ELCA Advocacy

Lutherans are taking action across the country! Below you will find our monthly State Advocacy Newsletter. Share with your friends!

The 114^th Congress: From the Keystone XL Pipeline to healthcare and banking regulations, the first few weeks of the 114^th Congress will be packed with important votes. The ELCA Advocacy team in Washington, D.C., is working to build connections with new members of Congress and preparing for the upcoming legislative agenda on Capitol Hill. Be sure to follow our action alerts this year to stay up-to-date on these important issues!

Conclusion of UN Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru

Mary Minette, ELCA Advocacy’s director of environmental policy, returned from the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Lima, Peru, last month. Going in to the conference, the U.N. hoped to create a global treaty to help limit global warming to 3.6 degrees F above pre-industrial times – a necessary limit which would prevent further disasters and high humanitarian costs. An official treaty will be decided in 2015 in Paris, but due to the involvement of various lobbies, the plans in Lima were far from reaching the 3.6-degree goal. Minette reports that the most challenging concern facing world leaders is how much developing countries will be expected to invest in cutting their emissions. Additional international funding will likely be needed for these countries.

Lutheran response to police violence issues

Last month, Lutherans helped take action on police violence by encouraging the Senate to pass the Death in Custody Reporting Act. The successfully passed act will require law enforcement agencies to report all deaths of people held in police custody to the Department of Justice, serving to improve transparency and local accountability.

ELCA Advocacy also supported Lutherans in the Justice for All March in D.C. on Dec. 13. The march, organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton, protested police violence against men of color. Our office organized dozens of Lutherans, including passionate lay people, young seminarians, and ELCA pastors from D.C. and New York. Lutheran attendees held a small vigil at Luther Place Church before joining the march on the Capitol.

Hunger Leadership Gathering:

The Lutheran Office of Public Policy –California is looking forward to the ELCA Hunger Leadership Gathering Jan. 15-18 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Director Mark Carlson has been serving on the planning team and consulting on the Oakland congregation site visits (including, appropriately for the MLK Jr. weekend – a stop at Remember-Them, Champions of Humanity, pictured right). It is the largest bronze sculpture in the West, featuring several African American civil rights leaders and other champions from around the world, such as Mother Theresa and Oscar Schindler). Mark also confirmed for the Gathering advocacy training a former legislator, Ted Lempert, who is president of Children Now.

New legislative session: LOPP-CA arranged for the new president of the Pacific School of Religion, David Vásquez-Levy, to read a Scripture passage at the Jan. 13 interfaith service at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Sacramento. Vásquez-Levy is an ELCA pastor and immigrant-rights advocate relocating from Luther College and will commemorate the beginning of a new legislative session. Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles will give the message. Mark is working to arrange meetings for David with legislators and advocates, and lunch with local clergy.

LOPP-CA is co-sponsoring the Women’s Policy Summit in Sacramento on Jan. 14, the Green California Summit and legislative reception on Jan. 22, and the California Women Lead reception for women legislators and statewide elected officials on Jan. 28, with co-hosts Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins and Minority Leader Kristen Olsen. LOPP-CA has confirmed state senator Hannah-Beth Jackson for the ecumenical conference on climate change Feb. 22-24 in Santa Barbara.

Prisoner and Family Ministry: We ended the year with a road trip to Marion, Ill., to visit the Lutheran Social Services of Illinois Prisoner & Family Ministry program. The purpose of the trip was to strengthen the advocacy of our state office in partnership with LSSI and the ELCA’s racial justice ministry. We are connecting the dots on how to make the recent criminal justice social statement a living document. We saw a firsthand account of the great work LSSI is doing with job training and life skills coaching of returning citizens. Our office shared with staff and program participants the state level advocacy we have been doing, and we created a process to involve them in becoming advocates on this issue. Judith Roberts shared with them the work of her office and the social statement. There are plans in the works to hold a series of workshops in 2015 for people to learn about the social statement, best practices in the field, and how to become advocates for criminal justice. You can learn more about the LSSI Prisoner & Family Ministry program here.

Earned sick days: We are currently in the midst of working toward passage of the state-wide earned sick days bill in the Assembly. The bill has passed the Assembly Labor and Budget committees and is awaiting a full floor vote. A2354 is a model earned-sick-days law that covers nearly all 1.2 million workers in the state who lack earned sick days. The majority of those who will benefit are low-wage workers earning less than $10 an hour.

The bill allows workers to use earned sick days to care for themselves as well as all immediate family members when sick and to use earned sick days to deal with, relocate or find safe accommodations due to circumstances resulting from being a victim of domestic or sexual violence. It includes the best components of earned-sick-days laws adopted around the nation, including the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and California, as well as the cities of San Francisco; San Diego; Portland, Ore.; Eugene, Ore.; Seattle;  Washington, D.C.; New York City; and eight cities in New Jersey.

Food insecurity in New Jersey: LOGM participated in a press conference with leading legislators and faith leaders from around the state. Check out an article on the conference here.

Bishop Jim Gonia and LAM-NM Director Ruth Hoffman attended the New Mexico Conference of Churches annual judicatory leaders retreat in Albuquerque the first week of December. This is a gathering of the leaders of the New Mexico Conference of Churches member denominations, including Bishop Michael Vono of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande and Archbishop Michael Sheehan of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe. The leaders agreed to send a letter to President Obama and the New Mexico congressional delegation urging that the women and children at the soon-to-be-closed Artesia detention facility be released and not transferred to another detention facility.

State budget: Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy offered testimony before the House and Senate Appropriations and Finance committees during hearings held in five Virginia communities. Through our members and with our partners we emphasized the priority on strengthening families, creating opportunity and overcoming inequality. We specifically called on these budget decision-makers to expand Medicaid to reach more low-income Virginians and to make Virginia’s Earned Income Credit at least partially refundable.

Hunger: We have been meeting with a task force that Bishop Mauney has convened to address childhood hunger throughout the Virginia Synod, and in that context we have joined with Lutheran Family Services to meet with members of the governor’s staff about their interest in addressing hunger in Virginia. We facilitated a meeting with Bishop Mauney and First Lady Dorothy McAulife, who chairs the Governor’s Commission on Bridging the Nutritional Divide. Bishop Mauney now serves on that commission.

Immigration: We are ramping up our work with immigrant communities to help coordinate enrollment in the president’s new deferred-action program for immigrants. We hope to work with both synods in Virginia and have begun a conversation with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service to help as well.

Finally, our Day for All People advocacy day at the Capitol will be Jan. 20 in Richmond; we are looking forward to a stronger than ever turn out that day!