Author: Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity

Categories
Justice Not Jails (JNJ) Resources

Faith & Reparations Toolkit

Dear Friends and Faith Partners,

I bring you New Year’s greetings from the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity (IM4HI). After several months of labor in love, IM4HI has produced a Faith & Reparations Toolkit for our faith and community partners, faith leaders, congregations, and the general public. The Faith & Reparations Toolkit is a timely and valuable document that can be readily utilized. We invite you to employ the toolkit during February, which earmarks the month-long celebration of African American history.

This February, we celebrate with the people whose descendants built this country with blood, sweat, tears, and free labor. An authentic celebration with our Black brothers and sisters requires that all of us, in particular white people, engage in introspection and Truth-telling. In short, we must come to grips with our nation’s ugly past and the silence and capitulation to the perpetual harms inflicted upon the African American community.

An authentic celebration also means that we must act. We must take concrete and substantive actions to repair the harm and atone these past and present injustices. The Faith & Reparation Toolkit recommends ways for congregations, faith leaders, and individuals to start now and move toward mending the past, healing the present, and transforming the future.

As the nation celebrates the national holiday in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we should pause and consider that the promissory note bequeathed to African Americans in the Declaration of Independence is still in default. The US government has made no substantive monetary compensation or investments on the debt owed to African Americans.

To be sure, our black brothers and sisters need a check. However, African Americans cannot wait for a blank check. Nor should they be pacified with empty promises. Now is the time for African Americans’ just due.

The Reparations Toolkit offers practical guidance and resources for religious and faith communities to engage in spiritual reflection for reparative justice that goes beyond writing a check. There is a broader path to repairing the profound harm done to African Americans. This path is grounded in the spirituality and souls of Black folk. After all, reparation is and must be a Spiritual Practice.

Please accept and engage this toolkit as a gift from IM4HI, and one that, hopefully, will lead to building a “beloved community.”

Rev. Dr. Larry Foy
IM4HI Los Angeles Regional Director

Categories
Interfaith Prayer Vigils

Pagbangon (Rise-up): Filipinx Stories of Resistance, Prayers of Resilience

Join us on Thursday, December 9, 2021 in honor of International Human Rights Day for a virtual vigil with ritual, song, and call to action. We will center Filipinx voices impacted by inhumane U.S. immigration and incarceration policies, and US-backed human rights abuses in the Philippines.

We invite people of all faiths, cultures, and traditions to join us in embodying our Philippine values: magpagaling ng kababayan (healing of Filipinx community), paglaban (to fight), pagbangon (to rise up), and pagkikibaka (to struggle).

Speakers include:

  • Rev. Henry Pablo, Los Banos and Dos Palos United Methodist Church (UMC)
  • Rev. Jeanelle Ablola, Pine UMC
  • Rev. Jojo Gabuya, Fellowship Church of Reconciliation
  • Estelito Adiova, community leader in Imperial Regional Detention Center
  • Maria Legarda, Asian Prisoner Support Committee and Kasama ng Kalayaan
  • Shelly Clements, IM4HI volunteer and Kasama ng Kalayaan
  • Rev. Fel Cao, Faith and Riverside UMC
  • Johanna Dela Cruz, National Council of Churches in the Philippines

FB-event: https://fb.me/e/12zTUyOU1
RSVP: bit.ly/FilipinxVigilDec9-RSVP
Zoom: bit.ly/FilipinxVigilDec9-Zoom

To learn more about our Filipinx faith organizing, read our blog post on Filipinx American History Month.

Join our Kasama ng Kalayaan collective to organize for the liberation and healing of our Filipinx community members impacted by immigration detention, deportation, and incarceration.

Categories
Updates

World Without Walls: Global Day of InterAction

www.stopthewall.org

Dear Bay Area World Without Walls Community,

On this November 9, we write to you in solidarity with the global movement for a world without walls of expulsion, exclusion, and exploitation. COVID’s unveiling has revealed all the more clearly the devastation of walls of separation and oppression, as well as our need to band together to create the world we long to live in: a world of love and liberation, justice and mercy, hope and healing. Today we decry all visible and invisible walls of separation, walls that divide us geographically, economically and socially.

On this day, 31 years ago, the Berlin wall came down, ushering in a time of dismantling divisions, overcoming prejudices and reuniting peoples. This day is a reminder that all walls will ultimately come down, as long as we continue working together for a world that unites, humanizes and recognizes our collective existence. Tragically, over the past 31 years an era of wall constructing and wall profiteering has expanded. But as walls continue to be erected, all who are challenging these walls of injustice and inhumanity continue to unite and work together to create fissures, widen cracks and chip away at injustice. Our work is more important than ever, and the very future of our planet depends upon our success.

2022 marks the 20th anniversary since the beginning of construction of Israel’s wall that surrounds the West Bank and separates Palestinians from one another, their land, resources and the larger world. In solidarity with Palestinians, the global World Without Walls community is joining together to decry walls as false solutions to urgent concerns that plague our world. They will spend the next year circulating a series of Urgent Letters from the global community decrying the walls of injustice and inhumanity that surround us. Their first letter, “Our Time to Become Seeds of Justice,” challenges walls created by the climate crisis, and is written in response to the UN Climate Change Conference COP26. It calls on us to plant trees of resistance and nurture seeds of justice, while honoring martyrs like Berta Cáceres who led the way in this work. 

Throughout the upcoming year we will share these Urgent Letters to the global community as we commit anew to dream together, scheme together and work together to create a world without walls. Our humanity demands nothing less.

Thank you for joining us in this essential work.

In solidarity,

The Bay Area World Without Walls Coalition

About World Without Walls

In 2018, the Bay Area World Without Walls Coalition was formed to take part in the International Global Day of Interaction for a World Without Walls, commemorating the November 9, 1989 tearing down of the Berlin Wall. This international date is a call to dismantle all walls, which since World War II have risen from 7 to 77 across the globe. As a Bay Area Coalition, our focus has been on the 700-mile wall built by the US to stop migrants across the US-Mexico border, on the wall built by Israel to separate Israel from the West Bank and Palestinian villages from each other, and on the walls of incarceration that separate loved ones from the human family.

Bay Area World Without Walls Coalition members include: Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, Friends of Sabeel North America, Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, Jewish Voice for Peace, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Middle East Children’s Alliance, and East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy / Faith Alliance for a Moral Economy. Pastor Allison Tanner, of Lakeshore Ave Baptist Church, is the coordinator of the Bay Area World Without Walls Coalition and author of this letter.

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