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Jarrett Smith, NETWORK Government Relations Advocate, is pictured at a June 16 reparations event near the White House alongside Nkechi Taifa.

The Moral Imperative of Reparations

The Moral Imperative of Reparations

Movement on H.R. 40 Is an Act of Justice for Black Americans
Jarrett Smith
November 15, 2022
Jarrett Smith, NETWORK Government Relations Advocate, is pictured at a June 16 reparations event near the White House alongside Nkechi Taifa.

Jarrett Smith, NETWORK Government Relations Advocate, is pictured at a June 16 reparations event near the White House alongside Nkechi Taifa.

Last year, the U.S. government honored Juneteenth as a federal holiday. This recognition came 155 years after the first celebration marked the anniversary of formerly enslaved people and families learning of their liberation in Texas. While the majority of Congress voted in favor of commemorating this day, more is required to fully incorporate the formally enslaved into the American project following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Our national will to act and repair must not end there.

It is time to create a system that protects Black people by putting an end to economic and employment inequality, a failing healthcare system, housing segregation, and state-sanctioned police violence. The passage of H.R. 40, a bill first proposed by Rep. John Conyers in 1989, could put the nation on solid footing toward such a process. The bill would create a commission to research and quantify the persistent economic disparities that Black people continue to suffer due to slavery and the discriminatory federal laws and regulatory practices that followed in its wake, and develop reparations proposals for African Americans.

The passage of H.R. 40 would be the first accounting of the role of the federal government and U.S. institutions in the atrocity of slavery, the legalized discrimination that followed, and action needed for atonement. Despite widespread and growing support to reckon with the legacy of systemic racism, H.R. 40 has not been brought to the House floor for a vote.

This reality calls to mind how much who we elect matters. It’s also why NETWORK Lobby calls on President Biden, as a Catholic Christian and U.S. president committed to justice, to sign an executive order to enact H.R. 40 now. It is a moral imperative.

There are precedents for federal-level repair. The federal government has examined and honored claims for reparation from other communities in the past — in 1946 to federally recognized Native American tribes, and in 1981 for Japanese Americans interned during World War II.

Federal financial support to residents following a natural disaster is an example of reparations. This action happens every year. FEMA is the government’s reparations arbitrator. Repair was made because of a harm suffered. As people of all races and backgrounds grapple with the question of what our country’s history means for us, people of faith have shown up repeatedly to drive this point home. Last year, over 200 faith organizations and leaders, including the African American Ministers in Action, the American Muslim Empowerment Network, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and the Union for Reform Judaism, signed a letter to House leadership asking for legislation to study redress. In May 2022, dozens of secular and faith-based organizations and racial justice advocates sent a letter to the White House urging President Biden to sign an executive order that would create a federal commission by June 19.

Supporting such proposals should be second-nature to Catholics, whose faith believes in reparatory justice in pursuit of reconciliation. We saw this lived out boldly with Pope Francis’ visit to Canada in late July, in which he met with Indigenous people and apologized repeatedly for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system.

Dr. Ron Daniels, Amara Enyia, Bishop Paul Tighe, Nikole Hanna-Jones, and Kamm Howard meet at the Vatican's Dicastery for Culture and Education on July 18 to share ideas regarding reparations for Black people in the U.S.

Dr. Ron Daniels, Amara Enyia, Bishop Paul Tighe, Nikole Hanna-Jones, and Kamm Howard meet at the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education on July 18 to share ideas regarding reparations for Black people in the U.S.

That same month, a delegation from the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing met in Rome with Bishop Paul Tighe, an official of the Dicastery for Culture and Education. A leader in the Vatican’s efforts to grapple with emerging issues, including social media and artificial intelligence, Bishop Tighe suggested the time is “ripe” for the church to consider these issues and agreed to share the delegation’s findings with others.

In his “I Have a Dream” speech, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted that America had given Black people a bad check “which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” Wide support from faith-based and secular organizations today demonstrates the conviction of people in the U.S. that our country must address its original sin of slavery.

People of faith are called to carry on the legacy of working for civil rights and to use their collective power to call on leaders in Congress and the Biden administration to make good on their pledge to tackle systemic racism. Bypassing the opportunity to understand, analyze, and financially quantify this devastation would be more than a missed opportunity; it would be a moral failure.

This story was originally published in the 4th Quarter issue of Connection. Download the full issue here.

Action to Take After Watching Faith in Reparations

You've Seen the Conversation, Now What Can You Do?

Here's an action to take after watching Faith in Reparations

Tell President Biden

NOW is the time to sign an executive order for a reparations commission.

Watch Faith in Reparations Again...and Share it with Friends and Family

Keep Up with NETWORK

Just Politics Catholic Podcast Season One

Faith Speaker Bios

Sister Anita Baird, DHM

Sr. Anita is a member of the Religious Congregation of the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary having served as Regional Superior, Provincial Councilor, and most recently as United States Provincial. A trail blazer and history maker, Sister Anita became the first African American to serve as Chief of Staff to the Archbishop of Chicago in 1997. In 2000, Cardinal Francis George appointed her the founding director of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office for Racial Justice. 

She is a past president of the National Black Sisters’ Conference,  and recipient of the organization’s Harriet Tubman “Moses of Her People” Award. Since 2001, Anita has traveled the country preaching at parish revivals, directing retreats, and presenting anti-racism workshops.   

Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein

Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein has written and taught extensively about the case for slavery reparations in Torah and Rabbinic literature, including in a 2018 article, “The Torah Case for Reparations”. Aryeh is a fifth-generation Chicago South Sider who works as National Jewish Educator for Avodah and Educational Consultant for the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. 

Aryeh is a Senior Editor of Jewschool.com and a member of the Tzedek Lab. Aryeh studied at several institutions of higher rabbinical studies and was ordained by Rabbi Daniel Landes’s Yashrut Institute.

Dr. Iva Carruthers

Dr. Iva E. Carruthers is General Secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference (SDPC), an interdenominational organization within the African American faith tradition focused on justice and equity issues. SDPC is both a 501c3 and United Nations Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). As founding CEO and a trustee of SDPC, she has steered the organization as a unique, influential and esteemed network of faith based advocates and activists, clergy and lay. Former director of the Black Theology Project, Dr. Carruthers has a long history of teaching, engagement in community development initiatives and social justice ministry, fostering interdenominational and interfaith dialogue and leading study tours for the university and church throughout in the United States, Caribbean, South America and Africa.

Dr. Carruthers is Professor Emeritus and former Chairperson of the Sociology Department at Northeastern Illinois University and was founding President of Nexus Unlimited, an information and educational technology firm. She was appointed to the White House Advisory Council on the internet, “National Information Infrastructure”, Mega Project and the educational software she developed was awarded a ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award. She is also founder of Lois House, an urban retreat center, Chicago, Illinois.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis 

The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis—Author, Activist, and Public Theologian—is the Senior Minister at Middle Collegiate Church, a multiracial, welcoming, and inclusive congregation in New York City that is driven by Love. Period. Jacqui is the author of several books, including her latest: Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World. Jacqui earned her Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and earned a M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in Psychology and Religion from Drew University. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she is the first African American and first woman senior minister in the Collegiate Church of New York, which was founded in 1628.

Middle Church and Jacqui have been featured in media such as The TODAY Show; Good Morning America; The Takeaway; The Brian Lehrer Show; and in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Her podcasts include Love.Period., which is produced by the Center for Action and Contemplation, and The Four—a fearsome faith foursome talking about Black Life, Love, Power and Joy, with Otis Moss III, Lisa Sharon Harper and Michael-Ray Mathews. 

Rabbi Jonah Pesner

Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner serves as the Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. He has led the Religious Action Center since 2015. Rabbi Pesner also serves as Senior Vice President of the Union for Reform Judaism, a position to which he was appointed to in 2011. Named one of the most influential rabbis in America by Newsweek magazine, he is an inspirational leader and tireless advocate for social justice. 

Rabbi Pesner’s work has focused on encouraging Jewish communities to reach across lines of race, class, and faith in campaigns for social justice. In 2006, he founded Just Congregations (now incorporated into the Religious Action Center), which engaged clergy, professional, and volunteer leaders in interfaith efforts in pursuit of social justice. Rabbi Pesner was a primary leader in the successful Massachusetts campaign for health care access that has provided health care coverage to hundreds of thousands and which became a nationwide model for reform. Over the course of his career, he has also led and supported campaigns for racial justice, economic opportunity, immigration reform, LGBTQ equality, human rights, and a variety of other causes. He is dedicated to building bridges to collectively confront anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate and bigotry.

Advent 2022: Better Neighbors Set the Oppressed Free

NETWORK Lobby offers Advent reflections

Advent 2022: Better Neighbors Set The Oppressed Free

Min. Christian Watkins
December 5, 2022

Reflection:

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus proclaims the words of the prophet Isaiah and in doing so, makes very clear why he’s been sent among us:

“…to proclaim liberty to captives and to set the oppressed free…”

During Advent, as we prepare to welcome him with the observance of Christmas, these words should challenge us still. If Jesus is sent to proclaim liberty to people in captivity and freedom for those oppressed, how can we claim that he is with us in the U.S. today?

In a culture that seeks to denigrate and ignore entire groups of people, including the elderly and the sick, the U.S. holds some especially dubious distinctions when it comes to incarcerated people. With over 2 million of our people in prisons, the U.S. is the most incarcerated country in the world – not only in raw numbers of people behind bars but also our incarceration rate (639 per 100,000 people, according to the World Prison Brief).

Is this really the land of the free?

It’s even worse when race is taken into account. Despite being only 12 percent of the adult population, Black people account for over a third of those incarcerated in the U.S. That number climbs to over half when Black and Latinx people are counted together. The horrible combination of overly punitive drug policy, excessive sentencing, and the use of for-profit prisons makes for, in many ways, a form of legal slavery. It’s so bad that reform of the U.S. criminal legal system actually enjoys some bipartisan support.

Emmanuel means “God with us,” so for us to gather near to Jesus this Christmas season, we should remember the “with us” that Jesus himself said he came to proclaim his Good News to. Jesus is our melaninated Savior from the southern part of Jerusalem who was unjustly imprisoned shortly before having his life snuffed out in a shameful, public, state-sponsored execution. However, as his followers comprise the Body of Christ still in the world today, we can cooperate in his saving work by helping bring “liberty to captives and freedom from oppression.

Call to Action:

The EQUAL Act is bipartisan legislation that seeks to eliminate the disparity in sentencing for cocaine offenses, a major contributor to mass incarceration. It would apply retroactively to those already convicted or sentenced. As people of faith, we cannot continue to tolerate racial profiling, brutality and hyper-militarization in policing, the loss of future generations to mass incarceration, or the perpetuation of poverty. We affirm the truth that every person is entitled to dignity and equitable justice under law.

Help us ensure that the EQUAL Act is included in the Senate’s must-pass legislation by the end of this year.

Sr. Cora Marie Billings, RSM

Black Sisters Testify: The Real Work of Belonging

Black Sisters Testify: The Real Work of Belonging


November 29, 2022
Sr. Cora Marie Billings, RSM

Sr. Cora Marie Billings, RSM

Sr. Cora Marie Billings, RSM, has spent her life knowing the weight of being the “first” or the “only.” The first Black Sister to join her religious community and the first Black Sister to lead a U.S. parish, to name only two such distinctions, she is also a co-founder of the National Black Sisters’ Conference.

Living in Richmond since the early ’80s, Sr. Cora Marie has served as a campus minister at Virginia State, as head of the diocesan office of Black Catholics, and for 14 years as the pastoral coordinator of St. Elizabeth’s parish, where she still attends.

Sr. Cora Marie shared with NETWORK her reflections on what it means to be a Black Sisters serving in the U.S., with all of the history and cultural proclivities wrapped up in that.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qyBKe4JTfY]

The EQUAL Act Helps Us Dismantle and Build Anew

The EQUAL Act Helps Us Dismantle and Build Anew

Joan Neal and Sr. Mara Rutten, RSM
April 13, 2021

The Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law (EQUAL) Act (H.R.1693/S.79) is bipartisan legislation that seeks to eliminate the disparity in sentencing for cocaine offenses, a major contributor to mass incarceration, and apply retroactively to those already convicted or sentenced.

The EQUAL Act was introduced in the House on March 9, 2021 by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY-08), Bobby Scott (D-VA-03), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND-AL) and Don Bacon (R-NE-02). Across the Capitol, Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had previously introduced the bill on January 28, 2021.

Before introducing the bill, Senator Booker said, “For over three decades, unjust, baseless and unscientific sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine have contributed to the explosion of mass incarceration in the United States and disproportionately impacted poor people, Black and Brown people, and people fighting mental illness… I encourage my colleagues to support the EQUAL Act as a necessary step in repairing our broken criminal justice system.”

While there are many provisions within the justice system that produce discriminatory and racist impacts, the crack/powder sentencing laws are among the most obvious. For many years now, science and experience have shown us there is no difference between use of crack or powder cocaine. Neither one is more or less addictive nor produces more violent behavior in the user. The difference is that crack cocaine has historically been used in more urban communities of color, specifically Black communities, while powder cocaine has more often been found in whiter, more suburban communities. The racial implications couldn’t be clearer.

Furthermore, the sentencing disparity between these two drugs has contributed significantly to the growth of mass incarceration in this country. According to FAMM, in 2019 alone, 81% of those convicted of crack cocaine offenses were Black, even though historically, 66% of crack cocaine users have been white or Hispanic. It is time to end this racist policy and restore proportionality in sentencing.

Events of the past few years have illuminated the systemic inequalities in our country’s criminal legal system. At NETWORK, we cannot continue to tolerate racial profiling, police brutality, the loss of another generation to mass incarceration, or the perpetuation of poverty. As we Build Anew, we affirm the truth that every person is entitled to dignity and equal justice under law. It is time for Congress to act and take a firm stance against institutional racism embedded within the criminal legal system by passing the EQUAL Act (H.R.1693/S.79).

Write a Child Tax Credit Letter to the Editor

Write a Letter to the Editor Supporting the Child Tax Credit

Letters to the editor (LTEs) are a powerful advocacy tool. They are among the most widely read sections of newspapers and magazines and are closely monitored by Members of Congress to find out what their voters are thinking. When LTEs are strategically coordinated and published, they can strengthen the impression of widespread support or opposition to an issue or piece of legislation. Often, they can influence editorial writers to take a stand or influence other members of the media to probe an issue more deeply. While they start out as one voice, LTEs can build a movement!

Your LTE about the Child Tax Credit is incredibly timely, as we are calling on Congress to extend the expanded Child Tax Credit before the end of the year! Also, your letter is contributing to nation-wide, targeted, multi-tactic strategy to make sure that 19 million children and their families can receive the full Child Tax Credit!

Tips for Powerful LTEs

Follow guidelines of the publications to ensure you have the correct length, style, and format. Remember that most publications prefer letters to be 250 words or less.

  • Timeliness is key. Many newspapers publish letters responding to articles, editorials, or other letters the day after they appear.
  • Frame your letter in relation to a recent news item or topic. A letter is more likely to be published when it is written in response to something that has appeared in the publication.
  • Use local, specific information whenever possible. To find your state specific data, please go to https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/year-end-tax-policy-priority-expand-the-child-tax-credit-for-the-19-million 
  • Be aware of your audience: use talking points that will appeal to the readers, avoid jargon and abbreviations, and do not engage in personal attacks.
  • Include your credentials
  • If you are using a sample letter from an organization, do not copy talking points verbatim. Papers can search for canned content after it is published one time.

1. Start with your qualifications.

“As a Catholic who is dedicated to living out the social mission of my Church, I am calling upon Senator Cornyn to support an expanded, fully refundable, monthly Child Tax Credit (CTC).”

2. Tell them what you think!

“It is a moral imperative to end child poverty and hunger, and Congress has a tool do just that with the CTC. This program has a proven, transformative impact on the lives of children and families. We know that the expanded CTC led to historic reductions in child poverty, especially for Black and Latino children. However, under current law, there are over 2.1 million children—including over 1.7 million Latino and Black children–in Texas alone who are excluded from the full CTC because their families’ incomes are too low. It is not only just but common sense to make the full CTC available to these families!”

3. Bring it together with a legislative ask.

“I call on Senator Cornyn to support an expanded, fully refundable, monthly Child Tax Credit. All of Texas’ children, from the Panhandle to Dallas to the Gulf Coast, deserve to live healthy and productive lives, and the Child Tax Credit is important way to support children and families.”

Find submission guidelines on your local paper’s website and send.
  • Found on the same page where you found length rules.
  • Submission will either be to an email address or online form.
Quick Tips:
  • You can write to multiple local papers.
  • It helps to tie your LTE into a recent story run by the paper.
  • Wait three weeks before repeating.

For additional information about writing and submitting a letter to the editor, watch this training from former NETWORK Press Secretary Lee Morrow:

Sr. Sandra Helton, SSND

Black Sisters Testify: Live the Call To Be Authentically You

Black Sisters Testify: Live the Call To Be Authentically You

Nora Bradbury-Haehl
November 23, 2022
Sr. Sandra Helton, SSND

Sr. Sandra Helton, SSND

Sr. Sandra Helton entered her community, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, when she was in her early 30s. She already had two college degrees and had done post-graduate work. The child of a couple of generations of Baptist ministers, she was raised learning the Scriptures.

“From the time I could barely be seen. They’d stand you on the table to recite Bible verses,” she says.

Growing up as a PK (preacher’s kid), she came into religious life with an extremely strong prayer life. “I brought that with me. It’s not something I had to get when I got here,” she says.

She was attracted to life as a sister “because I had this call and I knew the type of service that God was calling me to could not happen in the Baptist Church.” As a convert to Catholicism. some people tell her she came in through the back door.
She says, “No. I came in through the door that God opened.”

As an African-American woman religious, Sr. Sandra’s vocation story, and her experience of life in a predominantly white religious community, is different from that of most sisters in the U.S. Out of 40,000 or so Catholic Sisters in the U.S. only about 400 of them are Black. The National Black Sisters’ Conference has 104 members.

In their September 2020 statement “Hold Up the Light” the NBSC declared, “We must hold up the Light of Christ against the sin of racism. We must speak the truth not only in love but we must speak the truth forthrightly about the complicit, systemic, and structural racism that continues to exist in the American Catholic Church today.”

For Sr. Sandra, living the countercultural witness of a Black Catholic Sister carries both challenges and graces.

“I think for me, being a Black woman in America today means that you basically live in a dual society. I live in a world where I have the norms that are set for the dominant culture. And so I have to follow those norms, even though that may not be the norm that I would typically go to within my own culture,” she says.

“Particularly here in American society, most of the norms are set by the dominant culture without reference to other cultures. … I get up every day and I have to think, ‘What position will I find myself in today?’ I have to always think twice. ‘OK, where am I? And what’s the situation here?’ … It’s a dual setting for me. Most people don’t have to get up and think like that, other than people of color. So it’s not that it’s something that I’m begrudging to do. It’s not something that I dwell on. But it’s an ‘is-ness’ that I have to be conscious of.”

Sr. Sandra gives the example of driving in St. Louis over 20 years ago.

“I was stopped by the police. I was told that the car didn’t belong to me because it belonged to the School Sisters of Notre Dame. I was told I stole the car because there are no Black Sisters. I was made to place my hands on the hood, all of these things that I know that would not have happened had it been someone else, particularly to a woman.”

When she communicates this disparity to white people – that her experience is that of being harassed, rather than protected, by police – she notes, “Some won’t even accept, nor do they understand. Some understand, but there’s always a little caveat, ‘Oh that was happening long ago. That doesn’t happen now.’ That totally is not correct. So there are all of these other things, excuses that come up. Their response is, ‘No, and it’s certainly not talking about me.’”

Conversely, when Sr. Sandra discusses religious life with young people of color, she gets questions that are highly attuned to these realities:

“Are you okay living with whites? That’s one of the questions that comes up a lot. The other one: Can be yourself? And I think the last thing, more importantly, is: Do you feel that what you’re doing is the best thing that you can do in order to help your people?”

“I speak to them of my real experience. I don’t sugarcoat anything,” she says. “I try to answer their questions as honestly as I possibly can.”

Sr. Sandra sees the outreach to young people, especially young people of color, as essential for women religious, that it’s not an attraction to the lifestyle of Sisters that is lacking, but simply the invitations are.

“There are younger people who are very serious about their faith walks and very serious about how they want to spend their lives in terms of their calls as well, and you know it may look different than most people who are in religious communities now,” she says.

While older sisters might question tattoos or other aspects of a young person’s lifestyle, Sr. Sandra counsels, “So what? Let’s go a little bit deeper than that, and it’s not about what you look at and see. It’s when you start getting to the heart, and the gut of who a person is.”

But the vocation to religious life is something Sr. Sandra cherishes and welcomes others to consider.

“It’s a wonderful lifestyle,” she says. “There’s nothing else that I would have done. I know that that’s what God wants me to do, and for whatever reason he’s chosen – and I said yes to it – that I live it out in this particular situation.”

In addition to being lived in the particular, it’s a call that must be lived with authenticity.

“You have to be who you are. No matter what, and even if it’s different,” says Sr. Sandra. “It doesn’t have to be popular. It doesn’t have to be what everybody else is doing. It doesn’t even have to be something your best friend or your family may like. But here’s the thing: It’s going to be where your call is, and that’s where you’re going to live your best life.”

Nora Bradbury-Haehl is the author of “The Twentysomething Handbook” and “The Freshman Survival Guide.”

Sr. LaKesha Church, CPPS

Black Sisters Testify: Example of Love and Healing

Black Sisters Testify: Example of Love and Healing

Briana Jansky
November 20, 2022

Sr. LaKesha Church, CPPS

When LaKesha Church was a young girl, she had a close relationship with God. As a convert to the Catholic faith and temporarily professed with the Sisters of the Precious Blood, her relationship with God is stronger than ever. For Sr. LaKesha, maintaining her close, personal relationship with God and serving others has always been central to discerning God’s will for her life.

Growing up in the Missionary Baptist church, she quickly found that she had a servant’s heart. She was heavily involved in youth ministry. Encouraged by her mother, she became involved in church ministry and worship services regularly and grew in her faith. Later, she volunteered with the Peace Corps, serving in Botswana, Africa.

This knack for service and willingness to follow God led Sr. LaKesha to begin discerning her vocation early on, even before she became Catholic. Now, as a fourth-grade teacher St. Adelaide Academy in Highland, California, she carries her servant’s heart into the classroom daily with her students to show them Christ and to help them become competent citizens.

Like most African American sisters, Sr. LaKesha experienced her fair share of rejection during the discernment process. Historically, Black Sisters have faced difficulty and resistance to professing vows within the church. Many sisters, such as Henriette Delille and Mary Lange, founded their unique religious orders after being rejected by all-white communities, and today, less than 3 percent of Catholic Sisters are African American. Most of them still experience racism, discrimination, and rejection.

Sr. LaKesha had a similar experience that led to a turning point in her discernment process. After one particularly hurtful experience at a “come and see” event, she found herself ready to throw in the towel. Although she felt discouraged, she still felt led to pray to God.

“I think I’m done, Lord. But if you’re not done, then let me know,” she prayed. No sooner than she uttered those words, she received a phone call from the Sisters of the Precious Blood inviting her to come and discern with them.

Sr LaKesha Church, CPPS, stands in front of St. Boniface Church, a place where she finds herself often praying with the saints.

While discerning one’s vocation can often be confusing, Sr. LaKesha has found ways to help with clarity. Along with meeting with a spiritual director and learning the language of discernment, Sr. LaKesha believes in the power of prayer and the intercession of the saints.

“I believe in the power of continual prayer, especially before the Eucharist,” she says. “Through those channels I have been able to hear God’s voice.”

For Black women considering discerning religious life, Sr. LaKesha confidently recommends finding support with the National Black Sisters’ Conference. Founded in 1968 by Sr. Martin de Porres Grey (Patricia Grey Ph.D.), the NBSC has offered education and support to African American religious sisters. The NBSC has extended valuable support to Sr. LaKesha during her discernment.

Sister LaKesha says that living in community “can be a challenge and a struggle, but also a gift.” As she spent time in various congregational houses, she learned more about herself and how to live in community with others. She says, “I’m still learning! Relationship building is a lifelong process.”

In addition to the National Black Sisters’ Conference and the Sisters of the Precious Blood, Sr. LaKesha has also found strength in the saints. She likes to ask for intercession from St. Teresa of Ávila and Mary Undoer of Knots.

As she continues to discern religious life, Sr. Lakesha has a few goals in mind. First, she wants to be herself fully, united through vows. In terms of being herself, she means her authentically Black self and all that her experience as a Black sister has to offer to the life of the church and others. These experiences include her suffering, joy, intelligence, wit, and culture.

Sr. LaKesha Church, CPPS, distributes ashes to her students.

Sr. LaKesha Church, CPPS, distributes ashes to her students.

She also wants to continue teaching her students what it means to be a life-giving, reconciling presence in the church. As the church grapples with issues such as racism and division, she wants to teach them integrity, unity, and what it means to respect the human person. She understands that part of her mission and calling to serve is to help guide her students along the path as they journey their way closer to Christ and with others.

For Sr. LaKesha, a healed church looks like the communion of saints: “Jesus did not judge or cast the first stone. He loved everyone. If we can truly imitate him, we will be healed.”

For her, it’s crucial to be this example of love and healing to her students. In her words, it is essential to be a life-giving example of what it means to imitate Christ. “I have to teach my students about Christ and his love. He encountered people with love, and he dignified them.”

Briana Jansky is a freelance writer and author from Texas.

Eliminate Unjust Sentencing Disparities and Build Anew

The EQUAL Act Has a Fighting Chance

The EQUAL Act Has a Fighting Chance

Min. Christian S. Watkins
November 18, 2022

Eliminate Unjust Sentencing Disparities and Build AnewOver the past two years, the NETWORK community has worked to advance legislation that would reform the criminal legal system for our first and second annual Lobby Days, with the goal of doing our part to end the injustice of mass incarceration.

Now, after much effort, the Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law, better known as the EQUAL Act, finally has an opportunity to pass in the Senate. The EQUAL Act is bipartisan legislation that seeks to eliminate the disparity in sentencing for cocaine offenses, a major contributor to mass incarceration. It would apply retroactively to those already convicted or sentenced. The difference between success and failure is dependent on NETWORK and our partners making a joyful noise in support of the EQUAL Act.  

The original EQUAL Act was introduced in the House on March 9, 2021 by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries, Kelly Armstrong, Bobby Scott, and Don Bacon and in the Senate on January 28, 2021 by Senators Cory Booker and Dick Durbin. The House passed the bill on September 28, 2021. However, the Senate Judiciary Committee failed to take it up for consideration. The lead Senate sponsors were not satisfied with the bill dying in Committee, so they and Rep. Jeffries inserted the EQUAL Act into a piece of must-pass legislation, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).   

Now, categorically, NETWORK does not support the NDAA. Congress passes the NDAA every year to set guidelines and priorities for defense policy, make organizational changes to the Department of Defense (DoD) and other interrelated agencies, and provide guidance on how military funding can be spent among other things. Year after year, mandatory military funding has proven that exponentially increased military spending has been detrimental to our nation, and its passage has often been the bane of justice advocates and peace seekers nationwide. Instead of Congress pursuing bold reforms to defense spending, the annual passage of ever-increasing funding to the DoD in the NDAA has locked us in an unsustainable cycle that leaves other legislative priorities without adequate financial support, and left only crumbs for disenfranchised and disinvested communities of color.

Despite our disagreements with it, the NDAA will pass with broad bipartisan support this year, as it does every year. At this point, as we near the end of the 117th Congress, it is also the only bill that can carry the EQUAL Act over the finish line.

In the pursuit of justice, we applauded the House sponsors of the EQUAL Act for adding its provisions into this year’s NDAA in an attempt to secure its passage. Unfortunately, Senator Chuck Grassley—the ranking Republican member of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee—has maintained his disapproval of the EQUAL Act by thwarting its advancement to the Senate floor. In fact, he has submitted his own, less than equitable and considerably problematic alternative into the NDAA among other amendments counterproductive to eliminating injustice and racial disparity.  

Senator Grassley has a history of supporting criminal legal system reforms. In the late 1990s, he launched a successful statewide initiative to address Iowa’s drug addiction problems at the grassroots community level. Now is the time to tell Senator Grassley that we need to accept the evidence-based need for the EQUAL Act to be passed, now, together. We need this racially equitable bill and nothing short of it. 

While there are many provisions within the justice system that produce discriminatory and racist impacts, the crack/powder sentencing laws are among the most obvious. For many years now, science and experience have shown us there is no difference between use of crack or powder cocaine. Neither one is more or less addictive, nor produces more violent behavior in the user. The difference is that crack cocaine has historically been used in more urban communities of color, specifically Black communities, while powder cocaine has more often been found in whiter, more suburban communities. The racial implications couldn’t be clearer. Furthermore, the sentencing disparity between these two drugs has contributed significantly to the growth of mass incarceration in this country. According to FAMM, in 2019 alone, 81% of those convicted of crack cocaine offenses were Black, even though historically, 66% of crack cocaine users have been white or Hispanic. It is time to end this racist policy and restore proportionality in sentencing. 

As people of faith, we cannot continue to tolerate racial profiling, brutality and hyper-militarization in policing, the loss of future generations to mass incarceration, or the perpetuation of poverty. We affirm the truth that every person is entitled to dignity and equitable justice under law. As the 117th Congress comes to a close after two years of hard-fought progress and arduous midterm elections, this one-of-a-kind legislation is much needed in order for our nation to be as liberatory and equitable as it is on paper. Now is the time for the Senate to follow the House in taking a firm stance against racism embedded within the criminal legal system by assuring the EQUAL Act is kept in the Senate’s FY 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. 

If you live in Iowa, Add Your Name: Tell Senator Grassley to Support Fixing Racist Sentencing Disparities!

*If you know more Iowans to share this letter with, email the letter to them or post on Twitter or Facebook

Sister Anita Baird Shares History of Black Sisters in the United States

Sister Anita Baird Shares History of Black Sisters in the United States

Honoring the Legacy of Black Sisters during Catholic Sisters Week
May 12, 2021

“In this moment of dual life-threatening epidemics: COVID-19 and racism, the voice of the Church in America is eerily silent when it comes to the racial unrest in this country.”
– Sister Anita Baird, DHM

 

In honor of this year’s Catholic Sisters Week, Sister Anita Baird, DHM spoke to the NETWORK community about the history of Black sisters in the United States and their work today. Sister Anita, a recognized religious leader, community leader, and racial justice activist in Chicago, presented, “This Is Our Story…This Is Our Song: Black Catholic Women Religious Standing in the Breach.” While the hour-long talk was only enough time to brush the surface of the rich and complex legacy and the often painful history of Black women religious, Sister Anita told the stories of several sisters and the 53-year history of the National Black Sisters’ Conference, as well as her personal journey of becoming Catholic and a member of the Religious Congregation of the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary.

As Sister Anita remarked, “Over 500 years of Black Catholic faith and presence in what is now the United States… is a history that was not just erased, but rather, it was often never documented or recognized by the larger Church, even to this day.” Sister Anita went on to share a wealth of insights into both this history and the Church today. While Black Catholics are sometimes seen as “recent newcomers” to the faith, that is an inaccurate and uninformed assumption.

Sister Anita explained that Black Catholics had an active presence in the United States and in the U.S. Catholic Church for more than two centuries before Declaration of Independence was even written. This began in 1526, when the first enslaved African peoples (who were themselves Spanish-speaking Catholics) were brought by force to what is now the U.S. by Spanish colonists, all with the blessing of the Catholic Church.

As Sister Anita’s description of the history of early U.S. Black Catholics continued, including instances where religious conversion was held as a price for freedom from enslavement, I was reminded of Cardinal Gregory’s February 2021 reflection on Black Catholics in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. He named the often-unspoken truth that many Black Catholics’ ancestors did not come to their faithfulness by choice, but by cruelty. Sister Anita and Cardinal Gregory’s truth telling led me to reflect on how often white people are encouraged to not name racism in our history or the current reality of race in the Catholic Church and in the U.S.

Sister Anita named the three Black Catholic Women included in the group of six Black American Catholic candidates for sainthood, including Mother Mary Lange, O.S.P. She noted that in 1829 when Mother Lange founded the first African-American religious congregation, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, in Baltimore, Maryland, it was still legal to enslave people in parts of the United States and named some of the challenges and tragedies the Oblates faced. White religious orders in the U.S. did not accept African-American women until the 1940s, and Sister Anita told how Eliza Healy (sister of the first African-American bishop, Bishop James Augustine Healy) joined the Congregation of Notre Dame in Canada and served as a superior and Mother Superior decades before then. Even Sister Antona Ebo’s story, shared by Sister Anita, illustrated the racism present in the Church for Sister Antona and the two other Black sisters who joined the Sisters of Mary in 1946. When Sister Antona Ebo marched alongside Congressman John Lewis in Selma following “Bloody Sunday” and spoke out for racial justice in the years following the Civil Rights movement, she was bearing witness to racism that infected even her religious life.

For herself, Sister Anita knew she wanted to be sister since she was young, but as a Black woman was discouraged from considering religious life. Sister Anita spoke about the day when she saw two Black nuns at a department store and followed them around, in awe. After that, Sister Anita says, “I knew I could be a Black woman religious. I had seen them with my own eyes.”

Today, Sister Anita and the sisters and associates who comprise the National Black Sisters Conference continue to grapple with what it means to be Black Catholics, and continue to take their place at the table. Faithful and prophetic, they expose the racism of the Catholic Church and hold the hope that it can change.

Watch Sister Anita Baird’s talk: www.networklobby.org/sistersweek2021.

Learn about the National Black Sisters’ Conference: www.nbsc68.com.

This article was originally published in Connection. Read the full issue here.