Eugene Rivers and the Boston Strategy

A good article on the message of Eugene Rivers:

The strong crime-fighting medicine prescribed by the preacher from Boston has been most bitter for black Toronto, if the grumbling in some quarters about “blaming the victim” is any indication.

But the genius of the good Rev. Eugene Rivers is that he comforts and afflicts at the same time.

He lambastes the “hug-a-thug, paleo-Liberals” who think social programs are going to remove guns from the hands of gangstas. And just when he has you nodding your head in agreement, he excoriates the neo-cons who want to spend millions of dollars on law enforcement “toys” instead of prevention and intervention….

“The middle class, the political leadership and the middle-class church have turned their backs on the poor,” Rivers told a meeting of the Etobicoke Strategy, a group of ministers and church leaders in Rexdale, yesterday.

More on the Boston Strategy here and here. Dr. Rivers only covered one point of the ten-point strategy yesterday (that churches adopt youth gangs) but that was challenging enough.