California Council of Churches - Latest News

What is the human cost of drug trafficking? See "Kingdom of Shadows" on PBS

9/16/2016

In a world of violence and death due to the rise of gangs and smugglers running drugs, your local public television station will likely be broadcasting Kingdom of Shadows on PBS on September 19, 2016. The film tells the human side of the US-Mexico drug war, following the story of an activist nun in Mexico, a US enforcement officer, and a former Texas smuggler.

Here's a link to the trailer and film synopsis: http://www.pbs.org/pov/kingdomofshadows/

If your congregation or justice group would like to show this at a different time, PBS can make a DVD available to you. We hoped you might be able to help us spread the word about the film and its broadcast on PBS. They have designed a Kingdom of Shadows Partner Toolkit web page (here) to make it easy to spread the word via social media, and to access any additional resources.

The PBS team’s mission is to lend documentaries for free to organizations for free community/staff screenings. You are welcome to borrow the film for a “sneak preview” screening before its national broadcast on POV, or anytime that works best for your schedule.

There are just a few simple steps to borrow the film from our free Lending Library:
Register in the POV Community Network.
Activate your account: Check your inbox for an activation link and temporary password. (email events@pov.org if you do not receive this email within 24hrs.)
Request: Log-in to your account and click "Create an Event" to register your screening.
Screen: PBS will send the DVD to you about one month prior to your event, then you just send it back after your screening.

The drug wars aren't about just drugs but about people and the toll smuggling takes on their lives. This impacts a great deal of our immigration issues and basic human morality. It is a subject about which we must become more wise.

Thank you for your interest.

URGENT! Will you help CCC put faith in action helping the working poor? We NEED YOU.

8/24/2016

Dear Friends:

There is an excellent, easy means to lift working families from dire poverty. You and your congregation can help them achieve this assistance!

California Council of Churches is applying for a state-funded grant to connect very low- to moderate-income families with the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credit – EITC - that gives them a major hand up financially.

We need YOU to help us reach those families.

EITC provides tax-free cash to working families ranging from a single individual to individuals or couples with children. The federal program sets the income maximums that range from $14,680 for a childless single adult to $53,505 for couples with three or more children. The annual amounts returned to families can range from $506 for a childless working adult to $6,269 for those with three or more qualifying children.

These funds have proven a lifesaver for working families who are at or below the state’s median income levels. It has provided people the means for debt retirement, repairs to a vehicle, new clothes for school kids, paying unexpected utility bills, and even creating a small savings account for future emergencies. It is available annually and can be applied for retroactively for past years. One family who called our offices about help with a utility bill discovered that by filing an amended return for EITC, they would get over $15,000. It changed their lives!

CCC is asking for a sense of your interest in helping us do Outreach and Education on connecting working families to EITC. This is as simple as distributing literature in your congregations, perhaps on your CROP WALK or at community events. Do you have members in need, people whom you serve at food banks who are working but still hungry? Do you run clinics or childcare centers or any other services that touches those who work but do not earn enough? Every bit of this is important possibilities for reaching people for whom EITC is a critical lifeline.

This is an intense project starting mid-October 2016 through the end of April 2017 (tax season). We need to reach as many working families as possible. EITC is not well known and not widely used by the very people who desperately need it. We need your help connecting them to this critical resource.

PLEASE send us an expression of interest in being part of our outreach. If you are,, will you give a rough estimate of how many volunteers might contact those families, however it works for your congregation or group, and about how often per week or month it could be done? If it’s 4 hours per month or 40 – we just need a rough estimate. Nothing at all commits you to doing this work, but in our application we need to have a sense of the geographic range of interest.

If you do choose to participate and we get the grant, CCC will provide you with the materials telling people how to access EITC, both state and federal, and how to contact the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) programs in your area that do the applications for working families. Your congregation may wish to become a VITA source, but it is not required at all.

We are extremely excited about a chance for us to turn our social justice witness and advocacy to the benefit of those who labor so long yet earn so little. This is justice-in-action, a manifestation of all we say, for those in need whose lives we can improve. Please feel invited to help us help them.

Please get back to us as soon as possible if you are interested. Grant submission deadline is September 12, so time is critical. We appreciate any aspect of this outreach and education you would like to do, and we thank you in advance for considering this opportunity.

Thank you!!

FROM WHITE GUILT TO WHITE RESPONSIBILITY

7/7/2016

In the face of such egregious violence against people of color, it is easy for well-meaning members of the dominant culture to feel paralyzed and helpless. This article is form a year ago, but is still a very good piece describing how it is the the responsibility of those who benefit from the most privilege to also take responsibility for changing broken and unjust systems that dehumanize and terrorize God's children who do not enjoy the same privilege.

What's in your backpack?

www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/6153/from-white-guilt-to-white-responsibility

Join Us for a Community Read-In & Discussion of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

2/1/2016

The California Council of Churches/IMPACT Justice Seekers Project
Centennial United Methodist Women
&
The 3rd Annual Sacramento Black Book Fair

In Partnership Present

A Community Read-In & Discussion of
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Wednesday, February 24, 2016
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Doors open at 6 p.m.
Centennial United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall
5401 Freeport Blvd, Sacramento 95822

In observance of Black History Month, we invite you to join us for a panel discussion to discuss the highly acclaimed New York Best seller, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States” (The New York Observer)

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men — bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Doors open at 6 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.
For more information, please contact Kendra Lewis at fundraiserknl@gmail.com

Panelists:
Imhotep Alkebulan
Caliph Assagai, founder and President of Public Interest Advocacy, Inc.
Kevin John Fong, President at Elemental Partners
Aisha Lowe, Associate Professor of Education at William Jessup University
Walter Robinson, Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management at UC Davis
Elizabeth “Libby” Sholes, Director of Public Policy at CA Council of Churches IMPACT

Moderators: Kendra Lewis, the Rev. Dr. Rick Schlosser

Join the Movement! Support the California Council of Churches

11/30/2015

Make Your Gift Today!

Dear Activist,

December 1, is #GivingTuesday.

Today, join others around the globe in playing a major role in coming together and make a gift to support the important work of the California Council of Churches. The spirit of giving is the pulse of who we are and what we do. Your gift will support our ongoing role of educating ALL communities to pursue justice, equity and fairness in the treatment of all people, in particular those most often get excluded. Your gift today sums up this quote by Teddy Kennedy: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Gifts can vary in size, and every dollar will go toward our mission working for equality and justice for all. After mourning the materialism of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, please join in the generosity of #GivingTuesday and give a gift that will help make things better for your sisters and brothers throughout California.

Please click here to make your tax-deductible gift today

Please click here to watch a short video by the President of our Board of Directors, the Rev. Dr. Alan Jones.

Thank you for your unwavering support. We still have work to do.

With deepest gratitude,

The Rev. Dr Rick Schlosser
Executive Director

P.S. Another way you can support our work is to help us build our activist list. Please forward this email to others you know who might support the work we do and invite them to join our activist list at http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html

Our #GivingTuesday team: Board President, the Rev. Dr. Alan Jones, Administrative Assistant Robert “Stefan” White, videographer Cameron Lewis, and Director of Development Kendra Lewis. Not pictured: Director of Public Policy Elizabeth “Libby” Sholes” and Executive Director Rev. Dr. Rick Schlosser.

Happy Thanksgiving!

11/25/2015

Dear Friends:

Americans are preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving in commemoration of our nation’s first harsh days for those who came here as refugees. We cannot ignore the irony that our nation’s people are simultaneously discussing whether we should slam our borders shut to the current group of refugees from Syria.

We hope each and every one of you has a wonderful holiday this November. We hope also that you have been wisely following the information on the care our nation and the United Nations take in making sure refugees are people of true need, not violence.

We now fear for the safety of the petitioners as well as the existing 750,000 refugees admitted to our shores since 9/11. The voices of opposition to have begun scapegoating those from the Mid East and those who are Muslim no matter where they have come from.

This is entirely contrary to who we are as Americans. When we have given in to fear, we have been ashamed. We have no call to do that again. No concentration camps. No ships sent away. No exclusion acts. No “markers” to distinguish people’s religion. That is NOT who we are; it is not what we should ever do again.

This Thanksgiving, please remember the “lost and tempest tossed” who have found refuge here – our own families – and those desperate for safe haven today. We will ask you to raise your voices in support of them soon, but for now, have a blessed Thanksgiving with everyone you love including in your celebration both gratitude for what we all have and prayers for everyone still in need.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Refuse to Become Numb: Participate in National Gun Violence Prevention Sabbath Weekend

10/2/2015

Yesterday was a painful reminder of the work that remains for us to end gun violence. Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence, a coalition that NCC is a member of, provides an opportunity for you and your congregation to begin to act. Click here to add your congregation.

http://decembersabbath.org/

from our friends at the

Please help refugees in this and all crises. Your engagement is urgent!

9/9/2015

photograph by Daniet Etter/New York Times/Redux /eyevine. Laith Majid cries tears of joy and relief that he and his children have made it to Europe.

In Memory of Aylan, Galip, and Rehan Kurdi and in Honor of All Who Flee

HOME
by Somali poet Warsan Shire:

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

by Somali poet Warsan Shire

The Syrain crisis is without human precedent in sheer numbers. Please help them as you are able? Most will not, by choice, be coming to the U.S. They want to remain fairly nearby in case, soon, they can go home. However, they need our help and those who aid them also need our help.

Here are some resources – of course there are others, but these are our trust ed allies.

Church World Service
http://www.interaction.org/crisis-response/church-world-services-response-syria-crisis
Donate but also volunteer to assemble relief kits.

Lutheran World Relief
http://lwr.org/ - click on the Syrian information.

Episcopal Church – Episcopal Café
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/the-syrian-refugee-crisis-and-how-you-can-respond/

Presbyterian Church USA
https://pda.pcusa.org/situation/syria/

Methodist Church – Syrian issues
http://www.umc.org/search/tag/syria

Church of the Brethren
http://www.brethren.org/news/2013/brethren-respond-to-syria.html

UCC relief effort (scroll down – awkward web page to navigate)
http://www.ucc.org/disaster/syria/

Global Ministries – joint UCC and Disciples world relief
http://www.globalministries.org/mee

UNICEF Syrian Appeal
http://www.unicef.org/appeals/syrianrefugees.html

Doctors Without Borders – rescuing refugees from many nations from which they are fleeing.
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

Then please look for ways to help all who flee, all who travel hundreds to thousands of miles when forced by violence, oppression, danger to leave Home.

Thank you.

National Council of Churches Calls for End Racism Sunday - Sep. 6

9/1/2015

Liberty and Justice for All

A Sunday Committed to Ending Racism

Join with our brothers and sisters in the historic African American Methodist community in dedicating your worship this Sunday to "Confession, Repentance, and Commitment to End Racism".

Racism will not end with the passage of legislation alone; it will also require a change of heart and thinking. This is an effort which the faith community must lead, and be the conscience of the nation. We will call upon every church, temple, mosque and faith communion to make their worship service on this Sunday a time to confess and repent for the sin and evil of racism, this includes ignoring, tolerating and accepting racism and to make a commitment to end racism by the example of our lives and actions. Every faith leader is asked to preach about racism and our responsibility as people of faith to end racism.

Union Co-ops and Economic Development

8/27/2015

by Elizabeth Sholes on August 27, 2015

Recently, a UNITE HERE organizer called union worker co-ops a “transitional model” for union engagement in places where traditional organizing could no longer work like a shutdown aversion or start ups like Our Harvest.

Union worker co-ops are also a key to providing jobs within the mainstream business sector. In the discussions of conventional metrics on labor costs and income inequality, worker ownership is the only sustainable and reliable means to reverse that trend toward lost shares of wealth creation. I’m fine with artisanal bakeries, but the real change will come when we have workers owning Wonder Bread. (We will also have better yet still affordable bread…) Union worker co-ops give those who make the wealth a share of that wealth in guaranteed ways.

Most of all, union worker co-ops, by providing the ‘one worker one vote’ direction, remove the enduring uncertainty about job security. While all businesses are vulnerable to economic crises, working people can choose how they endure it as they did in Fagor’s closing. They can also be involved in preventing crises it where possible rather than becoming the sacrificial goats for capital.

These three principles – transition, full economic participation, and control over investment decision making – are why union worker co-ops must be part of America’s long-term economic strategy.

Elizabeth Sholes, 1worker1vote.org co-founder, is a union co-op catalyst organizing California progressive faith communities, labor, immigrant groups, and communities of color.

This article was originally posted on the 1worker1vote.org website at http://1worker1vote.org/union-co-ops-and-economic-development/ Reposted with permission.

1:1
1worker1vote.org and Mondragon International North America are building a national network of unionized worker-owned cooperative businesses to overcome inequality of opportunity, mobility, and income.