Click here to read the full article at RENEW.org: https://renew.org/reflecting-on-the-st-paul-church-protestors/
This an audio version of a written Article from RENEW.org
Minnesota’s Twin Cities have erupted again. A large deployment of President Trump’s ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents in the area met with icy resistance. Protests escalated following the fatal shooting on January 7 of protester Renee Good when an agent believed she was running him over.
Then on Sunday morning, January 18, protesters infiltrated the worship service of Cities Church in St. Paul on the lead that one of the pastors is acting field director for ICE in the area. The service devolved into a chaos of yelled chants, such as “Justice for Renee Good!” and “Hands up, don’t shoot!”
Picture the classic crime scene “evidence board,” with newspaper clippings mapped together with strings and thumbtacks. If there were an evidence board in the minds of those who disrupted the worship service, it might have looked like this: The killing of Renee Good . . . ICE . . . ICE-affiliated pastor . . . Cities Church. They considered the strings sturdy enough to justify crossing what for many of us is a sacred line—infiltrating and shouting down a worship service.
And it wasn’t just because of a lone leader they believed needed to be called out. Former CNN anchor Don Lemon was on site covering the protest. Later, while defending himself for his sympathetic coverage of the protest, Lemon painted the disruption as more than just a legal right—but as the right thing for them to do. Adding more clippings to the evidence board, Lemon described churches with sympathies for ICE deportations: “There is a certain degree of racism there and there’s a certain degree of entitlement.”
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