Current Issues of Social Justice

Current Issues

Recent Actions Taken by Leadership Team
Environment/Water
Human Rights/Women and Children
Immigration/Worker Rights
Nonviolence/Peace
Opposition to Death Penalty
How to Take Action

Recent Actions Taken by Leadership Team

The BVM Leadership Team or the BVM Congregation has recently signed onto several letters:

Health Care Reform Endorsed by BVM Congregation We, the undersigned faith-based organizations, write to urge you to include legal immigrants in any national health care plan enacted by Congress.

While our organizations have other priorities in the health-care debate, we agree that any health-care plan should include legal immigrants and other vulnerable immigrant populations. It is our strongly-held view that the provision of health care is a shared responsibility grounded in the sacred act of creation and our common humanity. Universal teachings within the scriptural texts of our diverse faith communities call us to welcome strangers and compassionately care for their basic human needs – including health care.

Legal immigrants work hard, pay taxes, contribute to society, and pay into the Social Security and Medicare systems, as is required of U.S. citizens. We seek to rectify the injustice of denying them access to needed health care for them and their families.

Specifically, in any proposal that moves forward, we call for provisions that:

· Provide permanent residents with equal access to subsidies to help them purchase health-care coverage.

· Eliminate the five-year waiting period which excludes low-income immigrants from Medicaid.

· Include all immigrant children and pregnant women, regardless of their immigration status, in eligibility for Medicaid.

Uninsured immigrants, like uninsured citizens, are vulnerable. With no access to preventative care, they too often have to rely on emergency-room care, which is always more expensive and is often too late. Providing them with access to health-care would ensure healthier immigrant communities, would drive down the cost of uncompensated care, and ultimately would contribute to savings for all of us.

It is important that, as Congress considers health-care reform, legal and other vulnerable immigrants have access to health-care coverage. In such action, we are ensuring that they have what they need in order to live out the fullness of their sacred potential as individuals and as contributing members of our society.

Letter of endorsement by the BVM Congregation which calls on the Obama Administration and the Congress to enact humane and equitable immigration reform in 2009. Such reform should uphold family unity as a priority; create a process for undocumented immigrants to earn legal status and eventual citizenship; protect workers and provide efficient channels of entry for new migrant workers; facilitate immigrant integration; restore due process protections and reform detention policies; align the enforcement of immigration laws with humanitarian values; view immigration as a matter of human rights.

Environment/Water

"Water is a gift from God to be preserved and shared for the benefit of all people and the wider creation."

Living out the theme of the BVM 175th Jubilee celebration, "Crossing the Waters, Currents of Hope: 175 Years of BVM Presence and Partnership," BVMs have promised to educate themselves and engage in projects focused on the care of the world's water.

The Community is pledging $1,750, and hopes that BVMs throughout the country, plus Associates, friends and supporters, will raise at least $5,000. Monies will go to the Sister Water Project of the Dubuque Franciscans to help meet the need for potable water in Honduras and Tanzania.

BVMs are making personal commitments to practice water conservation in daily life, avoiding the use of bottled water and participating in legislative action to protect water. Visit Corporate Accountability International.

Human Rights/Women and Children

BVMs are supportive of decent, affordable housing as a human right, and we especially focus on the needs of women and children for safe shelter. Maria House and Teresa Shelter in Dubuque, Iowa, are among the ministries the congregation helped to found and has continued to support.

The Living Justice Press in St Paul, MN has a number of books relevant to Native American issues, written by Native peoples, together with social justice publications. Their web page is www.livingjusticepress.org. Leonard Peltier is a Native American who has been in prison for 33 years. Millions of people around the world have pleaded for Leonard's freedom. For information, visit www.mylifeismysundance.com

Immigration/Worker Rights

In the face of mounting antipathy to immigrants, especially those of Hispanic origin, the congregation bases its position on the gospel values of love and justice. While we recognize the right of countries to control their borders, we also recognize the needs of people to migrate in search of work that will sustain life and hold families together. We support dialogue toward comprehensive immigration reform in the United States. Visit National Farmworker Ministry.

Nonviolence/Peace

Following the gospel value of nonviolence to which Jesus gave witness, we oppose war as a means of dealing with conflict and execution as a means of punishment. We promote justice through dialogue and peaceful protest, upholding the human dignity of all involved. We belong to and support organizations which further the development of humankind. Visit Eighth Day Center for Justice.

Opposition to Death Penalty

We believe that all life is sacred. We stand in opposition to the devaluation of human life by capital punishment and the use of violence to exact retribution from the perpetrators of violent acts.

We oppose the state-sanctioned executions of our brothers and sisters done in our name and reject the argument that the death penalty is a deterrent to violence. We assert that violence only continues the cycle of violence and that it is through love that we can end violence.

We encourage one another as members and as associates of the BVM Community to work for the abolition of the death penalty by:

Educating ourselves
Advocating the use of resources for rehabilitation rather than execution
Encouraging the re-establishment of right relationship between perpetrator and victim through restorative justice programs
Writing letters, visiting, or calling elected officials about abolishing the death penalty

Each date of a scheduled execution, the bell from the Old Motherhouse at St. Joseph Prairie is tolled. This is in solidarity with a national initiative, For Whom the Bells Toll, among religious organizations. The community email distribution list carries the name(s) and state(s) of the condemned.

How to Take Action

On these and other issues, contact your: