Category Archives: Climate Justice and Equity

Build Anew Series – Looking Ahead

Build Anew Series — Part 10
Looking Ahead

Virginia Schilder
December 5, 2023
Welcome back to our Build Anew Series, with weekly posts covering the people, policies, and values at the heart of the issues we work on. This final post wraps up the Series and looks ahead to more work together in 2024, including the launch of Y.A.L.L.: Young Advocates Leadership Lab. Thank you to everyone who has joined us in reading, watching, and taking action!    

Well friends, here we are: our TENTH and final part of the Build Anew Series!

Thank you to everyone who has been with us on the Build Anew Series journey. Over the past few months, we dove into each issue of NETWORK’s Build Anew Agenda. We learned from the some of the people most directly impacted by these policy issues, we confronted some tough policy facts, and, rooted in the Catholic Social Justice tradition, we reflected on the moral dimensions of these social realities.

Equipped with that knowledge, reflection, and compassion, we took action — from urging President Biden to establish an H.R. 40 Reparations study commission; to calling our Representatives in Congress to protect and expand SNAP; to learning more about Medicaid unwinding; and to watching White Supremacy and American Christianity part 3.

The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration (FSPA) and NETWORK work together in political ministry for climate justice advocacyYou may have noticed that one of our key issue areas was missing from the series posts: climate justice. Earlier this year, NETWORK added climate justice to our work, thanks to an extremely generous gift from the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. Climate justice is connected to all of the issues in the Build Anew agenda, like food, health care, immigration, taxes, the economy, and more. As we move into the new year, join us in integrating climate justice more deeply into our advocacy!

2024 will also bring the launch of our exciting new initiative, Y.A.L.L.: Young Advocates Leadership Lab. Y.A.L.L. will equip and resource emerging Catholic and other faithful justice seekers to be leaders in working for a multiracial democracy. If you’re a young person (like me!) and found that even just one of these issues touched you or spoke to you or your community’s lived experience, we invite you to reach out to NETWORK’s Grassroots Mobilization and Education Specialist Chelsea Puckett to learn more about Y.A.L.L.

The Build Anew Series brought us back again and again to our foundational Catholic social teaching: that every single person has dignity and our flourishing is intertwined — meaning no one can be left out of our circle of care! To build anew, our society and communities to be more life-giving for all of us means cultivating solidarity, a daily conversion to loving our neighbor by working for their wellbeing. We are called to join in the Spirit’s liberating action all around us, and together, we have the power to build anew!

Thank you so much for joining us! Continue to be part of our community of justice-seekers by following NETWORK on social media (like Instagram (@network_lobby) and Facebook) and becoming a NETWORK member.

NETWORK Lobby Advocates for Catholic Social Justice

Ecological Justice Means Racial Justice

Laudato Si Week Calls Us To Recognize Our Interrelatedness

Virginia Schilder
May 24, 2022

This is part one in a three part reflection on Laudato Si Week (May 22-29, 2022), which celebrates the anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on integral ecology and care for creation by inviting all people of goodwill and prayer and study to on how they can tackle the climate crisis.

Read Part Two Here |Read Part Three Here

Ecological justice is about more than ending climate change and restoring damaged landscapes. It is about recognizing our interrelatedness and interdependence with one another, with land, air, and water, and with the non-human life forms alongside us — and then creating social and economic structures that affirm this reality.

At NETWORK, ecological concern permeates all of the policy areas we work in. As we promote the Build Anew agenda specifically, what does it mean to prioritize ecological health and cultivate an ecological orientation?

On one level, it means that our policies must always keep ecological impact in mind. No policy can be fully just if it comes at the expense of our lands, waters, air, or other living beings. This is especially true for job creation, which does not truly help our communities if the new jobs are in the business of exploiting the very resources we need to live. It is critical that as communities grow – with more housing, schools, libraries, parks, and food markets – that development is focused on meeting real needs instead of ceaseless land conversion that depletes natural spaces, pushes out long-term inhabitants (both human and non-human), and accelerates pollution.

Dr. Kate Ward, assistant professor of theology at Marquette University, wrote last year in Connection magazine, “Integral development is a distinctively Catholic reassessment of economic development. Just like national budgets can be both moral and immoral documents, so also economic development can impede or impel authentic human development.”

Rather than alienate us from ecosystems, all forms of development should strengthen our ecological relationships and uphold ecological well-being. All policies have ecological effects, meaning ecological impact should be at the forefront of all policy discussions.   But going even further, an ecological orientation in our policy work means a holistic, multi-issue commitment to transforming the structures that denigrate human beings and the Earth alike.

The intertwining exploitation of people and land is evident in the way that women, the economically marginalized, and Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities are disproportionately harmed by ecological destruction. While climate change affects everyone, these populations are made especially vulnerable to inadequate infrastructure, poor water quality, deforestation, hazardous waste, and increased exposure to climate change-driven disasters and displacement.

Environmental racism refers to the reality that communities of color bear most of the burden of environmental degradation. Communities of color frequently face restricted access to clean air and water, green spaces, and nutritious and locally-sourced food. These forms of racism severely threaten the health of communities of color, especially as toxic waste facilities and highways are overwhelmingly (and intentionally) built in Black and Brown neighborhoods.

Environmental racism implicates housing, food, public health, and economic policy. Measures such as creating accessible, affordable housing and ending racist zoning practices have not only racial but also significant ecological justice dimensions.

Virginia Schilder, a graduate student attending divinity school in Massachusetts, completed a one-year fellowship with NETWORK’s Communications team in early May 2022.

Just Politics Catholic Podcast Season 2

Season 2 of Just Politics Podcast is Complete – Listen Now!

Season 2 of Just Politics Podcast is Complete – Listen Now!

August 24, 2023

After a successful inaugural season of the Just Politics podcast, produced in collaboration with U.S. Catholic magazine, we came back for an exciting second season!  

Our hosts Sister Eilis McCulloh, H.M.Colin Martinez Longmore, and Joan F. Neal spoke with more advocates, Catholic Sisters, scholars, faith leaders, and even a Vatican official about how we can transform our politics for the common good.  

In season 2, which wrapped up in May, our hosts covered topics ranging from Pope Francis and integral ecology to the urgent, Spirit-filled call for economic justice, health care access, and women’s leadership.  

You can find the podcast on the U.S. Catholic website, as well as on Apple PodcastsSpotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Don’t forget to subscribe, and join the conversation about #JustPoliticsPod on social media!  

Also check out Just Politics press at www.uscatholic.org/justpolitics where you can also sign up for email updates, learn more about each episode, and find additional reading on each episode’s topics. 

COMING SOON: Season 3 of Just Politics podcast drops Monday, Sept. 11!  

Sign the Petition to Lament the Loss of Transformative Policy

Sign the Petition to Lament the Loss of Transformative Policy

We suffer when Congress fails to address the crises facing people and our planet

President Biden’s ‘Build Back Better Act’ would have reversed 40 years of trickle-down tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, provided funds for healthcare, eased financial barriers to childcare and early education, invested in wildfire prevention and drought relief efforts, and more. The House passed the BBB plan, but the Senate did not.

Instead of taking moral action, the Senate prioritized the wealthy and corporations over the people and communities that would have benefited from the jobs and equitable access to life-giving resources that the transformative legislation would have provided.

Who would have benefited from BBB? Working people, school-aged children, Black and Brown people, tax payers, rural communities, the climate and ecological concerns, Tribal lands and citizens, college students, immigrants…all of us. Congress is in the final days of budget reconciliation negotiations for less impactful, piecemeal solutions as an alternative to BBB.

We lament the investments in affordable housing, support for children and families, and efforts to combat climate change missing from the budget reconciliation package. It is shameful that our country will suffer as a result of Congress’s moral failure. Join your lament with ours and sign the petition to lament the loss of transformative policy.

We invite you to sign our petition
NETWORK Lobby Advocates for Catholic Social Justice

Ecological Justice Means Holistic Justice

Laudato Si Week Calls Us To Advocate For Our Whole Community

Virginia Schilder
May 27, 2022

This is part three in a three part reflection on Laudato Si Week, which is May 22-29, celebrates the anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on integral ecology and care for creation by inviting all people of goodwill and prayer and study to on how they can tackle the climate crisis.

Read Part One Here | Read Part Two Here

The Catholic tradition affirms this interrelationality and calls us to honor our interdependence in holistic, grounded, ecological communities. One of the key principles of Catholic Social Justice is “Care for Creation.” In addition to conserving the Earth and curbing climate change, this principle calls us to critically examine how we live — how we encounter and treat living, breathing bodies and how we understand ourselves and what we need to live well.

This means reflectively asking ourselves: What does it mean to live in ecological community?

Luckily, ecological community exists all around us – in the interactions between plants and animals (including humans) outside your window, for example, but also among humans anytime we help one another and work for our mutual flourishing. Alternatives to the alienation of our present structures are already in practice, modeled by those who choose, as best they can within damaging systems, to live out ecological harmony. Through even small acts of connection, we participate in our common ecosystem life, and thereby resist systems of destruction and disconnection.

Promoting ecological justice policies, especially as they arise in NETWORK’s Build Anew agenda, embody Catholic Social Justice in their care for the earth and its inhabitants. These policies include ending fossil fuel tax subsidies, guaranteeing clean, safe drinking water as a right in all communities, updating water infrastructure and protecting watersheds, restoring ecosystems, instituting widespread renewable energy access, and developing other green infrastructure and natural solutions. They include curbing the ongoing conversion and destructive development of land (especially Native lands), and supporting green economies, localized agriculture, and responsible and integrated land stewardship.

As we enact other social and economic policies, we have a responsibility to make equitable ecological impact a key consideration. Dr. Kate Ward writes that in a just economy, “The environmental costs of economic production, which impact human health and livelihood, would be borne equitably when they cannot be eliminated.”

The same goes for environmental benefits, which we must equitably share. Our economic restructuring, including with the recovery package, must center ecological impact while prioritizing equity and community needs – because protecting the most vulnerable communities necessarily means protecting the land, air, and water on which they depend.

But above all, we are called to adopt an integral ecological orientation in our advocacy work and in the way we envision a just society. This means taking an ecosystems-view: highlighting our interrelationality, rooting more deeply in the land, and working from and in communities to conserve and promote mutual flourishing. It means taking seriously our interdependence with and embeddedness in all of creation, and letting that realization transform our politics.

Additionally, we can never discuss ecological justice without speaking of colonialism. Colonialism operates in large part via the stealing and destruction of the lands, waters, and wildlife on which Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods and cultures depend. Native Americans and First Nations peoples have sustainably inhabited and skillfully stewarded North America for millennia. It is impossible to truly respect and honor Native communities without also respecting and honoring their rights to land access, inhabitation, protection, and stewardship. Ecological justice means ensuring that economic development does not further burden Native communities with environmental destruction, and that our policies cease the ongoing usurpation and poisoning of Native lands.

Regardless of our issue area or community role, we are called to see that building thriving communities requires not domination over but harmony with the Earth. Because in an ecological sense, justice means the fullness of all God’s holy creation in integrated community.

Virginia Schilder, a graduate student attending divinity school in Massachusetts, completed a one-year fellowship with NETWORK’s Communications team in early May 2022.