This piece is part of the Minnesota installment of the “Advocating on the Road” blog series.

Minnesotan Julia Dinsmore has known poverty all of her life and is no stranger to homelessness. Her childhood was marked by frequent moves, chaos and episodes of violence — her mother struggled with mental illness, her father with alcoholism. As an adult, she has struggled to support herself and her three sons through insurmountable medical needs and expenses. “My dream is to earn enough money so I can get myself situated and help my kids and grandkids,” she says.

Julia uses her gifts in creative storytelling, music and poetry to educate others on the effects of poverty. Below is a link to a video presentation of her poem, “My Name is Not ‘Those People’”, which speaks to the importance of remembering the human stories and realities behind issues that are often looked at solely through a policy lens. 

As Christians, we must continually ask ourselves what was asked of Christ: “Who is my neighbor?” We must also ask ourselves, do I think of my neighbor as “the other”? Does my voice, and my vote, build a wall between myself and “those people”?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQWbkVqZKeo&feature=youtu.be

This piece is part of the Minnesota installment of the “Advocating on the Road” blog series.
By Sheila Ehrich

As I have grown older and experienced more of life, I have come to realize how truly blessed I have been. For me, advocacy is something I do out of gratitude. I have always known that poverty, hunger and injustice exist. Over the years I have done what I could to address those issues both financially and with my time.

I grew up in an intact middle-class family. The expectation was that my sister and I would go to college. We both did, and my education at Gustavus Adolphus College served me well in a variety of jobs as well as with the many volunteer and advisory positions I have held over the years.

Following college I married and had two healthy children who have now grown up, gone to college, married, and one has a family of his own. There has always been food on my table (and in my pantry). I have always had clothes to wear, a car that ran, and a job that paid decently – usually with good benefits and a guaranteed roof over my head.

Even after being divorced and now in my current unemployment, I have come to know that I am truly blessed. Advocacy is something I do out of gratitude for all that I have been given – “to those to whom much is given, much is expected.” I also do it because people living in poverty are often so downtrodden – maligned in the press and by politicians and others, that they are sometimes unable to advocate for themselves beyond seeking public assistance.

As part of my job search I often check a number of non-profits to see if they have any openings. This spring I saw that the Lutheran Coalition for Public Policy in Minnesota was looking for volunteer help. I began a two-month opportunity of a lifetime to work almost fulltime at advocacy, advocating with and for people who live in poverty, who seek not a handout, but a hand up. I had the opportunity this spring to advocate for people in poverty, to stand alongside them and say, “I am not a criminal! I am just down on my luck. Please help me.”

Living in poverty in and of itself is very limiting in terms of energy and time. Facing people who have power is intimidating and often frightening. I do have the energy and time – and while many people are intimidated by those who hold power, I am not, so it is my duty to speak up for those who find it difficult, for whatever reason, to speak for themselves.

I have met and gotten to know a number of people living in poverty, some of them even working fulltime. As the recession hit I also saw members of my congregation struggle to hang onto their homes, sometimes not succeeding. They also struggled to put food on the table and to be able to send their kids on for post-secondary education. Some also came to struggle with addiction.

These were not rich people or people who were irresponsible. They were people like me who worked hard, took care of their families and looked forward to life being okay. We have all seen people living in poverty maligned and dehumanized on the news and in person, but over the last few years they have often been seen as criminals.

God calls upon all of us to act for the well-being of the poor and hungry, and those who face injustice whether they live in our Twin Cities’ neighborhoods, a community in Minnesota, or across the globe. Through advocacy, we have opportunities to help our neighbors reclaim their dignity and restore their lives. I believe we truly cannot separate our faith and the grace we have received from doing this aspect of God’s work.

 To join a growing national network of Lutherans advocating for public policy that serves the well-being of our vulnerable neighbors and God’s creation, click here. 

We open the Minnesota installment of the “Advocating on the Road” blog series with this piece.

By Mark Peters, director of the Lutheran Coalition for Public Policy in Minnesota, a State Policy Advocacy office of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The advocacy road trip continues, pausing to explore poverty in Minnesota.  In recent years, Minnesotans have heard some policy makers malign people who use government assistance programs. In a scripted YouTube video, one state representative went so far as to compare people who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP- formerly food stamps) to stray animals. After the video went viral across the Internet and on online news sources, the legislator was forced to apologize for this dehumanizing statement. While not all dialogue has sunk to this level, recently officials in the Minnesota state legislature have employed harsh rhetoric to allege criminal behavior and illegal activity among individuals who use social safety net programs.

Minnesota’s primary tool for moving children out of poverty is the Minnesota Family Investment Program. The program seeks to facilitate connections for their parents to work while providing enough income to lift their family out of poverty. All applicants are part of a family with children, and seven out of 10 recipients are children (and half of these children are under the age of 5). More than two-thirds of those turning to the program are women trying to work and care for children. 

The family investment program is crucial in addressing poverty — and its effects on children — in our state. The number of Minnesota children experiencing poverty has grown by 62 percent since 2000. About 4,500 youth are homeless in Minnesota each night, and half of Minnesotans served at food pantries are children. Programs like the Minnesota Family Investment Program help families with children cycle out of poverty: half of the families move from welfare-to-work within one year and 70 percent transition within three years.

During the recent Minnesota legislative session, there were more than a dozen bills proposed that, if passed, would directly and negatively affect families with children served by the family investment program. Among these provisions were denying benefits to anyone with a drug offense in the past 10-15 years and mandated criminal background checks and fingerprinting, paid for by an applicant currently living in poverty who is seeking benefits to support his or her family.

Debate on these bills centered on anecdotal evidence of fraud and abuse in the program, but there is scarce evidence to support these claims. Minnesota Health and Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson notes that, “The majority of people on the Minnesota Family Investment Program do not fit a pattern of fraud, abuse or misuse. They are working, but at very low-income jobs. They have serious health problems which limit their ability to hold a full-time job. They are new mothers or they are recently unemployed as a result of our challenging economic times.”

ELCA members mobilized to oppose provisions that would restrict the ability of our vulnerable neighbors to receive assistance from the family investment program. Two hundred Lutherans gathered at the State Capitol on Annual Interfaith Day on the Hill, with 600 others, to tell their legislators to denounce rhetoric that vilifies people in poverty and impedes access to the program’s services. Minnesota’s six ELCA bishops joined with the six Roman Catholic bishops and archbishop in sending a letter to the governor and legislators in March 2011, arguing that “The most telling measure of how well we care for each other is to consider how we treat those who are the most vulnerable among us.”  Advocates from the Lutheran Coalition for Public Policy in Minnesota testified in both House and Senate Health and Human Services committees, which helped turn the tide of the committee’s decision.

Ultimately none of these provisions to restrict access to the Minnesota Family Investment Program were included in the final bill. Commissioner Jesson thanked the faith community for their advocacy, saying that they played a major role in efforts to reject harmful family investment program restrictions. In April 2012 eight ELCA pastors in the Southeastern Minnesota Synod joined area Lutherans and representatives from local food providers in a meeting with Senate Majority Leader David Senjem. The group thanked Senator Senjem and his caucus, especially members of the Health and Human Services Committee, for listening to the concerns of Lutherans and other faith-based advocates.

Through their visits to the State Capitol and letters to officials, Lutherans in Minnesota urged their legislators to work for the common good. They stood up for civil and respectful dialog, rejecting rhetoric that maligns our neighbors, regardless of their life experiences or personal burdens. Lutherans pushed for fair assistance to those living in poverty, a proven step that helps individuals cycle out of hunger and homelessness.

Keep an eye on the ‘Advocating on the Road’ series on the Voices for Change blog for contributions from Minnesotans in the coming days. 

Dear friends,

It’s not a secret that the political campaign season is underway in America. Turn on your TV, open a newspaper, or, depending on where you are, walk down your street and you’ll see politicians and their staff eagerly courting votes. Candidates for the highest elected offices are traveling by bus, plane and train into small towns and large cities, donning jeans and sweater vests, touring farms and factories, kissing babies and shaking hands — anything to convince Iowans ( … or Ohioans, Minnesotans or Floridians, Virginians or … ) that he or she is listening and understands our communities, our nation, and our world. 

Throughout the months leading up to the general election, the ELCA Advocacy Ministries invite you to join us on our own tour of the U.S. Through our blog, Voices for Change, we will travel to a different state each month, discussing issues of concern for their communities and exploring how they connect to our larger nation and world. As we hear how Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) advocates and congregations are serving their neighbors, we will ask ourselves what was asked of Christ, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), when grappling with these challenging problems. 

On this trip across America, we won’t be winning super-delegates or collecting endorsements — rather we’ll be sharing stories from ELCA advocates and congregations as they lift up moral priorities facing our neighbors who are near and far away. We invite you to discover America with us over these next few months. 

Safe travels,

The ELCA Washington Office

Our first stop is New Mexico, where ELCA congregations serve and advocate in response to widespread hunger. 

To be notified of new blog postings, click here.

Greetings from our nation’s capital!  I join the ELCA Washington Office as the new Director for Grassroots Advocacy and Communication, where I look forward to working with Christians as we connect faith and public life.

Humbled by Christ’s constant inclusion of people living on the margins of society, Christians identify with and support the vulnerable through prayer and public witness.  God’s inescapable call to his people to lift up the sick, welcome the stranger, and aid the poor follows us outside of our church walls and in to our communities, our wider nation, and our world.

Christians in the United States have unique opportunities to work through political channels on behalf of the vulnerable.  Through advocacy ministries, the Church intercedes and creates space for the voiceless by engaging governments to aid immediate need and shatter deeply imbedded cycles of injustice.  This citizenship and view of government was central to the Reformation and remains important today.

My work here in Washington is based on an active partnership with you and your congregation.  I very much look forward to hearing your vision, and it is my hope that you will share your advocacy ministries with me and our larger Church body, as well as your communities and elected officials.  We seek to keep you informed of governmental action, and our office can provide resources to assist you in standing up for God’s most vulnerable children.

Everyday the God of our fathers and mothers, the Lord who always lives and is always near, goes with us as we collaborate to carry out Christ’s work on earth.   Jesus tells us, “The harvest is plentiful and the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.”   Today we ask the Lord of the harvest to call us, unite us, and work through us to shape public perception and policy affecting Creation, the poor, the hungry, the sick, and the stranger.

By Sarah Dreier, Legislative Representative for International Policy and Advocacy for the ELCA Washington Office and the Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations

I’m the new Legislative Representative for International Policy and Advocacy for the ELCA Washington Office and the Episcopal Church (TEC) Office of Government Relations. This is the first joint, integrated position shared between our two churches and represents the innovative potential of the ELCA and TEC’s call to common communion.

Both my parents are ELCA clergy and they raised me to think critically about my faith. I have taken seriously Jesus’ revolutionary call, which is as radical today as ever,  to look beyond divisions of class, race, nationality, and creed, and to celebrate diversity among God’s people.  When I was old enough to vote, I noticed with dismay that religion was far too often misappropriated by those who had cast aside this theological message of inclusion and replaced it with a message of greed and exclusion.

I challenged this misappropriation of God’s global message in both academic and public policy circles.  It motivated my study of philosophy and legal studies as an undergraduate at Northwestern University; international sociology of law at the University of the Basque Country and political science at the University of Washington at the graduate level. My research at the Center for American Progress’s Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative also influenced my passion. 

I am thrilled to now be working to reclaim this inclusive message and infuse international development and U.S. foreign policy with God’s message of love.

With this message, I will be advocating to alleviate abject global poverty through the Millennium Development Goals. Specifically I’ll be urging Congress to address those vexing issues that plague the world’s most vulnerable: HIV/AIDS, food insecurity, humanitarian atrocities, unfair trade policies, and religious persecution.

I believe the work will be strengthened by our churches’ shared ecumenical voice.  I pray it serves as a model of dialogue and faith-based partnership at a time when religious diversity too often becomes divisive.

Together, as we grapple with some of the world’s most challenging problems, we’ll educate our communities and advocate for those in most dire need around the world. Together, we’ll discern how we can heed Jesus’ radical call to look beyond state borders and religious identity by being the voice for the voiceless in our nation’s capital and in our own congregations.

Pastor Reg Schultz-Akerson quotes Matthew 5 at a Season of Prayer event held at Faith Lutheran Church in Chico, California. Photo credit: James Henson

In solidarity with our brothers and sisters serving, working, and living in Sudan, the ELCA encourages you to pray for peace for all of Sudan as South Sudan approaches its independence from the North on July 9th, 2011.

Here is a prayer shared by Faith Lutheran Church in Chico, Calif.:

Abba, heavenly Father,

On behalf of the community of Chico, California allow our voices to be heard in unison with others across this nation and across the world. We pray for peace and self-determination for our brothers and sisters in South Sudan as they begin the Good Works as people of a new nation.

Lord hear our prayers:

Let the land yield crops; not land mines.

Lord hear our prayers:

Grant that the people of South Sudan may dig wells for water; not graves for their children from violence and war.

Lord hear our prayers:

Grant that both adults and children may be free to pick up pencils to write rather than pick up guns to kill.

Finally, God may the words of your prophet Isaiah come true so that the South Sudanese and all peoples begin to “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” (Isaiah 2:4)

In Jesus name we pray.

Amen

Guest blog posting by Eric Sigmon, director for advocacy, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. This posting highlights the human dignity issues with regards to welcoming refugees into the United States.

On June 20th, the United States will celebrate World Refugee Day to raise awareness about the estimated 15.2 million refugees around the world and to celebrate the wonderful contributions refugees provide to communities across the country.

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), a nationally recognized organization based in Baltimore, MD, welcomes refugees and migrants on behalf of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. LIRS partners with the federal government, local refugee resettlement partner organizations, and churches and volunteers to help refugees in the United States learn English, enroll their children in school, find jobs and become self-sufficient.  Since 1939, LIRS has welcomed over 372,000 refugees to the United States.

Here is a snapshot of the refugee populations LIRS currently assists:

Iraqis: LIRS has a long history of resettling Iraqi refugees, with a larger influx of arrivals in recent years. Many Iraqis have arrived to the United States through a special program to protect Iraqis who have been targeted as a result of their work and affiliation with the U.S. military.

Burmese: The Burmese are one of the largest and most diverse groups currently being resettled by LIRS. Since 1962 Burma has been under military rule. The oppression of minority ethnic groups has been brutal. Many Burmese refugees have lived in “temporary camps” for two decades or more. Many children and young people are born into these camps and do not know about life outside of these camps.

Bhutanese: Bhutanese refugees are mostly ethnic Nepalis from southern Bhutan, known as “Lhotsampas,” who have lived in camps in Nepal for more than 16 years. The Lhotsampas coexisted peacefully with the majority population, the Druk Buddhists, until the 1980s. Protests and clashes with the police culminated in the forced expulsion of Lhotsampas from the country in 1990.

Somalis: In 1990, after the civil war in Somalia, the Somali refugee crisis began and it continues today. Many Somali refugees have lived in camps in Kenya and Ethiopia for protracted periods with no durable solution available other than third country resettlement.

Eritreans: As a result of the Ethiopia-Eritrea war from 1998-2000, Eritrean refugees have sought protection in neighboring countries. Political tensions and increasing repression continue in Eritrea, with the targeting of independent evangelical groups. Most of the refugees LIRS currently serves practice Christianity or Islam.

LIRS also continues to serve refugees from Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and the former Soviet Union. In honor of World Refugee Day, please take time to pray, volunteer with a local refugee resettlement organization, or visit the LIRS website for further information:

 LIRS Advocacy Page on Refugees

 LIRS Work to Welcome Refugees

 Frequently Asked Questions About Refugees

 LIRS statement — Improving the Welcome for Refugees Resettled to the United States

 LIRS statement — LIRS Supports Legislation to Provide Permanency to Liberian Migrants in the United States

 LIRS statement — The Impact of Budget Proposals on Justice, Job Creation, Public Safety, and Civil Liberties

Guest Blog by Krista Zimmerman, International Policy Analyst of Lutheran World Relief

A young IDP whose family fled violence along the Sudan-DRC border. She is working on a handicraft project to help support her family in its new home. Photo Credit: Krista Zimmerman

Travel is something I enjoy.  So when my work for Lutheran World Relief took me to Sudan, I was grateful for the opportunity.

Although some aspects of the trip were uncomfortable and stressful, I was always aware that I journeyed far from home by choice – and that the same could not be said for many of the people I met along the way.

I traveled to a remote corner of Sudan, near its borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, by road.  My guide was a local Catholic priest.

Reports of armed conflict in the area initially delayed our departure as the priests contacted sources on the ground to ensure the situation was stable. When we finally left, we were relieved to be on our way, but also a bit nervous about the situation into which we were traveling.

Several hours into the trip we started to see empty villages and abandoned fields. The few people we encountered traveled in groups and were armed with spears or hand made knives. 

On the road we stopped and talked with women carrying bundles of food on their heads.  They told us they fled their village the night before to resettle on the outskirts of an army encampment several miles away.  They had returned to their homes to procure food and were anxious to return to camp before dusk.  They planned to spend their nights close to soldiers while they waited to hear if there would be more violence.

A mother and her son who were uprooted from their home in southern Sudan as a result of LRA violence. They were traveling to the town of Yambio to seek shelter there. Photo Credit: Krista Zimmerman

We also encountered a young mother and her baby boy, Richard. They aimed to get to town before nightfall, where they hoped things would be safer.

Our travel companions fled as a result of attacks attributed to the Lord’s Resistance Army – an armed force, originally from Uganda, that has plagued East Africa for years.  But they are not the only displaced persons in or from Sudan.

Lutherans provide support to a refugee camp in Kenya that houses about 18,000 refugees from Sudan. Many hail from south Sudan states where thousands died as a result of tribal clashes last year.  Needless to say, the death toll deters them from returning home.

Southern Sudan is supposedly at peace but the UN is making plans for up to 40,000 new refugees from the area.  Continued insecurity, unchecked poverty and a volatile political climate continue to force or keep many Sudanese from their homes.

For these reasons, and many others, Lutherans are actively working to encourage U.S. support for peace and continued development in southern Sudan – and are being successful in their efforts.

Last year, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution (S. Res. 404) calling on the United States Government to increase its efforts to assist the Government of South Sudan and to fully implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005.  It also encouraged the President and other international leaders to strategize and develop contingency plans for all eventualities – and to focus on long term development in the region.