Editor's note: Welcome to NCR's Justice Action Bulletin, where every Tuesday we bring you the latest news on active nonviolence in the service of peace and justice. Do you have news you would like to share? Contact Maria Benevento at mbenevento@ncronline.org.
AMERICUS, Ga. — On the 75th anniversary of the founding of Koinonia Farm, two churches that had expelled members of the interracial Christian community for attempting to integrate worship services in the 1960s welcomed the group and others for a “Building Up A New World” Clarence Jordan Symposium.
Named after one of Koinonia's founders, the symposium was held March 8-10 and hosted by the farm, School of Conversion, Repairers of the Breach, Fellowship of Reconciliation, and Red Letter Christians. Poor People's Campaign co-chair, the Rev. William Barber II, also attended and spoke at the opening event.
The symposium also featured a Cotton Patch Gospel Musical, based on Jordan's translation of the New Testament into southern vernacular, and the book launch of Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom From Slaveholder Religion by Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove.
NEW YORK — Pax Christi Metro New York announced in a March 7 press release that it is organizing the 36th annual Good Friday Way of the Cross across Manhattan. The stations will connect Jesus' suffering and death to the continued suffering of people around the world, and include contemplation of how to follow Jesus' "counter-cultural" example.
This year's Way of the Cross is dedicated to former Brooklyn Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Sullivan, who died in a car accident in 2013. Sullivan led the opening prayer for the Way of the Cross for most of its history. This year, Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, director of Catholic Charities of the New York archdiocese, will lead the opening prayer.
According to the press release, suffering people referenced in the walk include immigrants, people who lack health care and "victims of poverty, hunger and homelessness, poor education, a polluted environment, human trafficking, an unjust prison system, militarism, religious intolerance, nuclear weapons proliferation and gun violence."
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WASHINGTON — A series of immigration demonstrations scheduled around the planned termination date of a program that protects young undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, included a protest on Capitol Hill involving United We Dream, Faith in Public Life, the Hope Border Institute, and El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz.
According to a March 5 press release from PICO National Network, a faith-based community organizing group, religious groups also planned actions March 5-8 outside congressional offices in 10 states to urge the passage of a bill protecting Dreamers, who were scheduled to lose the protection offered to them by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program March 5.
Although injunctions from the courts have indefinitely postponed the program's termination, PICO still wants Congress to act quickly to reduce Dreamers' fear and uncertainly.
The group planned vigils, protests, and press events in California, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Minnesota, Indiana, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. Civil disobedience was planned in at least five states, including in Indiana where at least 19 were arrested for blocking a street during a protest outside of U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly's office in downtown Indianapolis.
