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Road trip to Chicago: Local activist says Obama's church smeared by Rev. Wright's critics

Judith Davidoff  —  5/07/2008 5:14 am

Much hay has been made over the purported anti-American and anti-Israeli statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's church.

But Judith Strasser thinks the presidential candidate is the victim of a smear-by-association campaign, as is Wright's former congregation at Trinity United Church of Christ in south Chicago. That's why Strasser is heading down to Chicago this Sunday along with other members of Shaarei Shamayim, Madison's Jewish Reconstructionist congregation, to attend 11 a.m. services at Trinity.

"I conceived of the trip to support a congregation that has been caught in the limelight by events beyond its control," says Strasser, who retired a few years ago as a senior producer and interviewer for the syndicated Wisconsin Public Radio show "To the Best of Our Knowledge." "Members of Trinity UCC are being smeared in the same manner as Obama -- but they have even less control of the situation than he does."

Wright has been at the center of controversy for months, with Obama distancing himself more and more along the way. Critics have dredged up a sermon Wright gave shortly after 9/11, in which he implied that the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon were tied to U.S. support of "state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans." He concluded by saying "America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Most recently Wright weighed in on AIDS, saying: "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."

A magazine published by Wright's church, called Trumpet Newsmagazine, has also generated heat for awarding the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award last year to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a man the publication said "truly epitomized greatness."

When asked about the magazine's praise for Farrakhan, whose well-known anti-Semitic comments have drawn widespread condemnation, Strasser says she is not in a position to comment on Farrakhan or Wright. But, she adds: "As a Jew, I obviously don't support anti-Semitism."

She says her trip to Chicago is meant to "show interfaith and interracial solidarity with the congregation," not support for Wright, Farakkhan or Obama.

Strasser says she is distressed by what she sees as the "McCarthyite tactics" of those who try to unfairly associate Obama and members of Wright's church with unpopular statements made by Wright and Farrakhan.

"How many members of any congregation agree 100 percent with everything their minister, priest or rabbi says? Do we, for example, assume that all practicing Catholics are anti-abortion, anti-birth control and anti-death penalty, because that's the Pope's position? Do we assume that all Jews are ardent supporters of everything Israel does, because some rabbis are unapologetic Zionists? Why should we assume that the members of Trinity are anti-Semitic, anti-Israel or, for that matter, unpatriotic, because of something Rev. Wright may or may not believe?"

This will be Strasser's second trip to Trinity. Last month, she attended Sunday services at the urging of her son, an ardent Obama supporter.

"Even as we were walking five blocks from where we'd parked to the church it was clear everybody was going that direction and we were really greeted very warmly," she recalls. "And when we got to services we were embraced."

But the upcoming group trip has not been an easy sell. As Strasser reports on her blog (www.inlieuofspeech.blogspot.com), only 16 of 29 seats on the bus had been filled as of Monday.

Despite some physical setbacks of her own, however, Strasser remains determined to make the trip. Diagnosed in 2005 with stomach cancer, it has spread to her lungs and she now has considerable trouble breathing and talking. Blogging on Monday, she wrote that her doctor discontinued one of her three chemotherapy drugs because of increasing numbness in her feet and hands.

Strasser has personal reasons for pushing on. A published poet and author, she is now working on a book about a college friend who, along with his wife and two children, was murdered in 1985. She says the family was murdered by "a right-wing nut" who assumed her friend was Jewish (his last name was Goldmark) and a communist.

He was neither.

"It may seem a stretch to think that smearing members of Trinity as anti-Semitic or unpatriotic will result in murderous acts, but I'm quite sure no one expected the Goldmark case to lead to four murders either," she says. "Crazy people exist, and guilt by association feeds their paranoia. Add racism into the mix, and you have a potentially very dangerous situation."

Judith Davidoff  —  5/07/2008 5:14 am