Tag: justice

Putting Xenophilia into Practice

~ Bruce Ray ~ Leave a comment

Here are some suggestions for making sure you’re not hitting the “snooze button.” There are videos to inspire, stories that stir up feelings–including righteous anger–and actions to engage. Let these daily disciplines help you “get woke” and “live woke’ for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.

  • PRAY DAILY that the Church in the US will wake up and defend the aliens and strangers among us. And pray for God’s protection of those who are living in fear of deportation or loss of their protected status. 
  • “GET WOKE” by reading the New York Times article (excerpt below) about Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a Christian woman from Iran that came to the US to seek asylum because of religious persecution.  
  • ACT to protect those who are vulnerable by calling your elected officials. Find the phone numbers for your elected at https://5calls.org/  Tell them to restore funding for refugee resettlement, unfreeze asylum applications and vote against increased funding for ICE.
  • FAST from at least one purchase this week and give your savings to help refugees that have already arrived in the US, and are still in need of support. Organizations like “REFUGEE ONE” a Chicago organization that resettles refugees and provides rental assistance for 6 months so families can get settled and find work. Refugee One, along with World Relief, Catholic Charities and others, lost their federal funding thanks to an Executive Order. They need private funds to make sure these families don’t lose their housing and support. Learn more about the plight of refugees and the organizations that want to help HERE.
  • WATCH this inspiring video about a couple of 90+ year old nuns in Chicago who have been advocating for immigrant rights for decades. You’re never too old to ‘get woke,’
  • PROTEST or sign petitions that oppose Executive Orders that target migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.  

This Christian Convert Fled Iran, and Ran Into Trump’s Deportation Policy

By Farnaz Fassihi and Hamed Aleaziz
Published in the New York Times on 2/23/25 & Updated 2/26/25

She first entered a church on a visit to Turkey. She remembers feeling a sense of calm so overpowering that she purchased a small Bible. She wrapped it in her clothes and smuggled it back to her hometown, Isfahan, in central Iran.
Artemis Ghasemzadeh’s conversion from Islam to Christianity evolved over a few years starting in 2019, through an Iranian network of underground churches and secret online classes. Three years ago, she was baptized and, in her words, “reborn.”

Converting was colossally risky. While Christians born into the faith are free to practice, Iran’s Shariah laws state that abandoning Islam for another religion is considered blasphemy, punishable by death. Some members of her Bible-study group were arrested. So in December, Ms. Ghasemzadeh set out for the United States.

“I wanted to live freely, to live without fear, to live without someone wanting to kill me,” Ms. Ghasemzadeh, 27, said in a series of phone interviews.

Her journey has landed her in a migrant detention camp on the outskirts of the Darién jungle in Panama. She and nine other Iranian Christian converts, three of them children, are among dozens detained at the Saint Vincente camp. Their fate remains uncertain.

People fleeing violent religious persecution are normally eligible for asylum. But they have been caught in the Trump administration’s deportation push as the president tries to fulfill a campaign pledge to close the southern border.
“We don’t deserve this. We are in a place where we feel helpless,” Ms. Ghasemzadeh said. “I am waiting for our voices to be heard, for someone to help us.”

Panama, which is separately under pressure from the Trump administration over control of the Panama Canal, has become a landing place for migrants who otherwise would have languished in detention in the United States — or potentially been released.

Panamanian officials have said that United Nations agencies are helping the migrants return to their countries or seek asylum in other nations, including Panama.

Read the full article HERE.

Budgets Are Moral Documents

~ Bruce Ray ~ Leave a comment

On Tuesday, February 25, the US House of Representatives passed a budget by the slimmest of margins (217-215). Once a budget is passed by the House, it goes to the Senate, where it will likely be met with a competing budget that will have to go through a process of “reconciliation.” The final budget may look different from the House version–at least I hope so.

The budget passed by the House was exactly what the President wanted–$4.5 trillion in tax cuts, about $2 trillion in spending cuts, but with spending increases in the hundreds of billions of dollars for the military and border security over the next 10 years..

So who suffers from the spending cuts? Though the budget is not specific to program, it is widely assumed that the cuts will be targeted at programs that make up the safety net for poor and working families–programs like Medicaid (healthcare), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – aka SNAP (hunger), and HeadStart (early childhood education).

And who benefits from the tax cuts? The budget proposal extends the President’s previous tax cuts which reduced corporate rates from 35% to 21%. Tesla (owned by Elon Musk) has paid NOTHING in federal taxes in 2 of the last 3 years despite making a profit in each year. And giving tax cuts to the wealthy increases the national debt. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the deficit would increase at least $2.8 trillion to the deficit in the next 10 years. (see Financial Times).

In the end, most of us lose with this budget. Budgets that make the rich richer on the backs of the poor aren’t just unfair, they are immoral. Proverbs 22:16 speaks to the immorality of robbing the poor and giving gifts to the rich. “One who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and one who gives gifts to the rich—both come to poverty.” God’s justice protects the afflicted. Jesus announced his mission to “announce good news to the poor.” This budget is an announcement of bad news for anyone already struggling. Reducing SNAP benefits while grocery prices continue to rise is condemning children and seniors to malnutrition. Cutting Medicaid is sentencing people to sickness and death. Cutting HeadStart is delivering children to the school to prison pipeline. Every cut to the social safety net is a cut to the heart of Jesus.

These cuts expose the truth. The very same people who called for the elimination of foreign aid so we can take care of the problems in the US, actually have no interest in helping people or solving social problems. The cuts make it obvious that their priority is their own wealth and power. And God has a name for that: idolatry.

Now is the time to tell our Senators that we will not accept a budget that delivers hardship to those already suffering. We will not accept any cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, HeadStart or any other social program that protects the vulnerable and is necessary to their survival. We. will not accept an immoral, idolatrous budget. Period.

Justice Takes Sides

~ Bruce Ray ~ 1 Comment

My wife has a collection of T-shirts that express a variety of opinions depending on the circumstances. One says, simply, “Ugh!’ (She got that one while running a school during COVID.) Another shouts, “I dissent,” quoting Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (She dissents a lot lately.) Yet another defiantly declares, “We will not go back.” Last week, she announced that she has found her next T-shirt. It says “Justice Takes Sides.”

The T-shirt is available at https://justicetakessides.com, a site developed by Dr. Jemar Tisby, a public historian, author, speaker and a Christian.. I regularly follow his Substack, “Footnotes”. Here’s why he created the T-shirt:

Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor and the recipient of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, included the following statement in his acceptance speech:

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.

Neutrality has consequences. As Tisby writes: “Neutrality in situations of injustice only supports the status quo. It only aids the empowered and further harms the disempowered.”

The prophets of Hebrew Scripture took sides, calling out and condemning injustice and demanding accountability for the perpetrators of oppression. There was no space for neutrality; no room for fence-sitting. .

Isaiah shouts: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20 – NRSVUE) and “Woe to those who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, to make widows their spoil and to plunder orphans!” (Isaiah 10:1-2 – NRSVUE)

Jeremiah cries out: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbors work for nothing and does not give them their wages.” (Jeremiah 22:13 – NRSVUE)

Amos calls out: “Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and lounge on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the stall…, who drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!” (Amos 6:4, 6 – NRSVUE)

And in the tradition of the prophets, Jesus announces: ““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.” (Matthew 23:25 – NRSVUE)

In this precarious time, it is the right time to ask ourselves, “Which side am I on?” The side of justice or the side of oppression? The side of the prophets or the side of the oppressors? The side of truth or the side of disinformation and alternative facts? The side of the marginalized or the side of the powerful? The side of healing or the side of harm?

When the most vulnerable are being sacrificed on the altar of “efficiency” and threatened by the forces of “unbridled greed”, sitting on the fence isn’t an option. Because sitting on the fence is actually taking the side of injustice.