Don't miss this!!

Reminder

Faith Leaders for Environmental Justice

Make the DREAM Act a Reality!!

Join us for an interfaith vigil to support the DREAM Act
 
Tuesday, 12/7 @ 6pm
 
Location: St. Theresa's Church
 
141 Henry Street
 
New York, NY 10002-7198
 
**NY Faith & Justice Executive Director Lisa Sharon Harper will be speaking
 

 
As you may know, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the DREAM Act next week.
 

 
THANK YOU for making calls!! Just yesterday alone, there were 16,588 calls made nationwide. Please continue to call 866-967-6018 or 866-957-2612 and ask to speak to your Congress member and one of the five Congress members below. Tell them you need them to vote "YES" on the DREAM Act.
 
* Congressman Michael Arcuri
 
* Congressman John Hall
 
* Congressman Brian Higgins
 
* Congressman Scott Murphy
 
* Congressman William Owens
 

 
ALSO:
 

 
On Thursday, December 9th: Governor Paterson Protect Our Communities Rally!
 

 
NO MORE DEPORTATIONS. POLICE SHOULD NOT BE IMMIGRATION AGENTS.
 
RALLY in Manhattan. Thursday December 9, 2010, 11 am. Gov. Paterson's
 
NYC Office, 633 3rd Ave (btwn 40th and 41st St.)
 

 
For more information: Lili Salmeron, NMCIR, 212-781-0355 or
 
co@nmcir.org
 

 
In May 2010, NY State signed a Memorandum of Agreement with ICE
 
approving "Secure Communities," in which local police send
 
fingerprints of all arrestees to Department of Homeland Security
 
databases. This costly program will push thousands more immigrants
 
into the unjust detention and deportation system, while making us all
 
less safe and violating our rights. ICE has repeatedly misrepresented
 
and lied about the program to the state and nation. Join us in
 
demanding that Governor Paterson terminate the Secure Communities
 
agreement and that the federal courts require ICE to share all
 
documents on "opting out" of the program.* New York State should not
 
cooperate with ICE in tearing apart immigrant families.
 

 
**After the rally, a federal judge presiding over NDLON v. ICE will
 
consider an emergency injunction ordering ICE to make documents public
 
regarding whether jurisdictions can refuse to participate in Secure
 
Communities. Please come to the hearing to show your support for this
 
injunction at 2:00 at US District Court at 500 Pearl Street, Courtroom
 
15C, NY, NY.

Urgent: Call your Congressman about the DREAM Act Today!

A vote on the DREAM Act in the House is set for TODAY. Please take 5 minutes today and first thing tomorrow morning to call at least 2 Members of Congress, especially our targets below.

Yesterday alone, 19,000 calls were made to Congress, according to Reform Immigration for America. We need to keep up this pressure until the very end.

Call 866-967-6018 or 866-957-2612 and ask to speak to your Congress member and one of the 5 Congress members below. Tell them you need them to vote “YES” on the DREAM Act tomorrow morning.

• Congressman Michael Arcuri
• Congressman Brian Higgins
• Congressman William Owens
• Congressman Scott Murphy
• Congressman John Hall

In addition, please spread the word to your friends and family. You can forward them a link to NYIC's op-ed in today's NY Daily News which explains why it is so critical that the DREAM Act passes tomorrow. Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/2wppgxf

You can also post the article on your facebook wall by clicking here and sharing the article with your network.

**This post was submitted by the New York Immigration Coalition

Food & PlaNYC: Northern Manhattan Community Meeting

On Earth Day 2007, PlaNYC was released by the NYC Mayor’s office. The Plan was designed to accommodate a projected population growth of one million New Yorkers over the next 20 years while enhancing the quality of life, protecting public health and the environment, creating economic opportunities, and combating climate change.

The NYC Mayor’s office has been holding conversations throughout NYC in order to give people the chance to share their ideas on how to create a greener, greater New York and contribute to the update process of PlaNYC.

This is where YOU come in! Be part of the Northern Manhattan Community

Conversation on Monday, December 6th from 7 to 9pm!

This discussion will be for community residents, leaders and

youth to:

* Learn more about PlaNYC

* Help define you and your community's role in making the City

more sustainable

* Work in small groups to develop local goals for PlaNYC

NY Faith & Justice, along with other organizations around the city, are working to get food added on to PlaNYC in order to make NYC’s food system more just and sustainable. Please attend this meeting and share your story of how the lack of access to fresh and affordable food has affected you, your family, and/or your community.

To learn more about PlaNYC click here!

We hope to see you there!

Northern Manhattan PlaNYC Community Conversation

Monday, December 6, 2010

7:00PM - 9:00PM

State Office Building 2nd Flr. Gallery

163 West 125th Street, (enter on 126th)

A, B, C, D, 2, 3,4,5,6 trains to 125th

Please RSVP: Call 212-788-9770 or email CountMeIn@cityhall.nyc.gov

Get Involved: Results from the Food, Faith & Health Disparities Summit

As the Thanksgiving holiday nears and we prepare for a day full of food and family, I wanted to take a moment to reach out to everyone who both took part in the Food, Faith, & Health Disparities Summit as well as those who registered but were unable to attend.

The Thanksgiving holiday is a time when food disparities come in full view. Some of our neighbors are unable to prepare a healthy meal for their family either due to the cost of healthy produce in their neighborhood supermarkets, the lack of fresh produce in their neighborhood supermarkets, or the lack of a neighborhood supermarket all together.

On Friday, October 29th and Saturday, October 30th, people from all five Boroughs came together to develop actions to take that would help create a more healthy and just NYC. I wanted to recap the summit as well as let you know how you can get involved in this movement!

Over one hundred people came out to the Riverside Church of NY on Friday night to kick-off the Food, Faith & Health Disparities Summit. It was a night packed with inspirational performances by Charmaine DaCosta and Christopher Cero as well as powerful speakers. Moderated by NY Faith & Justice Executive Director Lisa Sharon Harper, the evening featured speeches by the Rev. Dr. James Forbes, senior Pastor Emeritus at The Riverside Church of NY; Cecil Corbin-Mark, Director of Policy Initiatives at WeAct for Environmental Justice; Dr. Nick Freudenberg, Director of Hunter College’s Dept. of Public Health; Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, author of Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet & and an environmental policy consultant with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability; and Carolyne Abdullah, Director of Community Assistance at Everyday Democracy.

Friday evening set the stage for a very active day on Saturday, October 30th. Over 150 people filled out eight dialogue circles that were formed to take part in a series of four facilitated conversations aimed at coming up with a series of actions that could be taken to combat the food and health disparities that affect so many of our communities. After completing this series of conversations, all eight groups came back together for the action forum.

During the action forum the group from Everyday Democracy reviewed all eight group’s list of actions and produced a list of six actions that were consistent with all of the groups. Working groups were then formed around each action. These groups are charged with meeting over the next six months to a year in order to develop and move on each action.

Below is a list of these six groups along with a brief explanation of each one. If you have not signed up for one of these working groups and would like to get involved, please contact Stephen at stickner@nyfaithjustice.org and let him know you would like to join the fight in creating a more healthy and just New York City.

Community Engagement

This group aims to find creative ways to get faith communities, schools, and community groups engaged in hands-on activities to make NYC neighborhoods more healthy. This could take the form of helping communities start co-ops, community gardens, or band together to develop centralized CSA’s.

The Farm Bill

This group will focus on the U.S. Farm Bill. They will focus on shifting subsidies from soy, corn and sugar to fruits and vegetables.

Food & Voter Education

This group will focus around educating the public on both political leaders’ positions and records on issues of food and health and on upcoming laws, ordinances or government actions that will have an impact on the food system of NYC. In addition, this group will inform faith communities, schools and community groups about how they can take personal and organizational responsibility to make healthy food choices.

Incentives for Purchasing Healthy Food

This group will focus on working to get NYC to incentivize the purchase of healthy food for people receiving government assistance.

The Living Wage

This group will organize around the effort to get a living Wage Bill passed in NYC. This group will especially focus on making sure food workers are a part of this bill.

Business Outreach

This group will focus on getting the business community involved in helping to create a more healthy and just NYC. It will work at getting businesses to support various programs around New York City that promotes health and healthy living. This could mean the launch of another Food Summit focused on building bridges between faith, advocates, and business communities.

We had a very successful Summit, now it’s time to put all of our talk to action!

FoodWorks: A Vision to Improve NYC's Food System

What is the future of New York City's food system? Yesterday, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn released her new FoodWorks program that looks to create a more sustainable food system for the future of New York City. In a jam packed auditorium at the Food and Finance High School, Speaker Quinn told the audience that New York City is in a unique position.

"The New York City food market consists of over $30 billion in spending," Quinn said. "We have a budget for institutional meals second only to the United States military. We’re in a unique and powerful position to influence our food system—locally, nationally, and even globally."

Quinn's plan is a comprehensive program that involves five areas of concern (Agricultural Production, Processing, Distribution, Consumption, and Post-Consumption).

To see Speaker Quinn's plan in more detail see her plan online here!

Come Hear Wangari Maathi

Don't miss this chance to hear this incredible speaker and thinker on issues of Environmental Justice!

Enter the Conversation: a visit with Wangari Maathai

Cathedral of St. John the Divine (112th St. & Amsterdam Ave., NYC)
Wednesday, 1 December, 7:00 pm
the evening is free to the public; the doors open approximately one hour prior to the event

WANGARI MAATHAI was born in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1940. She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement (GBM), which, through networks of rural women, has planted over 30 million trees across Kenya since 1977. She was elected to Kenya’s Parliament (2002 – 2007) in the first free elections in a generation, and was appointed Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources (2003-2006). The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2004, she has three grown children and lives and works in Nairobi.

When Wangari Maathai began her work with GBM, she wasn’t motivated by her faith or religion. Instead, she was thinking literally and practically about solving the problems of rural populations who were suffering from a lack of basic needs such as clean water and adequate food. After many years of working with the GBM, she came to realize that the organization has certain intangible values, specifically: love for the environment, respect and gratitude for Earth’s resources, self-empowerment and the spirit of service. None of these core values belongs to one faith tradition more than any other; indeed, someone can adhere to these values without being particularly religious or holding onto one particular creed. Dr. Maathai believes these values are spiritual in that they foster the aspects of ourselves that seek more than material comfort, power, or worldly success. They are what give our lives value and meaning, and inspire us to look beyond ourselves.

Dr. Maathai has recently written about her journey in a book titledREPLENISHING THE EARTH: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World. The book seeks to engender a new level of consciousness in people’s spiritual lives, explaining why it is necessary to reconnect with the natural world wherever they live on the planet.

For more information please visit stjohndivine.org