JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It sounds improbable, but after a court ruling this week, the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church here in Washington owns the Proud Boys trademark. Yes, just to be clear, you did hear that correctly. The far-right extremist group can no longer sell hats, jackets or anything else emblazoned with their name or logo without the church's permission. And the church can also move to seize the profits from anything they do sell under that trademark. Rev. Bill Lamar IV leads the Metropolitan AME Church, and he joins us now in studio. Welcome to the program.
BILL LAMAR IV: Thank you, Juana.
SUMMERS: Reverend, I'd like to just start, if I could, by asking you a little bit about how we got here. Now, for people who may not remember - back in 2020, Proud Boys members jumped a fence onto your church's property. They destroyed a Black Lives Matter banner, and a judge ordered them in 2023 to pay the church $2.8 million. They failed to do so. And so the court granted your church this trademark instead. Just start by telling us if you know where that idea came from.
LAMAR: So actually, Juana, it is confusing. There were actually two lawsuits. The first suit is the suit that ended with Judge Kravitz of the D.C. Superior Court granting us nearly $3 million in damages, and that is growing because interest is applied to the decision. And because they defied the order of Judge Kravitz, we appeared again with a second lawsuit. We determined that the value they had was in their trademark, which they used the license to sell merchandise to recruit for their white supremacist and fascist activities, and we went after that trademark to be made whole. They defied the court, and we defy them in that we will live. We will live joyfully. We will do what we have always done without fear, even in the face of what they did to us.
SUMMERS: There is a statement on the homepage of your church's website that I read earlier today, and part of it reads - (reading) for the first time in our nation's history, a Black institution owns property of a white supremacist group.
And that statement, as I read it, it just carries a whole lot of weight. What does it mean to you?
LAMAR: Well, first of all, it means that my wife is a good writer.
(LAUGHTER)
LAMAR: And the second thing it means is, I think in this moment, so many people feel defeated, not only here but geopolitically - people who believe that humans should be free and flourish and share space together. And our victory magnifies the fact that we need not shrink in this moment politically. I think that what it means is we will not always get what we want. We will not always win, but where there are victories, other victories are ceded. And there is a passage of scripture where Joseph is mistreated by his brothers, and ultimately - and many people misinterpret this, and I hate the way many people interpret it. But the language is what was meant for evil, the divine repurposes for good. So I want to communicate that evil is afoot, but good is not defeated, nor is good dead if we will continue to lift our eyes toward what's possible together.
SUMMERS: So your church now owns the Proud Boys trademark. I do have to ask you, is there anything about this outcome that feels scary? I'll just note that members of the Proud Boys have been convicted of numerous crimes in recent years - violent crimes in some cases - in addition to vandalizing your church.
LAMAR: Juana, I think it's clear that this is a decision that the church took, and we're clear that it was not without risk. We're clear that they are violent. We're clear that they exist to stoke violence. And we understood that Fannie Lou Hamer was taking risks in Sunflower County, Mississippi. We understand that Ida B. Wells-Barnett was taking risks when she was writing about the truth of lynching. We understand that our ancestors come from a long line of those who took risks for themselves and for human flourishing, and we cannot shrink in this moment. I keep remembering the poetry of Lucille Clifton, who says, come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me, and it has failed. This has failed, and it will fail.
SUMMERS: I'll note that President Trump has pardoned in some cases, commuted in others, sentences from members of the group the Proud Boys for their involvement in the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol just down the road here. Does that give you any pause, any concern? I understand wanting to be bold in the face - all the inspiration you just talked about, but do you worry, even a bit?
LAMAR: Oh, well, you have to. I mean, I think that to consider what is possible is to be realistic. But there is something in us that causes us to rise above the kitchen table moment of Martin Luther King comes back when he is disturbed and being threatened and gets a nasty call from vitriolic races. And he hears the voice of God saying to fight on. He hears the voice of God telling him that he was called for this purpose, and we have been called for this purpose. And it's really sad the pardon is of a piece with the lost cause mythology. America has a way of punishing the poor, the Black, the gay, the dispossessed. But letting these type of extremists, these type of violent insurrectionists - the same way that they found a way to deify the lost cause and Confederate mythology - they're trying to do that now. But we will keep speaking truth, and the light will continue to shine.
SUMMERS: The former leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, was part of the group that vandalized your church. And on social media, he reacted to this judgment. He claims that he was denied due process, but he also called for your organization - for your church to be audited to lose its nonprofit status. And it's really easy to talk about things that we see and hear on social media as just confined to that space. But in the current climate, given everything we've seen, given everything that people are experiencing right now, are you concerned that this decision could bring your ministry unwanted attention?
LAMAR: It is possible. And we are clear that the law is on our side. What we are doing is not outside of the law. What they did was outside of the law. And this type of gaslighting from criminals is problematic. We have to talk about it because they are trying to distract us from the work that we are to do. And much of what I'm hearing from that side - in the words of my father's late sister who was an English teacher, Juanita Dolores Lamar (ph), that certain kinds of ignorance deserve no response.
SUMMERS: Do you have any sense of what your church plans to do with the money?
LAMAR: When we get it, we seek to repurpose it. Not only to further our mission, we also want to use money should we get it to lift up other organizations. This will be a reverse capitalism kind of way of doing this. We're not just going to accumulate, but we're going to share with others who are doing this work around the nation. And we've been in touch with some of them. So we don't want this victory to be a moment or a one-off. We want to seed an energy and inspiration that will help us to move forward in days to come because days to come will become more difficult.
SUMMERS: Your church is a familiar site for so many of us who live in and around Washington. It is historic. But for many people who are perhaps hearing our conversation, this story is the first time they will have ever heard of your church. I wonder, what should they know about it? What would you like people to know and understand about your ministry?
LAMAR: That's a wonderful question. Our ministry is a part of the Black prophetic tradition, and the Black prophetic tradition believes that we are all siblings. And wherever there is exploitation, oppression and extraction, our tradition has spoken into that and sought to build a space where we can live together. We have never excluded anyone. We've got the National Cathedral down the street. But at a point, my grandparents were not welcome.
SUMMERS: Right.
LAMAR: So we do not exclude. We love all, and we seek to build the kind of world where we can live and flourish together.
SUMMERS: That was Rev. Bill Lamar. He's the pastor for the Metropolitan AME Church here in Washington, D.C. Reverend, thank you for coming by our studios.
LAMAR: Juana, thank you. I'm a fan. I'm a fan. I'm excited.
SUMMERS: Thank you so much.
LAMAR: Thank you.
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