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.

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.

by the Rev. Dr. Rick Schlosser, Executive Director

“Being white means never having to think about it.”   — James Baldwin

The uprisings in Baltimore, Ferguson, and across the country remind us in a powerful way that racism is America’s original sin.  From the genocide of indigenous nations, to the immorality of the slave trade, to northern wealth built on cheap slave labor in the south, to the criminalization of God’s beloved children under our current immigration system, we know that privilege, power, and wealth is built on systemic, institutionalized racism.

Let those with eyes to see and ears to hear acknowledge this sin without excuse or defensiveness and commit ourselves to changing our culture until every child of God is treated with respect and dignity, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or gender identity, class, sexual orientation, age, ability, or any of the other “isms” we are so good at using to divide and discriminate.

We spend a lot of time talking about the injustice of racism, #blacklivesmatter, the New Jim Crow, and other issues that every person of faith should be actively working to dismantle.  For those in the dominant culture, one primary focus needs to be on the issue of privilege, primarily because so many do not recognize its extent and are, therefore, powerless to change it.  Until we recognize our privilege and are willing to actively work to give it up, very little will actually change.  Let me say this very clearly: Racism is a white problem.  It will not change until a critical mass of members of the dominant culture recognize their privilege and actively work to give up their privilege and challenge it in every way possible.

White privilege is a set of advantages and/or immunities that white people benefit from on a daily basis.  White privilege can exist without white people’s conscious knowledge of its presence (one of the biggest obstacles to change) and it helps to maintain the racial hierarchy in this county.

This is a difficult subject for many well-meaning white people to talk about.  But it is, nonetheless, absolutely essential that we facilitate conversations about this everywhere we can if we ever expect anything to change. 

Sunday mornings are still the most segregated hour of the week in this country.  I would love to recruit 100 congregations throughout California (to start) who would be willing to commit to actively engaging in study, self-reflection, respectful conversations, and direct action to challenge white privilege and racism.  We have justice-seeking churches in every corner of the state.  Churches are in a unique and powerful position to lead the way in this effort from a place of trust and respect in their communities.  Any movement for justice requires the participation of the faith community to succeed.

It is not helpful to talk about it in such a way that folk go right to guilt or despair.  One of the least threatening and accessible articles I have used for many years is by Wellesley professor Peggy McIntosh.  If you are looking for a way to consider this issue yourself or start a discussion of it in your community of faith, I recommend it to you: White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack by Peggy McIntosh.

I also recommend to you a pastoral letter from the United Church of Christ: A Pastoral Letter On Racism: A New Awakening. 
You can download a PDF of the entire resource here.

The biggest problem with white privilege is the invisibility it maintains to those who benefit from it most.  The inability to recognize that many of the advantages whites hold are a direct result of the disadvantages of other people, contributes to the unwillingness of white people, even those who are not overtly racist, to recognize their part in maintaining and benefiting from white supremacy.

White privilege is having the freedom and luxury to fight racism one day and ignore it the next.  White privilege exists on an individual, cultural, and institutional level.

Racism is America’s original sin. Racism signifies power relations associated with skin color.  Racism is more than personal prejudice.  In the classic definition, it is prejudice plus power.  To dismantle racism, a power analysis is necessary to identify its various institutional forms.

Are you interested and ready to help make a difference?  Following is a listing of a very few articles and books to help you get started.  There are so many more wonderful resources available and I will include a short list of resources in Justice Seekers on a regular basis. 

What are you doing to end white privilege?  How are you living out the gospel truth that #blacklivesmatter?  What is your community of faith doing in your community?  Is your congregation willing to join us in a statewide effort to dismantle white privilege and racism? I would love to include your suggested resources, your success stories and challenges, and anything else you are willing to share with others with others throughout California, so please send any and all feedback, resources, stories, suggestions, questions, and challenges to me at rick@calchurches.org.

Resources
Here is a very short list of articles and books to help your congregation discuss white privilege and racism.  Please send your suggestions to rick@calchurches.org so they can be included in future issues of Justice Seekers.

Articles

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack by Peggy McIntosh
https://www.isr.umich.edu/home/diversity/resources/white-privilege.pdf

See further: White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies by Peggy McIntosh
http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/diversity/white-privilege-and-male-privilege.pdf

The Undergirding Factor is POWER: Toward an Understanding of Prejudice and Racism by Caleb Rosado, Department of Urban Studies, Eastern University, Philadelphia
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/caleb/racism.html

Reflections on My White Privilege and Understanding It: Thoughts from a Teacher Educator by Todd S. Cherner, Coastal Carolina University
http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&context=catalyst

Young White Men: Scared, Entitled, and Cynical-A Deadly Combination by Paul Kivel
http://www.paulkivel.com/component/jdownloads/finish/1/4/0?Itemid=31

Books
If you purchase through Amazon.com, you can support our work by doing your shopping through smile.amazon.com and choosing the California Council of Churches as your designated charity!  Click here now!

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
by Michelle Alexander

Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book.  Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as “brave and bold,” this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness.  With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.”  By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control-relegating millions to a permanent second-class status-even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.  In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a “call to action.”

Called “stunning” by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis, “invaluable” by the Daily Kos, “explosive” by Kirkus, and “profoundly necessary” by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.

The Cross and the Lynching Tree
by James H Cone

“They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.” Acts 10:39    

The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols

in the history of the African American community.  In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. Both the cross and the lynching tree represent the worst in human beings and at the same time a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning. While the lynching tree symbolized white power and black death, the cross symbolizes divine power and black life, God overcoming the power of sin and death. For African Americans, the image of Jesus, hung on a tree to die, powerfully grounded their faith that God was with them, even in the suffering of the lynching era.

In a work that spans social history, theology, and cultural studies, Cone explores the message of the spirituals and the power of the blues; the passion and the engaged vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.; he invokes the spirits of Billie Holiday and Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Wells, and the witness of black artists, writers, preachers, and fighters for justice. And he remembers the victims, especially the 5,000 who perished during the lynching period. Through their witness he contemplates the greatest challenge of any Christian theology to explain how life can be made meaningful in the face of death and injustice.

Understanding White Privilege:
Creating Pathways to Authentic Relationships Across Race
by Frances E. Kendall
London: Routledge, 2006.

Knowingly and unknowingly we all grapple with race every day. Understanding White Privilege delves into the complex interplay between race, power, and privilege in both organizations and private life. It offers an unflinching look at how ignorance can perpetuate privilege, and offers practical and thoughtful insights into how people of all races can work to break this cycle. Based on thirty years of work in diversity and colleges, universities, and corporations, Frances Kendall candidly invites readers to think personally about how race - theirs and others' - frames experiences and relationships, focusing squarely on white privilege and its implications for building authentic relationships across race. 

This much-anticipated revised edition includes two full new chapters, one on white women and another extending the discussion on race. It continues the important work of the first, deepening our knowledge of the recurring history on which cross-race relationships issues exist. Kendall's book provides readers with a more meaningful understanding of white privilege and equips them with strategies for making personal and organizational changes.

Pre-Post-Racial America: Spiritual Stories from the Front Lines
by Sandhya Rani Jha

Those people. Their issues. The day's news and the ways we treat each other, overtly or subliminally, prove we are not yet living in post-racial America. It's hard to talk about race in America without everyone very quickly becoming defensive and shutting down.

What makes talking race even harder is that so few of us actually know each other in the fullness of our stories. A recent Reuters poll found 40% of White people have no friends of other races, and 25% of people of color only have friends of the same race.

Sandhya Jha addresses the hot topic in a way that is grounded in real people's stories and that offers solid biblical grounding for thinking about race relations in America, reminding us that God calls us to build Beloved Community.

Discussion questions at the end of each chapter provide starting points for reading groups.

Hardcover edition available through smile.amazon.com (be sure to designate the California Council of Churches!).  Electronic versions are available from chalicepress.com

Sandhya Rani Jha is the director of the Oakland Peace Center, the East Bay Housing Organization, a former member of the California Council of Churches Board of Directors, and so much more!

by Elizabeth “Libby” Sholes, Director of Public Policy

California Council of Churches’ work on economic justice has taken a new path.  We still fight for the safety net, for better education, and all the traditional issues such as lifting the minimum wage and increasing taxes on obscenely large corporate profits.  However, we have come to the conclusion that it is not enough. 

If we are to make serious inroads into economic inequality, we have to find a means to change not just what decisions are made about jobs, pay, and opportunities but also who is making those critical decisions.  We are supporting the creation of worker owned cooperatives, both with unions and without, as a redirection in economic justice.  The true ‘makers’ are those who create the wealth.  Only from ownership of the businesses where they toil will workers realize the full benefits of their labors.

The key to success lies in unleashing the creativity and knowledge that employees bring to their jobs.  Three stories illustrate the enormous void we’ve created in this nation on not just the outrages of income inequality but on the profound loss of skill, of solidarity among citizens, and on our democratic processes — all in the quest for corporate riches and domination.  These stories illustrate what is the art of the possible in worker ownership and why it is the right strategy for our time.

In 1976 Bethlehem Steel, second largest producer in America, hired its first ever outsider from Price Waterhouse Accounting to be its CEO.  Although the company was making a small but steady profit, highly respectable in the annals of industrial capitalism, the lure of double digits proved the company’s undoing.  The company’s Lackawanna plant had a rail rolling facility that was old but productive.  It also had an amazing boss roller, Don Landsittel, whose 40 years of experience allowed him to judge the heat of rails by sight and to understand the art of how you bend rails to cool properly.  The rest of his rail mill team were equally skilled, equally devoted to their craft.  1976 was also the year Conrail decided to rebuild the entire NE corridor track lines from Chicago east.  With this amazing market and incredibly skilled labor force, Lackawanna was poised for huge rail orders when the new CEO decided to shutdown the entire rail operation and take the federal accelerated depreciation that got them huge amounts of cash to sweeten the bottom line.  The mill never produced another dime in profits ever again, and when in 1983 the whole plant was closed, almost 22,000 people of skill were permanently out of work.

In 1984 Buffalo Brass that produces brass and copper rolled products and was then owned by ARCO petroleum, was slated to be closed because again, it was profitable but not obscenely so.  Shutdown would mean the loss of hundreds of skilled jobs.  However, five local capitalists bought the plant then met with the supervisors and union, USW Local 593, and said that they had NO idea how to run Buffalo Brass so the workers should do it.  The union was the lead, and within weeks they had changed the production process, the receipt and shipping of alloy raw materials, obtained new business, and started up old abandoned product lines.  There were almost no supervisors — workers were self directed on how they did their jobs — and no managers.  At the end of one year they moved the plant from marginal profitability to million-dollar boom.  However, workers did not own the facility so five years later when the investors decided to sell, the people who created all that wealth had no say in its sale.  Buffalo Brass never ran so well again.

Deindustrialization, plant closings, offshoring of jobs to Asia all have decimated not just the numbers of jobs but the foundation of our middle class.  We have also lost critical skills as highly trained workers retire, move away, or die just as we turn to imported capital goods for infrastructure that turn out to be inferior quality.  The saga of the new Bay Bridge that is deteriorating as it was being built lies partly in our loss of skilled steel workers and metallurgists who successfully provided the materials for every earlier bridge made in America and erected by local ironworkers.  One of them, Alfred Zampa, helped construct every earlier Bay Area bridge prior to the one now bearing his name that spans the Carquinez Straits.  We lost such amazing people when we rushed to save money and discard local production, local jobs.

This is incredibly helpful in other ways, too.  One of our projects, a Food Hub in Livermore, will house a variety of vendors including a union coop, the United Food and Commercial Workers may contribute some of their pension funds as either capital or collateral.  Unite Here is working on bringing the union coop model to their own members in their training centers, calling this a training and transition model.  Where expertise is needed — skill development, apprentice programs, licenses, certificates, permits — the unions often have them ready to go.  Having prepared workers inside at the start can allow the necessary lead time for others to gain those skills and certifications and not forcing the business to wait.  In one of our premier union coops in Cincinnati, UFWC released one of their members and subsidized her to help create “Our Harvest” farm and food distribution.  Because of her skills and knowledge of the business, Our Harvest now does $700,000 worth of business and was created as a viable worker coop within its first year, and she along with others are viable worker owners as well as union members.

In Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Clean and Green laundry, a United Steelworkers worker coop, has secured amazing head start via the union members’ previous experience working in a now defunct industrial laundry the union had also represented in more traditional ways.  Down the road, they are exploring the possibility of manufacturing commercial laundry equipment.

New Era Doors and Windows company has a most famous story — in 2008 workers held a sitdown occupation of the company against Bank of America’s lockout of workers and rip off of their pay.  Their dedication eventually moved into ownership with the help of United Electrical Workers, the electricians union.  While some of their professional advocates were negotiating the buyout of New Era, workers were STILL locked out of financial negotiations and UE helped them picket for a seat at the table.  They won the right to be part of their own finance agreements and in the structuring of their own cooperative. 

Throughout the Northeast — the proverbial Rust Belt of shuttered factories and mills — the union coop model is being adopted in many communities.  Reading, PA, surely one of this nation’s most battered cities from deindustrialization, has adopted the union coop effort as a citywide strategy.  In Cincinnati OH, even the very Red city leadership — John Boehner territory — has adopted union coops as a key ingredient in their economic revitalization.  Work is going on across the nation in Denver, Seattle, and here in CA where we have several projects gearing up.  We have just made alliance with the UAW that, while not a big presence any longer in CA, will be a force to offset plant closings in the Midwest. 

Service unions also are involved.  In the Bronx, NY, Cooperative Home Health Care is a SEIU — Service Employees International Union — cooperative of over 2000 home healthcare aides.  About half are now fully vested owners, and everyone earns far above the standard wage for this work.

Is it imperative for unions to be involved in every worker coop?  Of course not.  We have more non-union related success stories than union ones.  Our allies in Lompoc working with the Valley of the Flowers United Church of Christ created the “Green Broom Brigade” housecleaning service.  Immigrant women now have risen from low wage work to middle class status by owning this business.  They have the developed the critical county-wide network of coops now assisting one another through the spin off of the Lompoc Community Development Project that is helping to expand the idea of worker ownership throughout Santa Barbara County.

However, union affiliation offers a huge hand up in technical assistance, organizing, conversion projects, and even financing.  From conversion to start up, the partnership of unions with worker owners has been and will be a powerful new strategy. 

The face of Mondragon USA is now called 1worker 1vote, Inc. and can be found online at 1worker1vote.org.  California Council of Churches holds the only MOU with them for CA where we, as with others around the nation, are coop catalysts to help communities come together to do this work locally.

In CA we offer background information on how worker coops operate, conversion information and strategies, financial data and resources, organizational help, and alliances with labor.  We are working with communities of color, immigrant rights groups, low wage workers, ex-felons, dislocated former foster kids, along with our own congregations, and where possible, unions, all united in this strategy.  And we do this for free. 

Our strongest role is creating local communities of practice — groups arising from their own situation and creating projects appropriate to their own local needs — so that what is created belongs authentically to the people and is not something imposed upon them from above.  This vastly improves the likelihood of success since community buy-in as well as worker ownership strengthen the outcomes and through the authenticity of support.  Where communities such as Lompoc make major commitments to this work, the entire community benefits from it.  Stable businesses with stable jobs — ones that cannot easily be sold or shut down — helps the communities also to be stable.  

Anyone interested in gaining our help, having our study guide and tool kit may contact me at sholes@calchurches.org.  We welcome all new energies and all new voices in this work.  This is the new way for find and make manifest economic justice for all.