Category Archives: Racism

Lessons for Democracy in 2024

Lessons for Democracy in 2024

Advocates Agree That Voting Remains a Powerful Tool and Act of Engagement

Don Clemmer
March 1, 2024

One of the reasons politics seemed so broken in 2023 might have been because so many people separated the exercise of power from service:

  • A faction of the U.S. House of Representatives kept trying — and failing — to make the very functioning of the government contingent on deep cuts to human needs programs.
  • A former president on the campaign trail promised that a return to power would mean annihilation of his opponents.
  • And at the state level, restrictive voting laws continued to threaten the participation of all people in a system that shapes their lives.

It all raises the question of the overall health of democracy in the U.S. and its prospects for weathering the 2024 elections — in the presidential race, Senate, House, and state-level contests. Advocates, academics, and leaders in the areas of faith and politics agree — and shared with NETWORK’s Just Politics podcast last year — that current threats to democracy require vigilance and action. Action includes rooting out Christian nationalism, opposing voter suppression, forging broader political alliances to work common problems, and showing up to vote.

The Place of Faith in Politics

Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld

“This is much bigger than just elections,” says Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, who notes that the world has witnessed a global decline in democracy for the past 17 years. In consolidated democracies like the U.S. and Brazil, this has occurred because people elect populist, authoritarian leaders. “Just beating those leaders doesn’t mean that democracy is restored.”

Celina Stewart

“The threat has always persisted. The tools that are used each election cycle sometimes change, or sometimes they just get scaled in some way or another,” says Celina Stewart, chief counsel and senior director of advocacy and litigation for the League of Women Voters, of the particular threat of voter suppression. “Voting rights is really about empowering people to engage in their community, to have a voice in selecting the person or the group of people who will represent their interests.”

“When we start suppressing votes, and we start suppressing knowledge, we’re heading down a very dark road,” says Sr. Anita Baird, DHM, a member of NETWORK’s board. “As a church, we have failed to speak out on many of these issues.”

Sr. Anita Baird, DHM

As the threat of Christian nationalism has grown more visible in U.S. politics in recent years, NETWORK has vocally denounced the movement, as have other religious groups. The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) is one of them.

“Christian nationalism takes that Gospel of love and perverts it into this false idol of power,” says Amanda Tyler, BJC’s executive director. She says it’s incumbent on Christians to call out where public assertions of Christian identity stray from the teachings of Jesus.

She adds, “When we look around at all the injustice in the world today, we desperately need, I think, that authentic Christian witness to try to call us to live in a more just and equitable place.”

Rep. Jim Clyburn

Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, assistant leader of the House Democratic Caucus, has a similar response to colleagues who separate their Christian identity from concrete service.

“I ask them: Show me what you mean. Don’t tell me what you mean. Show me,” he says, citing from James 2:16 that one cannot say “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed” and do nothing to help someone. “You have to feed them. You have to clothe them. Because faith without works is dead.”

In the face of chaos spurred by Christian nationalism in the body he has served for over 30 years, Clyburn says he has begun reaching out to members of different factions within his own party, recognizing that they “need to demonstrate some leadership in the very near future to make sure this country doesn’t to go over the edge.”

Inaction Is Not an Option

“We need democracy to deliver more for people who have been left out,” says Kleinfeld. And in bridging that connection, she sees Catholics as having a special role. “Almost every other religious group is on one side of the aisle or the other. It’s really quite stunning. Catholics are the only group that are pretty evenly divided in Republicans and Democrats.”

Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM, Joan F. Neal, and Colin Martinez Longmore interviewed a range of democracy advocates and experts for Season 3 of the Just Politics podcast, produced in collaboration between NETWORK and U.S. Catholic magazine.
To hear more from the conversations encapsulated in this article, visit uscatholic.org/justpolitics
or networklobby.org/just-politics-podcast/

Kleinfeld advises, “What you need to start doing is both talking to people on the other side but then working with people on the other side on things you find you agree on. And this is really important, because finding those instances of agreement requires some deep conversation. It also requires constructive engagement with the system. … It can show people that the government can work. It can show people the humanity of the other side. And ideally it eventually moves into more political change.”

Rep. Clyburn says that fixing its own faults is something that makes America great.

“COVID-19 exposed some faults in our system that needed to be repaired,” he notes. And that inspired him to bring together Members of Congress from rural districts to get access to broadband included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The result was a $65 billion investment to make high-speed internet available to all people in the U.S.

Baird agrees that promoting policy that affords people what they need to participate more fully in society amounts to “strengthening the foundation of our democracy,” which gives future generations a better chance to realize the dream Dr. King talked about.

“We’re called to be in the political marketplace and to speak truth to power and to do it within the context of the Gospel and the social teachings,” she says. One failing Baird laments is how the racial divide in the U.S. makes it much harder for people to find solidarity with one another.

“If I’m white and poor in America, I don’t see what I have in common with poor people of color in America,” she notes. “But you have more in common with poor people of color than you have with the wealthy — that you have nothing in common except the color of your skin!”

Baird recalls that, when Dr. King called for a poor people’s campaign, that’s when people got upset. “When he started talking about bringing people together from every different background,” she says, “that became a threat to the power structure.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts speaks outside the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 6 as she and Senator Peter Welch of Vermont introduced the Inclusive Democracy Act. The bill seeks to end felony disenfranchisement, a measure that disproportionately keeps Black and Brown people in the U.S. from voting.

Stewart of the League of Women Voters affirms the value of getting engaged: “So often in my interactions with people, they don’t always recognize how important their perspective is. They think everyone may feel that way, they don’t know the value that it brings. And every voice, collectively, has so much power.” Baird says that — especially as a Black woman — she struggles with people who say they are so demoralized by U.S. politics that they aren’t going to.

“Things do change. It may not change as quickly as we want or in the exact way that we want,” she says, but, “people died for the simple right to vote.”

Stewart asserts that who we elect matters: “Those are now people who make decisions on behalf of your family, on behalf of your life, your access, your ability to move and have potential services around the country,” she says. “And so it’s a really big deal, not only election day, but the impact of who’s elected.”

Kleinfeld says some people are resistant to holding onto a system that seems to be broken, but she cautions, “There’s not been a better system for peacefully changing power, peacefully choosing leaders who represent you. And that’s a lot to throw out.”

“Perhaps we have to go through this to realize how fragile democracy is, but what a gift it is,” says Baird. “I think we have to understand the power of the vote, the power of people coming together.”

This story was published in the Quarter 1 2024 issue of Connection.
NETWORK shares Adam Russell Taylor's essay on educating his sons during Black History month

Acknowledging Systemic Racism and Unpacking Whiteness

NETWORK honors Black History Month by revisiting a 2019 blog post where a former staff member discussed NETWORK’s commitment to becoming an antiracist, multicultural organization. One strategy involved hosting staff book discussions and sharing resources to learn about the systemic injustices in federal and local policies that have led to inequities like the racial wealth gap—which was crucial in informing our work to build our country anew

Unfortunately, in 2024, we see harmful challenges to teaching Black history in book bans, curricula censorship, and the intentional erasure of Black history. Despite these obstacles, there is hope. Adam Russell Taylor, Sojourners’ Executive Director, shared in his essay, Teaching My Black Sons They Are Loved, how he cultivated a tradition of sharing Black history with his sons while driving in the car. Mr. Taylor’s commitment to teach Black History is a powerful model for all people in our country who are responsible for the care of children–-whether they are Black, Brown, or white, so that we can better understand who we are as a nation. As he points out, “Teaching Black history is not just about strengthening our democracy or fixing injustices; it’s also about affirming and celebrating an essential part of our nation’s culture and identity.”

Acknowledging Systemic Racism and Unpacking Whiteness

Black History Month Update
February 14, 2024
Lindsay Hueston
February 21, 2019

In a commitment to moving towards being an anti-racist, multicultural organization, NETWORK staff is intentionally setting aside time in 2019 to read and discuss Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. The book examines structures of race in the modern-day United States, and is an especially pertinent read during Black History Month. As a white woman, DiAngelo challenges systems of whiteness that have led to the racism that permeates our political and societal culture. Though it may manifest itself in different ways, racism is still alive and well today, and impacts countless policies and issues that NETWORK works on in order to mend the gaps in our society.

During Black History Month, NETWORK challenges you to examine the way you and the systems around you may unintentionally perpetuate racism. We are trying to be intentional about listening to the experiences of people who are directly impacted by systemic racial injustice, and we encourage you to do the same.

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

– Lilla Watson, indigenous Australian activist

Some resources that may be helpful throughout this month, please comment below with any recommendations you have to add:

Books
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
White Like Me by Tim Wise
Waking Up White by Debby Irving
Trouble I’ve Seen by Drew G.I. Hart
The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Artist: Ernesto Yerena

Authors
Roxane Gay
Audre Lorde
Alice Walker
Toni Morrison
James Baldwin
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Maya Angelou

Videos
We Must Talk About Race to Fix Economic Inequality (YouTube video)
Talks to help you understand racism in America (TED talk playlist, videos on racial justice)
The Myth of the Welfare Queen (PBS video)

Articles
Everyday Respectability Politics
An Examen for White Allies: from the Ignatian Solidarity Network
What Black Lives Matter Can Teach Catholics About Racial Justice: from America Magazine

Lists
Reading List for Northam: recently-published article that has some great anti-racism resources
16 Books About Race That White People Should Read: further reading resources
(White) Girl Power aka The List: a list of anti-racist resources to white women to attain a deeper understanding of Black women’s lived experiences
Skimm Reads for Black History Month: recent popular books written by Black authors

Websites
People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond: holds programs, workshops, and resources for anti-racist education and organizing
Rachel Cargle: an activist and writer who educates others about anti-racism and intellectual discourse
Everyday Feminism: website has an entire section dedicated to the intersections of race and feminism

Podcasts
Code Switch (NPR)
Pod Save the People
Yo, Is This Racist?
Good Ancestor
Hoodrat to Headwrap
The Racist Sandwich Podcast
Ezra Klein: Political Power and the Racial Wealth Gap
A Conversation About Conversations About Race

TV/Film
13th
Dear White People (TV, Film)
The Hate U Give
Black-ish
Moonlight
Pariah

Faith in Democracy

Faith in Democracy

Nichole Flores on Catholic Teaching’s Power to Fight Hate

December 20, 2023

Dr. Nichole Flores, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia

Dr. Nichole Flores is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. Her work focuses on issues of justice, democracy, migration, family, gender, and economics. She is Catholic, Latina, a wife, a mother, and like so many residents of Charlottesville, she witnessed the unthinkable when white supremacists with tiki torches marched on her city in 2017 and killed one young activist, Heather Heyer.

Dr. Flores recently spoke with NETWORK about democracy, public theology, and community in the wake of the Charlottesville attack. The following is an excerpt of that conversation.

How did your early life steer you toward teaching and writing on religious studies and Catholic ethics, justice, and democracy?

NF: I think the originating event was bearing witness to the faith of my grandmother, Maria Guadalupe Garcia Flores. Like so many of us, I was inspired by my grandmother’s faith, which passed on to me in a really profound way.

When I began studying theology, I realized that to be a Latina theologian and to have witnessed what I had witnessed in my grandmother’s life, in the lives of my family, and in my community meant that theology necessarily had a public and a social orientation. I had to pay attention to those things that were most challenging for our communities, and to think about them theologically. What does theology have to say about poverty, about anti-immigrant sentiment, about racism? That guided me in this direction, in addition to just an innate love for politics.

Can you tell us about your experience of the events in Charlottesville in August 2017?

NF: My narrative of these events is deeply informed by the activists and specifically the religious activist community in Charlottesville, of which I count myself a part. One of the young activists at the forefront of the response, who also happens to be one of my former students, Zayana Bryant, likes to say, “Charlottesville is not just a moment, it’s not just a hashtag, it’s a movement.”

It’s important to understand that local activists refer to not just that day of August 12 but to that summer as the “Summer of Hate” in Charlottesville. There were several rallies leading up to August 12. The community was very aware that the Unite the Right rally was being organized and was trying to sound the alarm bells early on. I think the rest of the world was really surprised by what happened. But those who had been paying attention in Charlottesville were not at all surprised. And that was even more devastating, because a lot of people put in a lot of energy trying to mobilize religious communities and activist networks, and get more support in town. Those connections didn’t really materialize at the level that could have made a difference and saved more lives. So that’s a part of the story.

At the time, I had just found out that I was pregnant with my first child. I had flown to Denver with my husband to share the news with my family. We watched all of this unfolding from 2,000 miles away, which was difficult, especially given that we had been concerned and had tried to show up in protest earlier in the summer. The local truly became national and global in that moment.

Because of our experiences in Charlottesville, our community was not terribly surprised by what happened on January 6. It resembled very closely what we had survived in our town, including the lead up, the kind of violence, and the people who were involved with the violence. It’s interesting how that on-the-ground experience has shaped the consciousness of our community. We have this devastating, first-hand knowledge of what can happen when we don’t take these threats seriously.

What has happened since then?

NF: Charlottesville is just like any other city with a lot of welcome but also challenging diversity in experience, politics, and socioeconomics. The Catholic community in Charlottesville, with just a handful of parishes, has everybody from frontline leaders of the resistance who put their lives on the line for Black Lives Matter, to people who were writing and talking about it, like me, to people who were horrified but didn’t really do anything in terms of direct action, to people who were kind of neutral. These people are all Catholic, and we’re all communing together.

This has been a real challenge for me not just in my calling as a Catholic theologian, but also in my calling as a Catholic mom who goes to Mass and participates in my parish because I want to love the people in my community as Christ loves. It is really, really challenging when I see openness to these ideologies that are a threat to my community, especially to our Black and Jewish siblings, who were very explicitly targets. In Catholic Social Teaching, solidarity is a virtue. An approach of solidarity helps me to hold all of these challenging things. I love the people sitting in the pews next to me, but I also strongly object to many of the ways that people have responded to this incident.

Even though I’ve been concerned and even disappointed at times by the response of our Catholic community in Charlottesville, the movement has really unfolded and been committed to making Charlottesville a better place to live in a broader, more comprehensive way. Responding to instances of white supremacy, successfully campaigning to remove Confederate statues that mark public space in our town as unsafe for Black and Brown people, providing support and community for migrants and refugees, advocating better zoning laws so more people can afford to live with dignity in the city where they work… — there is so much great work happening in Charlottesville in response to this event that I think is really inspiring.

You mentioned watching these events while pregnant. What are the lessons or insights you want to pass down?

NF: Because that baby is now 5 years old, I think about this a lot, and the importance of teaching him that he belongs to this community and thus has responsibility for things that maybe he wasn’t even born for. I’m trying to instill an awareness that these injustices exist, but not stopping there — that he has power and responsibility for responding to them. What does this world look like when all our friends are valued and their dignity acknowledged in ways that lift them up?

How can public theologians change the discussion around democracy in the U.S.?

NF: Those who are reflecting theologically in this context of a democracy that’s being tested have the opportunity to set the discourse. As someone in a public university where I teach mostly non-Catholic students, I think there are resources from within our beautiful, multifaceted Catholic tradition that can help our entire society to think well about the challenges that we are facing in a democracy. Now, in a political environment where a lot of people are justly on guard for the creeping theocracy, we have to be very wise and judicious about how we introduce resources for public consideration. But I do think it can be done.

I wrote a book on Our Lady of Guadalupe. Her symbol, even though it is profoundly Mexican and super Catholic, appeals to so many people and invites them to think about what justice and flourishing means. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were able to show other activists and organizers how a symbol, a very particularly religious symbol like Guadalupe, could be so powerful for people who had never heard her story.

Can religious arguments really change people’s minds?

NF: I think that they have and they can, but it is a process of communication and of making them accessible to the public. And that’s one of the things that I very much admire about NETWORK’s work in the community.

How can our concepts be relayed in a way that neither waters them down nor alienates people? Catholic Social Teaching is a wonderful place to start because these concepts are profoundly Catholic, but they also resonate with people who are not Catholic. If we explain clearly what we mean by common good and common life, people are really amenable to that vision. The same with solidarity.

We have a deeply Christ-centered, grounded understanding of solidarity and we can bring the richness, thoughtfulness, and prayerfulness of our tradition to bear on this larger conversation.

You taught a course called “Faith in Democracy.” Where do you find faith and hope in our democracy?

NF: I think back to that experience of being pregnant with this beautiful baby, witnessing devastating events that would rightly make someone feel despair. Why do we do what we do if this is just how people are going to react?

We were bringing life into the world even as these awful things were happening. We had hope in this little person. It’s been very special and profound to watch him grow up, to see the values he’s already been able to cultivate, this little hope, this little light. To see how he has been shaped by this community in ways that are so positive underscores the hope that I have.

I’m kind of obsessed with Advent, because it’s a season where we reflect deeply on what it means to gestate and to give birth. In doing that, we create room for another person. And that’s a profoundly democratic thing to do, right? And a profoundly Catholic thing to do. There’s a lot of richness there, and that continues to motivate me even when things are decidedly still difficult in our society.

Hear more of this conversation on the Just Politics podcast. 

This story was published in the Quarter 4 2023 issue of Connection. 

Advent Calls for Renewal

This Advent Calls for Renewal

Joan F. Neal
December 8, 2023

Advent 2023, Week Two Reflection: Disavow and Dismantle White Supremacy

Readings for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 10.

IS 40:1-5, 9-11
PS 85:9-10, 11-12, 13-14
2 PT 3:8-14
MK 1:1-8

The readings on the Second Sunday of Advent remind us that the purpose of Advent is to show us that we can start again, that new beginnings are possible. The Gospel and the first reading this Sunday feature the words of Isaiah, fulfilled in John the Baptist, a voice in the wilderness proclaiming Jesus’ entry into human history. Here, God is doing something entirely new. Human history is starting over again, and we get a second chance to hear the Word of God and follow it.

Read NETWORK’s Advent 2023 reflections here!

In the U.S., we could use this restart to our history. White supremacy and Christian nationalism were built into our systems and structures by people with a vision of America as a place for only a certain kind of privileged, white Christian. This white supremacy has endured for centuries and is contrary to the Gospel. Jesus showed up to transform the structures and habits that cut us off from God — to bring liberty to captive people and let the oppressed go free. Sadly, these structures still show up in how we treat one another: economic inequality, lack of access to affordable healthcare, and violence and oppression against Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, etc.

In recent years, NETWORK has sought to tell this story and spread it far and wide. In doing so, we have centered two justice-seekers — Fr. Bryan Massingale and Dr. Robert P. Jones — whose voices cry out in the desert of white supremacy as it manifests itself in U.S. Christianity. In October, we hosted the third of our White Supremacy and American Christianity dialogues with them, this time focusing on how “a consistent ethic of hate threatens our democracy.”

Read NETWORK’s Advent 2023 reflections here!

We know and recognize the truth and that truth can set us all free. It requires facing our history, repenting and repairing the wrongs. NETWORK’s conversations with Fr. Massingale and Dr. Jones offer a sobering perspective into the founding sins of the U.S. But where we start doesn’t always have to be where we end. This week’s second reading reminds us that as we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, we must conduct ourselves in holiness because, “God does not delay his promise,” and “is patient …, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

This Advent, let us all heed the call of the prophetic voices of our day and set about educating, organizing, and lobbying to disavow and dismantle white supremacy and Christian nationalism–in our communities and our churches.

Call to Action:

To assist with the ongoing work of dismantling white supremacy, NETWORK created a Reflection and Discussion Guide that you can download. It is a companion to the latest White Supremacy and American Christianity online conversation. We hope that it equips you, advocates and supporters, in personal reflection and your own conversations. We encourage you to consider hosting screenings and discussion groups to help educate your community about white Christian nationalism — an ongoing threat to a multi-racial, multi-cultural democracy where all people can thrive.

Where in your community does the path still need to be made ready for the way of the Lord? 

Visionary Goals

Visionary Goals

Devoting Ourselves to Transformation Brings Out Our Best

Sr. Emily TeKolste, SP
December 11, 2023

Sr. Emily TeKolste, SP is NETWORK’s Grassroots Mobilization Coordinator.

When I was a kid, I was mildly obsessed with NASA — particularly the Apollo missions to the moon. Because of this, I admired President Kennedy, who set a goal to send astronauts to the moon and inspired the American people to champion his vision. In a speech at Rice University, he said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”

As I grew older, I started to encounter the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many other visionary leaders who rallied our country to come together across division. They saw the fight for racial and economic justice as inextricably intertwined. They strove to build and sustain what Fred Hampton called a Rainbow Coalition, recognizing that our fates are linked.

Today, we benefit from the many fruits of their visions. We carry cellphones in our pockets that exist because of the vast technological leaps provided by the research and brilliant intellect that went into the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions and beyond. We have landmark legislation, the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act, that have moved us closer to racial justice because of Black-led, multiracial, multi-faith campaigns that withstood white supremacist violence to create a better world for us all.

We have made astounding progress thanks to the work of so many visionary leaders — people just like you and me who stood up and proclaimed that we could live in a better world if we could come together toward a common goal.

Over the past decade, though, it seems like we’ve lost so much ground. Supreme Court decisions have stripped the Voting Rights Act of vital protections. Leading candidates for public office stoke racism and misogyny with no negative consequences. And many family bonds are frayed along ideological lines — with people unwilling to recognize the humanity bestowed by God in their loved ones, and all too willing to stop talking to one another.

Several years ago, I encountered the words of Civil Rights icon and public theologian Ruby Sales in her interview with Krista Tippett of On Being. She said “I really think that one of the things that we’ve got to deal with is that — how is it that we develop a theology or theologies in a 21st-century capitalist technocracy where only a few lives matter? How do we raise people up from disposability to essentiality?” She goes on to say that this goes beyond the question of race, recognizing the basic dignity and the very real pain that so many people — Black and white — are experiencing in our world today.

When it comes down to it, most of us — no matter what we look like or where we get our news — want the same things. We want to live in safety. We want to love and be loved. We want enough food to eat and some comfort in our lives. We want to contribute to our families and communities. We want meaningful work — whether paid employment, care for family, or volunteer work (care for community). And we want that work to pay us fairly so that we can support our families and contribute to our communities.

Lately, though, it seems that people cling so tightly to political parties and identifying labels that we can’t seem to find common ground on anything. A few wealthy individuals and greedy politicians seek to divide us along ideological lines by strategically stoking a history of racial bias so that they can distract us while they dismantle our democracy and manipulate the economy to serve their interests.

The results of this strategic use of division and racism are stark: a real and ongoing threat of political violence, multiple days this summer of new domestic and global record-setting high temperatures, unaffordable housing costs, and a wealth gap between the rich and the poor that’s greater today than it was in the Gilded Age that preceded the Great Depression.

These things hurt all of us!

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We are people of hope. We believe in human dignity and are capable of treating everyone around us with the dignity they deserve. By doing so, we can begin to open up a path for transformation for those close to us, and to people in our community. When we begin by transforming our own hearts and minds, we can bring others along with us and, together, transform our whole political climate.

What if — instead of naming our enemies as each other — we come together to achieve a common goal as visionary leaders did in the past? This will require the best of all of us, much like we did as a nation when we took on the space race. What if we embraced a race to end poverty, a race to house the unhoused, a race for compassion and humanity? Not because they are easy, but because they bring out the very best each of us has to offer.

This story was published in the Quarter 4 2023 issue of Connection. 

The Need for Welcoming Communities

The Need for Welcoming Communities

Congress Can Invest in Welcoming Asylum Seekers Across the U.S.

Jenn Morson
December 5, 2023

Sr. Susan Wilcox, CSJ, of Brooklyn, N.Y. shares her account of coordinating and serving meals to people seeking asylum who had been bused to New York. She noted how her efforts would benefit from Congress funding the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which would shift the U.S. response to asylum seekers from militarization at the border to investment in communities across the country who offer a welcoming response to asylum seekers.

“Immigrants and Asylum Seekers Welcome Here!” read the signs held by a handful of supporters stationed behind the podium as several speakers, including three supportive members of Congress, gathered to deliver a letter to Congress signed by over 7,000 Catholics. Gathered September 13 on the U.S. Capitol grounds, members of NETWORK Lobby and other organizations including the International Mayan League, Church World Service, and Women’s Refugee Commission joyfully and emphatically laid out their hopes for a shift in how the U.S. government approaches its response to asylum seekers.

In her opening remarks, Ronnate Asirwatham, Government Relations Director of NETWORK, stated that the purpose of the gathering was to call on Congress to invest in welcoming communities. “Who are welcoming communities?” Asirwatham said, “To put it bluntly, welcoming communities are our community. People who welcome are all of us. It is very natural to welcome. We welcome each other, we welcome strangers, we welcome people seeking safety, and people passing through.”

“While it is most natural to welcome, it seems today that the voices against welcome, especially against welcoming people seeking asylum, [are] getting louder,” Asirwatham warned. “State and federal governments are moving to criminalize welcome. In Arizona, people are being arrested for leaving water out in the desert. In Florida, people are afraid to take their neighbors to the doctor because of pushback. And in Texas, people seeking safety are being pushed back, and Texans wanting to provide them water are not being allowed to.”

In spite of these obstacles, Asirwatham comforted those gathered, saying, “We are not going anywhere. Congress will hear us. Congress must act and enact laws and policies that support us, the American people, that allow us to thrive and reap the benefits that welcoming our fellow human beings allow. This is why our message is simple: we are asking Congress to invest in welcoming communities. We are simply asking Congress to invest in us.”

Gathered Together

Asirwatham introduced many compelling speakers who gave testimony of their own advocacy work as they also encouraged Congress to invest in welcoming communities. Speakers at the press conferences were optimistic despite the strongly worded letter calling for a renewed sense of justice.

Rep. Judy Chu (CA-28) speaking at the gathering

U.S. Congressman Joaquin Castro (TX-20) addressed the crowd, thanking NETWORK for being a voice of compassion, conscience, dignity, and reason for human beings. Castro’s own mother previously served on the board of NETWORK. “Your voice and your activism is needed more today than ever,” Castro said. “We need to remind politicians who use migrants as political scarecrows — because that’s what they do, they use them as scarecrows to engender fear and resentment among the American people — we should remind our fellow Americans and mostly politicians that America became the strongest nation on earth not in spite of immigrants but because of immigrants.”

“Instead of embracing our rich immigrant heritage, too many politicians have used our immigrant communities as political pawns by fearmongering and peddling harmful, dangerous, political rhetoric. And the human cost is immense,” said Rep. Judy Chu (CA-28) in her remarks.

Lifting up the leadership and vision of Pope Francis, Rep. Luis Correa (CA-46) said, “One human being suffering around the world is one human being too much.”

In her moving testimony that referenced her own plight as a refugee from Guatemala, Juanita Cabrera Lopez, Executive Director of International Mayan League, gave a message of hope: “I know firsthand what it looks like when a community invests in welcome and justice, and I know it is possible today because many communities are already doing this work.”

Regarding the immigration of Indigenous Peoples, Cabrera Lopez said, “Our ask remains the same. We need long-term investment to continue welcoming asylum seekers, particularly Indigenous asylum seekers.” Cabrera Lopez concluded her speech with a call for investing in shelter for newly arriving families and youth.

Sent Forth

Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM, holds up a copy of the letter signed by over 7,000 Catholics from all 50 U.S. states calling on Congress to invest in communities who welcome asylum seekers, while Sr. Karen Burke, CSJ, and Sr. Alicia Zapata, RSM, pray a blessing over the letter at the conclusion of NETWORK’s Sept. 13 action on Capitol Hill.

Sister Eilis McCulloh, HM, encouraged those gathered to extend their hands in prayer over the letter to Congress, as Sister Alicia Zapata, RSM, and Sister Karen Burke, CSJ, prayed in gratitude for the signers of the letter while also offering prayers for immigrants, organizations that support immigrants, and for the openness of members of Congress to the message of the letter.

“May this letter, which carries the stories of our immigrant siblings and our hope for immigration reform, be one way that we share in Jesus’ mission to ‘welcome the stranger’ and advocate for immigration policies that invest in communities,” they prayed.

The letter, which was co-sponsored by Hope Border Institute, Kino Border Initiative, the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, and St. Columban Mission for Justice, Peace, and Ecology, was addressed to key House and Senate members. It begins with Pope Francis’ 2015 remarks to Congress, in which he urged those gathered to welcome the stranger. The signatories are asking Congress to appropriate funds for supporting immigrants and communities while divesting from programs which militarize the border and criminalize immigrants.

In order to accomplish these goals, the letter urges Congress to fully fund the existing Shelter and Services Program at $800 million in 2024, and to distribute the funding equitably.

Additionally, the letter requests that any funding made available is done so via grant or contract rather than as a reimbursement. Additionally, the letter urges Congress to take back all funding for the border wall construction that has not yet been spent and cut funding for Customs and Border Protection and all other militarized border enforcement agents and technologies, as these agencies are overstaffed and overfunded.

NETWORK and its partners remind Congress that seeking asylum is a human right that should not be restricted, and invite them to embrace the Catholic belief of the inherent dignity of every person and make this a guiding principle to immigration policies, moving away from militarization and towards care.

In the words of Sister Susan Wilcox, CSJ, “We are doing the work. We have the solutions. We just need a little help.”

This story was published in the Quarter 4 2023 issue of Connection. 

Build Anew Series – Housing

Build Anew Series — Part 9
Housing

Virginia Schilder
November 30, 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 week, we’re talking about housing.   

Everyone can agree that food, water, shelter, and health care are the most fundamental necessities of life. Yet, the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, is facing a long-term trend of increasing houselessness. From 2015-2022, the unsheltered population increased by 35 percent — which means an additional 60,560 people in this country are without shelter. In 2022, the numbers of unhoused persons (over 420,000) and chronically unhoused persons (nearly 128,000) reached record highs.

Leaving so many of our neighbors out on the street is a policy choice. A structural refusal to control rent prices and designate and maintain affordable housing is a moral issue. The housing crisis most affects the people already made vulnerable by unjust systems, including the elderly, children, Black and Brown communities, LGBTQ+ persons, Native Americans, and families in poverty. The COVID-19 pandemic only worsened these disparities.

We know that housing is an essential part of the wellbeing of ourselves and our families. Access to affordable housing creates stability and unlocks a greater ability to get and keep a job, to pursue education, to stay out of the criminal legal system, to tend to one’s health, and to care for oneself and loved ones. We all deserve the basic security of a safe and stable place to live. This is why NETWORK supports a housing first model, and why we must engage federal policy to build anew our systems of ensuring housing security for all.

Present Realities

In our profit-driven housing market, millions of people experience housing insecurity every year. The largest problem renters and potential homeowners face today is a lack of affordable housing. In the United States, a record number of over 40 million renting and homeowning households are cost burdened, spending more than a third of their income on housing. When so much of a family’s income must go towards housing, they have to cut back in other areas. Cost-burdened renters or homeowners may experience hunger, struggle to pay for transportation, find it harder to pursue educational or professional opportunities, and experience higher rates of eviction and foreclosure. Rising rents and housing costs are worsened by stagnant wages, the decreasing public housing stock, and the poor condition of remaining units. (Since the 1990s, the U.S. has destroyed almost a quarter-million public housing units, and replaced only a fraction.) Meanwhile, rent prices for new privately developed housing are unattainable for low-income families.

Peter Cook, executive director of the New York State Council of Churches, participates in a NETWORK “Care Not Cuts” rally NETWORK on Long Island on May 22.

For people of color in the U.S.—especially for Black families—banks, the real estate industry, and local, state, and federal policies have enforced centuries of legal segregation and housing discrimination. Practices such as forcing Black families into higher-cost and lower-quality segregated housing (often in neighborhoods near toxic waste sites or highways with poor air quality), denying federally backed mortgages, and preventing the racial integration of white neighborhoods, have had devastating impacts on economic, education, community safety, and health outcomes. The legacies of redlining, environmental racism, and exclusionary zoning persists. Today, more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement won the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the gap between white and Black homeownership (which exacerbates the racial wealth gap) is even larger than it was in 1960 before the legislation went into effect.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half a million people in the U.S. were experiencing houselessness, disproportionately in Black, AAPI, and Native American communities. With housing costs already stressing families’ financial security, layoffs and other unexpected costs during the COVID-19 pandemic caused many to fall behind on rent and mortgage payments, leading to evictions and foreclosures where state or federal eviction moratoriums failed to protect vulnerable households. Before the national eviction moratorium went into effect (temporarily), the expiration of state eviction moratoriums in 27 states led to tens of thousands of additional COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Access to safe, affordable housing is absolutely critical for every person and supports our country’s overall health. Housing creates stability that helps people pursue education, employment, and health, as well as eliminate contact with the criminal legal system, comply with the terms of their probation, and reduce their risk of recidivism. By failing to ensure housing for all members of our society, we harm family development and deprive millions of the stability of a secure shelter. Lack of housing is a matter of life or death, and one disproportionately faced by communities of color. This is immoral. We must respond to this urgent need and build anew with housing policies that dismantle systemic racism in housing and ensure equitable access to safe and affordable housing for all.

Facts and Figures on Housing in the U.S.
Our Values

“Dorothy Day and The Holy Family of the Streets,” Kelly Latimore

As we’ve been exploring throughout the Build Anew Series, Catholic Social Justice principles call us to uphold the dignity of each person as an equally valuable member of the global family. Because dignity refers to what people deserve by virtue of their humanity, upholding dignity means ensuring that each person has what they need to live well. Stable, affordable housing — a shelter, a home — is among the most basic of these necessities.

The pervasiveness of houselessness and housing insecurity stands in stark contradiction to the Catholic call to uphold the dignity of each person. The Vatican II encyclical Gaudium et spes reads, “All offenses against human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions… all these and the like are criminal: they poison civilization; and they debase the perpetrators more than the victims and militate against the honor of the creator.” In other words, failing to ensure safe living conditions for all people is an offense against God!

Widespread houselessness is also where we see our social sin of racism and classism especially clearly. It is immoral that some people in this country have multiple houses, while so many have none. It is immoral that so many offices, hotel rooms, and other gathering spaces remain empty at night while our neighbors sleep out in the cold on the streets below. Whether or not you have shelter should not have anything to do with the color of your skin, or how much money is in your bank account. Yet, this is the reality in the U.S., an unconscionable affront to the equal dignity and worth of every single human being which our faith emphatically professes. We have an obligation to our siblings to redress this grave moral harm, as a matter of what it means to live a faith of justice, peace, and compassion.

We are all interconnected. When we all have the food, water, health care, and shelter that we deserve by virtue of our humanity, the whole community benefits. When we all have housing, our nation as a whole will be a healthier, safer, more stable, and more caring place to be for all of us.

When he visited a homeless shelter, Pope Francis asserted, “The home is a crucial place in life, where life grows and can be fulfilled, because it is a place in which every person learns to receive love and to give love.” Housing is a basic human right and the foundation of a person’s ability to meet their needs and care for themselves and their family. Each person deserves a stable shelter in which they can feel safe and at home. Together, we have the resources to make this a reality, and our faith calls us to do so.

Housing Justice and Federal Policy

Luckily, we know that good policy can significantly reduce houselessness. We saw this in the period from 2020-2022, when the rate of increasing houselessness slowed, due to strong (yet temporary) investments in human services programs during the pandemic.

The federal government must take action to promote lasting housing stability for all people. Congress must expand vouchers and increase funding for Section 8 rental assistance (including tenant-based assistance and project-based rental assistance), as well as invest in public housing repairs and rehabilitation (which need more than $26 million in major capital repairs). Additionally, federal lawmakers should pass legislation to provide a renter’s tax credit and expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program.

In addition to ending houselessness and bolstering rental assistance programs, Congress must address the ongoing legacies of redlining, by investing in Black and Brown neighborhoods and creating sustainable pathways to homeownership for communities of color, who still face racial discrimination in housing and lending practices.

In rural America, homeownership is the principal form of housing. Yet, access to mortgage credit is limited, especially for Black households. Another challenge for rural households is clean water infrastructure. Hundreds of rural communities nationwide do not have access to clean residential drinking water and safe waste disposal systems. The government should support the fostering of sustainable, vibrant rural communities, including by increasing investment in Department of Agriculture housing grant and loan programs to ensure every rural household has the resources to repair, buy, or rent affordably.

Most urgently, as Congress appropriates funding for Housing and Urban Development (HUD), let your elected officials know that housing programs must be bolstered, not cut!

Join us again next week for our tenth and final installation of the Build Anew Series, looking ahead to 2024! And don’t forget to stay tuned on Instagram (@network_lobby) and Facebook for our Build Anew video series!

Build Anew Series – Criminal Legal System

Build Anew Series — Part 7
Criminal Legal System

Virginia Schilder
November 3, 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 week, we’re talking about the criminal legal system, and the urgent need for reparations.   

The United States incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other nation in the world. Stop and let that sink in. In a nation with this extreme incarceration rate, where migrants and refugees seeking safety are placed in cages, and where millions of people — especially people of color — are ripped from their communities and locked up for years or decades, we must ask if the U.S. is really “the land of the free.”

The U.S. criminal legal system targets impoverished, working-class, and Black and Brown communities — seen in who and how the system polices, arrests, prosecutes, sentences, and even executes. In reacting to real social need with surveillance and criminalization, the system fosters instability and insecurity, and furthers the cycles of crime, violence, and poverty. Under the 13th Amendment, incarcerated persons can still be forced into labor for little to no pay. As a result, mass incarceration, which disproportionately locks up Black and Brown Americans, is the primary system of racial segregation, oppression, and coerced labor of our time.

Prisons and cages are incongruous with the Gospel message of true community. No human is disposable. The prevailing ethic of punishment (including capital punishment), separation, and imprisonment is not justice. We are called to a fuller picture of true justice — one characterized by community accountability, integration, healing, and well-being for everyone in our country, with no exceptions.

Present Realities

Since the end of legal slavery, U.S. criminal legal policies have targeted people of color, especially Black Americans. Professor Michelle Alexander writes, “Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.” The “tough on crime” movement of the 1980’s gave way to policies, like the The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (the “1994 Crime Bill”), which caused widespread over-criminalization, mass incarceration, and police militarization. Years of “tough on crime” policies and a focus on punishment rather than community healing have targeted already vulnerable communities, worsening racial inequality and creating cycles of poverty for many individuals, families, and neighborhoods. Financial incentives for drug arrests have encouraged over-policing in Black and Brown communities, who are left with disproportionate numbers of folks with criminal records (mostly for minor non-violent offenses) and face ongoing brutality from the police.

The U.S. has the highest percentage of incarcerated people in the world, largely a result of extreme sentencing measures such as mandatory minimums and “three strikes” laws. Even non-violent offenses can result in years in prison and continuing restrictions and penalties after release. Disparities in sentencing policies for comparable offenses, such as using powder cocaine vs. crack cocaine, have yielded vastly longer average sentences for people of color compared to white folks. The ongoing use of cash bail and barriers to accessing adequate legal defense trap low-income people in the system. And, the practice of referring kids (usually Black and Brown children) to the youth justice system for misbehavior at school has facilitated a “school to prison pipeline” that disrupts the lives of children and perpetuates cycles of incarceration.

Within U.S. prisons, the inhumane practice of solitary confinement, disproportionately used for people of color and people with mental illnesses, persists — along with other dangerous living conditions, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the U.S. is the only Western nation that still implements the death penalty and ranks fifth in the world in executions.

Restore Act Leave BehindA person convicted of a crime in the U.S., whether or not they serve time in prison, suffers long-term discrimination in employment, education, and public services. Requirements to “check the box” on employment applications and prohibitions against licensing in certain fields cost formerly incarcerated people both the immediate income they need and their long-term earning potential, which hurts not only themselves but also their families and children. Returning citizens face restrictions in accessing federal student aid, health care, the right to vote, public housing (which impacts family reunification), and nutrition programs like SNAP. These policies all contribute to the cycle of poverty for families and communities.

Head to our recent Build Anew Series – Food Systems post to learn more about the SNAP ban for citizens returning from prison with felony drug convictions. Read a testimony from Serena Martin-Liguori about the need to pass the RESTORE Act, which would end the ban on SNAP for returning citizens in the upcoming Farm Bill.

Facts and Figures on the U.S. Criminal Legal System
  • 2 million people are currently in jail or prison in the U.S. The U.S. has over 25% of the world’s population of incarcerated persons despite accounting for only 4% of the world’s total population. The U.S. has the highest percentage of incarcerated people in the world, 655 per 100,000.
  • The U.S. prison population has increased by 500% over the past 40 years. People of color comprise nearly 78% of the prison population. These trends are explained by changes in policies and laws, not crime rates.
  • In 2013, the Sentencing Project reported that if incarceration rates continue to grow at the pace they have since the 1970’s, 33% of Black American males can expect to go to prison in their lifetime, as can 16% of Latino males, and 6% of white males.
  • The U.S. carceral system costs taxpayers $80 billion per year.
Our Values

The murders of George Floyd and countless others are examples of the systemic violence committed every day by our country’s “justice” system. Our people cry out for change. We cannot tolerate the loss of another generation to mass incarceration. Our legal system’s punitive, “tough-on-crime” mentality perpetuates poverty, instability, and a dehumanizing ethic that harms us all.  

A legal system predicated on control, alienation, and racial subjugation stands in complete affront to the restoration, inclusion, peace, and racial justice into which the Catholic faith calls us.  Throughout the Bible, God moves to set free the imprisoned: “The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isaiah 61:1).  In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says that when you visit people in prison, you visit him. 

Further, the Psalms proclaim that God looked at Earth to “hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die.” Pope Francis has clearly stated that the death penalty is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” that is “inadmissible” in all cases. The Catholic Church is unequivocal in opposition to capital punishment, which in the world today is needless, state-sanctioned murder that perpetuates vengeance, violence, and militarism. Moreover, the death penalty is a mechanism of white supremacy, disproportionately executing Black Americans and our siblings with mental illness.    

We are rooted in our faith in a God not of punition, retribution, and abandonment, but of healing, mercy, and transformation. We are called to extend these graces to one another. To be truly just, our legal system must affirm the human capacity for reconciliation, reintegration, and reconnection. Even further, we must recognize the ways in which racist constructions of “crime” and oppressive social conditions undergird the punitive carceral system.

During his lifetime, Jesus did not look away from social problems and the people they affected, but moved into encounter and was an agent of healing. In his example, we cannot cast away our neighbors behind cell doors. As Angela Davis articulates, 

“Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.” 

The Catholic teaching of the immeasurable worth of each human being means that no one is disposable. We cannot let illusions of disconnection — “us vs. them” narratives — keep us from responding to the suffering in our prisons: “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body” (Hebrews 13:3). Salvation means wholeness, liberation, and communion. God does not leave a single person out of the circle of care, forgiveness, and restoration, no matter their past — and neither can we.  

Take Action: H.R.40 Reparations Study Commission

White text on a dark blue background reads, in capital letters, "IT'S TIME TO ADDRESS, REPENT, AND REPAIR." Throughout the Build Anew Series, we’ve been noting the operation of racism in and through our economy, our tax code, and our political, immigration, and even food systems. This week, we see that the legacy of enslavement is acutely visible in the system of mass incarceration. In conjunction with other social and economic barriers, our carceral system continues to chronically destabilize and tear apart Black and Brown families and communities.

All of this makes clear: we need reparations. The legacy of enslavement persists today. Structural racism keeps communities from accessing the housing, health care, food, economic stability, safety, and political participation we all deserve and need to thrive. As a country, we need reparations in order to move towards repair, transformation, and liberation for all of us.

Catholics are called to be agents of peace, healing, truth-telling, and justice. Take action here by telling President Biden to use his executive power to establish an H.R. 40 reparations study commission. Together, we can work for reparations and take a crucial step towards true healing, democracy, and flourishing in our country.

Join us again next week for part eight of the Build Anew Series on health care. And don’t forget to stay tuned on Instagram (@network_lobby) and Facebook for our Build Anew video series!

Tax Justice is Racial Justice

Tax Justice is Racial Justice

Undo the Hidden Racism of the U.S. Tax Code

Jarrett Smith
November 16, 2023

 

Jarrett Smith, pictured above at an August 25 reparations event outside the White House, is a NETWORK Government Relations Advocate.

It is no secret that the U.S. suffers from a staggering degree of wealth inequality. Resources are increasingly concentrated in the possession of the top 1 percent, creating a degree of inequality never before seen in the country’s history.

This wealth stratification is most acute across racial lines. A Pew Research study in 2016 found the median income of white households was $117,000, while Black households had only $17,000. And while a white person in the U.S. has an equal chance of being a millionaire and having no wealth, a Black person is 20 times more likely to have no wealth than to be a millionaire. Between 1983 and 2016, Black wealth decreased year over year, and education did not stop this trend.

This vast inequality did not happen by chance. As NETWORK’s Racial Wealth and Income Gap workshop helps to illustrate, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Jim Crow, and centuries of the U.S. government’s racist policies created and still preserve this hoarding of wealth in the hands of a small class of white folks. Many of these policies shaped our tax system. Indeed, the U.S. tax code plays a central role in not only keeping rich people rich, but also rewarding white people at the expense of Black folks.

The marriage joint filing bonus, for example, privileges married couples, especially when one spouse makes high income while the other isn’t employed. A high earner can split their income with their spouse, and thus split their tax liability. Usually, these couples are white, as the highest-earning demographic in the country is overwhelmingly white. Because Black married households make the least household income in the country, rarely does one member of the household make enough money to enable their spouse to stay at home. Joint filing or married filing separate tax incentives do not help Black or Brown households because they earn so little income compared to their white counterparts.

In addition, tax incentives are structured to reward the things that wealthier, white folks can afford. For example, there are tax incentives for home ownership, but not for renting or for buying cars. Moreover, medical insurance is tax-deductible, but medical debt is not — penalizing Black and Brown communities who face inequities in access to affordable health care.

Long-term capital gains, usually enjoyed by white wealthy folks, are taxed at a lower rate than “ordinary income” — that is, wages, salaries, or even short-term capital gains. In 2021, an unmarried middle-income worker like a teacher or truck driver paid 22 percent of income tax on every dollar of taxable salary she made over $40,525. Meanwhile, a billionaire living entirely off long-term capital gains or dividends paid no more than 20 percent on millions of dollars of unearned income.

Over the past several centuries, white families have been able to amass wealth off the backs of enslaved and underpaid workers. They then pass that wealth on to their descendants, usually without having to pay their fair share of taxes on what is passed down. The tax code specifically protects this preservation of generational wealth in white families, and even helps it build up, by providing tax benefits to assets that are inherited. Under one policy called “Step Up in Basis,” if the owner of an investment or asset that has increased in value dies, neither the owner nor the inheritor owes any tax on that gain!

We know that for all nations, not just the United States, social and health outcomes — including for the richest folks — are worse in countries with high wealth inequality. Wealth inequality is immoral. It harms the most vulnerable and marginalized among us, especially Black and Brown communities, and it harms the wellbeing of the country as a whole.

The fact that racism is written into our tax code makes three things clear. First, it confirms that racism is systemic and is enacted through policies and structures. Second, the road to equality is reparations now, to begin to heal our society and close the ever-widening gap between those who have been allowed to amass and hoard resources, and those who have had to go without – so that all communities can truly thrive. And third, as we think, dream, and envision a future with reparations, transforming the tax code must be part of what it means to repair and build anew our society.

 

This story was published in the Quarter 4 2023 issue of Connection. 

Build Anew Series – Democracy

Build Anew Series — Part 6
Democracy

Virginia Schilder
October 27, 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 week, we’re talking about democracy.   

This past weekend, NETWORK held the third iteration of our White Supremacy and American Christianity event series, with Fr. Bryan Massingale, Dr. Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, and NETWORK’s Joan F. Neal — this time joined by Darcy Hirsh from Interfaith Alliance and Laura Peralta-Schulte, NETWORK Senior Director of Public Policy and Government Relations.

Fr. Massingale and Dr. Jones articulated how Christian nationalism and white supremacy (we cannot talk about one without the other) suppose that America belongs to white Christians, who are therefore entitled to its control and its resources — and justified in achieving that control through violent means. Our speakers explained that white supremacist Christian nationalism is a “consistent ethic of hatred” that benefits only a specific subset — “the right kind” — of white folks. This hostile ethic, predicated on exclusion and hierarchy, is fundamentally anti-democratic.

In seeking to concentrate power in the hands of a select few, Christian nationalism and white supremacy pose an urgent threat to democracy today. While this threat to democracy is growing, it isn’t new. Systemic racism has worked to disenfranchise Black and Brown voters for centuries. The restriction of voting rights, gerrymandering, the undermining of election integrity, and the unchecked role of corporate money in politics all weaken democracy and threaten free and inclusive political participation.

The weakening of democracy in the U.S. is part of a larger trend of marked decline of democracies worldwide. Pope Francis has lamented this decline with urgency, affirming that “Universal participation is something essential; not simply to attain shared goals, but also because it corresponds to what we are: social beings, at once unique and interdependent.” Catholic Social Justice emphasizes the sociality and the dignity of each human being, which means that each person has a right to a say in the decision-making processes that affect their lives. What could it mean for our democracy to be oriented towards participation, encounter, the common good, and truly collective decision-making?

Facts and Figures on Democracy in the U.S.
  • Between 2016-2018, after the Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision, at least 17 million voters were purged from voter rolls. Counties with a history of voter discrimination continue to purge voters at a much higher rate than other counties.
  • Research demonstrates that strict voter ID laws significantly increase the turnout gap between white voters and Latinx, Black, and multiracial voters.
  • As of 2020, 5.17 million people — one out of 44 adults, and 2.27% of the total U.S. voting-eligible population — are disenfranchised due to a current or previous felony conviction. Over 6.2 percent of the adult Black American population is disenfranchised, compared to 1.7 percent of the non-Black population. It is estimated that over 560,000 Latinx Americans are disenfranchised, and approximately 1.2 million women are disenfranchised, comprising over one-fifth of the total disenfranchised population.
Present Realities

While democracy is much more than what happens on election day, even the right to vote, our most basic method of democratic participation, is not fully realized. Voting rights in the U.S. are under assault at the state and federal levels.

In particular, election policies continue to deliberately undermine Black and Brown voter participation. Since the 15th Amendment codified the right to vote for Black American men in 1870, state and local governments have continued to pass discriminatory laws to disenfranchise voters. One in 16 Black Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate 3.7 times greater than that of non-Black Americans. Today, voter ID laws and restrictive voting rules disproportionately affect people of color, low-income and disabled voters, elderly and young voters, and voters who are unhoused.

The 2013 Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court ruling gutted Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, dismantling protections that prevented states from disenfranchising voters based on race. Since then, Congress has failed to pass legislation to restore that oversight provided in Section 4(b), meaning that states are still able to enact racist restrictions without accountability. As a result of the Shelby decision, over 1,000 polling places have closed — again, disproportionately harming voters of color, rural voters, and voters with disabilities. According to the White House, since January 2021, 18 states have enacted 30 separate laws that will make it more difficult to vote. What’s more, over 400 bills that would make voting less accessible, including restrictions to voting by mail and early voting, as well as voter roll purges, have been considered in various state legislatures in recent years.

Varied methods of voter suppression, in addition to the undue influence of corporate money in politics, gerrymandering, felon disenfranchisement, and other anti-democracy tactics limit political participation, particularly for our most marginalized community members. States that make voting harder or redraw districts unfairly strip their neighbors of access to involvement in our collective political life. These efforts are serious threats to our democracy, that not only harm our communities’ well-being but harm our ability to politically engage in the pursuit of our communities’ well-being at all.

Lived Experience

Rabbi Bonnie Margulis, with Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice, spoke about the 2020 Wisconsin primary at a Faithful Democracy Town Hall in April 2020.

Rabbi Bonnie Margulis. Photo from Madison365

“Our election on April 7th was a morass… The Thursday before the election, a federal court judge said that our absentee ballots did not need witness signatures, so people were sending in their absentee ballots without signatures because they were safer at home [during the pandemic] and didn’t have any way to get their ballots witnessed. 24 hours later, that decision by the federal court was overturned by an appellate court, and so all of those ballots were invalidated. At least 750 ballots in Milwaukee alone were invalidated for lack of signature.”

Rabbi Margulis explained that in Dane County, where Madison is, the county clerk said that if you requested an absentee ballot online you didn’t need an ID. However, “That also was declared to be illegal, so people who didn’t submit an ID couldn’t get an absentee ballot.” At the same time, “A federal court judge had said that absentee ballots could be postmarked as late as April 13th, and on April 6th (the day before the election) the United States Supreme Court overturned that and said no, ballots have to be postmarked by April 7th, the day of the election.”

Further, in part due to a shortage of polling workers during the pandemic, “In Dane County, the number of polling places was reduced from 95 to 63. In Waukesha, a suburb of Milwaukee, the polling places were reduced from 13 to 1. But the most egregious was Milwaukee, which usually has 180 polling places, and it was reduced to 5.” Rabbi Margulis emphasized that this was a blatant attempt to suppress the votes of people of color because Milwaukee has the greatest percentage population of people of color anywhere in the state.

Our Values

A core principle of Catholic Social Justice is that we all have both a right and moral responsibility to participate in our shared public life and political processes, as a matter of our dignity and agency. As the Leadership Conference of Women Religious states, “As women religious and believers in the abundant love of God for all, we are called to bring our faith and our voices to the public square.”

People cast their votes for federal democracy reform as part of NETWORK’s “Team Democracy” events across the country in 2021. Voting rights, which have come under threat at the state level since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, are a key component of NETWORK’s efforts to defend democracy.

People cast their votes for federal democracy reform as part of NETWORK’s “Team Democracy” events across the country in 2021.

This responsibility to participate means each person also has a fundamental right to participate and must be equipped with the resources needed to do so. The intentional curtailing of political participation by restricting voting, gerrymandering, and undermining elections is a serious moral failure and a threat to the free society we are called to build. We have a responsibility not only to participate in the democratic process ourselves but also to protect our most vulnerable neighbors’ right to join in shaping our society.

But participation alone is not enough: political participation must be aimed at and committed to advancing the common good. The Catholic Catechism states, “It is necessary that all participate, each according to his position and role, in promoting the common good. This obligation is inherent in the dignity of the human person.” The Catholic tradition also calls us to move beyond partisan politics in our pursuit of justice and social transformation. The US Council of Catholic Bishops writes,

“As citizens, we should be guided more by our moral convictions than by our attachment to a political party or interest group. When necessary, our participation should help transform the party to which we belong; we should not let the party transform us in such a way that we neglect or deny fundamental moral truths or approve intrinsically evil acts. We are called to bring together our principles and our political choices, our values and our votes, to help build a civilization of truth and love.”

Our democratic processes are a vehicle of participation in the public realm, which is where our Catholic obligation to cast our nets wide in cultivating social solidarity, loving one another, and working for the good of others happens. Scriptures tell us, “There should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (1 Corinthians 12:25-27), and “So in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:5). The political arena is where we are called to act as the body of Christ, honoring each of its parts, alleviating suffering anywhere. And just as Jesus did not lead by force or concentrated power but spoke of casting down mighty rulers, we are called to assert the strength and needs of our communities, always opposing the imposition of authoritarian, unilateral rule — the kind of government to which Christian nationalism points.

The Catholic tradition affirms that public service is a noble vocation, but only when it serves justice and the flourishing of life. Elected officials must be accountable to all our people, especially the most vulnerable among us, and center the needs of real communities—not the interests of wealthy donors and corporations. In Fratelli Tutti (66), Pope Francis reminds us that we are called to direct society to the pursuit of the common good, and policies and laws that allow unlimited money in politics threaten this democratic and moral obligation. We are called to uncover these workings of wealth and power (“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11)) and institute justice in their place.

We know that there are alternatives. Catholic sisters, for example, have long modeled “contemplative dialogue, deep listening, and mutual respect” in consensus-based, collective decision-making processes that serve as an example for our political life at large. A democracy is not a democracy unless it is a culture of participation, encounter, and solidarity with those on the margins, in which our communities can work together to solve problems and meet needs. Transforming our politics and working for a multi-racial, multi-faith, and anti-hierarchical society in which all our communities can thrive is the real meaning of democratic participation — our right and responsibility.

Take Action

WATCH: Watch “White Supremacy and American Christianity: A Consistent Ethic of Hate Threatens Our Democracy” to learn more about the threats that Christian nationalism and white supremacy pose to democracy, how it shows up in current policies and legislation, and what we can do protect our democracy.

SIGN: Tell President Biden that the U.S. needs an H.R. 40 reparations commission. In this installation of the Build Anew Series, we’ve talked about how systemic racism operates through our political system. Support a reparations commission to help transform our politics into a multiracial, multifaith democracy.

LISTEN: Listen to a recent episode of the Just Politics podcast, “Actual strategies for saving democracy,” in which Rachel Kleinfeld reflects on why democracy in the U.S. is in decline and names some steps we can take to protect it.

READ: And, check out this reflection by NETWORK Advocate Bob Kloos on his experience as a poll worker.

Join us again next week for part 7 of the Build Anew Series on our criminal legal system. And don’t forget to stay tuned on Instagram (@network_lobby) and Facebook for our Build Anew video series!