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Category: justice

shame on burger king!

shame on burger king!

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From a UCC Justice and Peace Action Network newsletter:

You probably also know that after much work and a successful boycott, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) won an agreement with Taco Bell for improved pay, better working conditions, and greater dignity for tomato pickers. CIW also signed similar agreements with McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver’s, and A & W Restaurants.

There is great momentum within the fast food industry to improve conditions for farm workers but Burger King is refusing to join this movement.

Burger King’s actions are threatening to undo a hard-fought victory on behalf of exploited farm workers. I have just received this call to action from the Sojourner’s community:

Dear Timothy,

For Christmas, Burger King is trying to make the country’s poorest workers even poorer.

A few months ago, we asked you to send messages to Burger King, asking them to join McDonald’s and Taco Bell in increasing the sub-poverty wages of Florida tomato pickers.

Almost 20,000 of you responded, but Burger King’s behavior has only gotten worse. Not only have they failed to heed the faith community’s call to improve wages and working conditions for tomato pickers – they’re working to undermine the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ existing agreements with other fast-food chains!

As Eric Schlosser, author of Fast-Food Nation, explained in the New York Times:

The migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries, and unloads two tons of tomatoes.

Yum! Brands (owner of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC) and McDonald’s had agreed to pay a penny more per pound to increase wages by 70 percent per bucket, but this holiday season workers aren’t receiving the increase. Why? Because Burger King has refused to pay the extra penny and its refusal has encouraged tomato growers to cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonald’s. This month the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state’s growers, announced that it will not allow any of its members to collect the extra penny for farm workers.

A Burger King spokesman responded, “Florida growers have a right to run their businesses how they see fit” – apparently, even if that means putting profits ahead of justice and dignity for their workers.

Meanwhile, on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs – a major shareholder in Burger King, with two representatives on the board of directors – is preparing to pay holiday bonuses. Last year, Goldman Sach’s top 12 executives received more than $200 million in bonuses – more than twice the annual earnings of 10,000 Florida tomato pickers.

As we read of such injustices in this time of Advent, we reflect upon God’s justice and mercy, as described in the words of Mary:

[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; [God] has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52-53).

Advent reminds us that God intends well-being for all, not just some. We hope you’ll join us in taking action.

Blessings,

I encourage you to join me in responding to Sojourner’s call and send a message to Burger King.

seeing gray

seeing gray

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Writing in Sojouorners magazine (In the prison-industrial complex, is there hope for redemption?), Nancy Hastings Sehested, a Baptist minister and prison chaplain, describes a North Carolina maximum-security prison this way:

Colorful flowers mark the path to the gatehouse. Then the stripping away begins in earnest. It is a gray day every day in this prison. Gray walls, gray floors, and gray ceilings. The gray uniforms worn by the men can fade their faces into obscurity. The blue uniforms of the staff can create the same effect. Holding a gaze is crucial in seeing the person beyond the clothing. A simple “hello” can seem like a subversive act in a place where everyone is defined by role.

Now I know that prisons are not meant to be “cushy” places, and that justice — at least in part — is about punishment and the deserved forfeiture of rights and privileges. Nevertheless, after reading Sehested’s description, I found myself wondering what gray on gray on gray does to the human soul?

In creating a lifeless and colorless and despair-inducing environment, what do we hope to accomplish? It seems to me that such an environment would readily foster nihilistic thoughts and desperate acts and a soul-killing sense of resignation, hopelessness, and resentment.

I know what the colors and scents of a garden can do for my soul. I know how stepping outside and watching the ebb and flow of tree limbs in the wind or hearing the chatter of birds or taking my dog for a walk in the early morning sunlight can lift my spirits.

Justice — at least in part — is also about rehabilitation and restoration, and it seems to me that those things that can lift spirits and renew a love for life and restore a sense of beauty could provide invaluable aid in turning inmates lives around. I am no corrections expert, but I don’t see how we make a man or woman more human or more hospitable by sequestering them in an inhuman and inhospitable environment.

Within those prison walls, we literally have a captive audience. What a teaching opportunity! What an opportunity — not to confirm the fatalistic notion that the spoils go to the strongest and the “baddest” — but to show another way to measure value, another way to enjoy beauty, another way to satisfy the longings of the human soul. Only God can finally satisfy those longing, but it is the colors and scents and textures and vistas of all of creation that point us to God.

Maybe colorful flowers should mark the paths inside the prison walls, too …

enemies of freedom

enemies of freedom

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How can we win against the “enemies of freedom” while proving to be an enemy of freedom ourselves???

Senate Rejects Expanding Detainee Rights: The US Senate failed to break a Republican filibuster blocking a vote on an amendment to restore habeas corpus rights to terrorism suspects. Democratic senators were joined by six Republicans in voting to close debate and bring the amendment to a vote, but still fell four votes short.

We cannot claim to be defenders of freedom and of the universal application of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all human beings, if we so readily deny the most basic means of legal recourse to any person or class of persons.

a cure worse than the disease

a cure worse than the disease

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Chaplains have been systematically removing a wide range of religious books and tapes from the libraries of federal prisons under a directive issued by the Bureau of Prisons. The aim is to prevent federal prisons from becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The banned materials include books by eminent protestant theologians (Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth) and contemporary evangelical leaders (Robert Schuller, Rick Warren).

Once more, our frantic response to a real, but elusive and unpredictable, terrorist threat has done more harm to human liberty and quality of life than any terrorist could. We are denying religious freedom, breeding bewilderment and resentment among the prison population, and cutting inmates off from resources that could aid in rehabilitation and positive spiritual development.

Sojourners is sponsoring a letter writing campaign to end the censorship. You may sign on at: Stop Censoring Prison Libraries.

crazy horse

crazy horse

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Crazy Horse, book coverI finished this book during our summer vacation in Maine … and left it with my mother who wanted to read it too!

It is a classic and faithful retelling by Mari Sandoz of the story of Crazy Horse, the warrior who bested Custer at Little Big Horn. Her account, originally published in 1942, is based on her extensive research including interviews with many of the tale’s principal characters, people who knew Crazy Horse and had experienced the events of his life firsthand.

Her book provides a fascinating insight into the daily lives and joys and struggles and hopes of the Lakotas; a sobering exposure to the violence of the times, among the Native Americans, and between Native Americans and whites; and a depressing revelation of our own (the whites’) record on this continent, a record of greed and inhumanity and broken promises.

For more updated favorites of mine — books and music and movies — go to my Recommendations page.

talking is easier than doing

talking is easier than doing

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It is easier to write than to do. Easier to complain than to do. Easier to rant and grieve about injustice and unfairness, than to do anything substantial to change the course of injustice and unfairness. Easier to say “No matter who you are, you are welcome here,” than to do the actual welcoming. Easier to be moved to tears by a song about “Jesus in all his distressing disguises,” a song about people failing to meet the eyes of a beggar on the street, than to meet the eyes of the beggar who greets you the next morning on the street.

I am in Nashville this week for the Festival of Homiletics, being edified, insprired, challenged, prepared for ministry by faithful men and women, passionate women and men, perceptive pastors and prophetic preachers, and, mostly, by the God who speaks through them. It is a joy to be here, to be embraced by the Spirit of Jesus, by the wonder of the gospel, by the power of the Word … that speaks to us with the help of its interpreters, and even in spite of the help of its interpreters.

But, most of all, I am reminded how much I am a writer, a talker, a teacher, a commentator. That comes easy. That I do well. And that is a task to which I believe God has called me. But, before all that and above all that, I am called, as we are all called, to do … to do what Jesus does, to go where Jesus goes, whatever that means, wherever that means, with whomever that means. And that is harder for me … and maybe for you, too.

We need to help each other to be the church, to be faithful people, to be faithful followers of Jesus … by what we do. We need to prod each other, provoke each other, not let each other off the hook too easily. At the same time, we need to encourage each other and remind each other from where, from Whom we draw our strength. The songs, the prayers, the Bible study, the sermons make us ready — and remind us of the One on whom we depend — to do whatever it is that God calls us to do.

It may be big, it may be small, but it will be something.

if at first you don’t succeed …

if at first you don’t succeed …

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It’s hard to see how this is just or fair by any definition. If this is the practice, why go through the bother of a hearing at all? Why pretend to adhere to any rule of law?

The military system of determining whether detainees are properly held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, includes an unusual practice: If Pentagon officials disagree with the result of a hearing, they order a second one, or even a third, until they approve of the finding.

Read the rest of the New York Times article: Guantánamo Detainees’ Suit Challenges Fairness of Military’s Repeat Hearings.

a prayer for good friday

a prayer for good friday

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Lord Jesus, forgive us for all the ways we deny you …

… by remaining quiet in the shadows, not daring to speak our faith in the public arena
… by quietly going about our own business, while neglecting to wonder what your business might be
… by being more American than Christian, more the children of our culture than the children of God
… by adopting a lifestyle and a system of values that are indistinguishable from the rest of the world, pursuing wealth instead of justice, accumulating things instead of sharing generously, protecting ourselves whatever the cost instead of showing mercy whatever the cost
… by approving of revenge, calling it “being tough on crime” or “protecting our national interest”
… by approving of greed, calling it “the entreprenurial spirit” or “the natural workings of a market economy”
… by approving of hate, calling it “defending the faith” or “protecting family values”

Forgive us, Lord Jesus …

We know that you will. We know that you will never deny us. We know that you will welcome us with joy when we confess our sins and confess our need of you. We know that you know that we do love you and want to learn to love you better.

May it be so. May we love you as you have loved us and love us still … and may we show it by refusing to deny you.