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Jamaica Plain church stamping Tubman's visage over Jackson on all the $20 bills it gets
By adamg on Wed, 06/05/2019 - 11:53am
Hope Central Church on Seaverns Avenue in Jamaica Plain isn't waiting for the current administration to be voted out: The Religion News Service reports the church has gotten an ink stamp of Tubman's profile and is using it on $20 bills:
"I'm taking such pleasure in this. Mr. Trail of Tears, gone!" laughed Ann Potter, who counts offerings for HCC, as she covered the former president’s face on bill after bill.
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Comments
I am fortunate enough
to count Laura Ruth Jarrett, the pastor of Hope Central, among my neighbors and friends. I'm not much the religious type, but she is a delight and everything a pastor (or person) could ever aspire to be. Glad to see her doing this, glad to see the congregation behind her, and glad to see the church standing against white supremacy.
Taking a stand is nice but can we keep it legal?
"Defacement of Currency
Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both."
https://www.moneyfactory.gov/resources/lawsandregulations.html
I mean should not a church take the high road? Or another question: Why do they feel that they are above the law in this regard?
While I too would like to see Jackson replaced, giving potential fodder for those "white supremacists" to use against one, is not the way to win your case.
Seriously?
What if Harriet Tubman had taken the “high road” instead of the Underground one?
Oh, please.
Yes, seriously.
Let's not get off topic. I made a point about the law only and the breaking of the law (and laws are there for a reason).
Look at MLK. He did not break laws to make his point. Peaceful protests. Non-violence and civil disobedience.
FYI
Civil Disobedience is, in fact breaking the law. Google “MLK lawbreaker” for countless examples.
Nooo
Martin Luther King Jr didn't break laws to make his point?? WHAT? Segregation WAS the law! Do you not know how many times he was thrown in jail for "breaking laws"?
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/mlk-topic/martin-luther-king-jr-arrests
Come on...
the "crime" would be in making the bill unusable
per the definition you yourself added, the bill would have to be unusable to be defacing. People put notes on bills all the time, including morons who proudly announce that "their" president lives here (the Lincoln Memorial on the $5). No one can even pretend that the delay in the Tubman $20 is anything but racism - the security work involved lasts exactly as long as Trump's assumed presidency??! What are the odds. Hiding that behind so called defacing the currency claims is ridiculous.
Is this a joke, what do you
Is this a joke, what do you think people were disobeying?
Do you know anything about MLK?
You really believe MLK did not break the laws!? Are you serious!? He constantly broke the law and he was often jailed for it. Civil disobedience, like helping enslaved people escape, or protecting free blacks from capture, are breaking the law. And his protests were not always peaceful, albeit the violence more often from the other side. This sanitized view of MLK is horribly inaccurate and it has caused you to view current liberation movements incorrectly.
The second point is that it may not be against the law - read it. It clearly states that the action must be "with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued." That is clearly not the intent, so is it still illegal?
oh honey
white people were all about arresting MLK at the time for all the breaking of (unjust) laws he was doing. see also "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"
then, because he won, and because the tide of opinion changed, white people went in and whitewashed (lol!) the whole history, scrubbing him clean and handwaving all the nasty unpure technicalities and facts away.
Wow.
Wow.
MLK "did not break laws"? Is this for real?
King was arrested 29 times!
You do know that sit-ins at lunch counters and Rosa Parks sitting in the front bus seat was literally breaking the law, right?
You cite civil disobedience, whyaduck; here is the dictionary.com definition of civil disobedience: "the refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form of political protest." This is actually the first thing that appears in a Google search when you type "define civil disobedience".
Not only did King break the law, he publicly advocated for breaking laws. Let's look at what King himself wrote in the 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail":
It is astoundingly ignorant to make a comment and upvote a comment that states that MLK did not break laws when a.) breaking laws is what the civil rights movement was known for b.) you argue that civil disobedience is superior to law-breaking protests when the definition of civil disobedience is to break laws and c.) King himself is on record many times over encouraging the breaking of laws - King was prolific in writing and in speech; this is not super secret information that is hard to look up.
I strongly encourage everyone here to read more of Dr King's speeches and books and to maybe read some critical analysis of what he actually said and did so that misinformation like the comment above does not propagate.
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Those were tough days
"What if Harriet Tubman had taken the “high road” instead of the Underground one?"
She would have been killed. She had to be as tough as the slavers and slave hunters that were looking for their 'stolen property'.
She risked her life on an almost continuous basis.
This image shows her as she was at the time, a young woman not to be trifled with, a woman willing to fight for a just cause, freedom for her people. It captures her spirit.
Best. Bill. EVAH.
It is hard to make a revolver look cool.
Well done.
I think we should have more badasses with guns on currency.
Don't be so sure of yourself
This isn't exactly new and it's not clear that it's illegal.
Changing the principal image on currency
sounds like it meets the definition of defacement to me.
Whether or not it's
Whether or not it's defacement, you put a concern of mine into words. I wouldn't feel comfortable accepting this bill in the fear that someone else may not accept it from me. The "principal image" being masked makes it look like funny money. This is quite different than "where's George?" on singles.
When the Treasury comes out with the real bills, great. Until such time, I'll refuse these and ask for a plain $20.
Counterfeit Test Marker
So what about those counterfeit test markers which stores use frequently? They efficiently draws a permanent black strip across the bill.
Apples and oranges
One is an insignificant mark done to insure integrity of the currency. The other is deliberate defacement of one of the key identifying elements of the bill.
Green and Red Apples
Either way you're defacing the bill. Beyond that it's a matter of taste.
The real security features (micro printing, microchip, watermark) remain visible either way.
If intent is a relevant
If intent is a relevant consideration in this (and the law states that it is), neither is defacement or illegal.
This isn't exactly new and it
As unbiased a source as POTUS 45 holding up a report summary and saying "100% exonerated!", to be sure....
They do link to some of the specific passages of law, though, which does talk about defacing, disfiguring and rendering (currency) unfit to be reissued. A thick stamp image like that blocks part of the detailed design image (as printed by the US Treasury)? A thick stamped image that isn't engraved like everything else on the note? I think that a reasonable person could entertain reasonable doubts that such a note was authentic and safe to accept and/or spend.
This group seems to hang their argument on the rationalization that they don't intend the currency to be unfit for circulation, they want it circulated. They also push the notion that because nobody has faced legal penalties for defacement yet that it's illegal to refuse it as legal tender. If it's as dodgy as the photo suggests, a person/business has some right to decline.
If someone thinks the stamping is a good idea, here's an idea for a first-level test: go to the bank, make a deposit through the no-envelope bill-scanning ATM, see if it rejects the bill, see if the deposit is verified.
Your concern
is duly noted.
It is legal
You can see from the text of the law that you posted that this is not "defacement", any more than using a counterfeit-detection marker would be. Stamping an image that is not profane and doesn't advertise a business over the face on the bill clearly does not fall under "mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together", and is clearly not being done "with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued". It's obviously the opposite: these bills are intended to remain in circulation. The denomination of the bill is also not obscured.
More info: https://www.stampstampede.org/faq/yes-its-legal/
Doesn't seem to FIT THE BILL, hey-oh
No damage to the structure of the bill
No gluing bills together
Okay, sure, that's pretty general...
Right...
Ah. Seems like an artistic modification of the portrait on the bill may not actually constitute a violation, based on this wording. Is there precedent for the "Where's George" project or other stuff like that?
"...unites or cements together..."
Taping a torn bill is illegal? Who knew.
But muh currency!!!
Where is the intent to render the bill unfit to be reissued? I don't think intent can be proved here.
Reading is fundamental
Right there in the legislation you cite:
'with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued"
Evangelical chuches preach murder
Evangelical churches teach bigotry and pray for genocide by God wiping out homosexuals. Seems to me that praying for deaths of millions is much worse than stamping an image on paper money.
Sometimes no.
Before the Supreme Court decision that effectively nullified sodomy laws I was a criminal everytime I committed a sodomy crime. By your reasoning I should have remained celibate and refused the joy and health of a loving relationship by refusing to have sex with the gender that nature made me to be sexually attracted to.
So sometimes it is necessary to ignore laws that that are designed to or have the effect of maintaining immoral rules.
You need to be reminded of
You need to be reminded of MLK's word on this matter:
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens’ Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season ..."
legal is not
the same always as moral. the church IS taking the high road.
And what is moral here?
It is of their opinion (the church) that Jackson should be replaced but many others in this country may feel differently. It is better to build a consensus than go rogue, no?
"build consensus"?
There WAS a process over replacing Jackson on the bill, you know. That ship has sailed.
There was a consensus. There
There was a consensus. There was a multi year process that resulted in the decision to put Tubman on the bill. Many other people and particularly women were considered. Tubman was chosen. The ones who have "gone rogue" is the Trump administration and they have done so based on the same racism they have always built upon.
Nice use of the passive tense
Nice use of the passive tense to omit the fact that the decision to change the twenty was pushed through by a Democratic president, and the delay is being done by a Republican president.
Pure politics from *both sides*.
"Pushed through"
It doesnt need to be pushed through.
So sorry but Congress doesnt get a vote on it, all it takes is the Treasury Sec and a signature from the President.
An outside group started a group (with support from female politicians) to get 'Women On 20'
There was a poll and Tubman won.
And because our infantile President still can't handle that the black guy before him is wildly more intelligent and liked he must, yet again, try to reverse everything Obama ever did.
Grammar
It’s passive voice, not passive tense.
You don't seem to know much
You don't seem to know much about this issue. All of the things you have asserted, about MLK, about the legality of the "mutilation" of the bill, about the process of selecting Tubman are incorrect and easily verified. It is troubling that you feel comfortable posting your thoughts as fact instead of asking the question. Google before you post.
A consensus?
It was announced in 2016.
Now it's delayed.
Not a few weeks, or even months. But years.
As in, not until Trump leaves office.
It has nothing to do with security or design problems but to satiate a racist toddler.
Delayed until....
... after the end of Trumps 3rd term? :-(
History
What a limited understanding of Andrew Jackson
Expand our understanding, then
What are we missing?
here you go
https://www.google.com/
Let me spell it out for you
Limited understanding of Jackson? What do you THINK your antagonist understands about Jackson, and what are they missing?
Put up or shut up, don't use Google to wipe your lazy ass.
Genocide
He want to kill all people native to this continent.
Or do you support genocide?
if
the only higher authority you answer to is established law then perhaps. it doesn't matter if many people feel "otherwise" --the church is still taking the high road. not complicated buddy.
church money
last time i heard about people counting money in church a dude named jesus christ was flipping over tables.
Ever been to a Catholic mass?
They got those nice bread baskets with looooong sticks to make sure EVERYBODY pays up.
Ya know, for heaven or whatever.
Go back and read your bible, kid
They were money *lenders* and it was a temple. You need to listen more closely next time.
been happening in Canada for years
called spocking - bills still in print. Not illegal per the govt, they just ask them to please stop. Not fighting racism, he just looks like Spock man
https://www.businessinsider.com/bank-of-canada-stop-drawing-leonard-nimo...
Trump should accelerate issuance of new Tubman $20 bill
Notwithstanding that President Obama had a Democrat majority in the House and Senate in 2009 and 2010 that produced no Tubman $20 bill, President Trump should now speed the process for this very worthy woman who shared the same ideals.
After all, Ms. Tubman fought against the very foundations of the Democrat party, slavery and secession, while proudly exercising her second amendment right to carry firearms and devoutly practicing her Christian faith. Trump should unveil the bill next year or early in his second term.
Ahh, the ever-present fishy stench
There he is, right on time with his dewy-eyed innocence about the Southern Strategy that has been pointed out to him thousands of times and his masterful command of second-grade level shade with his talk about the "Democrat party". Even Dubya could do better than you, you old mullet.
Eloquent sleeze
Mention Democratic party of that late 19th century to imply that the Democractic party of the early 21st century is the same.
Use respectul sounding terms such as Ms. Tubman to create credibility while at other times coming across as racist as a Klansmen.
Conflating the false interpretation of the 2nd Amendment with devout practice of a Christian faith.
Deny the obvious racism of The Traitor by calling for him to unveil the new $20 bill this year or in his failed 2nd term - in other words, put it off so that most people forget about the issue.
Slick, slimy and sleezy.
Easy fix
Easy fix for this, anytime you get one rip in half and turn it in to your bank for a new one.
And remember Jerry, "it's not
And remember Jerry, "it's not breaking the law if you believe it."