Ady Barkan and Bradley Whitford (Photo – allsaints-pas.org)
On Sunday, December 22, All Saints Church Pasadena, its Rector Mike Kinman, church member and actor Bradley Whitford and at least 300 others welcomed Bradley’s friend, the lawyer and activist Ady Barkan to the Rector’s Forum.
By Mike Pashistoran
Barkan is now confined to a wheel chair and requires the assistance of a computer device to speak. He was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 2016 shortly after the birth of his son; ALS affects the motor neurons in the spine, progressively paralyzing all the muscles in the body except the eyes. In his message at All Saints entitled “Love and Death, Hope and Resistance,” Barkan communicated that losing the ability to speak is far worse than losing the ability to touch or walk.
Ady Barkan has been described as the “most powerful activist in America.” He is the co-founder of the Be a Hero PAC, an organizer for the Center for Popular Democracy, and author of Eyes To The Wind: a Memoir of Love & Death, Hope & Resistance. Congresswoman Alexandria Orcasio-Cortex wrote the forward to his book.
Bradley Whitford first met Barkan at Senator Diane Feinstein’s office on the plight of the Dreamers. Whitford said that, “We must realize we are not doing enough if this guy can do what he’s doing with what he’s going through!”
For his part, Barkan communicated that since he has lost his ability to speak [in 2018], more and more people have heard him and that power can come from unlikely sources. “ALS has taught me that participating in popular democracy is a healing experience.”
According to Barkan, “The Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr (Christian theologian) is something I rely on.” A common version of the Serenity Prayer is: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
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