Baptized in Tear Gas

From White Moderate to Abolitionist

De: Elle Dowd, Rev. Traci Blackmon - Foreword

Narrado por: Elle Dowd

For years, Elle Dowd considered herself an advocate for justice, but her well-meaning support always took a back burner to what Martin Luther King Jr. called the tension-free, ordered "negative peace" of white moderates. Then Michael Brown, a Black man, was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the subsequent uprising changed everything.

In Baptized in Tear Gas, minister and activist Elle Dowd tells the gripping story of her transformation into an Assata Shakur-reading, courthouse-occupying abolitionist with an arrest record, hungry for the revolution. Thanks to deep relationships with people in Ferguson and St. Louis, and to experiencing a fraction of the system for herself - including the fear of rubber bullets, the shock of sound cannons, and running from tear gas-Dowd fully committed to the work of anti-racism and abolition. Now she wants to help other white allies do the same.

Like in baptism, this transformation requires parts of us to die: our lack of power analysis, our commitment to white niceness, our tone policing, our respectability politics - all of those impulses we have been socialized by since birth must die so that something new can be resurrected in our lives and in the world. The uprising in Ferguson changed Dowd, and through it, God made her into something new. Now it's our turn.

©2021 Broadleaf Books, an imprint of 1517 Media (P)2021 eChristian

captures it accurately and tells the truth

I was present for many of the events surrounding the murder of Mike Brown. I knew many of the folks involved. I still struggle to make sense of so much. But the lessons in this work are indisputable, and necessary learning for all who inhabit this nation. I am grateful for it, and not only recommend it - I consider it required reading.

A thoughtful leader and follower

Pastor Dowd is a wonderful example of leadership and learning when our privilege means we can step back and should step back to allow more marginalized identities lead. I appreciated her wisdom and humility throughout the book and am happy to call her a colleague in Christ.