Category: justice
Habitat - NYC School for Faith, Action & Impact
Registration is now open for our new groundbreaking training course created specifically for our dedicated Habitat-NYC faith partners. Sign up today and ask your congregation’s Habitat volunteers and supporters to join us on Saturday, October 2nd for the first session!
Habitat-NYC’s School for Faith, Action & Impact will explore how our faiths call us towards justice and how we can put our faith into further action by raising our voices for our communities and neighbors in need.
Session 1 – Breaking Down the Walls:
Saturday, October 2nd
10am – 4pm
Central Manhattan Location TBA
Lunch is provided!
This exciting first session explores the reality of poverty and the lack of affordable housing in our city and how our faiths call us to respond. The day will include interactive activities and exercises, special guest presenters, and much more! If you’re excited about Habitat and our mission, you’ll love this special opportunity to get more involved in serving families in need.
$10 requested registration donation per session or $20 for all three sessions. Scholarships available and congregational sponsorship of participation is encouraged. Lunch included.
Attend all three sessions to receive:
· Free transportation to Habitat for Humanity – NYS’s March 2011 Albany lobby day
· A certificate of training
To Register or for more information contact Matt Dunbar at: (212) 991-4000 x320 or mdunbar@habitatnyc.org
Save These Dates!!!
Session 2 – Faith in Action:
Saturday, November 6th
Takes an in-depth look at housing issues in New York City and State and equips faith partners with the tools needed to construct change
Session 3 – Building Impact:
Saturday, December 4th
Examines the importance of classic organizing models and coalitions and focuses on how faith-rooted advocacy can have a major impact by utilizing the unique and exciting opportunities individuals and communities of faith have to speak and act out for social change
Advocating for Farm Workers
This Thursday evening, August 19, at 6:00 p.m., there will be an opportunity to advocate for justice for farm workers outside of Trader Joe’s in Chelsea (6th Avenue and W. 21st Street). The purpose of the advocacy is to help inform consumers about abuses against farmworkers and to push Trader Joe’s to join an agreement to end abuse and modern-day slavery.
There is a well-documented human rights crisis in Florida’s fields, and conditions facing farmworkers who harvest the tomatoes we buy at places such as Trader Joe’s are as urgent as they are appalling. Farmworkers picking tomatoes for Trader Joe’s chain of supermarkets earn 40-50 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they harvest–wages hat have not risen since 1978. A worker must pick nearly 2.5 tons of tomatoes just to earn minimum wage for a typical 10-hour day. Grinding poverty leaves farmworkers vulnerable to the most exploitative employers, often resulting in egregious labor rights abuses.
We have the opportunity to encourage the supermarkets where we shop to support social responsibility in the Florida tomato industry.
For more information visit workers@ciw-online.org
Some things we take for granted...
“One was rubbing a peach along his face, and I said, ‘It’s supposed to feel like that.’ Another was breathing into the peach, and I said, ‘It’s supposed to smell like that.’ Another was biting into the peach, and the juice was running down his face and arms, and I said, ‘It’s supposed to taste like that.’ In a country of plenty, everybody should have the experience of tasting the bounty.” Chef Tony Geraci, director of food and nutrition for Baltimore City Schools, on the reaction of second-graders eating fresh peaches for the first time in their lives after he brought in 40,000 pounds of tree-ripened, Maryland-grown peaches for school lunches. (USA Today)
Food, Faith and Health Disparities Summit
Faith Leaders for Environmental Justice invites you to
Food, Faith, and Health Disparities Summit
October 29-30, 2010
Location TBA
What is it like to live in a “food desert”? What is the link between poverty, obesity and diabetes? Do things just have to be this way? Is it a lost cause or can we do something about it?
Mark your calendars now and join faith and community leaders, health and environmental advocates, and government representatives from the Boroughs of the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn in October for the Food, Faith, and Health Disparities Summit.
Join hundreds of New Yorkers who live in New York City’s food deserts and those who don’t. Listen and share your stories of food, faith and health. Work with a small group representing a diverse cross-section of New Yorkers to discern the spiritual, social and structural causes for our city’s health disparities. Then work together to set action priorities for the next year.
Be a part of the solution!
This summit is made possible through the generous partnership of the Bronx Health REACH Legacy Grant.
Co-sponsored by:
NY Faith and Justice, Everyday Democracy, Muslim Women’s Institute, NYC Coalition Against Hunger, We Act for Environmental Justice, Our Planet Media, The Interfaith Center of New York, Center for the Study of Science and Religion, New York Divinity School, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, Borean Baptist Church, It Is Well Living Church, Convent of the Sacred Heart, The Blak Project, New York Theological Seminary, UFCW-Local 1500, NYC Dept of Health-Strategic Alliance for Health, Metro Hope Church NYC, Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council, Lambs Church of the Nazarene, Office of the Borough President of Manhattan, Trinity Grace Church, Sustainable South Bronx, F.U.R.E.E., NYC Economic Development Corporation
Modern-Day Slavery Museum to Tour New York
From August 2nd to August 4th
The Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum consists of a produce truck of the same model that farmworkers were locked inside of and chained in one of the latest slavery prosecutions (U.S. v. Navarrete, 2008), accompanied by displays on the history and evolution of slavery in Florida agriculture. The museum’s central focus is on the phenomenon of modern-day slavery – its roots, the reasons it persists, and its solutions.
The exhibits were developed in consultation with workers who have escaped from forced labor operations as well as leading academic authorities on slavery and labor history in Florida. The museum is endorsed by several leading human rights and anti-slavery organizations, including Amnesty International and Anti-Slavery International, respectively the largest human rights organization and the oldest human rights organization in the world. It has recently been hosted at the U.S. State Department building and the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The museum was conceived by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the human rights award-winning farmworker organization that has aided in the prosecution by the Department of Justice of seven farm slavery operations and the liberation of well over 1,000 workers since 1997. A federal indictment for the most recent forced labor case in Florida agriculture was unsealed just this month.
The tour will also raise awareness about labor conditions in the tomato supply chains of Ahold’s USA supermarket brands, including Giant, Stop & Shop, and Martins.
“Slavery in Florida agriculture today is not separate from the past – indeed, its roots extend deep within our state’s history. Farmworkers have always been, and remain today, the state’s poorest, least powerful workers,” explains Gerardo Reyes of the CIW. “If we are to abolish slavery once and for all in Florida agriculture, we must pull it up by the roots by addressing farmworker poverty and powerlessness.”
NEW YORK CITY STOPS INFORMATION
Date: Monday, August 2nd
Location: Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Ave.
(between 112th and 113th Streets)
Time: 10am – 9pm.
Date: Tuesday, August 3rd
Location: Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South (West
4th at Thompson)
Time: 10am – 9pm.
Date: Wednesday, August 4th
Location: Middle Collegiate Church, 50 E. 7th Street (between First
and Second Avenues)
Time: 10am – 9pm.
Reveal Summer Spa Benefit
Reveal is a volunteer-run nonprofit organization benefiting local women recovering from abuse and sex exploitation. It was birthed out of one of TGC’s first missional communities. All proceeds of Reveal‘s Summer Spa Benefit go to the Reveal monthly self-care workshops.
Wednesday, July 28, 8 pm at the Jeunesse Spa & Salon, Empire Hotel (1885 Broadway at Lincoln Center)
Admission: $25 online, $35 door
Free mini-treatment to first 50 individuals to purchase a ticket; $30 gift card to first 50 individuals in at the door.
RSVP online
We are prophets of a future not our own
It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen.
(A prayer of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was martyred in San Salvador in 1980)
Shalom and Justice
Lisa Sharon Harper, co-founder and executive director of New York Faith & Justice, who spoke at TGC on July 18, referred to a ground-breaking book that should be must reading for all Christians. The book is Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, by Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith.
A second book, also recommended is United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race by Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Choi Kim.
How can we live with the evil in the world?
How can we live with the evil in the world?
Jesus answered with the parable of the wheat and the darnel, whose force hits us every day. It is about having patience with the persistence of evil in the world. We may face malicious vandalism, like the enemy who sowed weeds in his neighbour’s field. In their early stages the weeds looked like wheat, and you could not root up weeds without taking some wheat as well. So too some of the evils we face are dressed up to look respectable.
We have to fight evil, but we need not give ourselves ulcers if we find that society remains far from perfect. The final judgment lies with God.
Lord, you remind me of my impatience when faced with evil in the world. Let me learn to wait for the wheat and the weeds to grow. Otherwise my judgments will likely be too hasty and mistaken.
You warn us against the illusions of inquisitions which tried to eliminate sin by laws and bonfires. You do not ask us to coerce people into what we think is the right path. Part of me is impatient to root out evil, like the servants offering to weed out the darnel. You tell me to wait on God’s judgment and trust that the goodness of his seed will prevail over the weeds.
May I learn patience. When faced with violent people, I will not let their way of treating me determine my way of treating them.
(From Sacred Space)
Countdown to Zero - UPDATE: no more free tickets
A still from Countdown to ZeroMany of us are oblivious to the nuclear danger in which we unwittingly live—and why Christians should be taking the lead on it. But when it comes to nuclear weapons, we’re talking about the sanctity of life, care for creation, concern for the poor, and preservation of justice.
Countdown to Zero is a documentary film that explores the threat of nuclear proliferation.
View the trailer here.
TGC is taking a group to see Countdown to Zero on July 23 at AMC Empire at 8:15 p.m.
All free tickets have been spoken for, however feel free to purchase a ticket for the same show and join us! Contact Gary for more info.
