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Prayer Vigil for the 1%

Interfaith Worker Justice will hold a Prayer Vigil for the 1% tomorrow, December 8th. You are invited to pray along, starting at 11 a.m., for the wealthiest Americans. We are calling on them to help us create an economy that works for 100 percent of us.

If you are on Facebook, you may RSVP to the Online Prayer Vigil. Then, tomorrow at 11 a.m., change your Facebook status to say: Praying for the One Percent: to whom much is given, more is required — Luke 12:48.

While thousands of unemployed workers and people of faith gather in Washington, D.C. tomorrow for a Flower Prayer Vigil for the 99 percent, I will be praying along with IWJ for the One Percent – the wealthiest Americans who have benefitted from unfair economic policies.

Please join in prayer, even if you’re not on Facebook.

On Tuesday, Dec. 6, IWJ’s national Board of Directors released “An Open Letter to the One Percent:”

To Whom Much Is Given, More is Required:
An Open Letter to the One Percent

During this time of financial crisis and economic disparity, we affirm the God-given dignity of every person. We believe God loves all 100 percent of us and wants to use us to create a more just society.

As faith leaders, we appreciate the generosity, charity, and commitment to the common good that many of you embody.

Still, some of you have used wealth and power to benefit the few at the expense of the many. We expect you to work with us to not only give generously, but to advocate for democracy and economic justice that works for everyone.

We call on you to:

  • Support tax policies and legislation that require more from you so our nation can create good jobs in America
  • Call for an extension of unemployment benefits for those unable to find work

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” We are in this together, all 100 percent of us.

National Board of Directors, Interfaith Worker Justice

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, , , , , , ,

On Veteran’s Day

For my dad, grandfather, and all our Veterans. May their service and sacrifice be honored.

My dad, Louis T. Konicki at Mainz-Bischofshein - part of the post WWII occupying forces

Our veterans are now returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, and of course are greeted with initial joy. Then they face the search for work and the struggle with the horrors they have faced. They face a lack of adequate physical and mental health care. As to jobs, what are our veterans finding? An extraordinarily difficult job market with an unemployment rate for combat-age veterans at 17.5% in New York State, 13.3% nationally.

Dr. John Guzlowski reflects in November 11, 1918–The Day World War I Ended

I first heard of World War I when we came to America as Displaced Persons in 1951. We were refugees after World War II, and we moved into a basement apartment on Hamilton Street in Chicago.

Our landlord was a veteran of the First World War. He was a Polish American named Ponchek. He was also a drunk, but that wasn’t anything special. There were a lot of drunks around. What made Ponchek special was that he had a steel plate in his head. As a kid and a recent immigrant to America, he had been drafted and sent to France to stop the Germans who were trying to rip France apart and shove it into the Atlantic. He ended up in the trenches in France in late October fighting the Germans, and a bullet took off the top of his head. The doctors cut away what bone they could, cleaned out the wound, and screwed a steel plate into the skull bone.

This fascinated me when I was a kid. I wondered about that plate, and what it felt like. Did Ponchek always feel a weight pressing down on his head? Was it like wearing a steel hat? A steel helmet? And I wondered what they covered the plate with. Skin? And where did it come from? Was it his skin or someone else’s? I never could ask.

Like a lot of the veterans I knew, he was frightening. He wasn’t a guy you wanted to spend a lot of time talking to.

Veterans were men who limped. They dragged their legs behind them like Lon Chaney in the Mummy movie. They were men who had wooden legs that creaked when they walked past you and the other kids sitting on the stoop. These veterans had no arms or only one arm, or were missing fingers or hands, or ears.

My dad, a guy who lost his left eye when he was clubbed by a Nazi guard in a concentration camp, used to go to a bar where the owner had a black, shiny rubber hand. He lost his real hand during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 when he shoved a homemade grenade into the steel treads of a German tank. The black rubber hand was like some kind of weird toy. Sometimes, it looked like a black fist, sometimes it looked like an eight ball.

Sometimes, a vet without arms or legs sat on the sidewalk in front of this bar. He had a cloth hat in front of him, and he was selling pencils. He’d sit there smiling, making chit chat with the guys walking in and out of the bar. You’d toss him a nickel, and you could take a pencil, but most guys didn’t. Who needs a pencil?…

A musical reflection – “Sargent Mackenzie”

Original Scottish Version

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid

Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Ains a year say a prayer faur me
Close yir een an remember me

Nair mair shall a see the sun
For a fell tae a Germans gun

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

English Translation

Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone

When they come I will stand my ground
Stand my ground I’ll not be afraid

Thoughts of home take away my fear
Sweat and blood hide my veil of tears

Once a year say a prayer for me
Close your eyes and remember me

Never more shall I see the sun
For I fell to a Germans gun

Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone

Where before many more have gone.

Art, Perspective, Poetry,

Poetry — Literature — Boston

From Somerville News: Poet Kathleen Spivack: Boston as a Literary City

Boston is a historically literary city. The beauty of Boston for writers today is that it is manageable, friendly, diverse, and non-hierarchical. I am sure the reverse is equally true, of course.

Whether you are a young aspiring student or an established writer it is easy to meet and speak, read your work and share ideas. Boston is non-intimidating and, despite its variety of poets, very democratic actually. There are numerous presses and as well as many writing centers that encourage our work. Our long winters help: we huddle together around the metaphoric campfires and warm our hands on writing.

In 1959 I came to Boston on a fellowship to study with poet Robert Lowell, both in his famous workshop and in private tutorial. He introduced me to other poets. They included Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, Basil Bunting, Jonathan Griffin, and others. Later, writers Frank Bidart, Andrew Wylie, Robert Pinsky, Jonathan Galassi, Lloyd Schwartz, Fanny Howe, Gail Mazur and James Atlas; to name only a few, gravitated to Lowell as well. Lowell championed his writers, and the experience of working with him changed lives.

The Grolier Poetry Bookshop has always been a historic center for poetry, and survives today under its new owner, Ifeanyi Menkiti. Founded by Gordon Cairney, it was a home for the young T.S Eliot, E.E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish, Richard Wilbur, and later for Margaret Atwood, Robert Creeley, Gerard Malanga, James Alan McPherson and many others. Its roster of patrons mirrors aspects of our literary heritage. It is lined with photographs.

The young Louisa Solano who had worked at the Grolier took over the store when Gordon died. She brought it into the 21st century. One of the legendary dedicated great booksellers in America, Louisa’s knowledge, taste, passion, width of book buying, and her reading series reflected the whole span of American poetry. She also sponsored prizes for young poets.

Seamus Heaney was in Boston during that time and often at the Grolier. He inspired us with his poetry and also with his open generous nature. The Woodberry Poetry Room, at Lamont Library, Harvard University grew under the directorship of Straits Haviarias. The Woodberry Poetry Room opened to all members of the writing community and had a vast collection of recordings, books and little magazines. The Voices and Visions series was one of their projects. Christina Thompson, Don Share, Christina Davis and others continued with the Woodberry Poetry Room to make its archival material available. The Henry Wadsworth Longfellow House in conjunction with the New England Poetry Club, sponsors readings on its patrician grounds. The Boston Public Library hosts several festivals for writing.

And on the grassroots level, the Bagel Bards as well as many other community writing groups welcome local writers, editors, and publishers to weekly networking sessions. There are similar groups in other parts of Boston. Our city is small and multicultural and there are many opportunities for writers of diversity to come together. First Night, a city wide New Year’s celebration, began in Boston in 1976 under Clara Wainwright and Zaren Earles. It opened its doors to literary readings from writers from every community.Later Patricia Smith was instrumental in bringing the Poetry Slam here, which helped youth of all backgrounds to hone skills in writing and performance. Poets in the Schools started in the 70’s as well, and linked writers working in schools with each other, and with the diversity of Boston’s school population. Sam Cornish, Boston’s current Poet Laureate, a writer and scholar teacher and former bookstore owner, has been tireless in his efforts to encourage poetry. We’ve seen many Boston area literary festivals blossom.

Under its recent ownership of the Grolier, the warm and wonderful Ifeanyi and Carol Menkiti have brought a specifically multicultural approach to the store and it is once again a lively magnet for the poetic community, with its own ambiance. Theirs is a labor of love indeed and we love them for keeping this historic bookstore alive. We also cite the presses of Steve Glines, Doug Holder, J. Kates, and others. The work of Harris Gardner and Jack Powers. Sajed Kamal at the Fenway. There are many links between the writing circles in Boston. We are lucky to have the resources, the dedicated bookstore owners and teachers and administrators, the open heartedness of our poetic institutions, the diversity of community, and the manageable size of greater Boston’s literary landscape to support our writing life. Generosity is the word that best describes Boston’s literary scene.

The writer, Kathleen Spivack is the author of A History of Yearning, Winner of the Sows Ear International Poetry Prize 2010, first runner up in the New England Book Festival, and winner of the London Book Festival; Moments of Past Happiness (Earthwinds/Grolier Editions 2007); The Beds We Lie In (Scarecrow 1986), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; The Honeymoon (Graywolf 1986); Swimmer in the Spreading Dawn (Applewood 1981); The Jane Poems (Doubleday 1973); Flying Inland (Doubleday 1971); Robert Lowell, A Personal Memoir; (forthcoming 2011) and a novel, Unspeakable Things. She is a recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award 2010, the 2010 Erica Mumford Award, and the 2010 Paumanok Award. She has also won several International Solas Prizes for “Best Essays.”

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political, , , ,

And killing the innocent?

Troy Davis has 1 days to live before he is executed by the State of Georgia. But 7 witnesses say Troy is innocent, and that another man committed the crime for which he will be killed. Evidence presented at Troy’s trial was considered shaky at the time. Since then, seven witnesses have recanted their testimony, many saying they were pressured by police into false testimony. There’s no physical evidence Troy committed the crime. And, according to Amnesty International, nine people have signed affidavits implicating another man. Georgia’s Board of Parole and Pardons had said there should be “no doubt” about a person’s guilt before he is executed. Today they decided that “doubt” doesn’t matter.

Background on the case from Wikipedia.

From the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

E.D. Kain writing in Forbes with whom I totally agree: Troy Davis and the History of Injustice in America

The history of justice in America is pocked with such deep institutional injustices that time and again we make a mockery of the word. From slavery to the War on Drugs, the powerful have trampled time and again on the weak.

Law and order masquerade as justice, and our prisons fill to the brim with young men, mostly black and Hispanic, mostly poor. Meanwhile, inner cities lie like sunken ruins across the wealthiest nation in the history of civilization, stomped upon by drug warriors and poverty and violence.

And though we accept the limitations of our government and of the good judgment of our leaders, we nevertheless believe in the infallibility of this system we call justice, but which is not justice, to hand down the most final sort of judgment a man could ever know.

Troy Davis, convicted over two decades ago of killing an off-duty cop, though much doubt has been cast upon his guilt and the methods which police and prosecutors used to secure his conviction, will be executed by the state of Georgia tomorrow. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has denied him clemency, and there are no other avenues left to save him.

In the end, I am not concerned so much with whether or not Davis is guilty or innocent. I am concerned with the uncertainty of his guilt. “I’m not for blood. I’m for justice,” said the mother of the slain police officer. But we extract one or the other, not both. In a case where the blood may be that of an innocent, how can we call it justice?

If Davis is not guilty and we kill him nonetheless then we have simply stacked one murder on top of another. The life of Mark MacPhail will not be avenged. If Davis is guilty, surely serving out the remainder of his life in state prison should be enough. Justice does not require retribution.

Death is tragic. The death of Mark MacPhail is a tragedy that will never be undone. Not by blood, not by prison bars, not by time, not by proof that Davis is guilty or proof that he is innocent. But if we have even a glimmer of doubt about his guilt, there will be no justice in his death…

I will not argue the death penalty here. There are times when it may be appropriate. However, a persons guilt or innocence cannot remain questionable. As long as questions persist, the course of least harm must be followed.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political, , , , , ,

Getting poorer

Poverty is on the increase, inequality — not based on personal effort — but systematically driven is on the increase. Those who have are fewer and fewer, those without are increasing, and those in the middle are on a downward spiral. What is the proper faith response? Where are the strong calls to justice and prophetic witness?

From the U.S. Census Bureau: Poverty

The data presented here are from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 2011 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), the source of official poverty estimates. The CPS ASEC is a sample survey of approximately 100,000 household nationwide. These data reflect conditions in calendar year 2010.

  • The official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent — up from 14.3 percent in 2009. This was the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased by 2.6 percentage points, from 12.5 percent to 15.1 percent.
  • In 2010, 46.2 million people were in poverty, up from 43.6 million in 2009—the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty.
  • Between 2009 and 2010, the poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic Whites (from 9.4 percent to 9.9 percent), for Blacks (from 25.8 percent to 27.4 percent), and for Hispanics (from 25.3 percent to 26.6 percent). For Asians, the 2010 poverty rate (12.1 percent) was not statistically different from the 2009 poverty rate.
  • The poverty rate in 2010 (15.1 percent) was the highest poverty rate since 1993 but was 7.3 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available.
  • The number of people in poverty in 2010 (46.2 million) is the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.
  • Between 2009 and 2010, the poverty rate increased for children under age 18 (from 20.7 percent to 22.0 percent) and people aged 18 to 64 (from 12.9 percent to 13.7 percent), but was not statistically different for people aged 65 and older (9.0 percent).

From the AP via Yahoo!: Behind the poverty numbers: real lives, real pain

At a food pantry in a Chicago suburb, a 38-year-old mother of two breaks into tears.

She and her husband have been out of work for nearly two years. Their house and car are gone. So is their foothold in the middle class and, at times, their self-esteem.
“It’s like there is no way out,” says Kris Fallon.

She is trapped like so many others, destitute in the midst of America’s abundance. Last week, the Census Bureau released new figures showing that nearly one in six Americans lives in poverty — a record 46.2 million people. The poverty rate, pegged at 15.1 percent, is the highest of any major industrialized nation, and many experts believe it could get worse before it abates.

The numbers are daunting — but they also can seem abstract and numbing without names and faces.

Associated Press reporters around the country went looking for the people behind the numbers. They were not hard to find.

There’s Tim Cordova, laid off from his job as a manager at a McDonald’s in New Mexico, and now living with his wife at a homeless shelter after a stretch where they slept in their Ford Focus.

There’s Bill Ricker, a 74-year-old former repairman and pastor whose home is a dilapidated trailer in rural Maine. He scrapes by with a monthly $1,003 Social Security check. His ex-wife also is hard up; he lets her live in the other end of his trailer.

There’s Brandi Wells, a single mom in West Virginia, struggling to find a job and care for her 10-month-old son. “I didn’t realize that it could go so bad so fast,” she says.

Some were outraged by the statistics. Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund called the surging child poverty rate “a national disgrace.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., cited evidence that poverty shortens life spans, calling it “a death sentence for tens and tens of thousands of our people.”

Overall, though, the figures seemed to be greeted with resignation, and political leaders in Washington pressed ahead with efforts to cut federal spending. The Pew Research Center said its recent polling shows that a majority of Americans — for the first time in 15 years of being surveyed on the question — oppose more government spending to help the poor.

“The news of rising poverty makes headlines one day. And the next it is forgotten,” said Los Angeles community activist and political commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

Such is life in the Illinois town of Pembroke, one of the poorest in the Midwest, where schools and stores have closed. Keith Bobo, a resident trying to launch revitalization programs, likened conditions to the Third World.

“A lot of the people here just feel like they are on an island, like no one even knows that they exist,” he said…

From Robert Reich writing in the Christian Science Monitor: What you won’t hear about during the 2012 election: Why progressive ideas like wage increases and medicare won’t be mentioned during presidential debates

We’re on the cusp of the 2012 election. What will it be about? It seems reasonably certain President Obama will be confronted by a putative Republican candidate who:

Believes corporations are people, wants to cut the top corporate rate to 25% (from the current 35%) and no longer require they pay tax on foreign income, who will eliminate capital gains and dividend taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year, raise the retirement age for Social Security and turn Medicaid into block grants to states, seek a balanced-budged amendment to the Constitution, require any regulatory agency issuing a new regulation repeal another regulation of equal cost (regardless of the benefits), and seek repeal of Obama’s healthcare plan.

Or one who:

Believes the Federal Reserve is treasonous when it expands the money supply, doubts human beings evolved from more primitive forms of life, seeks to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and shift most public services to the states, thinks Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, while governor took a meat axe to public education and presided over an economy that generated large numbers of near-minimum-wage jobs, and who will shut down most federal regulatory agencies, cut corporate taxes, and seek repeal of Obama’s healthcare plan.

Whether it’s Romney or Perry, he’s sure to attack everything Obama has done or proposed. And Obama, for his part, will have to defend his positions and look for ways to counterpunch.

Hence, the parameters of public debate for the next fourteen months.

Within these narrow confines progressive ideas won’t get an airing. Even though poverty and unemployment will almost surely stay sky-high, wages will stagnate or continue to fall, inequality will widen, and deficit hawks will create an indelible (and false) impression that the nation can’t afford to do much about any of it – proposals to reverse these trends are unlikely to be heard.

Neither party’s presidential candidate will propose to tame CEO pay, create more tax brackets at the top and raise the highest marginal rates back to their levels in the 1950s and 1960s (that is, 70 to 90 percent), and match the capital-gains rate with ordinary income.

You won’t hear a call to strengthen labor unions and increase the bargaining power of ordinary workers.

Don’t expect an argument for resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act, thereby separating commercial from investment banking and stopping Wall Street’s most lucrative and dangerous practices.

You won’t hear there’s no reason to cut Medicare and Medicaid – that a better means of taming health-care costs is to use these programs’ bargaining clout with drug companies and hospitals to obtain better deals and to shift from fee-for-services to fee for healthy outcomes.

Nor will you hear why we must move toward Medicare for all.

Nor why the best approach to assuring Social Security’s long-term solvency is to lift the ceiling on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes.

Don’t expect any reference to the absurdity of spending more on the military than do all other countries put together, and the waste and futility of an unending and undeclared war against Islamic extremism – especially when we have so much to do at home.

Nor are you likely to hear proposals for ending the corruption of our democracy by big money.

Although proposals like these are more important and relevant than ever, they won’t be part of the upcoming presidential election.

But they should be part of the public debate nonetheless.

That’s why I urge you to speak out about them – at town halls, candidate forums, and public events. Continue to mobilize and organize around them. Talk with your local media about them. Use social media to get the truth out…

John Gray’s essay from the BBC: A Point of View: The revolution of capitalism

Karl Marx may have been wrong about communism but he was right about much of capitalism, John Gray writes.

As a side-effect of the financial crisis, more and more people are starting to think Karl Marx was right. The great 19th Century German philosopher, economist and revolutionary believed that capitalism was radically unstable.

It had a built-in tendency to produce ever larger booms and busts, and over the longer term it was bound to destroy itself.

Marx welcomed capitalism’s self-destruction. He was confident that a popular revolution would occur and bring a communist system into being that would be more productive and far more humane.

Marx was wrong about communism. Where he was prophetically right was in his grasp of the revolution of capitalism. It’s not just capitalism’s endemic instability that he understood, though in this regard he was far more perceptive than most economists in his day and ours.

More profoundly, Marx understood how capitalism destroys its own social base – the middle-class way of life. The Marxist terminology of bourgeois and proletarian has an archaic ring.

But when he argued that capitalism would plunge the middle classes into something like the precarious existence of the hard-pressed workers of his time, Marx anticipated a change in the way we live that we’re only now struggling to cope with…

Perspective, Poetry, , ,

Reflections – 10 Years Later

From John Guzlowski, his poem Sept 13, 2001 found in his post: 9/11 — Ten Years Later

I’ve written a number of poems about 9/11 over the years. The first one was written a couple days of 9/11. That poem talked about how I wanted an end to 9/11. It didn’t happen then, and it hasn’t happened since…

Ted Monica, a fellow former seminarian at Wadhams Hall, and an Episcopal priest, offers his music: Sisters and Brothers.

To the Children of Emma Lazarus – a poem for 9/11 by Konrad Tademar

From Howard Community College on Danuta Hinc’s book To Kill the Other: A question of killing: Howard County author searches for an answer

Five days. That’s all it took after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for Danuta Hinc to realize that she needed to write a book about how such a thing could happen.

“I realized that I needed to know what leads people to make such extreme choices,” says Hinc, who teaches professional writing at the University of Maryland College Park. “And the next question I asked was: Am I capable of killing someone?”

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Hinc stood in the living room of her Ellicott City townhouse, riveted to the TV screen, unable to sit down, unable to comprehend what she was witnessing.

“Like everyone else, I thought it was an accident. When the second plane hit, I realized to my horror that it was not,” says Hinc, who is in her early 40s and grew up in Poland under Communist oppression.

“My first thought was ‘They must be so organized,’ ” she remembers. Then she realized she didn’t know a thing about them.

“I hated them with all my heart. But I didn’t like that I hated them,” she says.

What eventually came of that rush of tangled emotions and questions, some 10 years later, is Hinc’s book, “To Kill the Other.” It’s a fictional story of a boy who grows up to become a terrorist. It’s not about al-Qaeda; it’s not about ideology. It’s about the choices human beings make.

She spent three and a half years researching and writing the story, which she first wrote in Polish. Then she spent another two-and-a-half years translating it into English. At the time, she was an adjunct professor of English and religion at Howard Community College.

“To Kill the Other” follows the journey of Taher, a sensitive Egyptian boy, from the time he was 7 to his presence as a terrorist on the first plane to hit the World Trade Center…

[AMAZONPRODUCT=1617390194]

Mark Skinner reflects for More Magazine: 9/11 Changed My Life

“I spent so many years doing what I ‘should’ do,” says Mary Skinner, who went from financial exec to award-winning filmmaker.

For 20 years, Mary Skinner climbed the corporate ladder in financial communications, at one point working on the 106th floor of Two World Trade Center, before moving to San Francisco to be close to her family. In the months leading up to 9/11, her life was in limbo. Living with her parents, she wrestled with an internal conflict about her professional future. “I spent so many years doing what I ‘should’ do,” she says. She wanted to return to New York, and even flew there that summer for an interview with a financial services start-up. When the ‘no-thanks’ letter arrived, her disappointment was sharp.

But as the catastrophe unfolded, Skinner’s hesitation disappeared. “I knew friends were caught on certain floors and didn’t make it,” she says. “I felt: I need to be there right now. I’ve got to go back. I had devoted my talent, heart and brain cells to helping somebody make a little more money on currency arbitrage. In the face of what was going on in the world, I felt like, that’s a sin.”

Two months later, Skinner boarded a plane for New York – without a job or a place to live, and for the first time in her professional life, without a plan.

She found temp office work, reconnected with old friends and took writing classes. She enrolled in a documentary filmmaking class at the New School, wanting to make a film about her Polish-born, Catholic mother, Klotylda, who was orphaned and imprisoned during World War II and cared for by strangers afterwards. Klotylda wouldn’t agree to be her subject. Haunted by her mother’s experiences, Skinner continued with her research, uncovering more stories of children saved by heroic strangers…

From Jim Wallis at Sojourners: 10 Years After 9/11: The Good and the Bad

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at home in Washington, D.C. getting ready to go to Sojourners’ office. I was upstairs listening to the news on NPR when I heard the first confusing report of a plane crashing into the south tower of the World Trade Center. I immediately called downstairs to Joy and asked her to turn on the television to see what was going on. Moments later, as we ate breakfast together with our three-year-old son Luke, we watched the second plane strike the north tower. I still remember my first response to Joy, “This is going to be bad, very bad,” I said.

Of course, I meant more than just the damage to the Twin Towers and the lives lost, which became far greater than any of us imagined at first. Rather, my first and deepest concern was what something like this could do to our our nation’s soul. I was afraid of how America would respond to a terrorist attack of this scope.

But as the Towers collapsed, and the suffering of this horrible event became increasingly clear in the hours and days that followed, other parts of the American soul revealed themselves — the heroic responses of the first responders, and a city and nation of people taking care of each other. As ordinary citizens gave their lives for strangers, they became our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. In the days that followed the 9/11 attacks, the stories of pain, loss, and self-sacrifice brought Joy and me to tears several times. The suffering of many led to the service of many more.

For a moment, the world’s last remaining superpower was vulnerable, and we all felt it. In Washington, people fled from downtown D.C., walking and running right past our house, and gathered to pray at places such as Sojourners’ office. Joy helped Luke set up a little water station, as people frantically rushed by our house.

In our sudden sense of vulnerability we were now, and perhaps for the first time, like most of the world, where vulnerability is an accepted part of being human. And in those first days following 9/11, America, not the terrorists, had the high ground. The world did not identify with those who cruelly and murderously decided to take innocent lives in response to their grievances — both real and imagined. Instead, the world identified with a suffering America — even the front cover of the French newspaper Le Monde ran the headline, “We are all Americans now.”

But it was Washington’s response that I was most worried about. Within a short period of time, the official reaction to terrorism would simply be defined as war — a decade of it — resulting in many more innocent casualties than on September 11, 2001. In response to America’s own suffering, many others in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world would now suffer — all in the name of our war on terrorism. The opportunity for deeper understanding, reflection, and redirection would elude us as we sought to erase our vulnerability with the need to demonstrate our superior force and power. This was done quite easily in the early days of both our new wars. But now, we see that the longest series of wars in American history has failed to resolve or reverse the causes of the violence that struck us, or to make us safer. They just made it all worse.

The world expected and would have supported a focused and sustained effort to pursue and bring this small band of criminals to justice. But these last 10 years of manipulated and corrupted intelligence, endless war, practices and policies of torture, secret armies of assassination, global violations of human rights, indiscriminate violence with countless civilian casualties, and trillions of dollars wasted caused America to lose the high ground long ago. The arrogance of American power was our only response to the both the brutality and complexity of terrorism. Perhaps, this arrogance is most recently and brazenly exhibited in former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s new book tour, where he boasts of having absolutely no regrets for any of the momentous decisions he took part in. These are decisions which have made the world an even more divided, polarized, dehumanized, and dangerous place — 10 years after September 11, 2001.

But, fortunately, the official and failed response of Washington to the terrible tragedy of 9/11 has not been the only reponse. A new generation of Christians has asked how Jesus would respond to these same events. Many of them would agree with what Methodist Bishop Will Willimon recently said in the evangelical magazine Christianity Today: “American Christians may look back upon our response to 9/11 as our greatest Christological defeat … when our people felt vulnerable, they reached for the flag instead of the cross.” As many of those who have grown up in the decade since 9/11 confront the conflicts of their world, they are reaching for different things than their government. They are forging alternative responses to issues of injustice and violence, and rejecting the terrorism and war sequence of Washington’s twisted and failed moral logic.

And despite the hateful diatribes of fundamentalist leaders in all our religious traditions, other pastors have decided to love their neighbors, and even their enemies in response to Jesus’ call. Their stories are slowly being told, from American neighborhoods where Muslims have moved in, to conflict areas around the world where faith is being used for bridge building and healing, instead of more revenge killings. Christian leaders are sharing meals, fasting, and prayer with Muslim leaders. Some have defended each other’s congregations and homes in the face of heated threats and rhetoric. While differences between faith traditions are not being glossed over, the nature of a loving and reconciling God is being courageously affirmed across religious lines. In all of this, we are saying that government responses need not define our own…

Art, Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, Political, , , , , , , ,

Art and thoughts for Labor Day

At Dawn. Going to Work, Czesław Wasilewski, ca. 1930

The history and tradition of the Polish National Catholic Church’s is the life and history of its people and their relationship with their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The documents, hymns, and writings of the Church, and its civic action all reference its relationship with Labor. That relationship was founded so that the struggles of its members would not go unheeded, but rather to support them in prevailing in their fight for freedom, recognition, fair treatment and wages as workers, and their dignity as citizens and Christians.

These references include, from the Hymn of the Polish National Catholic Church:

Now again He comes from heaven,
Midst the lab’ring, toiling people,
In the form of Bread and God’s Word,
To His humble, needful people.
To His humble, needful people.

From the Hymn of Faith:

To Thee we come, O Lord our God,
Before Thine altar Father,
Thou knowest best our yearning hearts,
This supplication answer.
Lift up from want thy people, Lord.
Bless us O God, O Father bless our toil.

Under Thy Cross we stand prepared,
To serve Thee with devotion,
Be it with sweat of blood or tears,
Or humble resignation.
For we Thy people are, O Lord,
Save us O God, O Father bless our toil.

The Church, addressing criticism of Bishop Hodur’s support for workers and their efforts. Some saw a necessity for removing religion from the workers movement. From Straz (21 January 1910):

As it was in 1897, so it is today in the year 1910, that Bishop Hodur is a supporter of reform in the civil or the social spirit, he is for the nationalization of the land, of churches, schools, factories, mines and the means of production. He has stated this openly and states it publicly today, he does not hide his sympathies for the workers’ movement and he will never hide them, and he considers himself nothing else than a worker in God’s Church.

But the bishop is an opponent of erasing religion from the cultural work of humanity — indeed, Bishop Hodur believes strongly and is convinced that all progress, growth, just and harmonious shaping of human relations must come from a religious foundation, lean on Divine ethics, and then such growth will be permanent and will give humanity happiness.

Bishop Hodur stood with strikers and those in the Labor movement. He participated in strikes and supported striking workers, and called the PNCC together to respond to the Lattimer Massacre. The following is from a November 30, 1919 speech at a reception for delegate Maciej Łacszczyński, editor of a labor newspaper in Poland and a delegate to the International Conference of Workers held in Washington. The address was attended by members of congress and John T. Dempsey, President of the United Mine Workers Union:

One of the greatest achievements of modern civilization is respect and honor for human labor. ln the past, labor was undervalued, work was shameful, and what goes with that, working people were mistreated and abused. There was kowtowing and bowing before those who did not need to work hard, and those who did work hard and with their toil created wealth and fed others were regarded as half-free or slaves. Even the greatest of the ancient thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle regarded this economic system as just and the only one recommended, in which a minority rules and possesses full rights of citizenship and the majority works and produces. This majority of people had no rights, it was not free. And such a system lasted whole ages.

Truly Jesus Christ came on earth as the greatest teacher of humankind, the spiritual regenerator, and he condemned a social order based on cruelty and injustice, and His immediate disciples tried to create a new order, the Kingdom of God on earth, but the exponents of force and exploitation soon managed to gain for themselves the leaders of the Christian Church and impose on them their points of view. And the entire Middle Ages, that is, for about a thousand years more, this unjust system was tolerated, this order in which two castes, that is, the magnates, nobles and clergy, possessed rights and privileges; townspeople had limited rights, but the great masses of peasants and laborers were without rights, without influence whatsoever. It was not even permitted to change one’s lord. One was tied to the field or to the workplace like some kind of thing without a soul.

Not until the beginning of the nineteenth century were the commandments of Christ the Lord remembered, His teaching about the worthiness and value of labor. But it was not the priests, not the bishops, not the pope – these representatives of the Christian Church – who recalled this splendid teaching of Christ about the value of the human soul and labor, but lay people, first in England, then in France. It began to be taught that work is the foundation of the social structure, that work is the source of wealth, prosperity and happiness, and what goes with this, that it is not the nobility, not the magnates, not those presently ruling who should be the ruling class, but if there is to be a ruling class then it should be the working class.

And from that time, that is, more or less from the middle of the last century, begins the organization of workers on a larger scale in the name of the rights of man, in the name of the value and worthiness of labor. Everything that workers did in the name of their slogans was good.

And today one may say boldly that the cause of labor is the most important one, and that progress, the development and happiness of the whole nation, of all mankind, depends on its just resolution. Workers today have more privileges than they have ever had.

In this reasonable and just struggle for rights, bread for the family and education for children, for common control of the wealth created by the worker, our holy Church stands before the worker like a pillar of fire, and the hand of Christ blesses him in his work.

Art, Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, , , , , , ,

Art for July 23rd: In solidarity with the people of Norway

Martzmorgen, Nikolai Astrup

I kveld gråter vi med dem som gråter. — We weep with those who weep.

In these days of sorrow we stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Norway, and all members of the Nordic Catholic Church. Know that our prayers and thoughts are with you.

This coming Monday, the Feast of St. James the Greater, Apostle, I will stand with the Very Rev. Roald Flemstad on the occasion of his consecration as bishop in our Lord and Savior’s Holy Catholic Church. The gift once given to the then Rev. Franciszek Hodur, so as to organize the Holy Polish National Catholic Church, is to be passed on to the Holy Nordic Catholic Church. I will stand with them and by my mere presence will offer support and prayer for them, and all the people of Norway.

O merciful God, Father of the Crucified Christ! In every sorrow which awaits us may we look up to Thee without doubt or fear, persuaded that Thy mercy is ever sure. Thou cannot fail us. There is no place or time where Thou art not. Uphold us in our grief and sorrow, and in our darkness visit us with Thy light. We are Thine; help us, we beseech Thee, in life and in death to feel that we are Thine. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. — A Prayer In Time of Sorrow from A Book of Devotions and Prayers According to the Use of the Polish National Catholic Church.

Perspective,

Guest article: 10 Frequent Employment Law Errors

The contemporary American workplace is susceptible to numerous federal, state, and local laws that impose strict obligations on businesses (e.g., wage and hour legislation, nondiscrimination legislation, etc.). Most companies, especially smaller businesses, tend not to know the scope of such obligations and, consequently, frequently (albeit inadvertently) violate what the law states. These violations can result in costly lawsuits, and also civil and criminal penalties. In my experience of being a defense attorney in addition to being a plaintiff’s lawyer, the most frequent employment law mistakes done by corporations are the subsequent (in no particular order):

  1. Misclassifying employees as independent contractors. Generally speaking, only workers who operate their particular separate corporations are “independent contractors.” Few workers meet this test; the truth is, most personnel are considered “employees” for the law, this means they’re eligible to the complete variety of workplace protections.
  2. Misclassifying non-exempt staff members as exempt. Generally speaking, all personnel are eligible for minimum wage and overtime pay, unless they’re “exempt” under state and federal law. The exemption rules (e.g., for executive, administrative, and professional employees) only apply in limited circumstances, however; therefore, many workers that are claimed by businesses to get “exempt” actually have entitlement to minimum wage and/or overtime pay.
  3. Not complying with state wage payment legal guidelines. i.e. New York imposes several specific rules regarding how businesses be forced to pay their personnel. These rules include providing new workers with written notice of these rate of pay and regular pay date; prohibiting deductions from wages unless to the employee’s benefit and authorized in writing; requiring written contracts for commissioned salespersons; and providing terminated employees with written notice of the last day’s work, their last day’s benefits, and their right to make an application for unemployment benefits.
  4. Not owning a personnel handbook. A laborer handbook is a vital tool for effective employer-employee relations. It notifies workers of the company’s values, policies, and procedures; promotes compliance with labor and employment legal guidelines; so it helps create an orderly, efficient, and transparent workplace.
  5. Not documenting personnel job performance. A well-managed organization clearly communicates its employees’ duties and responsibilities (e.g., through written position descriptions), trains and supervises workers to be sure they are meeting these requirements, and gives regular, objective, consistent feedback (e.g., through written evaluations and, where necessary, disciplinary actions). A deficiency of accurate, complete, contemporaneous documentation can cause liability in case of a case by a staff member.
  6. Not training supervisors regarding EEO legislation. Federal, state, and local equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws and regulations prohibit businesses from taking adverse actions against employees (e.g., demotion, termination) for reasons not associated with an employee’s job performance, including those determined by an employee’s race, color, sex, age, disability, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and marital status ( to mention the commonest “protected characteristics”), plus retaliation for an employee’s good faith complaints of discrimination. It is imperative that supervisors learn the way to manage staff members without violating (or appearing to violate) these laws and regulations.
  7. Not providing reasonable accommodations for disabled staff members. Most EEO legislation prohibit businesses from taking adverse actions against employees according to certain protected characteristics, but disability discrimination legal guidelines also impose an affirmative obligation on businesses to “reasonably accommodate” disabled personnel in order to assist them to perform the primary functions of the jobs. Such accommodations can sometimes include restructuring job duties, modifying work schedules, or providing assistive devices. Businesses must give a disabled laborer with needed accommodations unless doing this would cause an “undue hardship” for the company (e.g., very costly, too disruptive).
  8. Not obtaining releases from terminated personnel. When terminating a worker, businesses need to get a release that waives the employee’s potential legal claims against the enterprise. The simplest way to get a release is in exchange for an offer of severance (where appropriate). Generally, organizations are not essential to pay for severance to employees (unless essential to an employment contract or perhaps a collective bargaining agreement). If they opt to do this (e.g., associated with layoffs), they ought to require employees to sign a release in substitution for the payment.
  9. Not protecting confidential business information. Every company depends upon certain vital, often confidential, specifics of its organization operations, including trade secrets, marketing and advertising practices, and customer and client lists. Access to this information must be tied to employees with a “need to know” and may be protected by appropriate non-disclosure, non-compete, and/or non-solicitation agreements (depending on the nature of the information along with the employee’s position).
  10. Not consulting a certified employment law attorney. Perhaps the only most crucial point to take away from this discussion is always that businesses should consult an experienced employment lawyer to ensure they are in compliance with all the increasingly numerous and complex laws and regulations that carpet work just like a minefield. Large companies most often have attorneys and hr professionals within the company to help them in this field. Small- and medium-size businesses often tend not to. Their biggest mistake is attempting to navigate this minefield automatically.

So you? Exactly what are your top mistakes made in employment law?

About the writer: Stacia Abner, Esq. writes for labor law training courses, her personal blog, where she discusses her experience as an attorney assisting workers and corporations in coping with the elements of employment law.

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