Saint Mark
UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
781 Peachtree Street, NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30308-1205
404.873.2636
facsimile: 404.873.2639WWW.stmarkumc .org
July 1,2015
To James Avery,
Acting on behalf of the congregation as represented by Administrative Council of Saint Mark United Methodist Church, we, the Board of Trustees, hereby notify James Avery that his presence on the property of Saint Mark United Methodist Church, 781 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta Georgia 30308; bounded by Peachtree Street, Fifth Street, and Juniper Street, shall constitute a criminal trespass from the time of the delivery of this notice forward.
E.C. LaRocca-Pitts
Senior Pastor, representing the Board of Trustees
Loving
AcceptingServing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/09/18/why-pope-franciss-silence-on-black-america-may-soon-end/: It was June, Vatican City. Blackmon, a St. Louis County reverend who was one of the most visible religious organizers during the Ferguson protests following the death of Michael Brown, had just arrived in Rome to discuss the racial tension roiling the United States. The pope’s advisers, in anticipation of his first trip to the United States this month, had wanted to meet with grass-roots advocates who could explain the country’s fraught relationship with race. So Blackmon went to the Vatican expecting to talk basics — slavery, Jim Crow, Ferguson.
But then, according to two people who were present in the meeting, the Missouri reverend walked into a room painted pink to meet Monsignor Peter Brian Wells, the assessor for general affairs of the secretariat of state. Wells wanted to know about the pool party where an onlooker had recorded a white cop wrestling to the ground a black 14-year-old girl in a bikini in the Dallas suburbs.
“I was very shocked,” Blackmon said. “It did catch me off guard. And when we were there, [the pool party] had just happened. This wasn’t a case where anyone lost their life, and to ask about it was a way of saying, ‘We are paying attention. We do know what’s going on. And we’re looking deeper than the surface.’ ”
That discussion, which Blackmon said was intended to prepare Pope Francis for his trip to the United States, marks some of the clearest evidence yet that the pontiff may address topics of racial justice during his trip here next week. There’s already wide belief that Francis will advocate for climate change, inequality and broader protections for immigrants, but speculation is mounting that Pope Francis could also wade into the contentious issue of race in America.
If so, it would end Francis’s silence on black America.
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