It hasn't been easy being a Black minister and talking about human rights for all people. My brother sent me Rev. Graylan's story from a Rochester paper, how he was invited and then disinvited from giving a talk at the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, all because he supports the rights of Palestinians.
Rev. Hagler wouldn't have it any other way. The racism and murder facing the Palestinian people looks very much like the racism directed at African Americans over the last century. Apartheid in Israel is a mirror held up to see Jim Crow in the American Empire. Whenever people are treated as less than human, the results are the same. Suffering and resistance.
Rev. Hagler ended up speaking at a number of locations in Rochester as a result of his poor treatment by the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, and he drew overflowing crowds. His message is that resistance to the Israeli Lobby is growing, and that people are tired of the endless use of anti-Semitism to cover up the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Religion can be a way to achieve justice for all people. Of course, it can also be used to justify the crimes and greed of a specific ethnic group. A Golden Cafe to lead people away from the path of God.
