WHATEVER YOU DID NOT DO FOR ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE, YOU DID NOT DO FOR ME

Students from the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School AP Spanish class help deliver food to St Andrews Episcopal Church. Two planes of migrants from Venezuela arrived suddenly Wednesday night on Martha's Vineyard. The students served as translators for the migrants. (Photo by Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe)

The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

“For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.”

“I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”

They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?”

He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

Matthew 25:40-45

New International Version

I’m not much on religion, particularly not Christianity ever since I kicked the Sunday School teacher in the shins and told her she was a liar when I was 5. But back in 1967 I met the truest Christian I’ve ever known, Ammon Hennacy - Christian anarchist, imprisoned World War I draft resister, co-founder of The Catholic Worker - when I stopped by Joe Hill House in South Salt Lake City, the project he spent most of his life working on, while on my way to California as my future permanent residence. Ammon was one of the last Original American Radicals of the 20th Century left alive; Coxey’s Army had been camped on his parents farm the day he was born in 1893. He was friends with Eugene V. Debs and became a close comrade to Dorothy Day after he became a Christian while in solitary confinement in the Atlanta Federal Prison in 1918 as a guest of that great “progressive” Woodrow Wilson, and I wanted to meet him. I spent the weekend there, and when you did that, you helped with the work of Joe Hill House - you practiced Matthew 25:40-45.

It actually felt pretty good to do that. To me, ever since, those verses define what it is to be a Christian. Using that standard, I know for a fact there are no actual Christians among any group of Republican office holders today, anywhere in the United States of America. Nor in most Republican churches. Nor among the typical White Southern Republican.

Most particularly, not today. This day. Thursday. September 15, 2022.

The day Ron DeSantis decided to show how “Christian” he is to his “Christian” supporters.

DeSantis sent a team to Texas who approached a few dozen Venezuelan immigrants after they emerged from a shelter in San Antonio, Texas where they had been taken after being apprehended trying to cross the border. According to one of the migrants, Luis, age 27, they were “promised a flight to Massachusetts, along with shelter, support for 90 days, help with work permits and English lessons.” The woman who organized the trip called herself “Perla” but did not provide any identification or explanation of who she was working for other than having the group sign liability waivers.

“Perla” worked with Ultimate Jet Charters, based in North Canton, Ohio. There were two flights and they made stops in Crestview, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina. Both started in Texas. The State of Florida picked up the tab, using money from the $12 million dollar fund in a law DeSantis got his tame legislature to pass to send migrants to high profile liberal parts of the country as a sort of performative “own the libs” cruelty. .

The 50 undocumented immigrants were ultimately flown to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. According to DeSantis, who proudly announced his crime against humanity, he did it because neither Texas nor Florida are “sanctuary states,” so he gathered these people and sent them to the “sanctuary state” of Massachusetts, to piss off all the rich white liberals who would now have to deal with the actual physical result of their support for “open borders.”

What the stupid fucking Florida Man gatorbait white trash piece of shit masquerading as a human being was too fucking ignorant to know is, Martha’s Vineyard is not some rich white enclave. It’s been a major resort destination for African-Americans for a century, and the 16,000 or so permanent residents on the island are a diverse community.

And they, unlike the scumbag from Florida, actually are Christians. When the immigrants were offloaded at the airport without any advance notice to local government that they were coming, the community came forward with so much support for them that the police had to put out a public statement asking people to stop coming to drop things off because they were overwhelming the groups who had stepped up to help the immigrants.

The Washington Post reports that at a GOP donor retreat last weekend DeSantis bragged that he had a pot of money for shipping migrants to liberal parts of the country and that he might go to Texas to find immigrants to send. “I do have this money. I want to be helpful. Maybe we will go to Texas and help. Maybe we’ll send to Chicago, Hollywood, Martha’s Vineyard. Who knows?”

Greg Abbott has said the State of Texas was not involved in the action.

As it turns out, DeSantis, who isn’t smart enough to have ever had an original idea in his life, didn’t come up with this on his own. He got the idea from his Southern white supremacist trash forebears.

In 1962, “Reverse Freedom Rides” were set up by southern segregationists to send African Americans from Southern cities to mostly Northern, and some western, cities by bus. They were given free one-way bus tickets, and were promised guaranteed high paying jobs and free housing to lure them into cooperating. There was no guaranteed free housing or jobs waiting for them.

Above: A 'reverse freedom ride' brought Lela Mae Williams, 36, of Arkansas, and seven of her nine children to Hyannis, Mass., on May 23, 1962.

The reverse rides were organized by George Singelmann, member of the Greater New Orleans White Citizens' Council, in retaliation against Northern liberals for supporting the Freedom Rides. He viewed the reverse rides as a way of proving white northerners weren't sincere in their desire for racial equality. In a TV interview he stated, "They have been crying the sing song on behalf of the Negroes throughout the nation. And of course now when it comes time for them to put up or shut up, they have shut up." Singelmann also viewed the Rides as a means of removing African Americans from the states welfare roll as he believed they were draining state resources.

In May 1962, the White Citizens' Council of America issued a resolution supporting Singelmann in response to continued northern press coverage criticizing race relations in the south. he resolution read, "In order to effect an equitable and amicable solution to said racial chaos, friction and sectional division, the Citizens' Council of America hereby urge the various local and state organizations in the South to take necessary and judicious action to expedite volunteer migration of any dissatisfied Negroes from the South."

This led to coordinated multi-state effort by White Citizen’s Councils in Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama. When efforts began in Louisiana, the spokesman announced, "We want to see if northern politicians really love the negro or whether they love his vote." Louisiana Senator Allen J. Ellender said, "I want Negros from the South to learn they are better taken care of in the South."

Of course, the Mississippi House of Representatives announced support for the resolution and coordinated removal in a resolution of their own emphasizing the need to, "redistribute the dissatisfied Negro population to other areas where the political leadership constantly clamors for equal rights for all persons without regard to the constitution, judicial precedent and rights of the states."

Singelmann and the White Citizens Councils planned to send thousands of African American families North. They tried to secure $100,000 from the Louisiana legislature to fund the plan, but that failed and they had to rely on donors. The first reverse freedom riders arrived in New York on April 20, 1962. By the spring of 1963, the scheme had been exposed and the White Citizens' Council ran out of funds to continue. By the end of their operation, they managed to lure approximately 200-300 African Americans into participating. The most common destinations were New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

One bus was sent to Hyannisport, Massachusetts, where President Kennedy maintained his family vacation home. Kennedy’s response aimed to avoid losing southern supporters. He said the Reverse Freedom Rides were "deplorable" while clarifying that, "there is no violation of law." He also called it, "A rather cheap exercise."

Other northerners were more direct. Democratic Illinois Governor Otto Kerner Jr. compared the plan to the Nazi Deportation of Jewish people. Republican Senator Kenneth Keating of New York denounced the actions as "cruel and callous". The New York Times called out the rides as, "A cheap trafficking in human misery on the part of Southern racists."

Surprisingly, the segregationist newspaper Birmingham Post-Herald admitted the rides, "may be good for a few laughs down here, but it will neither help our cause nor make us friends where we need them most."

As Adam Serwer pointed out in 2018, “President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear... It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.”

Southernism will never change. Today it is called Trumpism. Tomorrow it will be called something else. Where once it was a regional phenomenon, it’s now become national after the

Republicans welcomed the Southernist political parasite to join them so they could keep power they could never attain honestly.

Whatever else Southernists are, they are the opposite of Christians.

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