Abraham Lincoln, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali.

And President Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed the nation on June 27, 1967 with this message:

“…The only genuine, long-range solution for what has happened lies in an attack – mounted at every level – upon the conditions that breed despair and violence. All of us know what those conditions are: ignorance, discrimination, slums, poverty, disease, not enough jobs.

We should attack those conditions – not because we are frightened by conflict, but because we are fired by conscience. We should attack them because there is simply no other way to achieve a decent and orderly society in America…”

The Student YWCA offered an antiwar-racism training in 1971. The preface of the training handbook bears repeating.

The handbook is written on the following assumptions.

1. Racism is a White problem throughout the U.S. and the world. Racism is most specifically manifested in institutional and cultural forms.

2. Racism is a result of exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.

3. Real distribution of power for all races is built on self-determination, and therefore, different strategies for change will be determined by different racial groups.

4. Whites are needed in the struggle against racism, but are not the leaders of that struggle. Those who have experienced the injustices of racism have greater clarity about those injustices than those who are beneficiaries of those injustices.

5. Changing attitudes and individuals is not sufficient for the kind of transformation needed in all institutions.

In 1972, I learned the phrase, “White army of occupation” to describe the role the Detroit Police Department (DPD) played. The DPD was well over 90 percent White in a city that was majority African American, with many of the officers having bad racial attitudes.

This White army occupied one of the largest African-American communities in the country and ruled it by terror.

The conservative American view of governmental benefits is tainted. It was as follows:

1. Government benefits should be handed out based on need, and if you are able-bodied, you don’t have a need.

2. Children, seniors, the disabled should receive government aid, but not enough to live a comfortable life. To get “too much” would disincentivize them from working.

3. If children receive benefits, that means that their parents might receive benefits too. If the parent was a father who was able-bodied, he should be excluded, but if a mother was able-bodied, she should stay home to take care of the children and should therefore also receive benefits.

4. Welfare is not a right but a privilege to be bestowed by the benevolent, White-controlled government.

5. The recipient of welfare are “burdens” on the state. (Remember the “white man’s burden” philosophy of colonizing countries populated by people of color? Just extrapolate that false belief onto this one, and you’ll see the connection readily.)

6. In the religious vein, people are poor because God doesn’t love them, so welfare is a sign of a sinner. (This especially was used for women with children out of wedlock. Since they had “sinned,” perhaps they should be denied the privilege of welfare benefits.)

The religious idea is to make our culture more like what we believe the kingdom of God should look like.

It didn’t, and doesn’t, matter what your faith is in an organizing project. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic, or other, we all have a basic belief in the betterment of humanity based on the ideals taught by our religions. And those ideals are remarkably similar when you apply them to daily living.

Gary Benjamin has been highly involved with these two advocacy organizations:

• MOSES [Metropolitan Organizing Strategies Enabling Strength] in Detroit, MI

• GCC [Greater Cleveland Congregations] in Cleveland, OH

These groups work on social justice issues and involve hundreds of people from dozens of faith-based and other organizations. 

They strive to empower low and middle income communities so that the members of that community can solve their own problems.

Because structural or institutional racism is not recognized by most courts as a basis for bringing a lawsuit under anti discrimination law, the courts have strayed from the path of ending racial discrimination in America.

Case law and attitudes of the bench have simply changed, making courts much less valuable as an agent of social change regrettably.

A few friends of mine and I formed a singing group we called Finland Station. We sang at rallies and in union halls, and gave our own concerts once a year.

We had a few memorable shows. One was with folk musician Pete Seeger at the Power Center in Ann Arbor, MI.

During a newspaper strike in Detroit, we performed at a rally with author and filmmaker Michael Moore.

Another time, we shared the stage with actor Ed Asner, who gave an impassioned speech calling for change.

We sang with Detroit musician Barbara Dane, who had been a solo act on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

But the BIGGEST accomplishment to me, was not one where we performed as a small group of musicians. But when Nelson Mandela spoke in Detroit at Tiger Stadium in 1990, shortly after he was released from imprisonment, we sang in a 2,000-voice choir. At the rally, he thanked the people of the Midwestern United States.

“Despite your own problems, you remembered us!” He called for human rights for all people and had the crowd cheering.

Local governments in Michigan were struggling to provide health insurance to their employees from 2007-09 because of the cost.

And our nonprofit advocates and political supporters knew there was a strong desire for health-care reform. I felt we had done a lot of good work, starting from an anti-racism perspective but showing that the White community, if approached correctly, would support an issue that would have a major impact on the African-American community.

We had learned, at this period, that primary care for the people of Detroit was inadequate. There weren’t enough clinics or doctors. At that time, there was, for example, only one obstetrician inside the city limits.

Several coalitions, non-profits, foundations, government and healthcare leaders pushed for reform and more clinics were added to Detroit.

The creation of the Detroit Wayne County Health Authority illustrates a key strategy in engaging in anti-racism work – setting up institutions that can carry on the work long after the originators of the organization are gone.

A lawsuit that I worked on against the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) revealed that it actively fought agains rail mass transit and never actively worked to unify bus lines that could have benefited people of color getting to and from jobs, medical appointments, etc. It supported our theory that it was intentionally designed to exclude African-American voices and benefit the White power structure.

At the time of the lawsuit, Detroit had 3 miles of train track, known as the People Mover. It moved people around downtown Detroit in a circular track that was raised above the streets much like the El is in Chicago. Other comparable cities had 117 miles of track (Atlanta) to a high 773 miles in Boston.

To those who said that disparity is not because of race but because the auto industry didn’t want rail to be built, we had a response. All 3 of the big three auto companies – GM, Ford, and Chrysler – signed a letter endorsing a regional mass transit system in 2001.

The two smaller health systems – MetroHealth and St. Vincent’s Charity Hospital (now closed) gave a larger percentage of their total income away as charity care than either of the two larger systems: the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) and University Hospitals and Health System (UH).

Richer neighborhoods have an easier time getting loans for larger amounts of money.

It’s not like banks don’t make money lending to low or middle income communities. They do make a profit, just not as much profit as they can make in richer communities making larger loans.

There’s irony here. Those that may need the loan most are less likely to receive one.

From generation to generation, this is how White supremacy continues. That is one way the White community maintains control of the wealth in America even after we have officially declared racism unlawful.

Ending racial discrimination helps all of us, not just people of color

In an article on the Network Advocates for Justice, inspired by Catholic Sisters website, a topic paragraph states, “While immigration for “white” Europeans has, for the most part, led to a smooth welcome into dominant society, immigrants who are people of color face a more difficult path to acceptance, much less belonging, in our nation. It is common to refer to the U.S. as a nation of immigrants, but the reality is that immigrants in our nation have been scapegoated, exploited for cheap labor, and treated as second-class citizens for hundreds of years.”

White immigrants from earlier years found open doors here, and came in droves. Now the tables have turned, and the immigrants are people of color. The doors are not wide open anymore.

Gary Benjamin and his wife Melody Joy Hart became sponsors and housed Haitian immigrant Ansly Damus for two years in order to help him obtain legal immigration status in the U.S. It was an uphill battle but, with community and faith-based support, they were successful.

Eventually, Damus’ wife and children moved to Cleveland Heights, OH, and lived together there for over a year.

But by mid-2025, their legal status ended under the current U.S. administration. They have since emigrated legally, once more, to Canada.

Doesn’t shutting our doors to immigrants mean we no longer believe we are the the best nation in the world? Where will “the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to be free” go? Is shutting the doors now, when people of color need us most, an act of White supremacy? Are we reinforcing the international racial order by our actions in immigration law?