day, your Renee Good was killed over night.
On January 23rd, Pastor Zach, and at least 400 other clergy members, decked out in their clerical attire, went to protest ice at the airport. They were allowed to just go into the airport. You just take the, all right, over 100 people have been infected from the airport. Plus Delta has this one of their main hubs and Delta's been profiting by deporting people. That's another reason they are at the airport. It was freezing.
Twenty-two below is cold. But Pastor Zach and his hundreds of colleagues held up pictures of the minisotans who had been abducted. And they sang protest songs and hymns for as long as they could.
Was this your first time getting arrested?
Yeah, they took us to school buses and drove us to a parking lot and then somebody in a cop where it issued all the citations and then let us go. It feels odd because, I mean, obviously, the whole thing is performative, but a lot of the people doing the actual groundwork, the mutual aid, the delivery and stuff were told don't do both. If ice knows who you are, don't be delivering stuff to people's houses because they have followed people home. And people have, you know, they have facial recognition on their phone, someone at this place by her house, went up to someone I know and said,
Hey, Cheryl, because they had ID terror from, like someone from ice went up to, yes, it was like, hey, yeah, this comment. That's so wild. Yeah, this is not being used for law enforcement purposes. This is just, let's just look up some civilians and see what we can do to them. Like, that's super dangerous being able to do that stuff without a warrant. Do you think you're going to get arrested again?
“I will if need be, but, you know, the point isn't to get arrested, right?”
The point is to draw attention to what's going on, right, and for better or worse, people tend to pay attention when it's a bunch of clergy. When will you feel that you can take the collar off? I don't know. I mean, I guess when, I mean, when it feels like this sort of assault isn't going on on a regular basis, that's when it will come off, but I think people being part of a community of faith or something is really important for times like this, especially when if your court entity is being an American,
That's no longer what you thought it was.
We don't even have the second amendment anymore. You should have higher aspirations than
“and higher ideals than Americanness, and everyone should have something that is a North star”
accompanies in their life that's beyond what authority is telling them to do.
Please join me in supporting Pastor Zach, along with his multi-faith, multi-racial coalition,
“and all the communities they represent in the Twin Cities by donating to a nonprofit called”
[email protected]. Take care of each other.
