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 [ VOICES ](https://mail.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=375)

#  Make The Bishop’s Courage Contagious

January 23 2025

Written by Hans Johnson.

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PREACHING TO TRUMP - Courage, essential and inspiring. The voice of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde at the National Cathedral this Tuesday, January 21, for “compassion and welcome” was so clear and true, it could knock you to your knees.

NOT the bended knees of cowards and fawning careerists — the many people and professionals who should know better but now choose to say nothing, or instead nod in the face of monstrous cruelty and, yes, Nazi salutes by the foremost billionaire enabler of the criminal cult leader. What a disgrace to their stakeholders and shareholders.

It’s worth ALL Americans’ taking a moment to appreciate these courageous remarks, looking the President and Vice President in the eye while concluding her homily, by Bishop Budde. Here is her complete homily:

[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwwaEuDeqM8)

Hers is the spine and expression of conscience that holds up a mirror to that complicity and sadism, reveals the stink of its putrid, poisonous breath. Shows the arrogance of batted eyebrows, not wanting the names of those victimized even to be uttered within earshot. The lawlessness and delusion and refusing to admit error, liability, or defeat. The unleashing of vigilante violence.

Hers is a voice rich with struggle and personal stories, like facts that cannot be bullied or coerced or intimidated, deported, or retaliated against.

Here in Los Angeles, we are living through not only horrific fires and an aftermath of toxic smoke, but also unconscionable grifting and fraud that are targeting survivors. We are also enduring disinformation intended to confuse and divide our neighborhoods and disparage authorized, expert helpers in a time of extraordinary need.

To be a witness — simultaneously — as another kind of serial arsonist intentionally destroys protections for the vulnerable constructed, sustained, and improved on over generations and, as Gloria Steinem likes to say, bridges of empathy built with toil, love, and sacrifice over decades is to behold another kind of unfolding catastrophe that must be called what it is: a deliberate atrocity.

That is NOT a reshaping or remaking of America. That is an attack on America, using many of our own lives, our family members, and our neighbors in the most precarious circumstances as pawns and targets of the ongoing onslaught.

This is why the courage of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is so extra-powerful, so extra-necessary, and contagious in the best way.

*(Hans Johnson is a longtime leader for LGBTQ+ human rights, environmental justice, and public education. His columns appear in national news outlets including USA Today and in top daily news outlets of more than 20 states. A resident of Eagle Rock, he is also president of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), the largest grassroots Democratic club in California, with more than 1,100 members.)*

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