NEW YORK TIMES features Interfaith Committee's work!
Posted by EBASE on December 26th, 2009
Check out the Dec. 26New York Times
for in-depth coverage of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice and allies' work to "build bonds with immigrant stories!"
The Times' national "On Religion" column profiles last Sunday’s inspirational service at Pastor Clarence
Johnson’s Mills Grove Christian Church, where immigrant worker leader Luz Dominguez shared her story
with the predominantly African-American congregation. Luz is a leader in the campaign for justice at the Woodfin Suites Hotel. Also featured: Pastor Brian K. Woodson of Bay Area
Christian Connection (a member of ICWJ's Steering Committee) and Gerald Lenoir, Director of the Black Alliance for a
Just Immigration (BAJI).
ICWJ (a project of EBASE) and BAJI are working to foster dialogues and
strengthen solidarity between the East Bay's African-American and
Latino communities.
If you haven't clicked on the link yet, here's a teaser:
In the midst of recounting a certain birth in ancient Judea, the
minister placed his gaze a dozen rows back into the congregation and
rested it on a dark-haired woman in a patterned blouse. He called her
by name, Luz, and then he went back into his sermon, to words he had
surely chosen with her in mind.
ICWJ partnered with BAJI on this year's “Labor in the pulpit” program, where
East Bay Pastors invited mostly Latino immigrant workers into several African-American
churches. (EBHO and the Sanctuary Covenant were also co-sponsors for the event, which took place mostly in September.) Workers like Luz took to pulpits throughout Oakland and shared poignant stories of
exploitative conditions and shattered families, while pastors described how
immigration reform would help all rise to shared prosperityin the face of economic crisis and reflect core religious values
like the biblical call to "welcome the stranger."
With follow-up dialogues already scheduled for next year, and a narrow window to win humane immigration reform about to open at the Federal level, keep an eye on this critical project.
