The Campaign Deval Patrick Is Searching For
CHARLESTON, S.C.—The reverend asked for a moment of silence. Twelve bells chimed.
No place in America knows the pain of Pittsburgh quite like here at Mother Emanuel AME Church. Another man corrupted by hate, with another gun; another group of innocent people murdered because of who they were, in the place they’d come to pray.
The reverend looked out at the congregation: half full, with one armed police officer at the back, but welcoming everyone in after a glance inside the bags of the ones it didn’t know. Before the call to prayer, he asked the politician who happened to be visiting to speak about fear and getting past fear, the lessons of the Boston Marathon bombings.
[Read: Governor got hammered after catching marathon bomber.]
“I keep thinking about what scripture teaches us in Galatians 6:7, that we reap what we sow,” Deval Patrick said when he took the microphone. “And there’s been so much poison, so much poison sown, so much hate sown. And we keep reaping it.”
Patrick was not reading from notes. He did not pause.
“But I also know what you know: that we don’t have to sow just hate; that we can also sow grace, that we can sow better seeds,
