Advocacy Training
Weekend: Save the Dates!
April
17, 2015 – PC(USA) Compassion, Peace and Justice Training Day
April
17-20, 2015 – Ecumenical Advocacy Days
Breaking the Chains:
Mass Incarceration & Systems of Exploitation
Come to Washington, DC,
April 17-20, 2015, for the 13th Annual National Gathering of Ecumenical
Advocacy Days for Global Peace with Justice titled, "Breaking the Chains:
Mass Incarceration and Systems of Exploitation."
Join over 1,000
Christian advocates in building a movement to shake the foundations of systems
of human exploitation (Acts 16:16-40),
including a prison-industrial system that incarcerates millions of people in
the U.S. and abroad. A world that incarcerates so many and allows
some to profit from the exploitation of slave, trafficked and forced labor
remains far from the “beloved
community”
which we are all called to seek.
The U.S. makes up only
five percent of the world's population yet holds nearly a quarter of the
world's prisoners. Still, “imprisonment” is a worldwide problem and takes
various forms, as everywhere people around the world remain trapped in
detention centers, prisons, factories and drug wars that bind and dehumanize
individuals for political or economic profit.
Lamentations asks, “When
all the prisoners of the land are crushed under foot, when human rights are
perverted in the presence of the Most High, when one’s case is subverted – does
the Lord not see it?” (Lam. 3:34-36) Do we?
As people of faith, we
denounce the elements in our world that justify such systems of exploitation
and mass incarceration. At EAD, we will
confess our personal and corporate failure to break the chains of poverty,
racism, and greed institutionalized in our laws, economy, and social behaviors
that collude to perpetuate such human exploitation and strip civil and human
rights.
As people of Hope, we
are reminded that Jesus' radical message was one of liberation
for all and restoration of right relationships. Through prayer, worship, advocacy training,
networking and mobilization with other Christians, we will face the reality of mass incarceration and corporate exploitation, and call for national policies that bring liberation both to the prisoner and to a world in need of restoration – all culminating with EAD’s Congressional Lobby Day on Capitol Hill.
for all and restoration of right relationships. Through prayer, worship, advocacy training,
networking and mobilization with other Christians, we will face the reality of mass incarceration and corporate exploitation, and call for national policies that bring liberation both to the prisoner and to a world in need of restoration – all culminating with EAD’s Congressional Lobby Day on Capitol Hill.
The Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.) is proud to sponsor and collaborate in planning this conference that
seeks to build a movement to shake the foundations of systems of exploitation
(Acts 16). We further invite you to arrive early and attend “Compassion, Peace and
Justice Training Day,” an opportunity for Presbyterians to gather, reflect,
educate, network, fellowship, and be in prayer together. Together we
can build a movement to Break the Chains!
