December 9

Walter Liggett, Nikki Giovanni, and the Genocide Convention

Author

David Barnhart
December 09, 2025

Homeless Jesus, by Timothy Schmalz. Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, 2022.

Detail of his feet.

Today in 1935, journalist Walter Liggett was assassinated in a drive-by shooting for his exposé of organized crime and government corruption in Minnesota. 

Today marks the death, in 2024, of Nikki Giovanni, professor, poet, and activist. 

Today in 1948, the United Nations ratified a treaty known as the Genocide Convention, making genocide an international crime. 

Reflection: 

Nikki Giovanni said: 

“The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things is the enemy, patriarchy in medicine, patriarchy in schools, or in literature.”

Her poem “Allowables” has been shared widely on social media:

Allowables

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small spider
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn't
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don't think
I'm allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened.

Article 2 of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as: 

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

and further defines criminal activity related to genocide as: 

(a) Genocide;

(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

(d) Attempt to commit genocide;

(e) Complicity in genocide.

By this definition, the United States has been involved in historic crimes of genocide against Native Americans, African-Americans, and Mexican-Americans. 

Prayer: Author of Life, forgive us for our complicity in the destruction of life. Amen.