Sacramento pastor prays to root out ‘sin of racism’ after George Floyd’s death, protests
Sunday finally came.
A long week in America began with a black man slowly dying under the knee of a white officer on a Minneapolis street corner and exploded into angry, fiery protest in cities across the country and here in Sacramento. On Sunday, a son of that fractured Midwest city prayed in Sacramento to heal a nation in chaos, root out police brutality and confront “the sin of racism.”
Pastor Tecoy Porter of Sacramento’s Genesis Church turned to Ezekiel and the story of the Valley of Dry Bones.
In its story of life being breathed back into dry bone, Porter offered his own anguished plea, evoking George Floyd’s death at the hands of police and a nation in the grips of what he called a “double pandemic:” COVID-19 and racism.
“Black America, we are angry. Sick and tired. We’ve been choking on this bone of white supremacy and racism. But we aren’t the only ones choking on this bone, because America as a whole has lost its breath. We’re dry, we’re shocked, we’re outraged, we’re disappointed and out of breath,” he said via livestream from a sanctuary closed because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as masses prepared to again take to Sacramento streets to protest.
“Our nation is facing a dry-bone situation,” he continued. “Can these bones live when racism is running rampant? When folks who are hired to protect and serve us, instead kill us? I’m not talking against the police. We need police. Let’s not generalize. Let’s not stereotype. Not all police are bad, but we need to root out those bad policemen. We stand as witness to a nation in need. A double pandemic: COVID and racism.”
A third-generation pastor, Porter was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and raised in Minneapolis. His Genesis Church on Meadowview Road in Sacramento, 30 years old this year, remains a vital touchstone for a community’s shared pain following the death of another black man. In March 2018, Stephon Clark was pursued and fatally shot by Sacramento police in his grandmother’s backyard not far from Porter’s church. Officers said they mistook the unarmed Clark’s cell phone for a weapon when they opened fire.
Porter said he will return to the Twin Cities later this week for Floyd’s memorial.
“This hits home for me,” Porter said of George Floyd’s death. “We need to confront racism and call it sin. It’s part of the fabric of America. But enough is enough. We have to name it, call it out and ask God for repentance from it,” he said.
He would later make an emotional plea to faith leaders to head the charge.
“We’re heavenly bound but no Earthly good. We’ve been hiding behind pulpits, behind choirs. We’ve been cowards but we have to change that because I don’t want to see my sons die, I don’t want to see your sons die just because of the color of their skin,” Porter said. “We have to confront racism now. We have to do something about it.”
Protests continued in Sacramento on Sunday after a long, tense Saturday devolved into looting and violence in the city’s downtown in the late hours.
At least 22 people were arrested Saturday as Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg mulled imposing a curfew, a volunteer army picked up mop and pail to clean up the damage left behind and homegrown Sacramento activists lambasted outside agitators they say were at the root of the violence and looting late Saturday.
On Sunday, Porter spoke to African-Americans’ sense of hopelessness and exhaustion in the face of a pandemic that has claimed black and brown people in disproportionate numbers in the United States, and Floyd’s death after a week that began with a measure of hope.
“There was a glimmer of hope that we would get back to some amount of normalcy,” after the easing of stay-at-home orders, he said.
But now, days later, “Protests have turned into riots — the destruction of buildings and looting of businesses. What started out as a week of some kind of hope, when the question was, ‘Should we open or should we close?’ has full-blown into protests and riots and looting in America. It’s all due to a virus that’s bigger than COVID. That is racism. And now ... the world is on fire,” Porter said. “What is God trying to speak to us in this hour, through our anger, our fear, our disappointment — and just being sick and tired of being sick and tired?”
On Sunday afternoon, as protesters returned to the streets in Sacramento, the Twin Cities and across the country, Porter sought an answer.
“We need to get back to the fundamentals of who we are as a nation, a country, as faith-based entities: Love thy neighbor. Be our brother and sister’s keeper. We have to get back to these principles. It’s not only a religious thing, it’s a human thing. We start there,” Porter said. “We have to stop ignoring the plight of racism. We can’t look at victims of this and say, ‘Fix it.’ It’s in our laws, our policies. Everybody has to get on board with that.”
This story was originally published May 31, 2020 at 6:03 PM.
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