Category: Civil Rights - California Church IMPACT

Facing a Grave Constitutional Crisis? What You Can Do

5/10/2017

Dear Friends:

Yesterday's firing of the FBI Director, James Comey, has led to what is now a grave Constitutional crisis. Comey was the key figure investigating whether American citizens, including key federal office holders and staff, colluded with a foreign government to corrupt our 2016 presidential election.

Firing the man in charge of the investigation is a most dangerous step toward totalitarianism and certainly to a cover up. Our system requires unfettered access to information by our duly elected representatives. Anything that thwarts this action is anti-democratic and a threat to the survival of truth and the operation of a functioning Republic.

While Congress continues its own work, we now must have an absolutely neutral outside force continuing the inquiry.

Please call or contact the Department of Justice and contribute your voice to the call for an independent investigation.

Contact information is here

You may make a written comment on this site or call the DoJ main public comment number 202-353-1555 Tell Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that you want him to appoint and independent investigation of the issues and people involved in the ongoing inquiry to Russian tampering with our election.

We never thought this would be an issue for us again. After the lessons of Watergate 1972-1974, we thought our nation and beloved democracy was safe from craven personal manipulation, from exploitation and abrogation of due process. We at Church IMPACT are charged with examining public policy, but we did not excpect to have to mobilize all of you to defend the basic principles of open and honest government, especially not at the federal level. But we cannot stay silent in the face of such a threat to our system of justice and right.

Please pass this on to your friends, allies, family - anyone who thinks we must speak out on the basic principles of democratic justice. Please encourage them to sign up with us to stay abreast of developments and actions they can take. We face a real crisis in our government, and it will take all of us working together to make sure we pass safely through these rough seas.

They may sign up at http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html

Thank you. May Peace and Justice prevail for us and our nation.

Urgent! Please send the Governor and State Legislators your support for humane immigration policy!

4/20/2017

Dear Friends!

California Church IMPACT is joining with Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity to send a powerful message to our Governor and State Legislators.

Please Sign and Circulate this California Faith Leaders Sign on Letter.   (e.g. lay and professional congregational, spiritual and religious leaders)

We have 5 days to collect 100+ signatures!
_________________________________________________

"Do you not wish that God should forgive you?" (Quran 24:22)

Faith Sign-On Letter to Governor Brown & CA State Legislature
A Call to Compassion, Courage & Common Humanity

Click Here to Sign on

Message of the Letter:

"Our faith traditions not only have a special protection and care of the migrant, but also the deep values of forgiveness and compassion for those who were formerly incarcerated. Our faith traditions call out the possibility for transformation and redemption, mercy and restorative justice.

"Let them forgive and overlook: do you not wish that God should forgive you? For God is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful." (Quran 24:22, Islam)

"I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you visited me." (Matthew 25:35-40, Christianity)

"When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt, I am the Lord your God." (Leviticus 19:33-34, Judaism)

We ask for your support for SB 54 and SB 6 and final legislation that will be as strong and as inclusive of all California immigrants targeted by the aggressive, rogue and inhumane deportation policies. We are disconcerted by the harmful discourse and potential amendments that would leave out from these important protections those most targeted by immoral and indiscriminate federal deportation policies.

We urge you to uphold your moral and ethical courage to stand on the side of righteousness and justice, forgiveness and redemption. Immigrants who are formerly incarcerated deserve to be reunited with their families and communities just like any other returning resident, and not deported.   [click here to read full letter]

We call on religious leaders of all traditions to add your name to this letter.

Add your signature here

Now more than ever our voice is needed!

Amplify the sound with us! Join us today!

Visit us at www.im4humanintegrity.org and urge others to join California Church IMPACT www.churchimpact.org to voice support for key legislation upholding these cherished values!

Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, Nor. CA office:
310 8th St. #310, Oakland CA 94607
Sent by dlee@im4humanintegrity.org

Thank you!

Faithful Five Minutes made easy if you like to text

4/11/2017

Dear Friends,

If you have a smart phone with text capacity that doesn't cost and arm and a leg, there is a very simple way to send messages to your federal Senators and Representative.

Send a text message to 50409 and type "Resist" in the message. Within seconds a "Resistbot" (I'm just the messenger - didn't make up this name!) replies and asks your name and ZIP.

Resistbot then finds your Senators first. Congress will be next.

It will ask you for a message that you compose to them. It can be very short or you can add information about yourself, a person of faith, or whatever you want to it. My first was only 8 words. Now I have the hang of it, I will add more about who I am, why issues matter. Once you're done, press 'send', and the Bot will FAX your message to your Senators or Representative.

If you don't text or have no desire to do this, we will always offer options through our IMPACT connections to your elected representatives including state ones. But do pass this information on to your friends, kids, grandchildren so they can become more engaged in advocacy, too.

Faithful Five Minutes via tech is yet another way to be heard. Give it a try if you like. It's powerfully easy to do!

Thank you!

You stood for justice - your voices were heard!

4/4/2017

Dear Friends,

Thanks to overwhelming numbers of calls, FAX transmittals, visits, and email, all three of the bills upholding the protections and rights for immigrants have passed.

YOU did this. Your witness for Muslims, for all immigrants, for due process and legal assistance, all have passed.

SB 6, SB 31, and SB 54 all passed in the Senate where we seriously doubted they could. We would not have convinced the "worried middle" Senators had you not spoken out so clearly.

Thank you for all you did on behalf of embattled and at-risk populations. It matters.

Now we will have a breather. The legislature goes on Spring Break starting Thursday April 6 through Easter Sunday. As soon as they come back, our work shifts to the other house, the Assembly, and we will let you know what are our "next steps" on this and other concerns.

Thank you for your presence on behalf of humanity. We are grateful beyond words for your care

Standing with the Strangers Among Us - support SB 54 and SB 6 now!

3/30/2017

Dear Friends:

Two bills we think are important for the rights of immigrants in our population will be voted on in the California Senate this coming Monday, April 3.

SB 6 offers every immigrant facing deportation the right to legal counsel.   SB 54 requires that all California state and local agencies refrain from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in identifying and apprehending immigrants for that reason alone.

SB 54 makes full cooperation with ICE a requirement when it comes to violent or serious felony offenders. But it stops police or any other agency from identifying or apprehending people who are guilty of nothing but a questionable immigration status.

Although ICE purportedly arrests only those with felony convictions, the actual record is considerably different. Many mistakes - or indifference to status - have been made in the last few months of increased action on deportations. Ripping families apart for no reason, deporting contributing taxpayers, threatening the stability of workplaces, are not the solution to our chaotic immigration system.

Please call your state Senator today or send email or FAX communication over the weekend. It is important that our witness for the 'stranger among us' be loud and clear.

Sample call:

Hello, my name is _______ and I am calling from _______ (indicate city as a constituent) to ask Senator ________ to support an inclusive SB 6, the Due Process for All Act, and a strong SB 54, the California Values Act, which will both be voted on in the Senate floor on Monday. I urge the Senator to be on the right side of history, not on the side of the California Sheriff's shameful collusion with Trump's anti-immigrant agenda. Will the Senator support SB 54 and SB 6?

To access your Senator's contact information, please go to: http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html

These two bills will go a long way to stopping the harassment and sheer terror that now are constant companions for too many of our neighbors. Yes we need paths to lawful presence, yes we need paths to full citizenship. What we cannot uphold is a chaotic, nightmarish apprehension and detention system that makes huge errors and destorys lives.

Raise your voice today for your fellow human beings. It is what we are called to do in our lives today.

Thank you!

Protect our brothers and sisters - whoever they may be. Support SB 6, SB 31, and SB 54

3/15/2017

Dear Friends:

I have just returned from a massive immigrant rights rally where I saw a number of you, our members, standing with immigrants and Muslims as we are called by our faith to do. This is the first step - bearing public witness however and wherever we can.

The next step is transforming our principles into law. If we do not secure democracy legally, we will eternally rally but no one will be truly safe because of it. These to things - activism and advocacy - go hand in hand.

This morning we rallied. This afternoon we begin changing our laws to assure the cries of "No Justice? No Peace! Know Justice, Know Peace!" are not just hollow slogans.

Please take a few minutes to support two bills that protect and defend our Muslim brothers and sisters and our immigrant families whoever they are.

SB 31 protects Muslims in California by forbidding any public agency from handing over information on a person's religion. Period. Full stop. This state will not be complicit with the ill-considered creation of religious profiling at airports or other points of entry nor with a religious registry that targets Muslims as potential terrorists. No hospital, college or university, no law enforcement agency, no social service office - no public employee of any kind may become an informer.

SB 6 will assure that people facing deportation have adequate legal representation. The brave attorneys who still sit day after day in the waiting lounge of international arrivals need this support as much as the people who need the attorneys. The lawyers must also be in place at detention centers to make sure those arrested are actually the right targets and that due process is maintained. We need a regular system of lawful representation for those unjustly targeted for who they are.

SB 54 prohibits our state and local police from abetting what too often has become hasty and erroneous seizure for deportation. Our law enforcement authorities already have the right to participate in deportation of convicted felons. When local law enforcement also becomes complicit in general round ups of people such as the awful story of a father ambushed by ICE, in the company of the local police, and seized while dropping his children at school. When this happens, the police drive a wedge into the trust of the community. Law enforcement officers around the state tells us this is extremely harmful to obtaining witnesses for crimes and especially for victims to come forward. This law prohibits the cooperation except under carefully planned multi-jurisdictional enforcement operations that must be pre-approved based on lawful criteria.

Please let your State Senators know that you support these three bills. They provide stable legal foundations as well as human rights and justice as part of how we exist as a state and society. All three are headed for the Senate floor. Please act NOW. While there is strong support, these three bills are "urgency" bills meaning they are meant to take effect immediately. This requires a 2/3 vote so every vote is precious. Allay doubts and worries among our elected officials; assure them these bills have our support from all of our members within our faith communities! Our faith voice is particularly powerful in these kinds of matters.

Please go to: http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html

Please tell your Senator that you stand with legal justice and lawful due process for all people and that these bills are essential to make sure our system of law gives the same rights to all people that we ourselves enjoy in California.

This is important witness for those who, caught in the hysteria too often present in our political lives, cannot always speak for themselves. Add your voice today!

Thank you!

Protect everyone's religious freedom - Support SB 31 in the State Senate

3/2/2017

Dear Friends:

In the changed climate of today's America, we have seen how too often the issue of a person's religion has become a target of and for discrimination and outright abuse.

We hold the truth of America, that a person's religion as with race, gender, and other characteristics, is never grounds for discrimination. Yet it happens these days with frightening regularity.

When the son of the late boxer Muhammad Ali, also named Muhammad Ali, flew into the Ft. Lauderdale airport in Florida, he and his mother were detained by immigration even though Ali is an American born citizen. He and his mother were separated and questioned for two hours after the ICE agent asked Ali, "What is your religion?" and Ali replied that he is Muslim.

It has become powerfully clear that religion is now a full-blown test for entry into this country, never mind citizenship and American passports, never mind declarations that the screening is not about religion. If this can happen to an American citizen, it will be only worse for those who are refugees, who hold green cards, visas, work permits, or are just tourists.

This religious profiling cannot be allowed to occur. We must not be complicit in such civil rights violations.

California will not engage in this kind of profiling. To that end, Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) has introduced an urgency bill, SB 31, that will prohibit "a state or local agency or a public employee acting under color of law" from providing or disclosing to the federal government personal information regarding a person's religious beliefs and practices.

The bill will require a 2/3 vote since it is intended to take effect immediately upon passage. At the moment, it is to be heard March 6 in Senate Appropriations where it strongly needs your support.

Please contact Senator Lara who is both the author and the chair of Appropriations. His status as chair does NOT guarantee smooth passage from Appropriations, so this is needed. His phone number at the Capitol is 916-651-4033.

The Appropriations staff person handling the bill is Mark McKenzie to whom you may send emails. His email address is Mark.McKenzie@sen.ca.gov. Appropriations does not have a FAX number, and a phone call to McKenzie is less likely to get answered while an email will be put into the file.

We strongly support this action. It is our moment to remember how targeting people by religion caused one history's most profound horrors in the Holocaust. Using people's religion to discriminate against them is outrageously un-American and a violation of our core faith principles of honoring all people.

Please let your voices be heard today - the bill will be heard March 6 and needs your strong support.

Thank you!

Assault on immigrants needs your witness - please join us and out allies for justice

2/14/2017

Dear Friends:

No one can watch the waves of arrests of immigrants this past week without a shudder of fear. Under the pretext that those being arrested are criminals – the worst of the worst – Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested over 700 people in a series of blitzkrieg assaults on people they claimed were both undocumented and criminals. They also claimed that it was continuing the policies of the previous administration, and that is not true.

The raids were carried out simultaneously in several states. Unlike previous arrests, the “collateral damage” swept up anyone in proximity regardless of status and for whom no warrants existed. They merely had to appear to be immigrants. Whole apartment complexes were turned out, people were fingerprinted without a shred of concern for their status, and workplaces were raided even again as no warrants existed for anyone other than a specific person. Checkpoints at intersections and highways stopped people demanding “papers” that not everyone carries. Such people were swept up and arrested.

Of those with some kind of record, the majority appear to have been for minor crimes, not for felonies. It did not matter. No one present at a raid was spared.

Now we get word that a new Executive Order will use false information to promote a policy denying green card status to entirely lawfully present people who have followed the rules and are asking to be permanent residents with, for many, hopes of citizenship.

The pretext is not that they are a burden to our society but that they might be. Using the utterly discredited idea that immigrants are a charge on our social service system – when in fact they contribute far more than they ever get – those who ordinarily would obtain a green card for long-term residence can now be denies if they might someday obtain a means-tested public benefit.

This means natural-born children of immigrants who are already eligible for health care and other services will also be denied or the acceptance of health care, food assistance, etc. used against their parents’ ability to obtain permanent residence. All this is in the Executive Order being created by the White House, despite a detailed study by the Center for American Progress that showed immigrants overall documented and lawfully present, use far fewer public services than the rest of the population.

With ICE raids increasing and lawful presence now threatened to those who ‘played by the rules’, families are being torn apart. Citizens, mostly but not exclusively young children, are losing their parents to deportation and being eft stranded in the United States.

You shall love the alien as yourself. Lev. 19:34

You shall not deprive the resident alien…of justice. Deut.24:17.

We are called as people of justice and people of faith to stand against the cruelty of dehumanizing immigrants. Whether they are lawfully present or not, they are human beings seeking what every immigrant who came here has wanted – a chance for a safer, better life.
These raids and the proposed ban on permanent residency for using resources into which immigrants have paid is a travesty of our entire idea of justice. President James Madison asserted that aliens owe temporary obedience to our laws and in return are entitled to Constitutional protections. In 1981 the Supreme Court denied Texas the right to ban immigrant children from school. In 2001 in Zadvydas v Davis the Court again ruled that the due process of the 14th Amendment applies to everyone whose presence may be or is “unlawful, involuntary, or transitory.”

These presumptions of right are now being ignored.

We urge you and your congregations to consider the many ways in which you might help. Normal advocacy such as calling the White House is not available. The White House phone line has been eliminated. There are other ways to comment, however. Whether they are read and forwarded to the president is not clear, but here are the options:

www.whitehouse.gov/contact or send a message through Facebook Messenger. For government information by topic, visit www.usa.gov or call 1-800-FED-INFO

In addition, we encourage every congregation and concerned individual to become familiar with the Sanctuary work of our key allies in the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.

http://www.im4humanintegrity.org/sanctuary-resources/

Sanctuary is not without risk, especially in these days of unknown consequences. IM4HI has done excellent preparation work giving you the best legal and moral guidance on whether your congregation should participate and what you can do and how you can do it. We do not encourage individuals to do this until every factor is known, but congregations, together, have much greater presence and power than isolated homes.

You will see their office numbers and addresses as well as the guide to Sanctuary on these web pages.

We must do what we can for justice for all people no matter who they may be.

“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of those who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Mat, 25:40.

Do all you can, howsoever you can, for as long as you can.

Thank you!

Did you March on January 21? Senator Dianne Feinstein wants to know why!

2/1/2017

Dear Friends:

We are passing this on from our members in Southern California. Do with it what you like.

"To All Those Who Participated in the Women's Marches: THIS MAY BE VERY IMPORTANT

Sen. Dianne Feinstein wants to hear from YOU. She has gotten a week's delay of the Jeff Sessions confirmation vote.

For real—this is not a random cut n paste FB meme, but a direct request from her Chief of Staff.

Basically: FEINSTEIN WANTS 2-4 SENTENCES FROM MARCHERS EXPLAINING WHY YOU MARCHED AND WHAT IT MEANT.

She will be incorporating messages AND most likely the sheer NUMBER of emails she gets, in her opening statement at the Sessions hearing for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Send emails to:

Sean_Elsbernd@feinstein.senate.gov, Caitlin_Meyer@feinstein.senate.gov

Subject line: WHY I MARCHED

Thanks for speaking out.

Please copy, paste and share this message widely. Thank you!

Confirmation Hearing Schedules and Our IMPACT on Them

1/31/2017

Dear Friends:

Confirmation hearings on the new Administration's Cabinet choices are continuing. Senate Judiciary will vote tomorrow on the proposed Attorney General, Jeff Session. We've been asking you to call your Senators on this and upcoming floor votes, even when we think your Senator will probably vote NO. In part it is to give Senators who are in agreement with us the "weight" of citizen response, and in part because even those on our side are getting pushed by supporters to vote Yes.

Dianne Feinstein of California indicated she'd had far too few calls concerning Mr. Sessions and might, therefore, have to vote for him. Now, after she was inundated by your calls, those from the NAACP, and many other human rights groups, she has asked for a delay in the vote because Mr. Sessions has failed to answer questions posed to him before the hearings began. She has been strengthened by your response.

Please understand that whatever an elected official's own beliefs about any given issue, if there is no real citizen support for that position within his or her constituency, it makes holding the line on the vote very, very difficult. That's why we encourage your voices to be raised. Your voice has "weight" in every serious matter.

The reason we don't suggest that you call the chair or ranking member of a committee at the federal leve is that if you are not a constituent and the person in that position is not interested in higher office, the voices outside their constituency (district or state) hold very little influence if any. You may, of course, do it, but it expends your energies for little return. So we focus on your representatives.

The upcoming hearings are as follows:

Senator Tom Price for Health and Human Services. He has repeatdly advocated overturning the Affordable Care Act and has proffered outright lies about how it is working. He is deeply opposed to women making their own decisions about their reproductive care including access to birth control and abortion. He also has ignored the existing laws (the Hyde Amendment of long standing) that prevent federal funds being used to pay for abortion and pretends they still do, using that as an excuse to remove access to Planned Parenthood and other women's health services. Moreover, he supports the general conservative goal of ending - yes ending - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veternas Tricare, and VA health care by privatizing them or turning them into tax credits. None of those strategies would offer the care we have today, not for our elders, not for the poor, not for veterans. He faced a second committee hearing due to undisclosed financial interests in major pharmaceutical corporations among other issues. He has a likely smooth passage through a floor vote, but we need to keep up the opposition to his leadership of these key issues.

Senate Committe on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) will hear the second round of questions for Betsy DeVos, candidate for Secretary of Education. The hearing is scheduled for Thursday, February 2. Ms. DeVos, wife of the Amway products founder, is a rabid opponent of public schools and is in favor of using tax dollars - our money - for private schools both secular and religious. She has never shown an ounce of understanding of what public schools need; her family have all been schooled privately, and she has a strong conservative religious agenda she wishes to have implemented in both those charter schools and public schools regardless of parents' and children's beliefs. She once advocated making poor children work, saying even jobs in mining would be good. Shades of the 1890s! She showed in the first round of questioning that she has no interest in or understanding of curricula or child development or what constitutes real achievement.

Senate HELP Committee has schedule February 2 to question fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder in his quest for Secretary of Labor. Mr. Puzder has expressed opposition to not only the "Fight for $15" minimum wage movement but to minimum wage. His own fast-food empire, CKE Restaurants (Carl's Jr. and Hardee's) is a chronic violator of basic labor standards. He expressed an interest in purusing automation to replace workers not help them do better. He wants to remove all liability on both his corporation and its franchise owners for harm done to workers - a standard even Andrew Carnegie rejected. And he wants to make union organizing very difficult if not impossible to further these anti-worker goals.

No matter who is now up before committee or who has passed to floor votes, please let your Senators know of your opposition. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was CEO of the company that ignored federal safety standards resulting in the deaths of 12 miners at his Sago Coal Mine. He operates most of his businesses outside the U.S. and has strong and dubious ties to Russian interests. Mick Mulvaney, candidate for Director of the Office of Managment and Budget was one of the legislators shutting down the government in 23 and 2015. Steven Mnuchin, candidate for Secretary of the Treasury, played a pivotal role in the financial crisis of 2007-08 while he was head of the branch that promoted toxic mortgages. He was called the foreclosure king of Wall Street, once trying to take back the home of a 90-year-old woman over a $.29 calculation error. He withheld payments to survivors of Hurricane Sandy. He has no government experience so tends to view the federal finances for what benefits corporate interests, not the public.

With all of these candidates whose moral values are, in our view, sadly lacking and whose experience has never been in the public interest, we urge constant vigilance and strong opposition.

To call your Senators please dial 202-224-3121 or connect to them for district phones and FAX or email contact at:
http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html

These people will have a great deal of say over our future, how we live, what benefits we will receive and how, whether we may operate freely or be constrained by unknown limitations. This is on all of us to oppose. Make your voice heard today, tomorrow, through the confirmation floor votes so that you send the message that we will NOT go back to an insecure time when corporations rule, and we suffer.

Thank you.