My inspiration to pursue justice comes from a confluence of family, educational experiences, and exposure to many courageous faith leaders through the years. These remarkable leaders have spoken up when their voices were not welcome, marched in cold winter weather, disobeyed unjust laws, and became shields for those in harm’s way. I learned from them that to be silent is to be complicit in injustice and oppression.

In my community, I have found that working with our local Jobs with Justice (JwJ) organizers, a part of the national Jobs with Justice, as a Co-Member of Loretto has afforded me a deep connection to what Solidarity looks like up close. We, faith leaders, work as a part of the team supporting the priorities decided by the JwJ core committee. This has led us to work with unions in the low wage worker movement, now for the fourth year.

We must work to overturn the prejudice against workers and their right to unionize. Unions are the structural way to provide working people with human dignity. 100 years of Catholic Social Teaching is deeply pro-union and is loudly proclaimed in five major encyclicals.

Applying NETWORK’S 2020 Mend the Gaps policy vision locally, I focus on the wage gap for fast food workers, home care workers, child care workers, and adjunct faculty and their employers. As faith leaders and justice-seekers, we are encouraged to accompany them on such action steps as:

• Going out on strike when the workers exercise their legal right to strike without fear of being fired, connect them to the media ( we are not their voice, we amplify their voice)
• Securing signatures for referendum ballot initiatives and petitions, writing letters to the Editors, speaking out on talk radio and social media
• Joining with workers in the exercise of civil disobedience to witness to injustice
• Accompanying workers at rallies to demonstrate the need to shrink the wage gap, secure health care coverage, and sick leave and a family-friendly work place. (Remember the acompañamiento model, from the experience of women in Nicaragua working with Canadian social workers. Accompaniment is best characterized by nonintrusive collaboration, mutual trust, agreement on the social ill, egalitarian spirit, commitment to solidarity, and an agreed upon plan of action)
• Joining with a worker when they go to court, traveling to the state capital to educate elected officials to pass minimum wage laws- $15 and a union

Solidarity means working with organizations across our communities and states in a unified manner to carry out shared goals. That means we meet with them, create implementation plans, and support the identified lead agencies. Cohesion is a challenge as each organization has a unique mission and they often have differing approaches. This requires the hard work of identifying, analyzing and planning strategy. It can mean compromise, lining up behind others, and bringing our members along to support others.

The power of working in unison with others is:  strength in numbers, voices, and the ability to leverage structural change and increase wages. This is not a one way street. Reciprocity is the ingredient needed to make this work. We are there for each other, standing in solidarity, no matter whether the issue is ecological reforms, payday lending regulators, health care coverage or minimum wage increases.

Alice Kitchen is a NETWORK board member, Co-member of the Sisters of Loretto, Adjunct Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, School of Social Work, and retired Licensed Social Worker.

Over 60 years ago, my father and mother met in Las Vegas, Nevada. My father, the son of a Mexican immigrant, got his start parking cars at the Dunes Hotel and eventually rose to become the head of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority – working to help build Las Vegas into the premier destination it is today. My father, Manny Cortez, lived his life following three principles: work hard, be honest, and respect everyone.

If it were not for my grandparents and parents’ hard work and the opportunities this country afforded them, my sister and I would have not been the first in our family to graduate from college and I would not be serving as the first Latina senator in the U.S. Senate.

For me, the appeal of public office has never been about the spotlight or political influence. It has always been about giving back – an important principle my parents taught me from a young age. I ran for public office because I want to give back to the community that has given so much to my family.

I’ve spent my career working to solve problems. As Nevada’s attorney general, I introduced over 40 bipartisan bills that were signed into law by a republican governor. As Nevada’s newest U.S. Senator, I will work to find common ground with my new colleagues to end the gridlock in Washington and get to work on the issues most important to Nevadans.

I also believe in ensuring the most vulnerable among us have the opportunities they need and deserve to succeed. When I first ran for public office and later for Senate, I promised that I would be a voice for those who have often been neglected. That’s why I have been a tireless advocate for human rights issues, especially domestic violence and sexual assault prevention. When women are given the support and tools they need to succeed, our communities thrive. That is why I am committed to passing equal pay for equal work legislation, raising the minimum wage, and passing comprehensive immigration reform to keep hardworking immigrant families together.

While we have a president who has wasted no time putting the anti-immigrant, misogynist, xenophobic rhetoric he campaigned on into dangerous action, I will continue fighting every day for an America that is inclusive and welcoming, not one that divides us and takes us backwards. But I cannot do it alone. We must all become eagerly engaged in our communities. Together, our voices and our actions can, and will, make a difference.

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto represents the state of Nevada. As a former attorney general, she has championed the rights of the vulnerable and fought for comprehensive foreclosure reform.

Last spring I went to jail for the first time. Not because I had been charged with any crime or because I had been arrested—I was with a group of students from Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry. We were in jail together that Sunday morning, seeking to pray and break bread with the inmates.

I suppose the jail matched what I could imagine based off a season of Orange is the New Black. The walls were painted cinder block. The doors locked behind us wherever we went. Corrections officers were stationed periodically throughout the hallways, buzzing us through.

I wasn’t even sure why I was there that morning or what I was expected to do. As part of a school-wide week-of-service, some of us had the opportunity to go to the jail to do “prison ministry” but I had no clue what that actually meant. Was I expected to talk to the prisoners? Counsel them? Tell them about God?

I breathed a sigh of relief when I learned I wouldn’t be going alone through the jail that day. Our task would be rather straightforward and simple: my fellow student and I would go with the seasoned chaplain to three locations in the prison; we would celebrate a communion service with a pre-written reflection from the chaplain and offer the prisoners a chance to say a word or two about the readings if they felt so called; and then we would pack up and go to the next location. I took comfort in the simple formula that our day would follow, knowing there was not much I could mess up so long as I didn’t miss getting buzzed through a door.

I don’t really know anything about the men I met in the jail that morning. I quickly learned that I was not being asked to “do” anything for them. There was nothing to do. The simple act of being present, of acknowledging the fundamental human dignity of the men in jail that day by praying with them, by sharing the Eucharist with them—that was all I could do.

Society often values human life only by what it can contribute to its prosperity. Most people might even agree with the reasonable-sounding idea that, for the most part, society should be structured to give to each person that which they have earned. It’s hard to argue with the logic of a meritocracy—if you work hard, you should be able to get ahead in life; if you pursue higher education, you should make more money doing less strenuous work; if you have an innovative idea, you should profit from your ingenuity.

People in jail are severely limited in their ability to contribute to society. In fact, they have been removed from society precisely so that society can extract a debt from them. It is not for me to say whether or not the men I met that day merited their sentences; in fact, many if not all of them may have been duly processed for a law they had broken.

But this is precisely the point. Human dignity is not only something which cannot be earned, it is also something which can never be taken away, even if one has committed a heinous offense. What I learned by praying with those in jail is that human dignity radically transcends both merit and demerit—nothing can add to nor detract from the humanity of any human being, in any circumstance, ever. A person couldn’t even renounce his or her own human dignity, so intrinsically is it linked to their very being!

We should be able to agree that those things which are necessary to uphold the human dignity of our fellow sisters and brothers—things like nutrition, shelter, healthcare, community, the opportunity to participate in society—are things for which no one must prove merit. Then, perhaps, we can begin to have a reasonable debate about how we can go about providing these things to all people. This might sound pretty radical, but then again, that’s human dignity.

James Luisi is a third year student at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, and a former NETWORK Government Relations Associate.