By David Gordon, associate editor
The United States is potentially the greatest nation on earth, but reaching that potential will require leadership from people of faith rather than from politicians, Rev. Willie Brisco told an audience of more than 150 people on Sunday.
Brisco was the keynote speaker at JONAH’s ninth annual celebration and fund-raising event, held at the Eau Claire Children’s Theater. JONAH is a Chippewa Valley organization based in faith communities and focused on social justice issues.
Brisco is president emeritus of MICAH (Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope), which is JONAH’s counterpart in the southeastern part of the state. Both groups are under the umbrella of WISDOM, a statewide organization that helps to provide focus and education on broad social justice issues. Brisco is the current WISDOM president.
“We have been politicked into hate, into choosing sides,” Brisco said.”
The result is that people often use skin color, social status or religion to separate themselves from others — “from ‘those people,'” he said.
“We are finally beginning to talk about some of the things stuck in the shadows” and “about what’s uncomfortable,” he said. “We’ve got to start having these conversations in church, we’ve got to have them in schools” and in the workplace.
“It’s not going to be done by the politicians. It’s going to be done by the JONAHs, the MICAHs, the WISDOMs,” he said.
“Shouldn’t America be embarrassed by the current political debate?,” he asked.
Brisco repeated several times that although people have different skin colors, they are members of “one race — the human race.
“We’re all creatures of the same Maker,” he said.
He urged his audience to bring people into society rather than leaving them in the shadows or in prison. Helping the country to reach its potential will require “making ourselves available,” rather than closing the borders or locking prison doors, he said.
“We have to start talking to each other as human beings,” he said. “We can’t allow fear . . . to drive us into thinking we’re better than someone else” and added that “there are no 100% pure, undefiled people. There are lawbreakers among all of us.”
The only way to overcome prejudice and ignorance is with love, Brisco said. “You are not going to be able to bomb somebody into loving you.”
The key, he said, is “treating your neighbor as yourself, bringing them to the table, bringing them out of the shadows” and added that “we just have to do better. It’s no more complicated than that.”
Brisco was among several speakers who paid tribute to John Stedman, JONAH’s community organizer who died sudenly earlier this year. Stedman “will be greatly missed but his spirit will live on,” Brisco said.
During the program, Brandon Buchanan was introduced as Stedman’s successor.