On January 28, 2017, when news began to spread that immigrants and refugees were being detained at U.S. airports, many of us knew we had to go to SFO and stand up against this injustice.
Why did we do this? For the members of the Faith Alliance for a Moral Economy (FAME), it is our faith which calls upon us to Resist – to become the justice that the world so needs.
When vulnerable people and communities are under attack, our faith traditions give us the foundation to stand up in solidarity with the economically and socially marginalized and oppressed.
- In the Christian tradition, Jesus said to his disciples: Truly I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me (Matthew 25:40).
- In the Hebrew scripture of the Torah: Justice, justice shall you pursue (Deuteronomy 16:20).
- And the holy book of the third Abrahamic faith, Islam, instructs us: O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice (Surah An-Nisah 4:135).
FAME brings these faith traditions together to bring a moral lens to EBASE’s work. Whether it’s immigrants’ rights, economic justice, equitable development, or fair housing – we know that mistreatment of the marginalized is an insult to the divinity present in all people.
We also know that the present political moment arises from an economic and social system that thrives on devaluing the work and worth of so many: women, people of color, queer folks, undocumented communities, prisoners and the formerly incarcerated.
However, faith communities understand that our founders, prophets, and ancestors – from Moses to Martin Luther King, from Jesus to Dorothy Day, from Muhammad to Malcolm X – are a cloud of witnesses encouraging us in the work of our own time. They remind us that when we stand up at the airports and in the streets against the outrages of the current administration, we connect with the deeper, historic, and continuing resistance to injustice in all its forms.
By David Brazil, FAME Coordinator