Pawlenty's Unallotment Use is Temporarily Restrained!

Here's the Minnpost article, which tells you absolutely everything you need to know. A quick summary: Ramsey County Judge Kathleen Gearin's ruling specifically restores a tiny chunk of funding to a nutritional program, but it has clear repercussions for the $2.7 billion total cut. It clears a path for other plaintiffs to bring specific suits. The action Gearin took is temporary, but is restores funding until a hearing in March.

Pawlenty's camp responded with this statement: "We are disappointed in the judge's decision. We are weighing all our options, including appeal, reestablishing unallotments under the current forecast, potential legislative options, and other actions."

Get Out the Vote: Concerned Citizen Caucus Training

The Get Out the Vote Task Group is offering a "Concerned Citizen Caucus Training," for anyone who'd like to be more involved in the political process on a local level. We'll show you how to leverage your network into real power to influence candidates and advocate for the issues that are most important to you.

Martin Luther King Jr. "Justice in Action" Day

Coming Up!

"Nonviolence in Action" Learn skills that transform everyday conflict. Cretin-Derham Hall's Theater of the Oppressed group will engage youth and adults in participatory experiences. This day will raise awareness of a variety of techniques and strategies that will help us address conflict in a constructive and nonviolent way.
When: Monday, January 18, 9am to 3:30pm Where: Carondelet Center, 1890 Randolph Ave., St. Paul Cost: $10 adult / $5 student (includes lunch)

TO REGISTER: Click here to register online. Or you can register by phone at 651-696-2874. Please register by January 11. ~ Sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and Consociates and the following ministries: Justice in Action Team of Celeste's Dream Spirituality Center for Young Adults, St. Joseph Workers, Justice Office, Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality, Hedgerow Initiative.

World's Least-Demanding Book Club Begins!

Each Monday we'll find a particularly inspiring article or homily from and post it to this site. I'll include my thoughts on the topic, and I'd love to hear your insights and arguments, as well as suggestions for the theme next week.


This week I'm taking "Radical Hospitality," as my theme, and using a recent post from the Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. Bret Lortie as a platform for the discussion. You can find Lortie's text here, and he's referencing a book titled Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love, which you can order here if you're interested.

From Radical Hospitality:
"It [hospitality] is instead a spiritual practice, a way of becoming more human, a way of understanding yourself. Hospitality is both the answer to modern alienation and injustice and a path to a deeper spirituality."

The reframing of hospitality as a powerful and soul-renewing spiritual practice is a fairly recent development in liberal Christian circles. The term first entered the lexicon with the publication of Brother Daniel Homan and Lonni Pratt's meditation on Benedictine hospitality: Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love. Homan, a monk, and Pratt, a friend of the monastic community, used the practices of the Benedictine hospitality as a framework for understanding the true meaning of empathy and community. What does it mean, they asked, to be truly hospitable? It means that you open your "tight little heart," and you ask the other to come nearer, to let you know them better.

Recently the idea of radical hospitality has begun to find a new application - more specific than the original, and perhaps more challenging. Advocates of immigration reform are using "hospitality" to reset the language used in what has become an increasingly acrimonious debate. They ask us: what does it mean to be a guest worker as opposed to an illegal alien?
We are often reminded that it was Jesus who was the guest in many of the stories in the New Testament. As Loren McGrail, UCC pastor, writes, "Jesus, our Lord God of Hosts, was and is also the perfect guest, the welcomed stranger. 'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, for I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, for I was a stranger and you took me in. (Mathew 25: 34-35).' "

Advocates for criminal justice system reform draw on the same passage from Matthew to push for a more meaningful acceptance of recently released ex-offenders. What should we draw from the continuation of that verse, "I was in prison and you visited me"? Who could be further from the common table than the prisoner? How can we welcome ex-offenders back into our communities in a truly hospitable manner?

What do you think about radical hospitality? How can this idea be used as a wedge to separate us from our easy understanding of what it means to be welcoming?

Asylum and the Church

Photo by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

A recent New York Times piece, "New Jersey Church Works with US to Spare Detention," offers a compelling case for faith communities' involvement in deportation and detention issues. The article focuses on the work one congregation has done to broker a deal between local immigration authorities (ICE) and the Indonesian congregation with whom they share church space, but it also offers a great overview of how "civil detention" usually works in the US.

Civil detainees are held at state correctional facilities, often mixed in with the general population of the jail or prison. In an infamous case in Texas, entire families were held at the T. Don Hutto facility, confined to their cells for 12 hours a day.

Here in Minnesota there are many interfaith groups that are pushing hard for comprehensive immigration reform. The Rev. Loren McGrail, a UCC pastor and a member of the local chapter of the national group Interfaith Immigration Coalition, will be speaking at the January 11th Day Prayer for Peace, hosted this month by the Immigration Working Group. Here is a sample of one of Rev. McGrail's past sermons on immigration, "Radical Hospitality."

Peace Prayer will be held, as always, in the Pro House Chapel, from 6:30-7:30pm on the 11th day of January. All are welcome!

GAMC Action Update

The GAMC action on Tuesday went well - we chose to illustrate the 1,000 names by threading a thousand paper snow flakes into a garland. The garland is now on display outside the Justice commission office.

The coalition got some great news coverage: take a look at the stories on Minnpost and on KSTP.

Thanks to all who came, to read or to sit.

GAMC funding

The Justice Commission Office will be partnering with St. Stephen's Human Services and 32 other organizations around the state of Minnesota to protest the termination of General Assistance Medical Care. This action will take place tomorrow, December 22nd from 10am-11am at the Administration Center of the Sister of St. Joseph, at 1884 Randolph Ave. Participants in the action will read 1,000 names - the names of Minnesotans whose health care coverage will be eliminated when the GAMC program ends. These lists will be read at 33 sites to represent the 33,000 citizens who are covered by this program at any given time in the state.
GAMC enrollees typically:

• Live in rural, suburban, and urban communities across Minnesota. Anoka, Dakota, Stearns and Olmsted counties all have significant numbers of GAMC enrollees, along with Ramsey and Hennepin counties.
• Earn an income at or below 75% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines ($8,100 a year)
• Have greater likelihood of chemical health or mental health needs: 70% of enrollees have a mental health and/or chemical health diagnosis
• Are disproportionately people of color, especially African-American and Native Americans

In the words of Governor Pawlenty's health commissioner, they are the "poorest of the poor and sickest of the sick." The end of General Assistance Medical Care would mean that most of the recipients of this coverage would be rolled over to MinnesotaCare, the state program for the working poor. This is not a feasible alternative for many GAMC enrollees - the premiums are higher under MinnesotaCare, and the hospital coverage is limited. There is currently a four month wait for enrollment into MinnesotaCare, as well, a gap in coverage that could make a critical difference for the stability of many GAMC enrollees.

For more information on this issue, you can read this excellent op-ed piece by State Representatives Denise Dittrich and Maria Ruud.

If you would like to join us in protesting the termination of GAMC, please call 651-690-7087, or email dolores.ohmans@gmail.com.

January Events

Peace Prayer
This month's peace prayer will be hosted by the Immigration Working Group.
Rev. Loren McGrail will give the reflection.
January 11
6:30-8:30pm
Provincial House Chapel
1890 Randolph Ave.
St. Paul
map

Concerned Citizen Caucus Training
This is a training that focuses on encouraging political involvement on a local level! It will be offered by members of the Get Out the Vote Task Force.
January 13
7:00-8:30pm
Carondelet Center
1890 Randolph Ave.

Martin Luther King Jr. National Day of Service
Nonviolent Communication Training
Learn skills that transform everyday conflict. Cretin-Derham Hall's Theater of the Oppressed group will engage youth and adults in participatory experiences. This day will raise awareness of a variety of techniques and strategies that will help us address conflict in a constructive and nonviolent way.
January 18
9am-3:30pm
Carondelet Center
1890 Randolph Ave

The Legislative Advocacy Working Group is working with a number of partners to put on their sixth annual "Conversation with our Legislators" event. Mark your calendar, LAP members!

Our Lady of Guadelupe

This is how the story goes: in the early part of the 16th Century in the newly Spanish colony of Mexico, a peasant named Juan Diego went walking up a sacred hill called Tepeyac. As Juan Diego approached the crest of the hill he saw a girl of about 15 or 16 walking towards him. As the girl drew nearer a corona of light appeared all around her, and she addressed Juan Diego in Nauhutl, the language of the place, asking him to build a church at the site in her honor. Juan Diego reported the apparition to Bishop Zumarraga, who demanded a miraculous sign before he would commence construction. Diego returned the next day with an arm full of Castilian roses and a cloak covered with an image of the Virgin, dressed in a starry blue robe, spiky rays of light emanating from her body.

This image has become a symbol not only of the Mother of God, but also of Mexican Catholic identity. Enter any Hispanic grocery store and you can find shelves of Our Lady of Guadelupe votive candles. Truck drivers hang her image from their rearview mirror, and Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla famously declared the start of the Mexican war of independence with a cry of, "Death to the Spaniards and long live the Virgin of Guadelupe!"

This month's peace prayer celebrates the healing aspect of the Virgin's presence. We will pray the Magnificat together, in Spanish and in English, enjoy beautiful hymns to Mary, and listen to the words of Kathleen Judge, a CSJ who spent much of her life in Peru.

Details:

This event will take place on Friday, December 11th, in the Pro House chapel, across the street from the Administration Center of the Sisters. It will begin at 6:15 and end at 7:00. All are welcome - please join us!