Category Archives: Emerging Justice Seekers

Reflection: Philadelphia Nuns on the Bus Town Hall

Reflection: Philadelphia Nuns on the Bus Town Hall

Saint Joseph’s University students
October 24, 2018

The Nuns on the Bus stopped in Philadelphia for a Town Hall at Saint Joseph’s University. Students, community members, and local sisters alike came to learn about tax justice and talk about how the 2017 GOP Tax Law is impacting Philadelphians more specifically.

 

Two students shared their reflections on the event below:

 

 

“I really enjoyed attending the Nuns on the Bus event that took place at Saint Joseph’s University. Before attending, I researched into who the Nuns on the Bus are and learned they are a lobbying group located in Washington D.C. which tend to have more liberal views. Each sister introduced herself to the audience and explained who they are, which order they are a part of, and why they joined the bus. I found it interested that although these women are part of different orders, they come together for the same reason, change that will benefit everyone. The social justice issues each woman stood for were education, immigration, economy, social services, and many more.

“After introductions, each woman took a persona. This persona belonged in a socioeconomic class and demonstrated through steps how they benefited from the current tax reform. They then demonstrated through steps how Trump’s tax reform would not benefit everyone yet only certain people. Before seeing this demonstrated, I never completely understood the impact it would have on each social class. I would read about the impacts it would have and look at the statistics. Seeing the steps helped me to comprehend what this really means for the economy. After seeing these demonstrations, I enjoyed the group discussions. The woman I talked to told me she believes that voting is the best thing for change. She believes that voting needs to rise for my age group and all the decisions made in the elections now will affect my generation the most.

“Reflecting on the event, I really enjoyed this presentation. I feel I have learned more about the tax reforms and what changes need to be made to better everyone in the United States instead of benefiting a select few. Voting is one-way change can be made and I do believe that my generation will be most affected by what we vote on now. Through attending this event, I feel that I have gained a better understanding about how decisions made by those we elect into political office will affect everyone in some form.”

— Kella Pacifico

“I really enjoyed going to this event.  It gave me a platform on which I was able to have intentional conversations about the new tax laws and the potential detriment that they could have on our society.  I was given the opportunity to provide a younger student prospective to the nuns and other people around me as to why most college students are not engaged with this issue and our small groups bounced ideas for solutions.  I would like to thank both Network and all of the Nuns on the Bus for spreading awareness and empowering people all over the country to vote in favor of social justice.  University students like myself need to embody the words of Saint Ignatius Loyola to “go forth and set the world on fire.”

— Michael Williams

View more photos from this event here.

Reflection: Listening to Hear, Not to Respond

Reflection: Listening to Hear, Not to Respond

Siena Ruggeri
October 16, 2018

I had the pleasure of accompanying the NETWORK Nuns On The Bus and their local allies on a small part of their journey across the United States to tell the truth about tax justice. The sisters held a Town Hall for Justice on the campus of my alma mater: Regis University in Denver, Colorado.

I came home for two purposes— to see family I’ve been far away from, and to welcome my D.C.-based NETWORK coworkers to my home. This visit reminded me of the importance of community in justice work. My two worlds came together that Sunday— the community I do the work for, and the community I do the work with.

Community organizing and advocacy is different when it’s centered on your own community. I did not feel like the D.C. insider looking in on “Middle America,” but rather an active participant in this struggle.

Regis is located in a working-class Latinx neighborhood that is quickly being replaced by luxury condos and artisanal coffee shops. Students are struggling to find affordable housing while the cost of their education continues to accelerate. Families, many of them families of color, are being pushed out of Denver and the neighborhoods they were instrumental in establishing.

The east Denver communities I taught in (Montbello and Green Valley Ranch) are home to working class people of color who have been pushed out of Denver’s heart and into the plains: far away from well-funded schools, accessible grocery stores, and reliable public transportation.

Twenty miles north of Denver, I’ve seen my hometown of Lafayette gentrify. Our town’s identity as a town was founded by the Mexican-American working class as an affordable and more racially diverse alternative to Boulder. It is now becoming a higher-altitude Silicon Valley. I know I can never afford to buy a house in the town I grew up in, let alone afford to have a family here.

My own family relies on Medicaid. Every time I hear a Washington politician attack Medicaid and people with preexisting conditions, I think of my family back in Colorado. If Medicaid continues to get cut, my sister could lose the ability to live independently as a young woman with a disability.

The Coloradans attending the Town Hall for Justice were telling similar stories. They shared their worries about our chronically underfunded schools switching to four-day weeks, our people with disabilities losing their Medicaid coverage, the skyrocketing cost of living that prevents us from finding affordable housing and child care, and the rapid development that is pushing so many people to the margins. My community expressed the same truth I knew— Colorado may appear to be a booming economy, but that economic growth has been unequal, and has pushed the people who made Colorado what it is to the margins.

It was heartening to know I was not the only Coloradan concerned about these issues. Being separated from your community can be alienating; it’s frustrating when not enough people in D.C. offices understand what’s happening 2,000 miles away in the Colorado plains and foothills.

If I could pick a word to describe the town hall, it was cathartic. My friends and family expressed to me how good it felt to be heard by people in Washington who had a genuine drive to take their stories to heart and do something about it. It reminded me of the privilege it is to be trusted with these stories and have the capacity to do something for my community people while on Capitol Hill. I also felt less alone in this struggle; I was reminded of the amazing, like-minded people in my network who are doing the same work on a more local level. We’re all mending the gaps together.

NETWORK is people-powered, and now I have a greater understanding of what that means. The stories of people on the ground is what fuels us. It was an important reminder of why I do this work. It can be easy to get caught up in the individualistic story of my work and my job and my career and forget that social justice work is about amplifying other people’s stories.

It is too easy to become removed from the realities of the groups we advocate with on the hill. It is tempting to fall in the mindset that you are advocating “for” these groups and stop taking the time to listen to their worries and their hopes. These realities are painful— it is much easier to read a report or a policy briefing than to look someone in the eye and listen to their fears. Even worse, a lot of the time there’s not a satisfying response to alleviate their pain. It is because NETWORK takes the time to listen that makes us better advocates and better allies to the people we represent in Washington. I’m grateful to work for an organization that reinforces the importance of listening.

The Nuns on the Bus is of course about telling the truth about taxes and economic inequality. I think its real strength, though, is not its telling of the truth, but its listening to the truth of many Americans who feel left behind and dismayed by the inhumanity and moral ruin exhibited by members of Congress. Washington’s elite can deny our facts and our statistics, but they cannot dispute the stories we collect on the road. In a society dominated by talking points, hot takes on Twitter, and 30-second political ads, listening is sacred.

Listening is the foundation of allyship and solidarity. If I’ve taken anything from this experience, it’s the importance of reaching out and listening. We may not be able to come up with all the answers, but we all have the capacity to listen. True democracy exists in relationships. If we’re serious about fixing our political system, it’s not enough to prescribe solutions. We must do the hard work of building community, and the first step of that is taking the time to be present and listen. The Town Hall for Justice showed me what’s possible when you take that first step, and it’s a truly beautiful thing.

View more photos from this event here.

Coming Out—and Catholic

Coming Out—and Catholic

Lindsay Hueston
October 11, 2018

Today, October 11, is National Coming Out Day, which celebrates LGBTQ+ people and the right to live their lives openly. The day commemorates the National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights and acknowledges the struggles that LGBTQ+ people face when coming out, and instead transforms them into reasons for celebration.

I’ve been more confident in owning my identity since working at NETWORK, where one of our four values of inclusion is to welcome and affirm the LGBTQ+ community. It can be daunting to be associated with a Catholic organization and simultaneously be a member of a group the church often actively discriminates against.

But I hadn’t always felt so unquestioningly welcomed in Catholic spheres: National Coming Out Day was a trepid joy entirely unfamiliar to me until a few years ago. I had tip-toed my way out of the closet during my entire senior year of college, painstakingly and anxiously. I finally reconciled the fact that I was gay that same April.

I was afraid, lonely, and liberated. At age 21, I had absolutely no idea that being gay was a possibility for my life, much less being able to recognize it in myself. In part, I blame it on Catholicism and the not-so-welcoming attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community that still permeate today’s church.

Overarching homophobia is still present in the church and our greater society. I had only been out for a few months before the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, when I realized the tense societal climate into which I’d stepped. Hate crimes still happen. There have been more than 20 trans women of color killed in the U.S. so far this year. A nine-year-old boy died by suicide when he was bullied after coming out as gay to his classmates, and they told him to kill himself. Recently, a Catholic parish in Chicago burned a rainbow flag, even after the archdiocese told them not to. Discrimination and hatred of the LGBTQ+ community is still alive and well, and much of that ugliness is rooted in warped religious beliefs.

In the few years that I’ve been out, I’ve come to view coming out as a kind of resurrection and a cathartic (and utterly Christian) practice. When I was most anguished about coming out, something tiny inside me whispered, “And Jesus wept.”

I wept, too, when I let go of the idea that I had to be straight. I had always been gay; what had died was my own self-expectation, and the presumably-straight self I had constructed. It was painful to grieve the self I was losing, and instead lean into this new life. Coming out felt like dying, but it also felt like rising again – like resurrection.

The process of reconciling my church, my faith, and my sexuality was an enormous hurdle, and I still struggle with it. No Catholic I knew growing up was out, and the few LGBTQ+ adults I encountered later on were always cautious about sharing their sexuality in Catholic spaces. I devoutly attended CCD classes as a child, and later paid rapt attention in high school theology. I have been in too many rooms where the words “Catholic teaching” and “unnatural” and “not God’s plan” had been thrown around. Morality automatically meant heterosexuality; at least, that’s what I absorbed. These words made me uncomfortable and defensive, but I never knew why.

A few months into my year as a Jesuit Volunteer, I came out to my spiritual director amidst shallow breaths and a racing heartbeat. I knew she’d be accepting of me, but as with many LGBTQ+ Catholics, I am perpetually on the defensive when it comes to not knowing if people will truly accept me in a religious setting.

To my utter relief, she congratulated me and said maternally, “Oh, honey. This is where your spirituality lies.”

And it is. I don’t remember when I became a part of the church, or how I knew I was gay. Both of these things have simply always been a part of me and have shaped my worldview. My sexuality is inextricable from my spirituality; I can’t dissect the ways in which I experience God without including my queerness.

My spirituality has shown brighter in places like El Paso and Ecuador and Philadelphia and Seattle—and yes, too, in attending a church service with a woman I dated briefly, our hands intertwined as we acknowledged the God among and within us.

Yet coming out has also meant living amidst fear, and deciding to rise above it. When I came out, a spiritual dam broke within me; I was no longer holding myself back.

I celebrate National Coming Out Day, now, as a recognition of my desire for changes in our society and in the Catholic Church: a sharing of vulnerability in the hopes that it will spur something new. Each time I come out to someone (especially in a Catholic setting), I put aside my fears and feel another small part of myself owning my identity. I understood, more concretely, that I too was made in the image of God – that we are all made in the image of God.

The shame still exists, but it’s dwindled. What takes its place, now, is the understanding that I am whole as I am created, and my sexuality is inextricable from who as I am as a person. In coming out, my relationship with God has strengthened, and I feel more full: at home in my skin, in myself. In the same way, I feel that I am able to be at home at NETWORK. I don’t have to fear that I will be judged or fired or scorned for my sexuality; many others don’t have that luxury and that freedom. To be in such a place is a gift, a sigh of relief.

Coming out, for me, was a personal challenge, but a spiritual one as well. It still is; I’ve questioned my place in the Church, if I still wanted to be part of an institution with a tenuous relationship to its LGBTQ members. Yet painful as it can be, I couldn’t imagine my life without my deep-ingrained Catholic faith, or the fact that I’m gay.

I’ve decided that coming out is better than staying hidden, and embracing myself as both gay and Catholic is often difficult, but life-giving. I shouldn’t have to compromise myself, nor should any Catholic in a similar situation.

Happy National Coming Out Day, all. You are exactly wonderful as you are.

Reflections on the Kavanaugh Hearing

Reflections on the Kavanaugh Hearing

Alannah Boyle
October 5, 2018

Catholic Social Justice teaches us that all people have inherent dignity. We are called to uphold the dignity of every person as an equally valuable member of the human family.

It is our Catholic duty to believe women. Was it not women who shared the seemingly impossible truths of Jesus? Mary, a virgin, announced she was pregnant with the child of God. Mary Magdalene spread the news that Jesus had risen from the dead. At first they both were not believed. Both women knew this would be the case when they told people. They did it anyway.

Dr. Ford’s courage has inspired the country. She had nothing to be gained, and yet still told her story. She knew she would not be believed by many, and yet she did it anyways.

Watching Dr. Christine Blasley Ford’s testimony was incredibly painful. I and many of those around me found ourselves bursting into tears throughout her testimony. The triggers varied, but many had the same thread: we identified with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. As Sister Simone said, “almost every woman I know has a #MeToo moment.” In watching Dr. Ford, it was clear her story was not unique: we have experienced the visceral memory of trauma, we have experienced being cut off or talked down to by a powerful man, we have desperately tried to stay composed while retelling the intimate details of our trauma.

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is all of us, and goes to show that hers is not a new experience. We are all Dr. Christine Blasey Ford in the same way we are all Mary and Mary Magdalene: for centuries we have told our truth and still not been believed.

We have both a biblical and moral responsibility to believe women.

Working in an environment committed to women in leadership, such as the one at NETWORK, has been refreshing. Engaging with my co-workers guided by sister-spirit is a compassionate environment rooted in Catholic Social Thought that I am proud to be a part of.

When Dr. Ford recounted the story of her assault to the Judiciary Committee, she spoke to 17 men and just 4 women. Twenty-seven years ago, when Anita Hill testified before the very same committee, she spoke to 0 women. We are moving in the right direction, and the treatment of Dr. Ford reflected this, but there is something to be said about telling stories in an environment of those who have a shared lived experience. We need more women in positions of leadership not to blindly support women, but to identify with the experience of having to fight to be heard.

Twin Cities Town Hall: Talking About Tax Justice

Twin Cities Town Hall: Talking About Tax Justice

Hanna Potter and Ceara Curry, St. Joseph Workers
October 2, 2018

Editor’s note: before embarking on NETWORK’s 2018 Nuns on the Bus trip, the “Tax Justice Truth Tour,” Sister Simone and Sister Mary Ellen traveled to bring one of the main programs – our Town Hall for Tax Justice – to the Twin Cities. This reflection is from those participants.

We attended a “Town Hall for Tax Justice” with Sister Simone Campbell and Sister Mary Ellen Lacy on Thursday, September 27th in St. Paul, MN at the Carondelet Center, hosted by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJs). The room was filled with religious sisters, consociates of CSJs, and community members.  And, of course, we as Saint Joseph Workers were present as well.

This event gave us a unique opportunity to see – both visually and through personal narrative – how much the 2017 Tax Bill affects people from a variety of economic backgrounds. We volunteered to help with an activity to demonstrate how the disparity between different economic levels has widened from 1979 to the present, and how the current 2017 Tax Law only widens that gap in inequality.

Seven volunteers from the crowd represented a different economic perspective – one for each quintile and one for the top 1%. Each volunteer had a name and a story. We represented the two lowest quintiles, the next quintile was the “middle” middle class, then the higher middle class, followed by the top 1%, and then a corporation. We started in the year 1979, with participants standing together. As “time” passed, participants were asked to walk farther away from each other – showcasing the gap widening between economic levels. Once the 2017 Tax Law was put into effect in the activity, the 1% and the corporation not only widened the gap by walking away from the lower economic quintiles, but the lower quintiles also walked away from the middle and more towards the poorer end of the spectrum. There wasn’t even enough room in the hall to show how far the gap would really be. The rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer is clearly an understatement.

After the demonstration, Sr. Simone and Sr. Mary Ellen had the room break into small groups to discuss the following 3 questions:

  1. What surprises you?
  2. How is your community impacted?
  3. What would the common good look like?

Reactions around the room were unanimous in their disgust of the effects that the 2017 Tax Law has. What surprised many was just how badly it will impact people. Many were not pleased with the fact that 4% of corporations were projected to raise wages for workers, but in reality only 2.2% have actually raised wages. Companies are not raising wages “out of the goodness of their own heart,” as trickle-down economics would suggest. With fewer taxes being collected, this also impacts public assistance programs that the lower quintiles will need to utilize in order to continue their current quality of living. Programs will accept fewer people or will be shut down completely, because money will be floating around in the pockets of the rich and not in public funding. This will impact communities negatively – people will struggle to upkeep their housing, lose housing, or could face not having enough food on the table.

But how would Catholic Social Teaching of the common good address this situation? Sister Simone says, first, there is a need to depoliticize the situation and to spread the message of radical acceptance: “I care for you, even though I disagree with you…” We must create a shared vision of an alternative to the tax bill and stop bipartisanship. We can all be better by helping one another. The unpatriotic lie of individualism needs to stop; it is “WE the people,” not “I’m looking out for my own people only.”

This Town Hall was so important because not only did it shed light on the negative impacts of the 2017 Tax Law, it invited us – in light of the realities of the law – to reflect on what the common good would look like for all.

So, what is a tax policy that honors and respects the common good? What does tax justice really look like?  Many people present at this event offered suggestions, and Sr. Simone and Sr. Mary Ellen also offered suggestions. An answer rooted in Catholic Social Teaching of caring for one another and of the Earth is a good direction, yet how we accomplish this goal through public tax policy is a difficult question to answer. What we do know is that the 2017 Tax Law does not accomplish the common good, and laws do not have to be permanent.  We can work together towards creating a tax policy that takes care of everyone.

An important take-away for us was that this kind of dialogue needs to continue to happen and people need to take action through exercising their political rights.  We are inspired by this experience, knowing that in order to continue moving towards the common good, we must continue to educate ourselves on tax policy and its effects on all economic classes. In order to work towards the common good, we must come to the middle ground.  We must not only consider how taxes affect the lower, middle and upper classes: we must get to know all sides of the story.

 

Hanna Potter and Ceara Curry are current members of the St. Joseph Worker Program, a year-long service opportunity through the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Hanna and Ceara are St. Joseph Workers in the Twin Cities, and recently attended NETWORK’s Town Hall event at the Carondelet Center in St. Paul, MN.

Choosing Magis

Choosing Magis

Jeremiah Pennebaker
July 25, 2018

I am a proud two-time graduate of Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, both with a B.A. and a Master’s degree. Like many, college was a very formative time in my life. I met great people and made close friends. While Jesuit ideals and values were something completely foreign to me a few years ago, it was something that had been instilled within me since the first day I stepped on campus. My Jesuit education at Xavier has pushed me to be more reflective and better discern where my talents and efforts are most needed. It was at Xavier where I learned to walk alongside those who I struggle with and those with different struggles. I built relationships with people in multiple marginalized communities and if it weren’t for them I wouldn’t have the depth and understanding of injustices that they face.

It was at Xavier that I learned the values of engaging the uniqueness and wholeness of each person. I realized that I couldn’t just acknowledge the part of my friends that I relate to. I needed to be able to accept them for their entire identity. Because of my relationships with them, I recognized how they had often hid or toned-down parts of themselves when they stepped out in public. But because of my education and immersion into Jesuit values I realized that this was not the greatest good God had intended for them. There was more of themselves that was being unjustly hidden from the world, and that my alma mater needed to do more work to better live up to its own ideals.

For me to invest time, energy, and finances to this institution for 4+ years and not hold it accountable to the values that it taught me would be reckless and irresponsible on my part. So I knew that I had to push it to do more, to live up to its values of cura personalis: of caring for the whole person mind, body, and spirit. My Xavier experience wasn’t terrible; It wasn’t filled with discrimination, I didn’t have teachers who refused to help me, and I wasn’t forced to use segregated facilities. But that doesn’t mean that my experience wasn’t without hardship—particularly related to my identity. And it doesn’t mean that I should settle for the standard of “at least you get to go to a good school.” So we pushed for our alma mater to do more work around racial justice on campus, we asked for it to recognize and grapple with its history of human bondage, we pushed for a more comprehensive effort to create a culture of racial equity on campus.

As my time here at NETWORK comes to a close, I’m once again in a space of reflection and discernment. I’m trying to figure out my next steps and trying to figure out if I took the right ones while I was here. I’m once again asking myself if I pushed NETWORK enough, if I did my part in asking them to do more and holding them to the standards they set for themselves. How can we become an anti-racist institution? How can we move away from tokenization of people of color and towards empowerment of people of color? What is the more that we need to do to not be complacent as another White-ally organization? I would hope that I did my part in pushing this organization to do and be more.

Asking and pushing for more than what’s been afforded to us is what is needed in this complacent and complicit country. As a Black person I need more than good white people who wear pussy hats and safety pins, and who can recite Ta-Nehisi Coates quotes. I need people who are serious about dismantling white supremacy and racist institutions. I need people who are willing to fully grapple with what it means to divest from white supremacy and invest (physically, mentally, and financially) in full reparative practices. As a tax-paying American citizen, I need more than politicians who simply identify as democrats. I need more than representatives who justify their political affiliation by claiming at least they’re not a Nazi. I need Members of Congress who are willing to push for real policy solutions that will protect the most vulnerable in our society. This means validating those who are undocumented. Aiding those who work 40+ hours a week and can’t make ends meet. It means reinstating those who’ve had their rights stripped away because of racist, sexist, homophobic etc. laws. It means protecting those who face state violence on a daily basis. As a country we need more than just equality, we need full comprehensive equity.

We need to push for more, and not just accept what has been placed in front of us. Complacency and complicity have brought us to where we are now.  We have a government filled with white supremacists. Children are being stripped from parents and placed in detention camps. State officials are raiding communities and dragging people from their homes. I don’t believe in being either complacent or complicit in that. Especially in a country that I was taught is built on the ideals of liberty and justice for all. For me to invest my time, energy, and finances into this country, it would be reckless and irresponsible for me to accept anything less than what I was told I would receive – and same thing goes for you, too.

Encountering the Reality of the Southern Border

Encountering the Reality of the Southern Border

Mary Cunningham
July 20, 2018

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas are just miles apart and yet they are worlds away. As you explore both, you notice the cities blend into one another: people living on one side, working on the other, Spanish and English spoken in both, and a shared industrial vibe. And yet, the cities remain two distinct realities – divided by a large border wall, 18 feet high in some places. People on one side are trapped by low wages, poor working conditions, violence, and persecution, and on the other trapped by their own minds and biases. But there is a deep inequality between the two countries, and, in the United States, an explicit denial of the experiences of people living south of the border – people most of us have never even met. It baffles me how a barrier can create not only physical separation, but a separation that is strongly emotional and visceral.

In early July I went to the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time. Working at a federal advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., I am constantly reading news about what’s happening at the border: people fleeing violence in countries such as El Salvador and Honduras, debates on funding for the border wall, family separation, the list goes on. Despite this, I always felt a desire to go the border – to meet people and hear their stories. D.C. is geared towards engaging with immigration on a policy level, but it often feels disconnected from what’s happening on the ground. This trip was a chance to immerse myself in the reality of the border—learning about the working conditions for people on both sides, the process for seeking asylum, the experience of migrants, the conditions in detention centers, Customs and Border Protection, and more. It was a chance to learn, but also a chance to feel the impact of the border and the precise division it creates.

At the beginning of the week we helped serve dinner at Nazareth Hall, a shelter for migrants recently released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and detention centers. Although there was a language barrier, the stories of the people we served food to were written all over their faces. We noticed the timidity of the group as they entered the dining hall and the slight relaxation that took over as they realized they were finally in a safe place. One woman came up to us after dinner with tears in her eyes, holding each of our hands for a few brief moments, as she repeated, “thank you.” We also got a tour of Annunciation House, a shelter for undocumented immigrants started by Ruben Garcia. (This is one of the only shelters available for migrants who are undocumented.) Interacting with migrants who had just been released from detention was a grounding experience. I spoke with one man from Cameroon who had been detained for 18 months. When I asked how that was, he just shook his head despairingly, claiming, “horrible.” It was evident that the conditions in detention centers are deplorable. Many local advocates we met with told us “make no mistake: these are prisons.”

In addition to helping at local shelters, we met immigration advocates and attorneys such as Anna Hey, Deputy Director of the Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services (DMRS). Anna gave us an overview of the particular barriers facing migrants coming to the United States, explaining the snares they often get caught up in the legal process. Among all the things Anna shared with us, what stood out to me the most were the discrepancies between the number of people granted asylum from state to state, depending on where their case is heard. (In New York, New York the grant rate is 85%, while in El Paso the grant rate is a mere 6%.) Additionally, Anna noted how the whole “wait in line” argument is complete bologna. Some people applying for immigrant visas or Legal Permanent Residency (LPR) may have to wait over 20 years! Hearing about this and the lived experience of the clients Anna works with exposed the undeniable reality of our dysfunctional immigration system.

Towards the end of the week we crossed the border into Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. While there, we visited the Bibloteca Infantil, “El Buen Pastor,” a children’s library started by Cristina Estrada. Cristina explained how the limited economic opportunity in Juárez dissuades many people from finishing their education. Maquiladoras (foreign-owned and run factories) are common in Juárez and many Mexicans – often multiple members of the same family– end up working in them. We talked to a representative from Foxconn (an electronics manufacturing company), who told us that the starting wage is around $60 a week. Broken down, that means that at least three members of a family would have to work to make ends meet. Recognizing that many Mexican young people see factories like this as their only path, Cristina’s mission at the children’s library is to provide a space for young people to learn, study, and grow. She provides books for students and helps tutor them so they are able to recognize the value of education and where it can lead them. When one of our group members asked Cristina what she hoped to accomplish, she replied with tears in her eyes, saying her dreams had already been fulfilled. Seeing so many kids achieve their educational goals over the years is her greatest accomplishment.

This immersion trip brought me many things, but perhaps among the most important was that nothing is more powerful than the power of experience. Some elected officials choose to paint the immigrant population with broad strokes, calling them criminals, drug traffickers, or burdens to our country. But how fair is that, when these are people just like us, who each carry their own pain, struggles, and joys? There are so many stories that simply don’t get heard, because we don’t have enough time or space to tell them. While I know this immersion trip and these stories won’t change immigration policy overnight, they certainly changed me. I find hope at the individual level, where the stories of each individual person we meet transform our hearts and minds and push us in subtle ways to see anew. As the Columban motto goes, “A life unlike your own can be your teacher.”

Not a Page in Your Handbook

Not a Page in Your Handbook

Garrison Mays
July 21, 2018

A few weeks ago, I took it upon myself to binge watch the second season of Dear White People, a series on Netflix. There was an episode where one of the supporting characters Lionel, a gay Black man, goes on a little adventure to find the right gay network where he can thrive and be himself. He goes through all the gay stereotype crowds: the Black gays, the theater gays, the overly sexual gays, etc. After his party hopping, he finds out that none of them accept him, regardless of the fact that they all share similar sexual identities. It should have worked out, right? Very wrong. Some people didn’t like Lionel because he wasn’t “gay enough,” others because he wasn’t “Black enough.” The list goes on as to why Lionel doesn’t fit other’s ideas of what he should be.

Like Lionel, I went to a Predominately White Institution (PWI) as an openly gay Black man.  However, unlike Lionel who had some sort of base network, I had a hard time finding a group  that understood and supported the three important attributes – my sexual orientation, my race, and my gender – that make me who I am.  In some groups, I got dumb questions about my blackness, and in others I got dumber questions about my gayness to the point where they weren’t inquisitive, but disrespectful.

Throughout my four years in college, it has been very difficult to feel 100% comfortable at this PWI. I have always bounced around from one white group to another, straight and gay groups alike, to better understand my place.  Lionel’s main network is made of thoughtful, smart, and decent Black people who don’t judge him by his gayness or his awkward blackness, but by his actions and the way he communicates. As my time was wrapping up at this PWI, I found a space that was judgement free with different types of people: straight, gay, Black, Latinx/Mexican, trans–all thoughtful and thought-provoking individuals that care about being inclusive and inquisitive about things that are unfamiliar.

I say all of this to say that Pride Month is a time for celebrating who you are. I for one bask in and appreciate this month so much as I try to find my place in this world that is just now coming around to the idea of the LGBTQ+ community. Nevertheless, this is an ongoing experience for me. I always try and fight the urge not to exclude a person because they don’t abide by the textbook or the website definition of what a queer person is. I’m not for everyone and vice versa–I understand that. But everyone deserves a chance to try and be comfortable in their surroundings. Happy Pride Month!

Garrison is a young chocolate smart-alec, who shares his opinion and wants to hear yours. He graduated from Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH in the spring of 2018 with a bachelor’s in marketing. He is excited to explore the opportunities that present themselves to him moving forward. He loves Beyoncé more than most, his favorite movies are The Incredibles and Reservoir Dogs, and you can find him lying in his hammock listening to the podcast The Read to decompress from people.

Juneteenth: A Celebration and Call for Freedom

Juneteenth: A Celebration and Call for Freedom

Jeremiah Pennebaker
June 19, 2018

“In its spread across the country and gradual supplanting of other emancipation celebrations, Juneteenth has always retained that sense of belatedness. It is the observance of a victory delayed, of foot-dragging and desperate resistance by white supremacy against the tide of human rights, and of a legal freedom trampled by the might of state violence. As the belated emancipation embedded in the holiday foretold generations of black codes, forced labor, racial terror, police brutality, and a century-long regime of Jim Crow, it also imbued the holiday with a sense of a Sisyphean prospect of an abridged liberty, with full citizenship always taunting and tantalizing, but just one more protest down the road.” – Vann R. Newkirk II, “The Quintessential Americanness of Juneteenth”

“What’s Juneteenth again?” I ask myself in my head because I did not want to admit out loud in front of my fellow interns that I didn’t know the meaning behind it. We were trying to figure out how to better integrate racial justice themes into our summer service locations. For the longest time my only connection to Juneteenth was an obscure Boondocks reference. Luckily for me there was another Black student in our intern small group who was able to explain what it was. “Juneteenth is the celebration of coming freedom,” she said.

“Coming freedom” tells us that freedom exists, but it is not here yet. The Emancipation Proclamation — the legislation that freed all enslaved Black women and men on U.S. soil — was signed into law on January 1, 1863. But like many things concerning the freedom and civil rights of Black individuals, the process was delayed. Juneteenth was established two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger issued Order #3 in the district of Galveston, Texas informing the residents that slavery was abolished and that the freed people should now operate under an employer/ employee relationship.

Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, news of liberation finally reached slaves in the southernmost parts of the country. Despite this, enslavement and mistreatment of Black people continued as slave owners took their slaves to the yet-to-be-unionized New Orleans, where emancipation was just folklore. There was no relief or instant jubilation as many might imagine; instead, some faced consequences if they celebrated too openly or tried to run away. This is evident in the account of former slave Susan Merritt in Leon Litwack’s book, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery: “Those who acted on the news did so at their peril. You could see lots of niggers hangin’ to trees in Sabine bottom right after freedom, ’cause they cotch ’em swimmin’ ‘cross Sabine River and shoot ’em.’”[1] Although slaves were free in theory, they were not free in practice.

Coming freedom is the Black American Dream–the idea that we will be free one day as it has already been proclaimed. Growing up in the church I imagined that freedom was something similar to the idea of kingdom come. As my father would say, we stand on tiptoe anticipation for the day that we can lay our burdens down and rejoice in the presence of the Lord. But what I’ve also learned about kingdom come and coming freedom is that obstacles still lie between us and the freedom. Lynch mobs and police units still lie between us and the coming freedom. Protests and assassinations still lie between us the coming freedom. Colorblind classmates, coworkers, and Members of Congress still lie between us and coming freedom. But the hope within coming freedom and the jubilation of Juneteenth lies within the fact that regardless of what lie between us and coming freedom, it is still coming.

[1] What Is Juneteenth?

Questions to Ask Yourself for the 2018 Primaries

Questions to Ask Yourself for the 2018 Primaries

Mary Cunningham
June 14, 2018

With midterm elections rapidly approaching, it is time to start thinking about primaries. While certain state primaries have already passed, there are some that are just around the corner! Primaries are preliminary elections used to determine which candidates will face off for the general election scheduled for November 6, 2018. With a surge of new candidates on the ballots, particularly women, it is important to ascertain whether or not these candidates will implement the policies you care about if elected to office. So with all that in mind, what are the important questions you should ask yourself before voting in your state’s primary?

  1. How will the candidates lived experience and background contribute to a more nuanced and diverse Congress?

When you see photos of most Members of Congress you will notice a striking pattern: they are typically white, middle-aged men. Imagine what it would be like to have more diverse voices in our offices– people of different genders, races, and religious affiliations. Take women as an example: according to Vox, women currently constitute less than 20% of Congress. That boils down to just 22 female senators and 83 female representatives in a Congress made up of 535 people total. It’s even more discouraging when you look at the number of women of color in Congress. According to Axios, 30 states have never elected a woman of color to Congress. Instead of leaving it up to the men to decide, we need female perspectives on issues such as paid-family leave and childcare. There is hope in the fact that more women are running for Congress, but that hope will only be realized if we take the extra step and vote for them!

  1. What is the candidate’s approach to the importance of human dignity for all in local, state, and federal policies?

As Catholics we hold dear the belief that all people have an inherent dignity: rich or poor, citizen or noncitizen.  We do not get to decide whether or not someone is not worthy of love. In Pope Francis’s new apostolic exhortation he calls us to value the life of migrants as we would any other life. Multiple candidates for the midterm elections have come out with flagrant anti-immigrant agendas. There is no place for these egregious mindsets in Congress. We need elected officials who recognize that there is value in every human being and who will enact policies that allow all to reach their full potential. This means recognizing the plight of those who cross the border and the dignity of all people, not making unsubstantiated assumptions about them!

  1. How will the candidate respond to the most vulnerable members of their community?

Back in November, the Republican tax bill passed, promising tax cuts for the wealthy largely at the expense of the poor. The new law is estimated to increase the United States debt by over $1 trillion.  Almost immediately after its passage, Republicans pivoted and took aim at safety net programs. This can be seen in the recent efforts to introduce Medicaid work requirements, SNAP work requirements, and harsh policies imposed on those who receive federal housing subsidies.

In another blatant show of hypocrisy, several House Representatives voting for stricter work requirements and SNAP restrictions in the Farm Bill are themselves benefitting from the federal farm subsidies they will pocket if the bill passes. It’s one thing to claim to support the needs of your constituents, but it’s another to fight for policies that actually help them. Without access to federal assistance programs, many families will not be able to stay afloat. When casting your vote, ask yourself: can you rely on that candidate to protect the needs of people who are marginalized?

When voting for a candidate, it is important to be informed about their platform. Furthermore, as Catholics, it is important to make sure that the people we elect to office represent our closest held values—whether that be dignity of life, care for the poor, or others After all, these are the people that will be representing you and all you stand for over the next few years. That should not be taken lightly!