George of Sylvania

Category: travel

  • March on Washington 2026

    March on Washington 2026

    Last Thursday, myself and five other friends of mine from the church I work at drove into Washington DC for the March on Washington: Defending the Vote, the fifth type of march centered on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s original March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Co-lead by the National Action Network and the Drum Major Institute headed by Rev. Al Sharpton and Dr. Martin Luther King III respectively. It was a rather leisurely trip in taking our time, and I don’t think we could have picked a more interesting group of people to come if we had tried. 

    A game of “what’s your story” led us to find out one of our members had traced his lineage to when his family was brought to the US via slave ships (and found out during our drive that his X2 great-grandmother had bought her freedom sooner than he originally had thought; another met his husband on his first day of college in the 1970’s; another had joined a previous march on Washington as a factory worker when she was younger; one is the youngest of 11; and the last one likes to get to know others hence starting the game. With an incredible dinner waiting for us provided by the family member of one of our travelers at their house, we called it a night as we had an early morning.

    Hitting the metro and hoping off at Arlington National Cemetery we were greeted with the sight of national traitor Robert Lee’s house and then saw the incredibly tacky and generally repulsive “refurbished” gold plated Arts of Peace statutes. As we walked toward the Lincoln Memorial, we took in a moment to remember the Kennedy Center before Trump yet again has his way with it, and being episcopal nerds we may have (totally did) taken a selfie with the far away National Cathedral. Once we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial two things were very clear; one, we had more time than originally thought to get there; and two, Trump really fucked up the reflecting pool. I have been to DC maybe five or six times, and this was the most I have ever seen the city closed off. You could generously, not get within 20 feet of the pool, which made the crowd size look smaller than the amounts that were there. It also did not help that busses were cancelled last minute, and people weren’t notified until after the cancelation. 

    Sun-screened and ready to go, we waited until the first few speakers started after 9:30, and there was a round robin of them until the end. Some key ones for me were Rev. Sharpton, Dr. King III, Sen Bernie Sanders, Rep Ocasio-Cortez, Gov. Spanberger, Derrick Johnson, Janai Nelson, Rev. Shavon Arline-Bradley, Marc Morial, Melanie Cample, many more, and the lackluster and spineless House Minority Leader (who needs to resign) also spoke. While it was a long day, even during the lulls, there was an electricity in the air I have only experienced a few times in my life. When it came time to line up and march, somehow one of my companions and I ended up at the front near Rev. Sharpton and Dr. King, but we were quick to move ourselves further back into the crowd.

    Once we started marching, eventually we made our way to the MLK Jr. national monument where some more words were to be spoken and the day’s events ended. As we were marching into the monument, there is a split wall that almost looks like Moses having parted the Red Sea which was incredibly emotional. But when the Freedom Riders who had bused in from Houston Texas that day started singing, We Shall Overcome, I was a teary mess. Eventually we were all surrounding the monument, and before I knew it, it was over. In another surreal moment, Spike Lee, Rev. Sharpton, Dr. King, and the remaining speakers walked by, some took photos, and that was that. 63 years since the original March on Washington, and people are marching for the same damn things.

    As Christians, we are called to bear witness and participate in acts of justice, social and other. These acts can be as small as sharing a meal with a person and getting to know them, bursting your church’s doors open for a Pride parade, showing up like this, praying for a change of heart, writing letters to your representatives, or as Georgia Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock says a vote is a kind of prayer. No politician is perfect, or even the best of what they can be, but we can be the people calling to account and pushing for our fellow image bearers to have the same access to rights as the most privileged amongst us. 

    Grace and peace my friends.

  • Henrietta Butler

    Henrietta Butler

    A few months ago my wife, child, and I took a little jaunt to New Orleans to visit some family that has lived down there for a long time. It is a trip we try to make every 18 months to two years, and this time it just happened to coincide with New Orleans Jazz Fest where Jon Batiste was closing down Friday night. It was a great time, I got to see almost a full set of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band in between getting snacks and drinks. By the time Jon Batiste was getting ready to go on, our almost four year old was cooked, and I took him back to the house. While I love Batiste, it was my wife’s bucket list item to see him play jazz fest. It was a trip that was hard at the start, but was incredibly enjoyable by the end.

    Whenever we go somewhere, I know there will be downtime in the middle of the day while those two nap to run out and check out something I know others either won’t want to see, or is just too off the beaten path. For this trip, my main goal during this limited time, was to see the Whitney Plantation Museum. Plantations are not places I have ever had any interest in visiting, I do not care for Gone With the Wind, or the revisionist history that white southerners have spent so much time trying to cover up. The whole idea of a tour being focused around the big house makes my skin crawl. So when I read Clint Smith’s book, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, and his chapter on the Whitney Plantation, I knew I had to try and see it.

    What sets the Whitney apart from other places like this, from their website, “Whitney Plantation is a non-profit museum dedicated to the history of slavery, situated on a historical sugar, indigo and rice plantation which operated from 1752-1975.” Their focus is strictly on the the lives of those enslaved, which was genuinely breathtaking, tear inducing, and uncomfortable which is perfect for every white person that walks those grounds. One thing that surprised me, aside from how stark the big house was (no decorations, no furniture, just there as a reminder which was 10/10), were the carved statues of children all around the grounds.

    When you check into the tour, you are handed a lanyard that has a name and picture of one of these statues because they are real people with real stories about being enslaved. During FDR’s time in office, he pass the New Deal, a sweeping group of legislation from 1933-1939 that was designed to help lift this country out of the Great Depression. One of the projects that came from it was the Work Progress Administration (WPA), and journalists like Zora Neale Hurston, and others were sent out to record the accounts of those formerly enslaved. From those records, the Whitney pulled names, and on the back of the lanyard was written part of their story.

    Henrietta Butler, around 80 years old when she gave her testimony, is who was on my lanyard. Her testimony is held on record at the Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Watson Memorial Library, in the Cammie G. Henry Research Center. The section of her story that is on my lanyard, which lives in my office, states:

    I’se 80 some odd years ole, born at LaFourche. I was born in slavery. I’se not ashame’ to tel it either an’ knows somethin’ about it.

    My damn ol’ missus was mean as hell; I know ever; night I had to wash dat ol’ woman’s foots an’ rub dem ‘fo I could ever go home to bed…they made my ma have babies all de time.

    She was sellin’ the boys and keepin’ the gals.

    If you are interested in reading some of the slave narratives from the WPA, you can access it online through the Library of Congress by clicking here. I cannot recommend visiting this place of history enough. Pick up Clint Smith’s book, read up on the Whitney, and friends, do your part to make sure nothing like this happens again. The 13th Amendment still allows slavery via the prison industrial complex, and those siblings who have been wrongfully or correctly imprisoned deserve the dignity they inherently have. Families are still being torn apart, I encourage you to contact your reps so that we do not find ourselves replaying this history. When we start to dehumanize our fellow image bearers, it becomes easier to think we are above “them” which we are not.

    Grace and peace.