Who we are?
Lazarus is a Collabrative project of Ms. Kathy Jackson of Hobson City Alabama, Brenda Faye Surles of Anniston Alabama, and Rev. Fred Williams of Brooklyn New York. It is suggested that anyone so moved to join our effort for social justice for Young Men and Women of Color, should read Dr. Martin Luther King's Letter from the Birmingham Jail, written on April 16th, 2013, 50 years ago.
http://abacus.bates.edu/admin/offices/dos/mlk/letter.html
It is our hope to focus our efforts in two distinct pathways:
Lazarus the Beggar - For the ones who remain
Lazarus of Bethany - For those who are bound in grave clothes
The
Key point of "Lazarus the Begger" is the desire of the Rich man to have a
transitory message of redemption given to his five brothers, who are
still living.
The Number Five (5) is important in the context
that it has been Five decades since Dr. Kings Letter from the Birmingham
Jail, and the blight of Racism still haunts the United States on the
Macro, Alabama on the Micro. Unlike the Parables
author, who suggests that sending Lazarus back from the Dead to warn
the Rich Man's brothers of their potential fate is faulty, we believe
that we the living, in this "E Pluribis Unum" union must call our racist
brothers and sisters to reconcilation, by the means of NonViolence
protest and legal action.
Luke 16: 28 He said, "I ask you
therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house; for I
have five brothers, that he may testify to them, so they won't also come
into this place of torment."
The
Key Points of Lazarus of Bethany: is based on the tenets that Racism is
ugly and that Young men and Women of Color are being buried within a
legal system which sees them as worthless. A prison industrial complex
which sees their worth as tools of economic development and wealth.
Lastly Communities which see them as a nuisance, troublesome, with no
redemtive value. They are being locked away in tombs of concert, steel and barbwire, given setences which steal away their youth and hope for building a successful life.
Lazarus seeks to roll away the grave stones which masks their cries,
hides them from the public's sight and conscience, and keeps them silent
thru security and soliltary confinement practices which are barbaric at
best.
Lazarus in the Bible story was bound with grave
clothes, four days in the grave, which in Judical law represents a time
when it is impossible to resurrect a body, because the soul has departed
and return to the Father. Lazarus believes that however long a person
has been incarcerated, and no matter what grave clothes were used to
bind them, that releasing them to a life of hope and reconciliation. And
that unbinding them from the social and pyshological grave clothes can
help them regain their lives, and help rebuld their communities and
families.
