Farm Workers, Mennonites and Justice

New post on Mennonite Church USA

Farm Workers, Mennonites and Justice by Joanna Shenk Richard MacMaster, speaking here at a rally, is chair of the Southeast Mennonite Conference Task Force on Farmworker Justice. He is a retired history professor and a member of Emmanuel Mennonite Church, Gainesville, Florida. By Richard MacMaster Last month Ervin Stutzman as executive director of Mennonite Church USA joined other religious leaders calling Wendy’s restaurants to sign the Fair Food Agreement with other major tomato buyers, 95% of growers, and theCoalition of Immokalee Workers, to assure fair wages and decent working conditions for farm labor. The men, women and children who harvest the vegetables and fruits we eat are invisible to most Americans. We Mennonites may be familiar with migrant farm workers, but how many of us have heard their stories and know what life is really like for them? For our congregation, Emmanuel Mennonite Church in Gainesville, Florida, a Sunday morning sharing time with workers from the tomato fields of Immokalee in 2009 was an eye opener. We learned about difficult working conditions, the impossible number of huge buckets of tomatoes needed to earn close to minimum wage, the prevalence of sexual harassment, and what farm workers themselves are doing to change this. We invited the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to bring their Modern-Day Slavery Museum to our new meeting house. When they came, our local newspaper was running stories about an unscrupulous Haitian labor contractor who recruited laborers in Haiti. These laborers agreed to pay him large sums for a legal job in Florida. They then worked eighteen months on a farm a few miles from Gainesville while the contractor pocketed their wages to pay the debt. We learned that this kind of servitude is commonplace in Florida. Farm workers found allies in churches and on campuses. In 2010 Kimberly Hunter asked Eve MacMaster, her pastor at Emmanuel Mennonite, to help organize the churches of Gainesville. Kimberly drew up a statement for the initial meeting, showing that the call for justice was a Biblical imperative rooted in the prophets and the words of Jesus. Our congregation was the first to join the Gainesville Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Justice (IAIJ) , which is now a coalition of a dozen faith communities. With our partners we’ve been working ever since to implement that Biblical vision. Berea Mennonite Church (Atlanta, Ga.) had a similar experience hosting the Immokalee workers when they came to Metro Atlanta. Pastor John Wierwille and his congregation reached out to other Atlanta churches and to our own conference to enlist their support for farm workers. Fast forward to 2014. In January the Leadership Board of Southeast Mennonite Conference created a Task Force on Farm Worker Justice. We on the task force are committed to helping congregations Southeast Conference and Mennonite Church USA connect with farm workers and support their efforts to improve their living and working conditions. We expect to soon have curriculum and study group resources. We hope to bring our concerns to the conference assembly this year and to Kansas City next summer. Meanwhile, if you would like to bring a speaker to your church or want more information about the Fair Food Campaign, contact Claire Comiskey atClaire@interfaithact.org. To learn more about our Task Force or our community efforts e-mail me at gainesvilleiaij@gmail.com Joanna Shenk | June 18, 2014 at 10:44 am | Categories: Holistic Witness, Immigration, Menno Snapshots | URL: http://wp.me/p3cxoO-45f

34 Days to End the 34,000 Immigrant Detention Quota June 9 to July 12

The next 34 days are critical in our collective efforts to end the 34,000 immigrant detention quota. Sign-up today to get involved during the 34 Days to End The Quota.  During the month of June, the House of Representatives will be voting on the Fiscal Year 2015 appropriations bill, which includes the detention bed quota. In the meantime, 34,000 immigrants continue to be locked-up at any given time in detention and thousands of families and communities continue to be torn apart. Now is the time to ADVOCATE, EDUCATE and ORGANIZE to #EndTheQuota. From watching and sharing the End The Quota video, and signing-up to host an event or action in your community, to calling and meeting with your members of Congress, we need all hands on deck! Now is the time to act and stop the arbitrary quota that keeps thousands of immigrants behind jail walls.

Here are 6 things you can do to End The Quota:  1 Join DWN's End The Quota webinar, this Thursday, June 12th at 2:00 p.m. EDT. Register here. 2 Hold educational events, community forums or teach-ins about the immigration detention system and the impact of the 34,000 detention bed quota on our communities. For educational materials and resources go here. 3 Call and/or visit your members of Congress and ask them to eliminate the immigration detention bed quota from the FY 2015 appropriations bill.  Ask your Representative to vote for the Deutch-Foster amendment that strikes the quota language from the bill. For advocacy materials go here. 4 Organize an action, or vigil outside a detention center, ICE office or congressional member’s office. Contact Catalina Nieto cnieto@detentionwatchnetwork.org for support. 5 Write an op-ed or letter to the editor about the impact of the quota in your community. For sample talking points go here. 6 Share End The Quota action alerts, videos, infographics, posters, and fact sheets viaFacebook, Twitter, e-mail, and blogs. For additional resources go here.  For more info or to get involved contact Catalina Nieto at cnieto@detentionwatchnetwork.org

Governor Scott Signs Tuition Bill

Passage of the bill to allow children of undocument immigrants who otherwise qualify to pay in-state tuition was achieved by the hard work of many Florida undividuals and groups over several years.  It was the first issue that Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice worked in 2010 as part of our DREAM Act campaign.