“That’s what we would say on the reservation” my mother said, “all my relations.” She’s reading The Water Protectors to one daughter as the other runs back and forth from the kitchen giving her bandaged arm a kiss. I’ve just rolled up her sweater to see the wound from a skin cancer surgery this week she hasn’t told me about. “They glued it shut” she said, but it’s opened and my spouse finds a large bandaid to dress it. “It may not stick. I’ve had it since 2012” Emily said. "It's a Jubilee year," Emily tells me, referring to the act of biblical justice (Isaiah 61); every fifty years all the captives were released--I'm less intrigued about the custom in ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah, than I am in the interpretation of God's time. Convinced that the lessons of Biblical truth about the time of Justice must inform our advocacy today. If God made us to know the meaning of the times, to anticipate the coming of God’s Kingdom of Justice from the same sense by which...

Ahead of the 20th anniversary of Guantánamo I want to take on three intertwining topics: The Ideal Victim, the Bystander, and Force Feeding.  The Ideal Victim Out of criminology--the concept of the 'ideal victim' is someone for whom people feel comfortable advocating. "So for instance people feel comfortable advocating against the Muslim Ban" Dr. Maha Hilal explains, "but not when it comes to the offshore Muslim prison Guantanamo." In exploring the use of "the ideal victim" to substantiate institutionalized Islamophobia, Dr. Hilal  pivots a counter-narrative about Guantanamo Bay.  What "the ideal victim" describes has important implications for advocates. Advocates, witnesses and active bystanders take actions whether or not they act up to intervene in situations. Thus,In part I believe because people of faith do not see Guantánamo--a circular logic we have to investigate. That blindness is a position reinforced by organized distraction b...