Blog Posts - California Church IMPACT

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!

Affordable Care Act remains law of the land! You saved it!

3/25/2017

Dear Friends:

Yesterday's defeat of the bill to scrap the Affordable Care Act was monumental. It is entirely due to your work.
Yes, hard-core anti-health care ideology was the final blow, but your voices in phone calls, emails, town halls, visits all held the line on behalf of the ACA and against gutting the plan. By standing firmly for good health care coverage, by rejecting plans to force 24 MILLION people to drop coverage they could not afford, you made a vote to kill the ACA utterly impossible.

This is the success that a moral voice for democracy can have. You did this work. You got this victory.

There will be more challenges to come. Those who see the ACA as tax revenue to be directed away from health care and into massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are not going away quietly. We will have to be on guard against stealth programs that cut support, especially for Medicaid, and start demanding the impossible such as the requirement that everyone receiving Medicaid has to work or lose it. Medicaid helps those who CANNOT work, so this tactic is particularly evil.

But for the moment, ACA is the law of the land, the health care option we saved. Your voices, your determination, your efforts made all the difference. This is democracy in action thanks to 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!

Health Care under assault - raise your voice NOW!

3/7/2017

Dear Friends:

The new Anti-Affordable Health Care Act has now been unveiled in the House of Representatives. It is called the American Health Care Act, and it is not pretty.

Under the guise of “returning” authority over health care to consumers and states, many changes to the Affordable Care Act simply take us backward to the problems we had prior to ACA.

For young people in the peak of health not a lot will change other than they can now drop health care coverage totally since it would no longer be mandated.
Healthy people of any age will potentially leave the insurance pool, gambling that they won’t need insurance at all. That puts more people with existing health care needs to be covered, raising the overall outflow of insurance payments. In turn that outlay for your care – considered to be costs to insurance companies - will shove up the premium and other expenses on you, the insured.

To “relieve” insurance corporations from the burden of caring for a less healthy population, especially those with pre-existing conditions that still must be offered coverage, Congress will permit the return of significant “risk rates”. These set higher costs for covering not just illnesses but conditions such as age. The older you get (a good thing yes?) the more you may be charged. You may be charged more if you are in poor health or have a pre-existing condition.
Subsidies will continue for now. They will no longer be linked to income, however, but will be flat rates also based on age.
The monthly subsidies are now set at 1/12 of $2000 per year for those up to age 30, escalating to 1/12 of an annual $4000 allotment for those aged 60. What is masked in this flat rate assistance is the variable cost of premiums in different states and, more important, the fact that those aged 60 will now pay 5 times what those in their 20s pay but the assistance remains only double for older citizens. It is not uncommon for premiums for those aged 60 to be close to $1000 or more per month while the subsidy would be $333.

That is a huge gap between help and hardship. Younger people with pre-existing conditions receiving lower subsidies per month will also find their premiums much higher than those of their healthy peers since those with pre-existing conditions may be charged three times more.

One of the pre-Affordable Care Act problems for the very ill who had chronic or life-threatening problems was the existence of annual and lifetime caps on expenditures for health care coverage. Those are again permitted.

Employer tax credits for providing health insurance will be eliminated.

Health Savings Accounts will receive disproportionate tax credit help. Those with little to now discretionary income cannot save to create an HSA in the first place. For the working poor, enrolling in a ‘catastrophic’ plan with very high deductibles (50% or more would be the patient’s financial burden) would be highly encouraged. The lower income supports for deductibles would be eliminated.
Preventive care that has no extra charge will be eliminated.
Overall evaluation of the costs to individuals and families is staggering. Per David Cutler, Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University, health care under this proposed bill will cost families an additional $2243, those 55-64 will pay an additional $7604. For those below 250% of the federal poverty level, the bill will rise an additional $6228.

One Representative summed up the health care choices for the working poor as a difference between their choosing an expensive iPhone and health care. The problem is, health care is not a commodity, and most iPhones can be had for $100, not $6000-plus. This plan returns the working poor to a choice among rent, food, insurance.
Medicaid will be another problem for states. It will be transferred as a block grant meaning a flat sum not based on need or use or caseload. What has, in California, been transformative for homeless single adults, will now possibly be means tested, work related (a problem for those with disabilities), or capped so new enrollees would not be able to join. Those on Medicaid now will be eligible until 2020 in states that expanded the program in 2013. After 2020, the federal supports are not clear, the program at grave risk, with no alternative specified as part of the to-be-amended Social Security Act.
Those states not participating in Medicaid expansion will still not be part of that program. The very poor, disabled, elderly, blind, and otherwise uninsured poor will still have no access to care.
For those who opt out of private health coverage since it’s no longer mandated, there will be no tax penalty to cover the possible cost of emergency services. However, should insurance be needed in the future, there will be a new ‘penalty’ for non-coverage that will be equal to 30 percent of premiums for 12 months.

There will be tax cuts in the new plan, eliminating taxes on insurance companies, on pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, and the “Cadillac Tax” on high-cost health employer-provided health plans. In part to cover the tax breaks, there is a proposed diversion – some say raid – of $346 billion from the Medicare Trust Fund. (Source-socialsecurityworks.org)
Finally, the bill defunds Planned Parenthood, a major source of health access for men and women without local providers, insurance, or public clinics. PP provides an enormous array of services not just reproductive, and its defunding harms the poorest of the poor yet again.

TIME AGAIN TO RAISE YOUR VOICE!
It is no doubt clear California Church IMPACT is horrified. We, along with hundreds of thousands of you, fought for the Affordable Care Act through early 2010. The faith community across America was very important in securing the passage of ACA, and we need to be present in opposition to these setbacks.
The Congressional Budget Office has not yet scored the bill – and passing it without a word of its public cost impacts is horrifying – but we already see that millions will lose their coverage through unaffordability and others will experience skyrocketing increases in their family outlays.

This is unacceptable!
The promises of those opposed to ACA were to ‘repeal and replace’. Repeal is clear. Replacement is not. This bill takes us back to the days of great harm to people whose only fault was not being rich. With employer mandates and tax credits removed, more people will be uninsured, not fewer.
RAISE YOUR VOICE!
Please contact the House immediately. Some votes on parts of this law are coming up in the next few days!
Please let them know you support continuation and improvement of the Affordable Care Act not this bill, not this way, not this tactic, not this time. We want real health care and real affordability, not promises that the “market” will somehow push prices down when it never has and never will.
Call Congress via the Switchboard at 202-224-3121 to connect with your Representative and tell your member of Congress that you will not accept this assault on Americans’ health care.

Time is of the essence. Please call tomorrow morning – your “Faithful Five Minute” call per day has never been more important!

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!

Mad about your utility bills? Join our allies from TURN in Davis, CA March 2 to protest!

2/22/2017

Dear Friends:

Please join our allies with The Utility Reform Network at a special meeting of the Public Utilities Commission on March 2 in Davis, CA

Take Action!

If you are hopping mad about your outrageous PG&E gas bill—You are not alone!

We need your help to stop the California Public Utilities Commission from granting PG&E rate hike after rate hike that are driving utility disconnections, homelessness, and forcing families to choose between paying for heat or paying for food and medicine.

Protest outrageous bills and fight future rate hikes!

   1)   BRING YOUR BILL!   Have your voice heard in person by the five Commissioners at the next CPUC meeting. You will have two minutes to tell them how much your PG&E gas bill has increased, and what your family must sacrifice in order to get it paid.

PUBLIC MEETING WITH THE CA PUC

CPUC Public Meeting
9:00 Thursday, March 2
UC Davis, Appellate Courtroom
King Hall 400 Mrak Hall Drive
Davis, CA

   2)   SIGN A PETITION! Tell the Commissioners to stop approving outrageous rate increases that double your bills by signing here.

   3)   FILE A CPUC COMPLAINT! Make the CPUC review your individual bill to find PG&E mistakes that might result in a credit or refund on your bill here.

   4)   SPREAD THE WORD! Share our petition on Twitter and Share on Facebook!

Your actions today can prevent outrageous rate hikes tomorrow!

Sincerely,
Ana Montes, TURN
The Utility Reform Network
785 Market Street, Suite 1400
San Francisco, CA 94103
office: 415.929.8876
http://www.turn.org

Please take advantage of this opportunity to be heard. Your voice can make a difference!

Thank you.

Two federal bills that begin the assault on older Americans. Please oppose them!

2/16/2017

Dear Friends:

Two actions, a joint House Resolution and a bill, start the assault on America’s aging population.

First, as a step in changing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), HR 708 would permit the reinstatement of “risk rates”. These are actuarial justifications for charging some people higher rates than others. HR 708 is an “Age Tax” that lets insurance companies charge us more as we get older (which ought to be a very good thing!) without any other consideration.
An “Age Tax” presumes that every older person is a burden on the system which, in this day and age of careful prevention and healthy ways of life, is not remotely accurate. Such a presumption opens the door to restoring the ban on coverage for pre-existing conditions. These aspects of health coverage denial and unaffordability were eliminated from ACA for very good reasons. They put health care financially out of the reach of older people and let insurance companies “cherry pick” only the healthy to cover.
We need you to contact both your Representative and your two Senators to stop the “Age Tax” now!

The second issue, HJR 66, attacks a program we worked to obtain in CA – California Secure Choice. This program, passed last year, enrolls employees of any business that has no retirement plan into Secure Choice. Unless employees opt out, they will have an automatic deduction of 3% of their earnings put into the state Public Employee Retirement System pool of investments so that upon retirement they will have a nest egg to supplement their Social Security.
California Secure Care and similar programs offer congregations and faith organizations a way of helping their staff and clergy obtain pension coverage when they otherwise cannot afford to do so. This is a great boon to us as well as to the fast food workers, cleaners, hotel housekeepers, and every other low-wage employee or those working for impoverished organizations. Retirement security just became real!
No one is forced to participate if they choose not to do so; loans for emergencies may be withdrawn during the pre-retirement years and repaid on very easy terms, and participants will have the safety and security of the PERS fund to protect their pensions just as state workers do now. This is at no cost to either the employer or to taxpayers.
But Congress is dead set against this plan, now in effect in 6 states and in preparation within 19 more. It does erode private retirement plan dominance, a good thing for working people if not for those plans. Employers always have the option of setting up their own traditional plans, but for those who cannot or do not, employees are automatically covered. Protecting investors not working people is behind this joint resolution.
Please contact your Senators and ask them to vote against HJR 66 and permit working people the option of participating in their state’s retirement system.
Are your representatives and Senators already on your side? Let them hear anyway! They need numbers to hold up to opposition to make clear that the weight of public opinion is on our side!
Please take advantage of the Congressional break this coming week, February 18-25 to contact your federal legislators in the district. To find their local contact information, please go to our site:   http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html

We have a real chance to protect two programs we use, health and retirement, but we must act now to make sure these bills do not pass.
Raise your voice! Make a difference!

Thank you!