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Be a Part of the Folk Music Festival at Pilgrim Place!!

Pilgrim Place  and
The Claremont Folk Music Center
invite you to the 
 

Progressive Music & 
Folk Festival

 

Singing the Just Word–Celebrating a Century
Featuring:
Jim & Jean Strathdee, Patti Amelotte, Cathy Clasper-Torch & Lee Torch, Kimball Coburn, Ellen Chase Harper, Maria Christina & Francisco Herrera, Bob Hurd, Frank & ValLimar Jansen, Jim Manley & the Pilgrim Pickers, Paul Svenson
 
Performances will be at various venues on the 
34-acre Pilgrim Place campus 
 
Friday & Saturday, Sept. 18-19 
(Fri. : 5:00 to 9:00 p.m., Sat. : 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.)
Attendance is $45 for both days. In addition, three full meals will be available for $13 each. 
Tickets can be purchased on the web. Discounts for early registration, students and low-wage workers. Click here to register. 

 

museum
The Petterson Museum of Intercultural Art at Pilgrim Place:
Will be open both days with their newest display in conjunction with the Folk Festival — Musical Instruments from Around the World.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Arts and Crafts:
One-of-a-kind items made by Pilgrims will be available for sale, including framed paintings and other hand-crafted treasures.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Other Things to See:
Also at the Folk Festival — the Pilgrim Place Peace & Justice Exhibit, chronicling the careers of Pilgrim Place residents in bringing about peace and justice.
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Economic Justice and Financial Literacy: Voices on Poverty Series

Voices on Poverty: A Series of Trainings on Poverty and the Economy

Multi-faith ACTION Coalition of Contra Costa County

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This training series helps make clear what’s broken in our economy and what Contra Costa faith communities are doing and can do to make it right.

A faith-rooted vision of our economy is one where values influence policy and collaborative relationships lead to real change regarding the root causes of poverty in our County. This training is provided in partnership with Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE-CA) and the FAITHS Program of the San Francisco Foundation.

Participants leave each session equipped with tools to converse, engage and organize as spiritual leaders to deepen the impact of Multi-faith ACTION Coalition’s work (including the focus areas of the task forces). They will also gain a deeper understanding of the religious principles of fairness, equity, sustainability, opportunity, and justice in the economy.

Delve into the following subjects:

* How does our economy reflect our faith values … and how could it?
* Navigate social services and barriers to success in a Poverty Simulation
* What are the intersections of Jobs, Housing, Wages, and our faith traditions?
* What does it look like to approach the budget as a moral document?
* How do we shift the economy and policies of our county to reflect our faith values about human dignity, equity, and basic needs?

If you are interested in participating this in this training or if you would like this training to be held at your faith institution please email Kshann@im4humanintegrity.org.

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Crossing the Mediterranean, Crossing Mexico.

Below is a personal post from our Northern California Director Rev. Deborah Lee. Rev Lee shares with us an account of her experience on our Root Causes Pilgrimage to Honduras and Guatemala and the parallels of the migration journey between crossing the Mediterranean and crossing Mexico. For other personal accounts of experience please visit out blog at: RootCausesDelegation.wordpress.com

The world has been touched by the image of little Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose body washed ashore the Mediterranean Sea this week as his family attempted to reach Greece. His mother and 5 year old brother also drowned, adding to the more than 2600 migrants who have died out of 300,000 who have attempted to cross by sea to get to Europe this year.

A completely preventable death if migrants were allowed safe passage so they wouldn’t have to come such dangerous ways. After all, the thousands of dollars migrants pay smugglers is many more times the cost of a one-way plane ticket. Aylan’s family was hoping to eventually get to an aunt in Canada who could offer protection and safety from the bombs barraging their village.

I recently returned from Honduras and Guatemala where we met people like Aylan’s father, family members who have lost loved ones due to unsympathetic and restrictive immigration and asylum laws.

disaparacidos-300x225We met Honduran mothers whose children have tragically died on the migrant trail heading for the United States. Even worse for some who have been waiting years, they are not even sure what fate has befallen them and so count them among los disaparecidos/las disaparacidas (the disappeared).

“Mexico takes our children. Like the Mediterranean Sea takes other children,” they told us.

700 cases from Honduras alone. The mothers all can recite the exact date their children left, the last time they heard their voices en route on the phone. They have photographs of each one. All young faces, in their teens and twenties. Some left with toddlers, like Aylan, in their arms.

Many also were potential asylum seekers fleeing violence seeking a lifeline in another place, another country. Others seeking a way to make a living to contribute to and support their families. Killed either in Mexico by organized crime, migration authorities or security forces that prey upon migrants; or dying of thirst crossing the Sonoran desert trying to avoid US Border Patrol.

Also preventable deaths.

Immigration doesn’t have to be difficult if we allowed safe passage and had immigration laws that put human life at its center.

Perhaps, looking at the crisis in Europe, we have become desensitized to the image of migrants dying crossing our own southern border. We might forget the avertable deaths of migrants that take place closer to home because of US immigration laws.

And why not? We are seeing less of it, because Mexico is doing our proxy immigration enforcement. To the tune of $86 billion dollars a year, the US is paying the Mexican government to crack down hard on migrants coming through Mexico, conduct mass detentions and deportations, set up more road blocks and even build 12 permanent naval bases to prevent migrants from getting even close to our US borders. All reliant on Mexican security forces with a track record of abuses, disappearances and impunity.

We are making migration even more dangerous and more expensive for those who see no options for their human survival. As the US and Mexico have shut down the land route through Mexico, some may already have to start coming via maritime routes along the Pacific.

It won’t be long before we too might tragically find a toddler washed up on our shores.

-Rev. Deborah Lee

**Nearly 50 years ago, in 1966, my mother fled her country of birth, Indonesia, at the beginning of massacres and a genocide that left between 1-3 million people dead. She went to a lifeline, an uncle in Ohio who could offer some temporary safety and protection. How many of our families have a similar story in our history? Who among us wouldn’t do the same, if we could muster the courage and resourcefulness to flee for safety?