Photos by Kamal Moon
“As a person of faith, I believe we all belong and I reject the racist and divisive politics of white ‘christian’ nationalism,” Janan Najeeb, chair of MICAH’s Religious Leaders Caucus, told the press Saturday.
About 30 local religious leaders affiliated with Milwaukee Inner-City Churches Allied for Hope gathered for a press conference Saturday morning in front of the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, where two days later the 2024 Republican National Convention began.
The next day, MICAH hosted a rally with local and national speakers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It drew about 600 people.
Why? To denounce the white “christian” nationalism (lowercased to indicate it is not the Christianity they recognize) growing in the United States, especially among Republicans.
White “christian” nationalism is the belief “that America was founded by Christians who modeled its laws and institutions after Protestant ideals” and that it faces threats from non-whites, non-Christians and immigrants, according to Phillip Gorski, Ph.D., chair of the Sociology Department at Yale University, which hosted a panel discussion on the topic.
MICAH’s We All Belong Rally for Democracy Sunday was a five-hour event that celebrated the diversity of the American people and called for building an inclusive “Beloved Community,” a concept popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
MICAH’s “We All Belong” campaign challenges white “christian” nationalism growing in the Republican Party. The campaign launched a year ago with a series of events leading up to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
A Milwaukee interfaith consortium that promotes justice “in a city afflicted with radicalized and concentrated poverty,” MICAH organized the press conferences and rally “to protect democracy, reject white ‘christian’ nationalism and build ‘the Beloved Community,’” promotional materials declared. Participants included representatives from Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Protestant Christian, Roman Catholic and Unitarian congregations.
Muslim woman leads MICAH’s Religious Leaders Caucus
Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition executive director Janan Najeeb is the first non-Christian to serve as the chair of MICAH’s Religious Leaders Caucus, which organized MICAH’s “We All Belong” campaign. MICAH launched its “We All Belong” campaign a year ago, planning a series of events ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“We may be children of different traditions but we are the inheritors of a shared wisdom and the brethren of a common humanity,” Najeeb said. “As a Muslim, I draw upon God’s beautiful teachings in the Holy Quran to create that Beloved Community that upholds the dignity of every human being.”
Referring to another verse from the Quran, she noted, “You have been made into nations and tribes so that you may come to know and cherish one another.”
Rev. Joseph Jackson, Jr., vice president of MICAH and co-chair of the steering committee for the We All Belong campaign, spoke with a WUWM reporter about the campaign’s Rally for Democracy.
Standing for democracy: “Necessary and urgent”
“MICAH has been organizing for 36 years, motivating people for justice in the City of Milwaukee,” Rev. Richard D. Shaw, president of MICAH and pastor of St. Matthew CME Church in Milwaukee said at Saturday’s press conference. “The ‘We All Belong’ campaign is another effort we have taken on to show the nation and to show Milwaukee there is a group of religious leaders who do not stand for white ‘christian’ nationalism. We do not support the racism and the divisive politics that have divided our country for so long.
“This gathering today is necessary because of those who have pushed an ideology that separates us,” Shaw explained. “We want to show that regardless of our race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, we come together to show America what the Beloved Community looks like.”
The time to act is now, added Rev. Joseph Jackson, Jr., vice-president of MICAH and co-chair of its “We All Belong” Steering Committee. Rev. Jackson is pastor of the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Milwaukee. “We are here to take a moral and ethical stand.”
“Lord, give us the strength to continue the fight of justice,” Rev. Richard D. Shaw, MICAH president, prayed at a press conference prior to the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week.
“What is it about now that makes this campaign so urgent?” the Wisconsin Muslim Journal asked Rev. Jackson in a press conference preceding the rally.
“I’ll start with what happened yesterday,” he said, referring to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. “The hate, the vitriol in the atmosphere … the 2025 project coming. How can we sit down?”
Learn what MICAH religious leaders and their statewide and national allies had to say in the story below.
See the We All Belong Rally for Democracy here.
9 a.m., Saturday, July 13
Let’s start with prayer,” said Rev. Richard D. Shaw, president of MICAH, a Milwaukee interfaith organization that promotes justice, at the start of a press conference that included prayer, declarations, singing and a proclamation from the Milwaukee Common Council.
Leaders from MICAH’s early days stood with him, including Rev. Joseph Jackson, pastor of Friendship Missionary Church; Rev. Dennis Jacobson, a founder of MICAH; Rev. Marilyn Miller, retired pastor of Cross Lutheran Church and Breaking the Chains Church; and Rev. Joseph Ellwanger, a white pastor of an African American church in Alabama who presided over the funerals of three of the four girls infamously killed in the bombing of a church in Birmingham.
Rev. Shaw stepped up to the podium Saturday morning with Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum in the background. Workers bustled in and out of a side door of the building making preparations for the 2024 Republican National Convention that was housed there this week.
Faith leaders stand by to speak at the MICAH We All Belong press conference.
A set of red letters (T, R, U, M, P) and blue numbers (2, 0, 2, 4) were being set up at the forum’s entrance. The building wore “RNC 2024 Milwaukee” in red like a slogan on a t-shirt. Above a row of pubs, a FOX News ad showed larger-than-life photos of journalists seemingly looking out at Fiserv above the phrase “America is watching.”
Behind Rev. Shaw, 30 religious leaders stood, including a Muslim community leader, Christian ministers, a Jewish rabbi and a Buddhist reverend. A row of nuns stood next to them in slacks and t-shirts. One t-shirt read, “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”
The nuns from various orders, including the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa and the Capuchin Franciscans, had been an hour before the press conference started. They tried to scout out a place to set up the podium but the loud pounding of construction equipment made it difficult for them to hear each other.
Someone hung a banner on the podium that read, “MICAH, Working for Justice in Milwaukee Since 1988.” It displayed two logos, MICAH’s sunrise and WISDOM’s silhouette of Wisconsin. WISDOM is a statewide, multi-faith network that uses a “faith-based lens as we fight for racial, social and economic justice for all,” its website states.
WISDOM and the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition were lead sponsors of MICAH’s We All Belong Rally for Democracy. The School Sisters of Notre Dame and Souls to the Polls, a faith-based group helps Milwaukeeans access their right to vote, sponsored at the next level. Rev. and Joyce Ellwanger and Rev. and Lynn Jacobson sponsored at the third tier.
Nuns from the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa and the Capuchin Franciscans support MICAH’s We All Belong campaign.
We all belong!
Rev. Shaw continued his prayer: “Lord, lead us away from toxic, exclusive ideology and lead us into the Beloved Community. Give us the strength to continue the fight of justice.”
“We all belong,” he declared.
“We all belong,” the group answered in chorus.
Rev. Joseph Jackson, vice president of MICAH, pastor of the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, also co-chair of the campaign steering committee followed. “MICAH’s We All Belong Campaign seeks to protect democracy. America is a democracy of the people, for the people and by the people. That’s all the people regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, social status or sexual orientation. We all belong!
“As people of faith, we support equal representation and voting rights for all Americans,” Rev. Jackson said. “We support separation of church and state rather than a national religion, where all people can worship without persecution. We support equal access to justice, opportunity and wealth for everyone.
“We all belong!”
“We all belong,” the group chanted back.
“We are descendants of multiple races and cultures. We celebrate the vibrancy, power and collective wisdom of a diverse community, a diverse world, a diverse society. We don’t stand for our democratic ideals and principles to be eroded by those who seek power and privilege for themselves because we all belong.
“We must protect and preserve democracy. My God would say it is crucial and critical for our congregations, our communities and our cities. As a person of faith, I believe that we all belong. I resist racism and the politics of white ‘christian’ nationalism.”
Voice of America’s Carolyn Presutti interviews Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition’s executive director Janan Najeeb.
Milwaukee’s Common Council endorses the We All Belong campaign
Milwaukee Common Council President and District 12 Alderman José G. Pérez joined the speakers at the podium. The Common Council endorsed MICAH’s We All Belong campaign and he was there to present a resolution.
“Buenos dias,” he said. He thanked MICAH’s leaders, including Reverends Shaw, Ellwanger and Jacobson, the third who was a founder of MICAH, for the experience he had as an organizer with MICAH. “When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something,” Pérez said. “We must do our part to build that Beloved Community. Dr. King said that. He was warning before many of us were born about the danger of disengagement.
“Do we have the courage to speak? It’s not always easy. These days, the voices out there are loud and they are angry. Some of them are even threatening.”
Pérez presented a resolution from the Milwaukee Common Council that endorsed all the principles of the We All Belong campaign. He said, “This resolution is about the Common Council coming together to say, ‘We all belong.’”
Amanda Tyler, founder of Christians against Christian Nationalism, is author of “How to End Christian Nationalism,’ to be released this fall.
Sunday, 1 p.m., press conference
Below the auditorium of the UWM Helene Zelazo Performing Arts Center, speakers and journalists gathered in the Green Room for a short press conference before the rally. National speakers joined local leaders in decrying the threat of white “christian” nationalism. They included Amanda Tyler of Christians Against Christian Nationalism; Rev. Jim Wallis of the Georgetown University Center for Faith & Justice; and Fr. Bryan Massingale of Fordham University Center for Ethics Education.
“Because the election of 2024 is not between two men but between two ideologies—Democracy vs Autocracy—and because one ideology gives all people the right to participate in their governing and one withholds that right from some groups—the We All Belong campaign is sponsoring a Rally for Democracy,” said a press release distributed at the event.
MICAH’s We All Belong Rally for Democracy drew about 600 attendees Sunday to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Helene Zelazo Performing Arts Center.
Sunday, 2 p.m., “We All Belong” Rally
It was a full-house in the auditorium with about 600 seats filled and a few milling about.
Following performances by ValLimar Jansen, international recording artist and composer and the Kassumai African Dance Company, MICAH Religious Leaders Caucus Chair Janan Najeeb explained the purpose of the rally.
“In the Religious Leaders Caucus, our various traditions are our strengths,” she explained. “We celebrate our diversity and find common ground in our shared wisdom. The Religious Leaders Caucus is a microcosm of what is best in America. MICAH … seeks to build the Beloved Community and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It rejects the racism of white ‘christian’ nationalism.
Rev. Joseph Ellwanger, active in the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s, has continued the fight for justice and equality through his work with MICAH.
“The Beloved Community is a society in which caring and compassion drive political policies that support the worldwide elimination of poverty, hunger, bigotry and prejudice. The Beloved Community pulses with the intrinsic worth and value of all people.
“We reject the authority of those who have created a God who hates the same people they do … we stand against the regression to the shameful parts of our history that allowed us to ethnically cleanse indigenous peoples and displace others, that enslaved millions of Africans and created Japanese internment camps, that implemented Jim Crow laws, instituted red-lining and housing discrimination. We stand against the mass incarceration and racial profiling of Black men and other people of color.
“White ‘christian’ nationalists and their racist supporters have been instrumental in promoting violence against Muslim, Arab and Palestinians in this country and around the globe … When a presidential candidate gets on national television during a debate and calls his opponent ‘a bad Palestinian’” it’s a racial slur just like the N-word and others, she said.
“I’m a Palestinian American Muslim and you can call me a bad Palestinian until you are blue in the face. I know that like communities of color who have dealt with this before. My existence is resistance!”
The Kassumai African Dancer Company performed at MICAH’s We All Belong Rally for Democracy.
