The following song, "No Houses, Just Stairs," was written and performed by Conner Williams, of Michigan, while participating in a JustWorks Camp in New Orleans. He is 17 years old.


Song Lyrics:

Walls break, water pours in
Devastating the heart that's within
It's a ghost town, with no one around
Except a few brave souls, who fill a few holes

Most have given up hope,
But they're still trying to cope with the fact that nobody cares.
But nothing you've seen
Compares to being, in front of no house just stairs.

There's just concrete slabs, left of what used to be
A city, with so much to see
You can't imagine the cost
The people are just getting, more tired and lost

Most have given up hope
But they're still trying to cope with the fact that nobody cares
But nothing you've seen
Compares to being in front of no house, just stairs

Celebrities and agencies
Do what they can, there's still hope
For all those still trying to cope
There's people who care although those types might be rare
Pretty soon there will be houses to go with those stairs.

So don't give up your hope
Stop trying to cope, there's no fact that nobody cares.
Because nothing we've seen, can compare to being in front of no house, just stairs.

Sign up for a JustWorks camp today.

[Ed.'s note: Shick will be presenting a workshop at the 2009 General Assembly, at which he will be discussing this book. Saturday, June 27, 3:30-4:45 p.m., Salt Palace Ballroom ABCD, workshop number 4037.]

"Every human being naturally possesses the power to initiate and sustain positive change," writes Stephen Shick, former director of U.S. programs for UUSC, in the introduction to his new book, Be the Change.

Be the Change offers a mixture of poems, meditations, prayers, and litanies meant to sustain the inner and outer journey of the peacemaker, the spiritual and worldly life of the activist.

With "Distant Return," Shick uses lines from Pablo Neruda's "Isla Negra" — "Here, I will be discovered and lost; / Here I will, perhaps, be stone and silence" — to reflect on the inevitability of mortality and the lasting gifts of active protest:

Someday, out there, on a day like this in a place I will never see, where the clearing winds always come after the storm, I will arrive nameless on a distant memory carrying with me all the best I gave back to the earth.

With "The Meaning of Suffering," Shick lifts up the voice and life's struggle of Dianna Ortiz, an American nun turned activist who was illegally imprisoned and tortured in 1989 by the Guatemalan government. Ortiz went on to found the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC), a UUSC partner and the only organization in the United States founded by and for people who have experienced torture. Shick's meditation concludes with the recognition that at some moments, "Speaking truth can be the most powerful way to give meaning to our suffering."

Opened with a foreword by Rev. Dr. William F. Schulz on the dynamics of "rescue" in social justice work and what it means to be a "rescuer," Be the Change gives readers much to ponder.

The winter 2008-2009 issue of Rights Now is hot off the presses! With in-depth articles on far-ranging issues from the Obama presidency to the national movement for a living wage, the Winter 2008-2009 issue is sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

"In many ways, this election was more about us as a people than it was about Obama as an individual. The truth is we have participated in something special. The world has witnessed the power of people who, when they make up their minds to break with the past...have proven they can do so." - Wayne Smith, "A Government of the People and by the People," Rights Now, Winter 2008-2009

• Check out our cover story on how the 2008 presidential election has restored faith in our democracy. (Who wasn't wowed watching democracy in action last November?)
• Read Charlie Clements's reflection on Rights Night (December 10, 2008), when we celebrated the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by honoring activist Gloria White-Hammond.
• Stay up-to-date on our partners in Afghanistan, who are spreading the word on human rights despite serious security setbacks.
• Sign up to be a UUSC First Responder.

And a lot more!

Download and read it today.

Send the editor your letters, comments, and questions at rightsnow@uusc.org. We want to hear from you!

 

It is said that history is written by the victors. This is no less true for Northerners following the American Civil War. How else could the North write itself into history books as abolitionists and emancipators, while brushing under the rug the fact that prominent Northern families like the DeWolfs and towns like Bristol, R.I., played a leading role slavery and in the transatlantic slave trade, even decades after the United States outlawed the trade in 1808?

U.S. History Pop Quiz What was the largest slave-trading state in U.S. history? Mississippi Rhode Island Louisiana In what state did the largest U.S. slave-trading family, the DeWolfs, live? Virginia Delaware Rhode Island In what year did the United States outlaw the importation of slaves? 1808 1850 1874 How many Africans were enslaved and transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas as part of the transatlantic slave trade? 2 million 11 million 50 million In what year did the United States government apologize for slavery? 1874 1974 2008 Answers: b, c, a, b, c

This is the history revealed in Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, a documentary film about 10 descendants of the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history, the DeWolfs, who travel to Ghana and then Cuba in search of their family's hidden past.

Watching the film at the MFA last week, during the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, I was fascinated on so many levels, as a New Englander, a Northerner, an American, an American of European descent, and as a human rights activist. But I was also interested as a social-justice journeyer myself, having taken part in two social-justice journeys with UUSC: a JustJourney to Mexico in May 2008 and Freedom Summer: A Civil Rights Journey in July 2008.

As their story unfolded, I was surprised to find that the DeWolfs' journey looked a lot like the journeys organized by UUSC.

• The DeWolf descendants were an intergenerational group from around the country who traveled to sites of specific historical and cultural significance, in their case, sites relating to the DeWolf slave trade: Bristol, R.I.; Cape Coast, Ghana; and Cuba.

• They incorporated into their journey daily (usually nightly) discussions and emotional check-ins with skilled facilitators who could help them to unpack and explore their experiences.

• They met with local experts, advocacy groups, and people from the community to learn all that they could about the issue, in their case, the economic and social institution of slavery and its legacy.

• Before the end of their trip, they each committed themselves to spreading the word about what they had learned and building support in their local communities, and beyond, to make change on social-justice issues.

It was this commitment to social action that resulted in two exciting developments: the Episcopal church, of which the DeWolf family and many other slave-trading families were a part, apologized for its role in slavery; and thousands of people around the country have seen this film and read Thomas DeWolf's Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History, raising our public and private consciousness on the issues of slavery, racism, privilege, and slave reparations. Even the UUA has gotten on board, doing its part to promote the film.

However, what was decidedly different from a UUSC journey was that the DeWolf group was not interracial (perhaps for obvious reasons). This lack of racial diversity had serious consequences for the types of discussions and explorations the DeWolfs could have. At one point in the film, as the discussion heated up about racial injustice in our country, a DeWolf family member pulled into the conversation Juanita Brown, the film's coproducer, from behind the camera to weigh in on why African Americans might be hurt and angry about what they have suffered as a people.

Brown is African American. That the whole storytelling and technical boundaries of film had to be transgressed in order to get just one African-American perspective highlights just how racially insulated this group was (perhaps for obvious reasons).

Throughout the film, I kept thinking about how much more interesting and challenging their journey would have been if the DeWolfs had invited 10 African Americans with them to explore and uncover this hidden history. Their conversations would have been so much richer and more profound, even if they might have been more difficult and more painful. In the end, the DeWolfs would have been able to cover a lot more ground. But they played it safe by keeping it in the family.

Still, I strongly encourage you to see Traces of the Trade, show it in your congregation, and discuss it.

I also encourage you sign up today to be part of one of UUSC's JustJourneys or JustWorks camps, particularly Freedom Summer: A Civil Rights Journey if you are interested in issues of race and social justice in the United States.

Passover is my favorite holiday that I do not celebrate. I say that because I have only celebrated Passover once, in Tel Aviv, back in 1999. At that time, I was living in Jerusalem — and the irony of saying the last words of the Hagaddah, "Next year in Jerusalem," inside a Jewish state, was not lost on me.

Since that Seder, I have been invited to just one other, at my friend Daniel's house in Chicago, but I could not make it. That is why I was so excited when I got another invitation, last Friday.

Our events coordinator, Cristin Martineau, came around with a list of local congregations that were kicking off their Guest at Your Table programs, and she invited me to attend one. When I looked at her list and saw that the Northshore UU Church, in Danvers, Mass., was holding a Seder to celebrate Thanksgiving and the opening of Guest at Your Table, my plans for Sunday were sealed.

I arrived at 10:30 Sunday morning, not sure exactly what to expect; but I got a great seat, next to the most well-known and well-liked person in the congregation, Tony Toledo, a resident writer and professional storyteller. He filled me in on the who-is-who and what-is-what of the busy 200-person congregation.

Soon the service began, and an intergenerational group that included two children, the religious educator, and two others adult congregants took their seats at a well-laid table, in the center of the church. The youngest at the table took up the microphone, asking, "What makes today different from other days?" And so our Thanksgiving Guest at Your Table Passover Seder began. Later, we shared a corn-bread-and-cider communion, just to make it a thoroughly UU, intradenominational celebration.

Beyond the restriction of eating unleavened bread and unfermented wine, there is so much to like about the Passover Seder (dinner) — sitting together with family and friends, eating course upon course of delicious food, and listening to stories about the heroic fortitude of one's ancestors. (Sounds a bit like Thanksgiving, right?, if you substitute the Pilgrims for the Israelites.)

I love the Passover tradition of leaving the door open for a special guest, Elijah, who may or may not arrive. Even in his absence, Elijah is a magical presence, representing hope, redemption, and future blessings. We pour him a cup of wine, and we reserve him a seat.

To me, there is no more fitting way to celebrate Guest at Your Table than with a Passover Seder. I have always envisioned this UUSC/UU tradition as a playful adaptation of Passover and its symbolic guest, Elijah. Just as during Passover, we open our door to hope, inviting in a special guest with whom we share our blessings, even if it is with something as simple as a gift box full of folded dollars or a "cup of wine for Elijah." We give thanks, and we look to a brighter future.

"Thank you for the vine and the fruit of the vine, for the produce of the field, and for the precious, good and spacious land." — The Haggadah

Happy Thanksgiving! And Happy Guest at Your Table!

A few weeks ago, I put together a chart showing the income gap between a minimum-wage worker and the average CEO while I was working with UUSC's Economic Justice Program staff on a new fact sheet. The difference was stark.

We were working with a statistic from our partner Let Justice Roll (LJR) that in 2007 the average CEO made 1,131 times as much as a minimum-wage worker. That is up from CEOs making 93 times as much as a minimum-wage worker just 25 years ago.

I put that chart together just as the banking crisis was unfolding, and stock markets around the globe were beginning to freefall.

Now, amid the near constant discussion of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, it is no surprise to me that right above that CEO statistic in LJR's Policy Points was a comparison to the Great Depression:

"The richest 1% of Americans [have] increased their share of the nation’s income to a higher level than any year since 1928 — the eve of the Great Depression."

In reading that statistic again, I realized that, no, the fall of the markets is no suprise at all!

Thinking back to some of the explanations I have heard for why the Great Depression happened, I remember hearing the idea that workers in factories and on farms just weren't making enough money to buy the very commodities they were producing. American workers were being critically underpaid and overexploited to the point where they could no longer participate in the flow of capital.

The inability of millions of full-time workers to participate in our nation's economy — to purchase health care, to buy a home, to pay for college, to put gas in the car, to put food on the table — is a sign of the major failure of that system. It speaks to the reason why the economy was in collapse, then and now.

Today, how can we say that the United States is the richest country in the world when millions of workers survive from paycheck to paycheck, just one missed paycheck away from an economic catastrophe? This, while CEOs are earning record salaries and bonuses.

I have been thinking about some of the people who have sounded the alarm about the growing income divide in the mainstream media. One that springs to mind is Michael Moore. In his book Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American, Moore criticizes the mass layoff of workers in the United States despite record corporate profits.

Another is Paul Krugman, the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. In his 2007 book The Conscience of a Liberal, Krugman decries the income gap, blaming backwards policies that have dismantled institutions created by the New Deal to make the United States a more equal society, such as unions, progressive taxation, and the minimum wage.

How do we turn back the clock and refortify these institutions? How do we prove that struggling workers can't wait any longer? Will it take another Great Depression?

With every dramatic turn that the credit crisis has taken, I have imagined that these great fissures in the system might call for larger, bolder solutions, no more "business as usual."

A true recovery will require a return to New Deal policies and a realization that wealth can not be concentrated in the hands of a select few. We do better as a nation and as a society when wealth is more evenly distributed, when we have a strong middle class.

One way to achieve this is by raising the minimum wage to a living wage, as the minimum wage is meant to be (not a poverty wage) -- and by protecting the right of workers to organize in unions.

In the coming months, Let Justice Roll and UUSC will need the support of human-rights defenders around the country to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.00 by 2010. An increase to $10 will help make up ground lost in the "earning power" of minimum-wage workers since 1968.

Raising the minimum wage is an attainable goal, and a right goal.

To learn more about UUSC's efforts to increase the minimum wage and how you can get involved, visit our Advancing the Fair Wage Movement webpage.

The following blog was written by Nancy Bennett, of Santa Fe, N.M., who participated in a JustJourney in Mexico exploring economic justice.

It’s been over a week now since I returned home from our JustJourney to Mexico – but I’m still not feeling quite at home. I’m coming to realize that I probably won’t ever feel at home in the same way I had before the trip. Home has a different meaning for me now – a larger meaning, and a less comfortable meaning.

Before experiencing this JustJourney, I had thought about international trade in terms of how it affects people in my country (the United States) and, separately, how it affects people in other countries, such as Mexico. I now realize that it is incumbent on me – on us – to develop as full an understanding as possible of the interrelated effects of trade and free-trade agreements on all parties. This is painfully clear in the case of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Although I’d had from the time of its proposal some concern about NAFTA’s possible impact on U.S. industrial workers, I’d had fewer worries about its impact on Mexican workers. However, not long after NAFTA went into effect, some very disturbing stories arose...stories about Mexicans having to leave their small farms because they were unable to compete with the burgeoning inflow of government-subsidized U.S. corn, stories about extremely low wages being paid to assembly workers in maquilas (foreign-owned factories), and stories about some of those maquilas being shut down after workers organized to demand higher wages.

Still, it seemed to me that there must be more to these stories. I couldn’t believe that the United States would be party to a trade agreement that fostered such great inequity and caused such hardship to the people of our trading nation, in this case, Mexico. I couldn’t believe that the United States would be party to a trade agreement that undermined the economy and culture of Mexico and virtually guaranteed a massive increase in Mexican migration to the United States.

Our JustJourney included visits to Mexico City, Puebla, Atlixco, and Vicente Guerrero. From our formal and informal meetings with members of these communities, I learned that, yes, there was more to the stories – but that “more” made evident the very irrational realities behind U.S. economic policies in Mexico. I realized

1) NAFTA has, indeed, wreaked havoc on the lives of many Mexicans, and

2) The governments of Mexico and the United States have allowed the interests of international corporations to take precedence over the well-being of people.

The real story is about corporate profit, corporate greed.

Corporate greed is to blame for the profound economic deprivation in Mexico that compels thousands upon thousands of Mexicans to leave their families, friends, and social traditions and risk their freedom, safety, and even their lives in order to migrate to the United States to find work. For most migrants, immigration represents the only chance of being able to support themselves and their families back in Mexico.

This reality is not well known in the United States. Instead, we hear outcries against immigrants who are stealing our jobs and the high cost incurred by our trying to keep these desperate people out of our country.

I would submit that were NAFTA to be renegotiated to include protections for Mexican agriculture and Mexican workers, the problem of immigration from our south would be greatly diminished. If the United States were to approach future U.S.-Mexico trade agreements so that the well-being of people in both countries take precedence over the profits of multinational corporations, undocumented migration to the United States would cease to be a significant problem at all.

If those who negotiate international trade agreements were to experience a JustJourney, a journey that opened their eyes, ears, minds, and hearts to the realities of life in Mexico under NAFTA, could they ever again put forth such a destructive policy? I don’t think they could. For when one knows and feels harsh realities, those realities become part of one’s own reality. “Their” home becomes as one’s own home – and a more just reality becomes an imperative.