OPW Hosts Reverend Peter Gai of South Sudan Council of Churches

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 2 Corinthians 5:18 (NRSV)

In mid-October, the Office of Public Witness was honored to host the President of the South Sudan Council of Churches, Rev. Peter Gai.   Rev. Gai also serves at the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of South Sudan.

Rev. Gai brought a message of peace and a pledge from the churches of South Sudan to be a

vehicle for peace in that war torn country.  Rev. Gai participated in a congressional briefing and met with high-level officials in the State Department, USAID, and the National Security Council.  He also met with the Sudan Working Group of the United States Institute of Peace and briefed the Washington Interfaith Staff Community.  In all of these meetings, Rev. Gai emphasized that the churches in South Sudan were ready to work for peace and that the church in South Sudan is the only institution that has the trust of the people and can reach them on a grassroots level.  He stressed that the church stands as one, that it is not part of the current crisis and it is willing to help to solve the crisis.

Since the conflict in South Sudan began in 2013, over 1.6 million people have been displaced and over 600,000 more have become refugees fleeing in neighboring countries.  The number of severely food insecure people has increased to 3.9 million.  In a United Nations rights report released earlier this year, the agency warned of widespread human rights abuses, including gang-rape and torture. The report was based on 115 victims and eyewitnesses from the northern state of Unity, scene of some of the heaviest recent fighting in the 18-month-long civil war notable for its new brutality and intensity.

The escalating violence has forced many aid agencies to relocate staff and suspend programs in South Sudan’s Unity State. Aid agencies have been forced to stop their life-saving interventions. As a result, the United Nations has reported that an estimated 40,000 people in southern and central Unity may be facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity and malnutrition from October to December 2015. Humanitarian partners have alerted that, unless unrestricted humanitarian access is urgently granted, food insecurity could deteriorate to famine in parts of Unity State, such as Leer, Guit, Koch and Mayendit.

The Greater Upper Nile area is the area of South Sudan in which the Presbyterian Church of South Sudan is predominant and the area of South Sudan on which Presbyterian Ministry has focused for over 100 years.

While the church can help with reconciliation, it can only begin once the fighting has stopped and aid can be sent to the hardest hit regions of South Sudan.  The United States

can help by urging full and unhindered humanitarian access to the most vulnerable, including in hard-to-reach areas. Factions in the conflict have blocked access to humanitarian aid, leaving millions of people food insecure, some on the brink of starvation. The United States should do everything in its power to pressure both sides of the conflict to allow aid to reach those who need it most.

Welcoming Mara Sawdy, New Young Adult Volunteer at the OPW

This upcoming year, I am serving as a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) in the exciting city of Washington, D.C.! I am currently living simply in the city with my fellow D.C. YAVs as I work at Miriam’s Kitchen and the Office of Public Witness with the Presbyterian Church. The goal at Miriam’s Kitchen is to end chronic homelessness. Miriam’s provides guests with a meal, an art program, and access to various services. When I am there, I get to help people fill out paperwork to get vital records that they may need, help them search for jobs, and get to sit and listen to their stories. The job can be extremely challenging, but it is also immensely rewarding. One day, I helped a guest apply to various jobs on the computer. The next day I saw the same guest at a bus stop, and he gave me the biggest smile and thanked me yet again for all of my help. The Office of Public Witness is the public policy information and advocacy office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Its task is to advocate, and help the church to advocate, the social witness perspectives and policies of the Presbyterian General Assembly. I recently attended a strike of low-wage federal contract workers to protest poverty pay. The entire time I was present at the strike, I felt such a feeling of unity and strength. Hearing the stories of those striking brought me to tears. It has been in small moments like these, whether a smile and thank you from a guest or experiencing the unity of those suffering, where I see God at work.

Mara Sawdy is a Young Adult Volunteer from West Newton, Pennsylvania. Mara is a recent graduate of Westminster College where she majored in environmental science with a minor in peace studies. Growing up, she attended West Newton United Presbyterian Church, where her grandfather served as a minister for 25 years. While at school she was involved in model United Nations, served as a member of the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring, and interned at the Silk Road Fair Trade Market. Mara enjoys reading Agatha Christie novels, Downton Abbey, and visiting the various museums in D.C.

Action Alert: Protect Sanctuary Cities. Oppose Anti-Immigrant Attacks in the Senate

This Tuesday, October 20, the Senate will take up an anti-immigrant bill called the Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act that would withhold federal funding from so-called “sanctuary cities,” where  local law enforcement exercise discretion when inquiring about a person’s immigration status.  The bill would also introduce up to ten year mandatory minimum sentences for certain undocumented immigrants.   The bill is opposed by the faith community because it would harm communities by creating a fearful relationship between immigrants and local police. It would also force local law enforcement to spend valuable resources targeting law-abiding members of their communities instead of protecting citizens from harm.  Finally, the faith community opposes mandatory minimum sentencing requirements because they are unjust.   

  Please write to your Senators in advance of this potentially dangerous hearing to ask them to oppose S. 2146, the Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act introduced by Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ).  We must stand in solidarity with our immigrant sisters and brothers seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

  The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has affirmed its support for immigrants many times. The 221^st General Assembly (2014) affirmed the formation of the Presbyterian Immigrant Defense Initiative, a campaign to “empower Presbyterians to work to change policies and practices that infringe on the human and civil rights of immigrants in our communities including immigrant detention, streamlined deportation, and the executing of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by local law enforcement.”

  In the book of Matthew, Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment of all. He answers, “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Join us in loving and protecting our neighbors and raise your voice against anti-immigrant policies.

Click here to contact your Senators today,

Action Alert: Call on Congress to Make Low Income Tax Credits Permanent: Protect The Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit

Congress is on a path toward prioritizing businesses while leaving behind low-income, working families. Looking to take action to extend a series of expiring business tax breaks, some in Congress want to make a few of those business tax breaks permanent. But they're completely ignoring the tax credits for low-income, working families, which also have expiring provisions. 

Today, join people from across the country and across faith traditions to tell Congress: Low-income, working families deserve just as much certainty as businesses. Make the expiring provisions of the earned income tax credit (EITC) and child tax credit (CTC) permanent without delay.

Will you take two minutes right now to call (800/826-3688) or email your representatives.

Critical provisions of these two tax credits are scheduled to expire unless Congress acts. These tax credits move more people out of poverty than any other program in the U.S., except for Social Security. Unless Congress acts to make these expiring provisions permanent, 16 million people will fall into or deeper into poverty.

If Congress is going to make popular business tax breaks permanent, it should also make expiring provisions of the EITC and CTC permanent. While those provisions don't expire until 2017, if Congress makes other business tax breaks permanent but ignores the EITC and CTC, then these anti-poverty tax credits are in real jeopardy.

Tell Congress: no permanent tax breaks for businesses without also giving permanent tax breaks to low-income, working families.

Additionally, it’s about time Congress fixed the glaring gap of the EITC for adults without children, a group of people actually taxed into poverty.

So call (800/826-3688) or email your members of Congress today. Negotiations are going on right now! 

PC (USA) Signs on to Letter Urging President Obama to Recommend Clear Path towards Elimination of Solitary Confinement

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

As representatives of civil and human rights organizations, religious organizations, faith-based and community leaders, defense attorneys, and mental health professionals, we applaud your recent historic remarks recognizing that solitary confinement does nothing to rehabilitate those who are incarcerated. We also welcome your announcement that the U.S. Attorney General will conduct a national review of the practice in prisons and jails across the United States. We are writing to urge that this review result in recommendations that create a clear pathway toward the elimination of the use of long-term and indefinite isolation in the United States.

Following two Congressional hearings on solitary confinement, a highly critical report on the federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) use of solitary confinement by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in May 2013; and an independent audit of BOP’s use of solitary confinement released in February 2015, it is abundantly clear that solitary confinement is overused and abused across the country. In fact, the audit of BOP’s practices found that more than 10,000 people were subject to solitary confinement in federal prisons on any given day in 2013. In some of these units, terms of solitary confinement average nearly four years. In light of these findings, the expert auditors recommended that the agency take immediate steps, including:

•  Stopping the practice of placing persons with serious mental illness in solitary;

•  Stopping the practice of placing vulnerable prisoners in solitary “for their own protection”;

•  Stopping the practice of releasing prisoners directly back to the community from solitary confinement units without any re-entry services; and

•  Limiting the mandatory amount of time prisoners are held in solitary confinement.

Despite the urgency of the audit’s findings, to date, BOP has not made public any plans for implementation of its recommendations. It is imperative they do so without delay.

Nationwide, on any given day, more than 80,000 people, including children and persons with mental illness, are held in conditions of solitary confinement in state and federal prisons for months, years, even decades, with many more facing conditions of extreme isolation in jails, detention centers, and juvenile justice facilities throughout the United States. Thousands are released directly from solitary back into our communities profoundly damaged.

Neuroscience, ethics and international human rights law widely consider solitary confinement a form of torture. Indeed, decades of research demonstrate the harms of

solitary confinement on human beings. Its systematic and widespread use in our criminal justice system compromises our stated commitments to human rights, human dignity, the human potential for redemption, and public safety.

States and jurisdictions across the country are implementing policy changes that focus on alternatives to solitary confinement. Some have abolished the practice for persons under the age of 18, pregnant women, and for persons with mental illness. Several states are also considering legislative proposals that embrace the recommendations of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, which include prohibiting placement in solitary confinement beyond 15 consecutive days. Supporting and incentivizing such reforms across the country and in the BOP should be an explicit goal of the Attorney General’s study of solitary confinement.

For the well-being of the men and women incarcerated in federal prisons, the communities to which they will return, and the staff employed by federal facilities, we urge you to ensure the implementation of the BOP auditors’ recommendations without delay. We further urge you to ensure a national review that prioritizes humane alternatives to prolonged solitary confinement, including mental health treatment, rehabilitation, and a clear path to the elimination of long-term isolation. Such a review should be completed with enough time for your administration to be able implement its recommendations.

The torture of prolonged solitary confinement compromises public safety, increases recidivism, is immoral and indeed has no place in any civilized society. Now is the time to act to ensure it has no place in our own.

Sincerely,

African American Ministers in Action (AAMIA)

African American Ministers Leadership Council (AAMLC)

African Methodist Episcopal Minister’s Coalition for Redemption and Justice

Alaska Innocence Project

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

American Friends Service Committee

American Humanist Association

Arizona Center for Disability Law

Arizona Innocence Project

Arizona Justice Project (Justice Project, Inc.)

The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, UAW Local 2325

Bend the Arc Jewish Action

Brookline PeaceWorks

Brooklyn Defender Services

California Families Against Solitary Confinement

California Innocence Project

California Prison Focus

Campaign for Youth Justice

Center for Public Representation

Center for Race, Religion, and Economic Democracy

The Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights

Children's Defense Fund

Children's Defense Fund-Ohio

Children's Law Center, Inc., Covington, Kentucky

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada

Church of the Brethren, Office of Public Witness

Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants – International (International CURE)

Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants – Virginia Inc. (Virginia CURE)

Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants –Nevada (NV-CURE)

Community Legal Aid Society, Inc

Connecticut Innocence Project

The Correctional Association of NY

Council of Bishops, United Methodist Church

Criminal Justice Policy Coalition

DeafCAN!, Deaf Community Action Network

Disability Rights Iowa

Disability Rights Maine

Disability Rights Washington

Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon

EMIT: End Mass Incarceration Together, working group of Unitarian Universalist Mass Action

Family UNIty Network of Imprisoned People

Florida Council of Churches

Florida Institutional Legal Services Project

Florida Justice Institute

The Fortune Society

Franciscan Action Network

Friends Committee on National Legislation

Global Justice Institute

Hip Hop Caucus

Human Rights First

Human Rights Watch

I.S.P. Consulting

Illinois Coalition Against Torture

Illinois Innocence Project

Incarcerated Nation Corp.

Innocence & Justice Clinic, Wake Forest University School of Law

Innocence Project

Interfaith Action for Human Rights

JustLeadershipUSA

Legal Aid Justice Center, Charlottesville, Virginia

Life After Innocence

Maine Council of Churches

Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition (MPAC)

Maryland Disability Law Center

Mass Incarceration Working Group, First Parish Unitarian Universalist of Arlington (MA)

Medical Mission Sisters Alliance for Justice

Metropolitan Community Churches

Midwest Innocence Project

Montana Innocence Project

Muslim Justice League

NAACP Maine State Prison Branch

NAACP Portland Maine Branch

National Alliance on Mental Illness – Huntington (NAMI – Huntington)

National Alliance on Mental Illness – New York State (NAMI-NYS)

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI National)

National Center for Lesbian Rights

National Council of Churches

National Disability Rights Network (NDRN)

National Religious Campaign Against Torture

New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement

New York City Jails Action Coalition

New York Law School Innocence Clinic

North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence

North Carolina Stop Torture Now

Office of Social Justice of the Christian Reformed Church

Ohio Innocence Project

Pax Christi Massachusetts

Pax Christi USA

Pennsylvania Council of Churches

Pennsylvania Innocence Project

Peoples' Action for Rights and Community (PARC)

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)

Princeton's Students for Prison Education and Reform (SPEAR)

Prison Activist Resource Center (PARC)

The Prison Law Office

Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts

Prisoners' Legal Services of New York

Protection & Advocacy Project (Disability Rights North Dakota)

Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities, Inc. (P&A, Columbia, SC)

Ramsay Merriam Fund

The Real Cost of Prisons Project

Resources for Organizing and Social Change (ROSC)

Sisters of St. Joseph Non-Violence Committee

Sisters of St. Joseph, Brentwood NY

Social Action Linking Together (SALT)

Social Workers Against Prolonged Solitary Confinement

Solitary Confinement. Org

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Manhattanville

St. Susanna Peace and Justice Committee, Dedham MA

Sylvia Rivera Law Project

Tamms Year Ten

T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights

Union for Reform Judaism

Unitarian Universalist Association

United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries

United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society

University of Miami Innocence Clinic

Uptown People's Law Center

Virginia Council of Churches

Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs

West Virginia Innocence Project

WISDOM of Wisconsin

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Boston Branch

Wrongful Conviction Clinic at IU McKinney

Wrongful Conviction Project, Office of the Ohio Public Defender

cc: U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch

The PC(USA) Signs On to Faith Letter on Syrian Crisis

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

We write to you as Christian organizations and denominations with strong interest and concern regarding the Syria crisis. Many of us maintain close connections with Christians and other faith communities in the Middle East, as well as civil society organizations, and have been responding to the crisis in various ways for the last four years. 

Recent media attention has focused primarily on the plight facing refugees trying to enterEurope. But not enough attention is being paid to the dire circumstances that have led these refugees to make the difficult decision to leave their homes in the first place.

1. The root of the crisis is the devastating civil war in Syria, which has been raging now for more than four years. As a result of the war, half of all Syrians are displaced from their homes and more than 220,000 have died, according to the United Nations.

Rather than responding with deeper military involvement, the armed involvement of alloutside actors, including the United States, must cease. This includes the provision of arms and weaponry, as well as training, to opposition groups. The U.S. must urge its allies to do the same. 

2. The U.S. government must make finding a negotiated solution to the Syria crisis a top diplomatic priority. This will require continued dialogue with Russia and the willingness to enter negotiations without preconditions, such as the requirement that President Bashar al-Assad step down immediately. In addition, Iran and all involved actors will need to be at the table if a sustainable solution is to be found. 

3. Humanitarian assistance for people suffering from the brutal impacts of the war is vastly underfunded. Despite the difficult circumstances, many people wish to remain in Syria or nearby, in neighboring countries. 

But their options are bleak, as the Syrian economy is in disarray and most refugees in neighboring countries are unable to work legally. As the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies have been forced to reduce or eliminate food vouchers, rent subsidies and other forms of assistance, and families exhaust their reserves, many feel they have no option but to leave. 

We commend the generous commitment of $4.5 billion that the U.S. has already made toward humanitarian needs in the region. But the U.S. can and must do more and should continue to encourage others in the international community to increase their contributions as well.

4. The U.S. should open its doors to receive many more refugees. Even with more adequate funding for humanitarian assistance, some Syrians feel they will never be able to return home safely and wish to resettle in a third country. Many in our faith communities have a long and rich history of welcoming refugees. We encourage the U.S. to accept more Syrian refugees and to expedite the processing of these applications.

After more than four years, the Syria crisis feels intractable. But it is a human-made, political crisis. We can find a way forward, if we are willing to dedicate our collective long-term vision and energies to resolving the crisis.

May you experience wisdom, courage and strength in the days ahead.

Sincerely,

American Friends Service Committee

Church of the Brethren

Conference of Major Superiors of Men

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Friends Committee on National Legislation

Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ

Marquette University Center for Peacemaking

Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

Mennonite Central Committee U.S. 

Pax Christi International

Presbyterian Church (USA)

United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries