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Tax Justice is Racial Justice

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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. 

Working for Transformation

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Working for Transformation

New York Advocates Show the Power of Commitment to Issues, People, and Communities

Mark Pattison
November 10, 2023

 

Justice-seekers from New York and NETWORK staff participate in a Zoom meeting with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York in 2021.

Getting involved in the work of justice-seeking takes many forms. For Anne Kiefer of Penn Yan, N.Y., it was as simple as receiving an email. “There was an invitation: If you would like to become more active, come to a New York NETWORK Advocates Team meeting,” she recalls. “If you have an inclination to do advocacy for social justice issues,” Kiefer says, “NETWORK makes it easy. I can’t say enough for the support you get.”

She’s had letters to the editor published in her local Finger Lakes Times newspaper and in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle on preserving the expanded Child Tax Credit. With issues-based advocacy, Keifer notes, “it’s really great to turn aside from the partisan part of it, which has gotten toxic in the last few years.”

NETWORK, with its long and vibrant history of over 50 years of educating, organizing, and lobbying on federal policy affecting the common good, has in recent years built Advocates Teams in strategic states across the U.S. With Catholics coming together with people of other faith traditions as well as secular justice-seekers, these teams exemplify the power of organizing and advocating for the common good. And the New York NETWORK Advocates Team, after just a couple of years, has shown what members dedicated to the issues of NETWORK’s policy agenda can do to serve people impacted by these issues, to each other, and to their communities.

Building Relationships

Janet and Lou Tullo, along with Bill Hurley, present a 2022 NETWORK Voting Record certificate to Rep. Pat Ryan (N.Y.-18). The Congressman received a 100 percent rating from NETWORK for his votes in the second session of the 117th Congress.

Catherine Gillette, NETWORK’s senior grassroots mobilization organizer, convened the New York team in mid-2021. With her from the start was Jane Sutter Brandt, a communications professional who now serves as team lead. The group meets monthly on Zoom, with Gillette providing policy updates and opportunities for advocacy as the team’s liaison to NETWORK. “Jane’s leadership has been invaluable,” notes Gillette.

Sutter Brandt says of Gillette, “She sends out the links to the NETWORK policy position on its website,” plus messaging to New York’s congressional representatives. “They make it so easy for us to be advocates, and to encourage family and friends to be advocates.”

“I know it’s in line with where I want to go as a Catholic.” —William Hurley

NETWORK first came to Rev. Peter Cook’s attention through a Nuns on the Bus tour. Cook, executive director of the New York State Council of Churches and its 7,500 congregations, and himself an ordained United Church of Christ minister, said the council collaborated with Nuns on the Bus on tax policy and a threatened rollback on the Affordable Care Act. Earlier this year, he collaborated with NETWORK on the “Care Not Cuts” rally NETWORK held in Long Island.

“With NETWORK, we thought they’d have the right approach, and they had a pretty good plan. We kind of piggybacked on that,” he says. “We’re always down for a fight at the federal level because it always has such an impact on the state.”

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.

The NETWORK partnership works, says Cook: “Roman Catholics are well grounded in Catholic Social Teaching, which has a lot of depth — theological depth — to it, and it’s very compatible with the position statements of our (nine) denominations. But I appreciate the depth of thought that goes into the social positions, and also particularly among religious …sisters.”

“We trust them, and they give a good social justice opinion on issues before Congress. They’ve already done their homework,” echoes William Hurley, a team member from Washingtonville, N.Y. “I know it’s in line with where I want to go as a Catholic.”

Members of the New York team met in February with the staff of their representative, Rep. Claudia Tenney (NY-24), a Republican who is not often aligned with NETWORK on justice issues.

“The staff expressed gratitude for the opportunity for conversation. Tenney puts out a weekly newsletter and puts out her record and an explanation on why she voted [as she did],” Kiefer says. “We commended her staff for that.”

Transforming Politics

Jane Sutter Brandt speaks at an August 2022 reparations vigil in Rochester, N.Y., one of four reparations-themed events sponsored by NETWORK’s New York Advocates Team.

In addition to building relationships, whether in their communities or in engagement with elected officials who may or may not share their priorities, the New York Advocates team has a robust track record of taking action to raise awareness on key issues and spurring people to greater action.

Team member and organizational partner Serena Martin Liguori is the executive director of New Hour for Women and Children on Long Island, which advocates for marginalized women and mothers who have been arrested or incarcerated, or have had family who have been incarcerated. Martin Liguori helped to organize and participated in NETWORK’s Care Not Cuts rally on Long Island in May. The event, which drew over 85 attendees and 12 community organizations, opposed proposed cuts in the federal budget to essential human programs providing food, housing, and healthcare.

“It was wonderful to bring together the faith-based and the local community — justice-impacted folks, folks who really rely on the system,” says Martin Liguori.

Other New York NETWORK Advocates Team members planned and hosted a “repair and redress” reparations prayer vigil last year in Rochester. The event pressed for support for H.R. 40, a bill that would create a commission to study the lasting impacts of slavery and Jim Crow in the U.S. and the possibility of reparations for Black Americans. It was one of four reparations events held by members of the team in different parts of the state—one of which included Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), H.R. 40’s chief proponent.

Jim Buckley and Joseph Molinatti join NETWORK Advocates Carol DeAngelo and Lois Harr in presenting a 2022 NETWORK Voting Record certificate to Rep. Ritchie Torres (N.Y.-15).

H.R.40 was first introduced in 1989 by former Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and has been introduced in every Congress since. The bill has yet to come to a House vote, and during the 2020 campaign, President Biden promised to set up such a commission. NETWORK has urged him to do so by executive action.

Sr. Phyllis Tierney, an Advocate Team member and justice coordinator for her community, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester, says reparations go well beyond slavery and require drawing connections for people to help them understand racist structures and policies through the years that have excluded Black communities from opportunity and deprived them of wealth. One example: the widespread destruction of Black neighborhoods across the country to build interstate highways.

“It really destroyed cities and neighborhoods. That was one of the things that we’ve talked about: to give examples, and local examples, that people would talk about and understand,” Sr. Phyllis says of the education, conversion, and the dismantling of systemic racism that must precede political transformation. “It really brought out the reason for doing this prayer vigil. …It was certainly good consciousness-raising.”

This story was published in the Quarter 4 2023 issue of Connection. 
Reflections on Solidarity and Democracy - Connection

Participants in Transformation

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Participants in Transformation

Renewing Democracy is a Truly Sacred Process 

Mary J. Novak
November 3, 2023

Mary J. Novak is NETWORK’s Executive Director.

We are about a year away from the 2024 election, a critical moment for our country. We will either choose candidates who uphold and protect our democratic processes, or ones who degrade and subvert them.  

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly making choices about democracy. Every day, voting rights are put up for negotiation, Congressional maps are drawn and redrawn, our leaders are offered millions of dollars from corporate lobbies — and people like you and me engage in the work of advocacy for the common good. Democracy is a way of living that we must practice continually to keep common good goals in play.  

While some see “politics” as a dirty word, Pope Francis teaches that we need politics. Specifically, we need politics centered on human dignity and the common good. For that centering to happen, our politics and policies must spring from below — being not just for those on the margins, but with and of the margins. The Catholic tradition teaches that when our politics are grounded in inclusive participation, love, and encounter with communities who are suffering, politics can become a sacred vocation — and, in Francis’ words, “one of the highest forms of charity.”  

The importance of elections in transforming our politics cannot be overstated. But our politics also requires a kind of transformation that no single election can bring about. This is because a just democracy does not only mean free elections and functional governance. It also means a culture, politics, and society of participation.  

Participation is one of the central principles of Catholic Social Teaching. The U.S. bishops, in their resources on Catholic Social Teaching, write, “We believe people have a right and a duty to participate in society, seeking together the common good and well-being of all, especially the poor and vulnerable.”  

What could it mean to transform our politics, to create a system animated by participation, solidarity, and interdependence? What policies do we need?  

For starters, we can ditch the heinous lie that only the “productive” or “prosperous” deserve what they need to get by (this is the false logic of Reagan-style capitalism). We can enact legislation that strengthens communities with access to health care, housing, jobs, and food. We can halt the ongoing legacy of disenfranchisement by strengthening the rights of Black and Brown communities. We can elect candidates who, in both word and deed, respect and bolster democratic processes. We can stop allowing corporations and lobbies representing the interests of the wealthy few to dominate our politics — especially when those interests involve grave harms like fracking and weapons proliferation.  

Christian leaders gather across from the U.S. Capitol Building for a sunrise vigil marking the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. Photo courtesy of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

Christian leaders gather across from the U.S. Capitol Building for a sunrise vigil marking the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. Photo courtesy of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

A participatory political system is not just one in which everyone gets a vote — although that is critical, and not even where our system is now. Rather, it is one in which communities are able to work together, in a spirit of liberation and mutual care, to solve problems and ensure that everyone has what they need to thrive. There is absolutely no room for any kind of oppression, stratification, or exploitation. A participatory political system is predicated on solidarity: the understanding that we are all interconnected, and that true flourishing is never at the expense or exclusion of another.  

At the core, our political consciousness needs a renewed awareness of our interconnectedness. This is what Pope Francis has been calling for, especially in his encyclical Laudato Si’: “Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity.” It is this emphasis on interconnectedness, among and with both people and the rest of the natural world, that has prompted NETWORK to join in the crucial work of climate justice.  

Ultimately, we are called to see that we are all intrinsically linked, which means your liberation is inseparable from mine. We are called to processes of inclusive, justice-driven, and collective decision-making. Many communities of women religious in the U.S. and around the world — communities I enjoy visiting and working with directly as part of my role at NETWORK — already model this vision of transformed politics, in the way they live into consensus-based, community discernment that follows the Spirit and is enlivened with care.  

This season, we are moving through the annual dying back that is autumn, which will soon turn to the surprising hope breaking through at Christmas. In our politics, may we similarly move through a “dying back” of exclusion and domination, and emerge with hope and new possibilities for a society of participation, solidarity, and transformation.  

Reclaiming the reality of our interconnectedness will unlock greater potential to transform our society. Instead of trickle-down, let transformation and renewal flow from living our sacred vocation of politics for the common good. 

Mary J. Novak is NETWORK’s Executive Director.

This column was published in the Quarter 4 2023 issue of Connection. 
Christian leaders gather across from the U.S. Capitol for a sunrise vigil organized by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and Faithful America, marking the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.

Relational Politics

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Relational Politics

Democracy’s Future Depends on Fostering Community

Mary J. Novak
April 12, 2023
Christian leaders gather across from the U.S. Capitol for asunrise vigil organized by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and Faithful America, marking the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.

Christian leaders gather across from the U.S. Capitol for a sunrise vigil organized by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and Faithful America, marking the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.

 

Early in the morning on Jan. 6 of this year, a diverse group of faith leaders from different Christian denominations gathered across from the U.S. Capitol for a sunrise prayer vigil. I spoke at this event, representing NETWORK and the concerns that many Catholics have for the future of the United States. We prayed together for our democracy, and it felt like a glimpse of the Beloved Community that our system of government is capable of fostering.

The challenge that faces all of us is that this group was not representative of the rhetoric and political movement currently claiming the mantle of “Christian” in U.S. politics. One of the results of the 2022 midterm elections has been the ascendancy of extremists in Congress who assert a nationalist brand of politics that is corrosive to our system of government. If anything is clear from the January 6 Committee hearings and other current signs, our democracy is not yet out of the woods.

Democracy is the container for all the social and political issues that our Catholic tradition so richly informs — the dignity of the human person, economic equity, the rights of workers. We work for them in a pluralistic context, always seeking to build up the common good. Democracy offers protections that policy alone cannot cover and which other systems and philosophies, like Christian nationalism and Catholic integralism, openly reject. These seek to ascribe some uniquely dominating role to Christianity in society and invariably end in oppression and violence. The protections of democracy have remarkably held us through these past years, and the midterm elections played out without violence, despite coming a year after the insurrection of January 2021. I believe this was possible precisely because people got involved, especially at the local level.

At NETWORK, our field is very engaged and active among the countless justice-seekers who have been awakened in the past six years. I see in them an opportunity to recapture a certain relationality in our politics that has been lost in recent decades, and some NETWORK Advocates Teams are already embracing this in moving ways. We cannot achieve lasting change without authentic investment in the human relationships that run through our government and our society. The Catholic Sisters who founded NETWORK believed in this model, and we have seen it start to re-emerge with a new generation of political activists, as was evident in the awe-inspiring turnout of Gen Z in the last election.

But what we need for the long haul is a true political movement that breaks through the polarization and moves us into a space where we can creatively imagine what our democracy needs to look like to meet people’s needs and truly respond to the signs of our times.

One of the real hazards of our politics, as pointed out by Rachel Kleinfeld and others, is that the very polarization and obstructionism that creates gridlock in our politics wears down people’s faith in our system of democracy over time, because they do not see it delivering for them. People need clean air, clean water, affordable housing, pathways to home ownership,  protections against discrimination — things that the government can and has delivered for people in the past! And we have been fortunate that the Biden administration has been able to deliver in areas like infrastructure and pushing back a bit against trickle-down economic policy.

But so much remains to be done. Part of our democracy work is addressing spiraling wealth inequality, the stratospheric inequity in our society that keeps wealth out of reach for so many and concentrated in the hands of the few. The wealth divide works to severely undercut people’s belief in this democratic system, because they do not see it as fair, they see that it can be corrupted, and again, they do not think it can deliver for them.

Despite the peril of the present moment, so many people of goodwill are responding to the challenge. Are enough people unsettled? No, frankly. But in our frustration with the polarization and stagnation brought about by a small number of ideological extremists with access to way too much funding and power, we can look around and see that we are not alone. We even find community in that space. And as we continue to organize and unify our vision and work for lasting change, we find something to be hopeful about, which can ground us for the long haul.

Mary J. Novak is NETWORK’s Executive Director.

This column was originally published in the 2nd Quarter issue of Connection. Download the full issue here.
Christian leaders gather across from the U.S. Capitol Building for a sunrise vigil marking the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. Photo courtesy of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

Healing Our Politics

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Healing Our Politics

We Can Build a Better World by Participating in the Systems That Shape Our Destiny

Joan Neal
Jan 11, 2023
Christian leaders gather across from the U.S. Capitol Building for a sunrise vigil marking the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. Photo courtesy of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

Christian leaders gather across from the U.S. Capitol Building for a sunrise vigil marking the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. Photo courtesy of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

With the 2022 midterms behind us and a new Congress coming into session, it’s fitting for people of faith to survey the “Signs of the Times.” Where is God speaking to us and trying to lead us as a people as we enter a new year, with a new Congress, in one of the oldest democracies on earth? The answer that NETWORK has discerned in the face of an increasingly volatile political landscape is that we must work to heal our politics.

Our political life has suffered a wound, a laceration that has exposed us to further injury and infection. This wound is reflected in the divisions in our society today that allow hateful, dehumanizing rhetoric to become normalized, and violent, resentful action to become a part of everyday life. The Signs of the Times are clear: We are a divided country. Even the composition of the new Congress – with the narrowest of majorities in both houses – suggests a body politic that has been torn asunder.

This situation has been building for a long time. The fact is, we are witnessing the ugly final acts of a power struggle in the U.S. that began half a century ago as an effort to strip away the gains made toward equity and justice for anyone who is not white, male, and socioeconomically privileged.

This struggle has played out in every aspect of our politics and now, most concerning, in our judiciary. For the first time in our history, we are seeing recent rulings that take rights away from Americans instead of expanding them, rulings that seem wholly untethered from any sense of the common good and even reflect bias toward a particular political ideology. Sadly, we also see allegations of corrupt dealings between justices and right-wing groups. Even the objectivity of our judicial system seems caught up in this fight.

The repercussions of this power struggle have been as painful as they have been predictable: stratospheric economic inequality; the dismantling of the power of organized labor; the rise of Christian nationalism with its view that America is only for white Christians; increasing threats to our planet and our public health; rising homelessness, and so much more. These are signs that our politics and our society are in desperate need of healing and repair.

As we look back on 2022 and the legislation passed in the second session of the 117th Congress, we can imagine each bill as a tiny swatch of material trying to patch the frayed social fabric of our current reality. The field hospital imagery of Pope Francis is apt language as we try to bind societal wounds while also addressing their root causes.

This is where we see our mission. At our core, NETWORK is a political ministry, which calls us to respond first with empathy and then with truth-telling and concrete actions that lead to economic and racial justice.  We decry the divisions and seek to be a prophetic voice for peace, reparatory justice and reconciliation in order to reshape our politics and center the voices of those whose voices are not heard – those who are not privileged; those who lack the money and power to wield influence; and those who are most impacted by the evils of unfettered capitalism, white supremacy and extreme individualism in our politics and in our society.

At NETWORK, we have endeavored to do this by first listening to and seeking out other justice-seekers, such as the National Black Sisters’ Conference, to partner with us in raising an authentic witness for the common good. We have also sought to amplify the call for justice through our new podcast. “Just Politics,” a collaboration of NETWORK and U.S. Catholic magazine, launched in September 2022 and will have its season 2 premiere in February. We have used this new platform to center the voices of women religious, impacted communities, and other justice-seekers.

In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis argues for “a better kind of politics” and makes a key distinction between political movements that are populist – the forces that weaponized people’s anger for personal gain – and those that are truly reflective of “the people’s voice”. Our work seeks to put the Pope’s words into action, to insure that our politics includes the needs and voices of all people in order to build a more inclusive and equitable community. Through healing our politics, we can all play a part in shaping our common destiny and building a better country, a better society, a better world for everyone.

Joan F. Neal is NETWORK’s Deputy Executive Director and Chief Equity Officer.

This story was originally published in the 1st Quarter issue of Connection. Download the full issue here.
Springfield Dominicans, NETWORK team, and our hosts from Faith Coalition for the Common Good

NETWORK Hits the Road for Our Pope Francis Voter Tour

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NETWORK Hits the Road for Our Pope Francis Voter Tour

Meg Olson
October 11, 2022
Springfield Dominicans, NETWORK team, and our hosts from Faith Coalition for the Common Good

Springfield Dominicans, NETWORK team, and hosts from Faith Coalition for the Common Good gather at the kickoff event of the Pope Francis Voter Tour in Springfield, Ill. on Oct. 8.

For nearly the whole month of October, the NETWORK team is on the road for our Pope Francis Voter Tour. We kicked off in Springfield, Illinois on Oct. 8, are in East Lansing and Detroit this week, then heading to Ohio, then trekking across PA, where we finish on Oct. 29 in Erie.

On this tour, we are calling on Catholics and all people of good will to protect our democracy by building an inclusive and equitable society in which all people can flourish. We believe that your vote is your voice, and with your voice can add advance a wide, intersecting range of issues that support the common good.

Our tour includes visits to social service agencies and community organizations to listen and learn from impacted people about the challenges they are facing in their daily lives, workshops at colleges, and Town Halls for Spirit-Filled Voters.

So, you may be wondering, “what’s a Pope Francis Voter?” A Pope Francis Voter is a multi-issue voter who is willing do the work to build a multi-racial, inclusive democracy. Because of our belief of Imago Dei, of the inherent dignity of every person, we know it is immoral to allow a single issue to outweigh candidates’ positions that harm immigrants and asylum seekers, low-income families, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, other marginalized communities, and the environment. Our faith calls us to position ourselves with those who are marginalized and those who have the least power in our society.

Pope Francis calls particular attention to this in Gaudete et Exultate (Rejoice and Be Glad). In this apostolic exhortation, he names all of the issues, such as the lives of the poor and the injustices that migrants face, that are “equally sacred to the lives of the unborn” (101-102).

Pope Francis actually has quite a lot to say about all of the issues we need to consider as we prepare for the election: racism, poverty, climate change, and even democracy itself. We here at NETWORK didn’t want you to have to pour over all of his writings and speeches, so we collected some key passages for you and put them on our Equally Sacred Checklist, our tool for the 2022 Midterms that equips you to evaluate any candidate running for office through a faithful, multi-issue lens. In fact, using the Equally Sacred Checklist is the first step in becoming a Pope Francis Voter!

Small group discussion at Pope Francis Voter Tour event in Springfield, Ill.

Springfield Dominican Sisters participate in small group discussions at the kickoff of the Pope Francis Voter Tour in Springfield, Ill. on Oct. 8.

At our Town Halls for Spirit-Filled Voters, we take a very close look at what is preventing our nation from having the multi-racial, inclusive democracy that we envision. What is actually keeping us from having a society where, no matter where we live, how much money is in our wallet, or the color of our skin, all people thrive?

As we were creating the town hall, we had an “ah-ha” moment: the very issues listed on our Equally Sacred Checklist are also the blocks that are preventing us from moving towards the world we want to see. Lately, it feels like these blocks have piled up into a wall. In our Town Hall for Spirit-Filled Voters, we name it the Wall of Division, Extremism, and Obstructionism. This wall is very real, and it didn’t just spring up during the 2016 Election. For well over 50 years, corporations, the ultra-wealthy, and their lobbyists, and some politicians have very strategically and systematically built this wall through an unrelenting assault on our collective rights and the common good. Why? Because they are seeking their own unrestricted power and wealth. And they have no problem sacrificing our democracy to get what they seek.   

Wall of Division, Extremism, and Obstructionism

So what can we do to dismantle the wall? Do the work of Pope Francis Voters! One significant task is to tell people, either in conversations or in letters to the editor, about the importance of multi-issue voting. At each of our Town Halls, we have local Catholic sisters model their “elevator pitches” for why they are multi-issue, Pope Francis Voters. At our Town Hall in Springfield, Springfield Dominican Sisters Rebecca Ann Gemma, Marcelline Koch, and Marilyn Runkel had this important role. After they shared, illustrating their points with personal stories, it was the audience’s turn to get into small groups and practice saying why they are multi-issue voters.  

As the NETWORK team listened in to the small groups’ conversations, we heard people say that when they were children, they were taught not to talk about politics. We here at NETWORK love to remind everyone that Pope Francis says, “A good Catholic meddles in politics.” It is exactly because of our belief in Imago Dei that we must participate in political life. We do this by voting, helping others register to vote, and sharing why we’re multi-issue voters. And when we take these actions and more, we can have fair and trustworthy elections, we can dismantle racist policies, and we can make sure everyone is treated with dignity and respect.

At the end of the Town Halls, we ask everyone to take the Pope Francis Voter Pledge. Whether or not you’re able to attend a Town Hall, you can too! Go to https://networkadvocates.org/voter-pledge and to join us this election season and beyond!

Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM, speaks at a reparations vigil in Cleveland in June 2022.

We Do Not Live Single-Issue Lives

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We Do Not Live Single-Issue Lives

The Struggle For Justice Calls on All People To Recognize Our Interconnection
Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM
October 8, 2022

As an undergraduate student, my history classes introduced me to the activism of the 1960s: civil rights, voting rights, women’s liberation. I distinctly remember listening in awe to a guest speaker who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. and thinking, “Wow, to have been a part of something that changed the course of this country…”

I naively thought that the era of fighting for our rights had passed, that we were on the right side of the moral arc of the universe. Of course, this is far from the case. The last six years have shown us that la lucha sigue, the struggle continues. Except now it’s more existential than it’s been at any time in my life, or even in my parents’ lifetimes.

Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM, speaks at a reparations vigil in Cleveland in June 2022.

Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM, a NETWORK Education and Organizing Specialist, speaks at a reparations vigil at a parish in Cleveland in June 2022.

It’s 2022, and I can’t believe that we’re fighting for the future of democracy. I had thought that was put to rest with the defeat of fascism in World War II, the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But no, we somehow face an onslaught of people in the U.S. who think that we should abandon the practice of upholding free and fair elections, and their vision of this country beyond elections are equally chilling.

The result is a long list of things I’m continually surprised to find myself advocating for today. We’re still fighting for voting rights, for an end to systemic racism, for immigration reform, for the acknowledgement of — let alone meaningful action on — climate change, for indigenous rights, for access to adequate health care, housing, and nutrition. In 2022, it’s easy to ask incredulously, how did we get here!?

In his Sept. 1 address in Philadelphia, President Biden said that “blind loyalty to a single leader” is a lethal threat to democracy. And renewed attempts to suppress the vote and overturn elections, and stripping away rights for all people, but especially women and non-white people, bears this out. But another blind loyalty to a single candidate or policy has also abetted this corrosive process. It’s the decades-long phenomenon of people, especially many Catholics, who engage in single-issue voting as their primary political engagement rather than working toward the common good.

Father Bryan Massingale offered the best rebuttal of this: “The crises that face us — militarism, racism, ecology and poverty — are interlocking, overlapping and compounded. … Single- issue groups and struggles will be neither effective nor compel people’s attention. To paraphrase the great Audre Lorde [a 20th-century Black writer and civil rights activist], many people do not have the luxury of engaging single-issue struggles because they — we — do not live single-issue lives.”

I would go a step further: Single-issue voting is conveniently racist. It’s like wearing blinders; it blocks out one’s view of the peripheries. To ignore systemic racism is to ignore active attempts at voter suppression and the lack of equal representation in our politics. Granting power to single-issue voters means that we silence the building up of inclusive communities. The rights of people of color, women, immigrants, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ+ community, and any other minority community are whittled away in the name of single-issue voting.

As Pope Francis reminded us in his 2018 letter in Gaudate et Exsultate, “Rejoice and Be Glad” that the lives of all people who are marginalized in our communities are “equally sacred.” That includes all kinds of people who are already born: people in poverty, people who are ill, the elderly, and victims of human trafficking. This is the call for all people: If we continue to only focus on a single issue, we will be responsible for the fall of our democracy, for the death of our planet.

The bitter fruits of the insurrection, blatant racism in our institutions and policies, election deniers, and attempts to suppress the vote should scream out to us. They beg of our attention. We must call on all people of faith and goodwill to be multi-issue voters and work to uphold and advance Gospel values.

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.

The Faith-Filled Push To Save Democracy

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The Faith-Filled Push To Save Democracy

A Stark Choice of Futures Faces Voters in 2022
Melissa Cedillo
October 7, 2022
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. 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.

Upholding a democracy is a daunting task this year. According to the elections data website FiveThirtyEight, 195 out of 529 GOP nominees on the ballot this year “fully denied” the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Dozens of others “raised questions” or accepted the results “with reservations.” Only 71 respondents say they accept the results fully.

As statistics like these surface the vulnerability and fragility of the system, faith groups in Washington and around the country are attuned to the moral urgency that this moment requires.

As the 2022 midterm elections grow closer, the NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice is just one entity among this patchwork of organizations, interfaith coalitions, and campaigns are coming together to respond to election deniers, Christian nationalism, and all the forces that currently threaten democracy in the U.S.

A Particular Threat

Anthea Butler, chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania

Anthea Butler

Anthea Butler, chair of the department of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and a historian of African-American and U.S. religion, notes that one of the long lasting threats to democracy continues to be Christian nationalism. Butler has written and studied the intersection of race, religion, history, and politics extensively. In her book “White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America,” she outlines the long history of Christian Nationalism and racism in the U.S.

“The first thing to understand about a lot of Christian nationalists is that they don’t want democracy,” Butler says. “Because at [Christian nationalism’s] core, it really wants to set up God’s law, rather than the Constitution, as an operating document for what this country is supposed to be.”

Butler says this form of nationalism poses a threat not only to people who immigrated to the country to flee religious persecution, but also to Christians who do not follow the same political beliefs. Denying the separation of church and state, ignoring the fact that many people who are not Christian live in the U.S., or simply not taking the outcome of the 2020 election seriously are some of the ways Christian nationalism erodes the foundation of a country that celebrates religious freedom.

One group responding to the threat of Christian nationalism is the Center for Faith, Justice, and Reconciliation.

Sabrina Dent of the Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation

Sabrina Dent

“The ideology that is being promoted by a small group of people that identify as Christians that causes great harm and moral injuries to the community as a whole,” explains Sabrina E. Dent, president of the center.

The center is a community of scholars, faith leaders, organizers, and citizens working to expand the idea of religious freedom in the U.S. The center also works to put on educational programming. The center has worked on immigration issues, LGTBQ+ issues, reproductive health issues, voting rights, environmental issues, criminal justice issues, church and state issues, and voting rights. Whenever the center feels that there is a justice issue, especially when looking at racial and religious minorities, they are willing to speak up and support these groups.

“A lot of our work is done in collaboration with other groups as well because, like I say all the time, this is not work that we could do by ourselves, “ Dent explains.

The Range of Issues

Others, including NETWORK, also see the work of protecting democracy as extending to other freedoms, especially voting rights. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, himself a Baptist minister, has explained the political as a way to embrace the dignity of all of humanity in his case for expanding voting rights.

“There is no question that voting rights is a moral issue. I have often said that democracy in a real sense is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. This notion that each of us is a child of God, and therefore we ought to have a vote and a voice in the direction of our country and our destiny within it,” Warnock told NPR at the beginning of the year.

“If we don’t have democracy in this country, all human rights in this country are going to be denigrated. We need to fight for democracy,” says Barbara Hazelett, a member of NETWORK’s Virginia Advocates team.

Her group attends public town halls to make comments about justice issues like paid family leave or eliminating practices like solitary confinement. She has attended the local events to hand out leaflets on different topics and talk about state legislation with Virginians. She has also traveled to Washington to advocate for bills.

The comprehensive nature of this work, focusing across a range of issues, exposes a friction that is especially prevalent in Catholic circles, the issue of single-issue voting. Pope Francis, in his 2018 letter Gaudete Et Exsultate, spoke against this approach when he spoke of poverty and human life issues as being “equally sacred” to one another.

He revisited this rhetoric in a June 2020 general audience, in which he noted that “we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.”

Min. Christian S. Watkins, government relations advocate at NETWORK, is quick to tie the work of defending democracy to the hyper-racialized rhetoric happening in the U.S. The risk that poses to a healthy democracy is that it continues to feed racist policies that only benefit a few and which intentionally suppress others, especially Black and Brown people. In other words, the system has to live up to its own ideals to protect it in the future.

For the structure of democracy in the U.S. to be authentic, says Watkins, it must include the people that have historically been — and continue to be — left out of democracy: “We have to realize our common bonds, our mutual experiences, our interconnectedness.”