BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In May 1963, thousands of Birmingham school children faced police dogs, fire hoses, and possible arrest to demonstrate against segregation. Now, 50 years later, those who were part of what became known as the “Children’s March” say they don’t want their story to be forgotten.
“We were doing this not just for ourselves but for some higher purpose,” said one of the young marchers, Freeman Hrabowski III. “It focused on civil rights for all Americans.”
Hrabowski is now president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He was 12 when he marched in Birmingham and was arrested for parading without a permit. He and hundreds of other children were held in custody for five days before being released.
Experts say the children’s crusade helped galvanize the civil rights struggle at a time when efforts were flagging.
“That was really the tipping point in a tipping year,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, who has written a series of books about the civil rights movement, told the PBS program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.”
Watch Birmingham and the Children’s March on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
NEW YORK — The “Nuns on the Bus” are revving up their engines for another national campaign, only this time the Catholic sisters are taking their mobile platform for social justice along the country’s Southern border to push Congress to pass immigration reform.
“The ‘Nuns on the Bus’ is going on the road again!” Sister Simone Campbell, head of the social justice lobby Network, told an enthusiastic gathering of faith leaders and charity activists at a Manhattan awards ceremony Wednesday (May 1).
“This time we’re going out for commonsense immigration reform,” she said to rousing applause.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland — When the Republic of Ireland apologized to the wayward girls who were sent to the Magdalene laundries for hard work and no pay, Teresa Bell felt encouraged. Surely, she thought, the government of Northern Ireland would do the same.
Nearly three months later, she’s still waiting.
Bell was one of thousands of young girls who were sent to the Magdalene workhouses run by Roman Catholic nuns when she got pregnant at age 16. She worked long hours washing clothes with no pay and little rest; after giving birth, her daughter was put in an orphanage.
Bell never recovered from the shame.
Back in 2005, I attended a “church growth” seminar in Dallas, Texas. The keynote speaker was Rev. Mike Slaughter of Ginghamsburg United Methodist in Ohio, one of the larger and faster growing UM churches in the country. He shared an experience that sticks with me.
That church had a “Cookie Patrol” that takes cookies to first time visitors. So, every Sunday afternoon, a group of people would meet down at the church to bake fresh cookies to be delivered to potential members.
One day, a member of the church came to Rev. Slaughter and told him, “I just love to bake, and I want to help with the Cookie Patrol. I’ve got a great kitchen at home, so let me tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make several dozen cookies each Sunday and bring them to the church. I just don’t have time to spend at church on Sunday afternoons.”
Pastor Mike responded, “You don’t understand. We don’t need your cookies. We need you.”
In January, I received a phone message from a friend of ours. She needed to talk with me, she said. About something.
Not long after, I got an e-mail from Cordera (not her real name), our friend’s daughter:
“I am writing to you because my family and I have run into a problem. This summer President Obama passed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [of undocumented immigrants]. Over a long course of paperwork and appointments with the USCIS, I was able to receive a work authorized social security card and employment card. [But] without a student visa, I was not able to file for a loan. A few weeks after my first attempt, I found a bank that would be able to grant me a student loan with a US citizen or permanent resident as the co-signer. My father's uncle offered to help but . . . he was denied the credit.”
She wanted us to co-sign for a private loan in the amount of $35,000 to cover her first year of college. My heart sank. We couldn’t co-sign. Or we wouldn’t. I wanted to discourage her because of unfavorable and variable rates, immediate repayment, and long-term consequences of excessive indebtedness. I spoke with her university’s financial aid officer who intoned piously that the cost of the university experience was but one factor to consider: Cordera needed to hold onto her dreams, despite the crippling price tag of those dreams.
President Obama broke his silence to comment on the current hunger strike of over 90 men at Guantanamo Bay. Time reports:
“It’s not sustainable,” President Obama said Tuesday, breaking his silence about the protest against his own government. “I mean, the notion that we’re going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no-man’s land in perpetuity.”
Obama repeated a position he has long held: The detention facility needs to be closed, with the prisoners either transferred to third countries if they do not present a threat or to the United States for adjudication. “This is a lingering, you know, problem that is not going to get better,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. It’s going to fester.”
The next steps at Guantanamo Bay are muddled in beaucracy. The President, Congress, and Secretary of Defense all have steps they must take before any real progress can be made.
Read more here.
May Day rallies are planned across the country urging Congress to ease the nation's immigration laws. Although the rallies won't be as large as demonstrations in 2006 and 2007, groups have focused heavily on calling and writing congressional representatives. Activists feel more their ongoing targeted campaigns at congresional representatives and demonstrations are the most effective way to achieve immigration reform. The Associated Press reports:
A phone blitz targeting Republican U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch produced 100 calls a day to the Utah lawmaker's office last week, said Jeff Parcher, communications director for the Center for Community Change, which works on technology-driven advocacy for the network of groups. After Hatch was quoted Sunday in The Salt Lake Tribune saying immigration reform couldn't wait, a message went out to call his office with thanks.
Read more here.
The ratio of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is approaching with 400 parts per million. This amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has not been seen since about 2.5 million to 5 million year ago. Scientists are alarmed that CO2 levels are also rising in places far from pollution sources. The Los Angeles Times reports:
"The 400-ppm threshold is a sobering milestone, and should serve as a wake-up call for all of us to support clean-energy technology and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, before it's too late for our children and grandchildren," said Tim Lueker, an oceanographer and carbon cycle researcher who is a longtime member of the Scripps CO2 Group.
Read more here.
Last Tuesday, a building in Dhaka, Bangladesh that housed five garment factories collapsed, resulting in more than 400 deaths and 2,500 injuries. Estimates are that possibly hundreds more are still missing. Cracks had appeared in the buildings walls the day before and polices ordered it evacuated. Factory managers, however, ordered workers to return. The factories primarily produced cheap clothing for western markets.
Protest rallies have been held this week in Bangladesh. Today, May Day, a procession demanded safe working conditions and the death penalty for the building’s owner, currently under arrest.
The Associated Press reported that Pope Francis commented on the tragedy in his Mass for the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker:
"At the Vatican, Pope Francis said he was shocked by a headline about the building collapse that said some of the workers were living on 38 euros [$50] a month. "This was the payment of these people who have died ... and this is called `slave labor,'" he said. Vatican Radio said the pope made the remarks during a private Mass at the Vatican."
Read the Associated Press report.
In the secular American political world, even among progressives, two progressive focuses – social justice and healing of the Earth – have remained mostly segregated from each other.
But the Bible, in one of its crucial passages, intertwine social justice and the urge toward healing Earth. It is as if the Bible – after watching the alienation of two May Days (pagan spring and workers’ social justice) from each other – had shrugged impatiently and said: “Now here’s the way to do it!”
The Bible calls for an entire year of rest for the land and its workers, every seventh year. Deuteronomy adds that in that year, everyone’s debts are annulled. (Deut. 15: 1-3). Thus the Bible sees economics and ecologics as intimately intertwined, and calls for a practice of strong, spiritually rooted regulation of both.
Leviticus calls this seventh year a Shabbat Shabbaton – restfulness to the exponential power of Restfulness, an echo and expansion of the restful seventh day. Deuteronomy calls the year “shmitah” – “release” or “non-attachment.”
Why all this? Because, says YHWH, YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh, The Interbreathing of all life, “The earth is Mine. You are but sojourners, temporary visiting-settlers, with Me.” (Lev 25: 23)