You are invited to use an orange altar cloth or center piece during worship service one day this June.  You might also make an educational display in your fellowship hall or other setting.

Torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment are not aberrations, but are institutionalized practices rooted in under-acknowledged histories of bigotry, slavery, genocide, and oppression in the United States and globally.

In 2002, the U.S. government opened a prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to hold suspected terrorists outside the limited protections of U.S. law. Iconically clad in orange jumpsuits, detainees were sold to the U.S. by their enemies in return for bounty and then sent to Guantanamo. Some were tortured by the CIA or the military. Many were ultimately shown to be innocent of any connection to terrorism. As of May 2021, 40 remain imprisoned there. 

After four decades of the cradle to prison pipeline, mandatory sentencing, lack of mental health treatment, and racial and religious profiling which have institutionalized “the new Jim Crow,” the U.S. accounts for 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s incarcerated. On any given day in U.S. prisons, between 80,000 and 100,000 adults and youth – disproportionately people of color – are held in solitary confinement. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and the United Nations General Assembly have affirmed that solitary confinement is a torture that should be prohibited by any nation which respects human rights.

Weaving together these abuses and torture is a common thread of bigotry against Muslims, racism, and de-humanization that are used to justify heinous actions against those perceived to be different. Ending torture means also confronting our own fear of the "other." As people of faith, we must join hands with our neighbors – whether from down the street or halfway around the world - to build a world in which human rights are a reality for all people.