Read about IM4HI’s beloved community and this year’s accomplishments in our 2023 End-Of-Year Newsletter! (Download 15-page PDF)
As we approach the end of 2023, we reflect on a year filled with growth, collective action, and beloved community at Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.
We are a multiracial, multi-faith movement for justice, rooted in the 1990s dedicated to ensuring the well-being and sacredness of all. Focused on connecting spiritual people ans impacted leaders to the movements for immigrant justice, de-carceration, and thriving communities, we strive to uplift a liberating vision grounded in dignity and care. We do this through 4 main strategies: transforming narrative, transforming leadership, transforming policy and practice, and transforming our organization.
With your collaboration, together here are a few highlights of our accomplishments this year:
Assisted nearly 400 newly arrived migrants, asylum seekers and those impacted by detention and incarceration
Undertook three powerful pilgrimages, transcending borders and barriers. From the Mexicali/Calexico border, to the historic Black town of Allensworth, and our second statewide witness to detention centers through Bakersfield, Adelanto, Calexico and San Diego.
Initiating a Leadership Summer Training which was bilingual, multi-racial and multigenerational
Completing our second cohort of Faith Advocates, five grassroots immigrant and formerly incarcerated individuals who learned skills of advocacy and organizing
Ending immigration detention at the Yuba County Detention Facility through a multiyear organizing campaign in broad coalition with others.
Impactful advocacy engaging hundreds of people across California, opposing Title 42, and supporting the HOME Act, a solidarity fast in support of hunger strikers inside ICE detention, and emphasizing our commitment to dismantling oppressive systems and advocating for the dignity and sacredness of all people.
Please read more as we recount the stories of impact, advocacy, and transformation. We thank you for your continued support and engagement, which has made these accomplishments possible in our ongoing journey toward justice and compassion.
In this heartbreaking moment, our Prayer and Call to action
“Palestinian women dream of peace”. Image reprinted with permission by artist Malak Mattar.
We believe that all people are sacred across bars, walls, and borders. We grieve at the loss of all life that has occurred in the attacks on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. We pray for the safe return of the hostages, the lives of children, friends, family, and partners in the region, and for all who remain fearful of continued violence across the divide. The wider implications of the rising violence and hostilities have already impacted the safety of our American Muslim neighbors, such as 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, who was fatally stabbed in Illinois, and an overall rise in hate crimes against Palestinians, Muslims and Jews in the US and around the world.
At IM4HI, rooted in diverse faith traditions and shared spiritual values, fundamentally, we believe we have the duty to prevent harm and to uphold the well-being of all people and the planet. We do that by addressing the root causes of harm. Our work in the US addresses the criminalization of people of color enacted through mass incarceration, immigration policy, and other forms of state violence targeting people based on race, religion, or national status. In the case of Palestine, for lasting peace and genuine security in the region, the root causes and systemic issues must be addressed, beginning with the decades of institutionalized oppression and collective punishment of Palestinian people enforced by brutal military occupation and forced segregation.
We have seen from our work the irreparable harm caused by militarization such as family separation, forced displacement, refugees and intergenerational trauma. In Gaza there are 8 refugee camps. 70% of Gaza’s population are refugees. 50% are children and youth under the age of 20. People in Gaza are being bombed without the possibility to seek protection, as they are unable to freely move and migrate to safety. Even routes suggested by the State of Israel are subject to bombing. Over 2 million civilians in Gaza, including over a million children, are being deprived of food, essential medicine and humanitarian aid being blocked by the Israeli government at the border and over 400,000 people have been displaced. 50 Palestinians in the West Bank have been murdered and are experiencing increased violence.
As a US-based organization, we have a responsibility for the actions of our government and the impact of our tax-dollars. This week the US is sending $2 billion to the State of Israel, on top of the $3.8 billion in military aid received annually, to resupply bombs, missiles, fighter jets and military equipment being used on occupied Gaza. The President is asking Congress for billions more.
We cannot help but think of the countless other social needs that billions of our US tax dollars could address around the world and here at home to address human needs: for the millions of families and seniors whose food stamps have just been cut, houseless people, re-entry programs for the formerly incarcerated, and support for newly arriving migrant families. True security only happens here and around the world when all communities are cared for and we recognize our shared humanity. We can only be as safe as the most vulnerable. And we cannot leave anyone out.
We call on the US to stop sending new weapons and military equipment to Israel which will intensify and broaden the conflict and cause further death and destruction. We ask for an immediate ceasefire, the return of the hostages, and an unrestricted humanitarian aid corridor to reach those in Gaza completely cut off from basic necessities for survival.
For the sake of our future generations, we pray for a shared future based on human rights, justice, equality, and freedom where all people can thrive. We hold fast to a vision of a World Without Walls and a commitment to Love over Fear.
—IM4HI Board and Staff Members:
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, IM4HI Board Member
Rev. Deborah Lee, IM4HI Executive Director
Maram Bata, IM4HI Board Member
Affad Shaikh, IM4HI Board Member
Benjamin Mertz, IM4HI Board Member
Sergio Jaime Isaac Lopez, IM4HI Board Member
Tarek Shawky, IM4HI Board Member
Martha Matsuoka, IM4HI Board Member
Gala King, IM4HI Regional Director, Northern California
Article from Mr. Yousef Aljamal, who spoke at our World Without Walls event last week. Recording is here. Since last week, 9 members of his family have been killed. He writes about it here.
Moving photo montage of IM4HI in action. 48 seconds.
At the intersection of spirituality and social justice, there is a convergence of people of faith, defending the humanity of immigrants and the dignity of the incarcerated. Because every person is sacred, compassion has no borders, and love has no walls. Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.
