Advocacy Action for Southern Sudan ... please take 60 seconds and act now!

Friends,

this alert just came from the Episcopal Public Policy Network. Please take a minute and take this simple action, which is so critical for our sisters and brothers in Southern Sudan.

We here in Missouri have had a companion relationship with the Diocese of Lui in Southern Sudan for several years now. Over the past few weeks we have heard increasing reports of violence in the neighboring diocese of Mundri with refugees streaming into Lui. This is a critical action at a critical time ... and it takes no more than 60 seconds.

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During his campaign, President Obama spoke of the need to stop he so-called "Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)," a Uganda-based rebel group that has been active in South Sudan and other parts of the region for more than two decades Over the past six weeks, the people of South Sudan, already living precariously with their northern neighbors, have been terrorized by an unremitting campaign of LRA militia attacks on civilians.

Christianity is the majority religion in South Sudan and the violence has had a particular effect on the Episcopal Church of the Sudan,. Some of the earliest attacks – which included killings, child abductions, decapitation, and other unspeakable crimes at the hands of the LRA – were directed at parishes and villages in the Dioceses of Mundri and Ezo. Tragically, the violence appears to be spreading, with reports from bishops and others in Sudan that LRA activity has reached across southern Sudan to Torit, Kajokeji, Lainya, Yei, Yambio, Ibba, Maridi, and Lui.

Last week, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori urged Americans to learn more about the situation, advocate for a U.S. government response, give to the work of Episcopal Relief and Development in the region, and pray for peace. To read the Presiding Bishop's statement, click here.

WHAT ONE CAN DO:

Click here to send a message to the White House, asking President Obama to take urgent action with other international leaders to stop the violence.

Ask him now to work to ensure:

(1) a viable strategy to arrest LRA leaders and bring them to justice;

(2) robust protection for civilians as the governments of Southern Sudan, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo continue a joint effort to apprehend LRA leaders;

(3) a negotiated end to the LRA's activity in the region; and

(4) an adequate deployment to the region of UN peacekeepers.

"Advocacy for Abundance" -- by the Micah Challenge

Today's post is from the Micah Challenge, a global Christian campaign to achieve the MDGs. Part of their mission is a weekly prayer emailing like the one you see below. You can receive it in your email box every week send a blank email to regine.nagel@micahchallenge.org with the words 'subscribe prayer' in the subject line.

Reflection

‘If Zambians work like donkeys, why is poverty so rife especially among communities where people work in the morning, at noon and evening?’ asks Lawrence Temfwe from Micah Challenge Zambia, reflecting on a recent article in the national newspaper and a song by a Zambian musician.

One of the reasons, he argues, is the lack of long-term planning: ‘most of our people work that they have food to eat at night.’

In Genesis 41: 25-38 we read of Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream and his recommendation to be good stewards of resources in the years of abundance so to be prepared for the years of famine.

Prayer

Let us pray:

*Lawrence asks us to pray for our political and civil society leaders, that they may ‘provide guidance on how we should live and perform duties in order to profit from the abundant resources God has blessed us with’.

*Next Thursday, July 24, more than 600 Anglican bishops, their spouses and other faith leaders from around the United Kingdom will march through central London on a Walk of Witness - a symbolic moment of solidarity and coming together for the fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals to reflect to the world God's desire for justice and concern for the poor.

Please pray for:

*The Micah Challenge team as they help to organise this event and further participate in specific sessions around global poverty issues at the forthcoming Lambeth conference.

*A joint statement that will be issued by the Anglican Communion as a call to action towards achieving the MDGs to world leaders gathered at the UN summit in September.

*The ‘Virtual March for the MDGs’ which is organised by Micah Challenge US steering group member Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation to coincide with the Walk of Witness. The aim is to march virtually by sending emails to Washington, D.C. asking US leaders to share our commitment to the MDGs and halve poverty by 2015.

For more information and to sign up please click here.

Reflecting on the statistic below: we praise God for the progress that was made in achieving education for all by 2015. We pray for continued good national policies and a renewed effort of the international community to invest in basic education which will benefit the poorest of the poor.

Meditate on the Statistics
As you spend time in prayer and reflection, you may like to take a moment to silently understand with your heart the focus statistic we include each week (see below). Our hope is that you will find this series of statistics a useful resource in preparing presentations.

Goal 2: Ensure access to primary schooling for all children

Target 3: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling

‘Primary school enrolment rose from 647 million to 688 million worldwide between 1999 and 2005, increasing by 36% in sub-Saharan Africa and 22% in South and West Asia. As a result, the number of out-of-school children declined, with the pace of this decrease particularly marked after 2002.’

‘The cost of schooling remains a major obstacle to education for millions of children and youth despite the abolition of primary school tuition fees in fourteen countries since 2000.’

‘Illiteracy is receiving minimal political attention and remains a global disgrace, keeping one in five adults (one in four women) on the margins of society.’

‘Aid to basic education in low-income countries more than doubled between 2000 and 2004 but decreased significantly in 2005.’

Source: Education for All by 2015: Will we make It? -
Global Monitoring Report 2008, UNESCO, July 2008

EPPN alert: Climate Change, Global Poverty and the G8

An action alert from the Episcopal Public Policy Network.

This summer marks the half way point for the targeted achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Despite high promises from G8 leaders, a new report this week by DATA, one of the Episcopal Church’s partner organizations, shows that while progress has been made in some of the anti-poverty commitments made by G8 leaders at their 2005 summit, much bolder action is needed if the MDGs are to be met by 2015.

In a few short weeks, leaders of the G8 nations, including President Bush, will meet in Germany with an agenda that includes addressing the onset of climate change throughout the world, as well as the world’s progress toward eradicating deadly poverty and meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Tell President Bush, the G8 must keep their commitments to the MDGs and need to address the role that climate change will play in their success.


This is a critical time for the climate and the MDGs. On Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle printed Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s opinion column urging that world leaders consider the two issues simultaneously, as climate change propels global poverty and global poverty propels climate change. "By understanding how the two crises, and the people they affect, are connected, we can begin to understand how humanity can triumph over both," wrote the Presiding Bishop. To read the full article, click here.

Click here to send a message to President Bush now -- Urge him to work with other G8 leaders to keep the promises they have made toward meeting the MDGs, and in particular, to address the relationship between global poverty and climate change as part of this meeting’s agenda.

Make Clinton, Obama and Edwards talk about the MDGs!

Do you want to hear the democratic front-runners' answer to this question?

In the Millennium Declaration of September 2000, 150 heads of state committed to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Are you committed to the Millennium Development Goals, and what is your view on the role of the U.S. in global partnerships to extinguish extreme poverty?

I sure do. Go to the Sojourners website and vote for this question.

On June 4, Clinton, Edwards and Obama will be live on CNN with Jim Wallis of Sojourners for a conversation on faith, values and poverty. Sojourners is giving us a chance to pick one of the questions -- so this is your chance to make the candidates talk about the MDGs and what they will do to make them happen if elected.

Go and vote ... and then go tell your friends to vote. Making poverty history means making our leaders know that we care -- and that we're watching them.

Religious leaders unite to address global warming

From Episcopal News Service
Uniting through a common concern for creation, Muslim, Christian and Jewish religious leaders announced May 21 a pact to fight global warming in a statement delivered to the White House and Congress.

"An Interfaith Declaration on the Moral Responsibility of the U.S. Government to Address Global Warming" comes on the heels of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's most recent report that makes clear the serious risks of delay.

The religious leaders, including Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, declare acceptance of the scientific evidence for global warming and pledge mutual support in addressing this severe challenge.

Recognizing the human contribution to global warming, the statement's signers call for legislators to enact mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and to make a healthy and healthful environment a priority.

"Our Earth is in great peril," the declaration says. "We cannot risk the consequences of inaction. Recognizing that human beings are largely responsible for creating this problem we stand together as brothers and sisters dedicated to finding solutions."

A pdf of the declaration is available here.

Read the whole story here.

Church, State and St. Dunstan

"The Church shouldn't be involved in politics."

I hear this one all the time ... particularly when I'm talking about the ONE Campaign or urging people as part of faithful living, to be in dialogue with their senators and representatives particularly about issues concerning the poor.

Enter Dunstan, 10th-century Archbishop of Canterbury, whose feast we celebrate today. Dunstan led a reform movement that closely bound the monasteries of England to the crown. He was a trusted friend of King Edgar and had a great deal of in the royal court.

Talking about Dunstan today as a positive model is liable to make lots of people nervous. Certainly the kind of merging of the State and a particular institution of the Church that existed in England (and greatly encouraged by Dunstan's efforts) is part of what this country was founded over against. Certainly a great fear with the current administration is that they are repeating exactly what happened with Edgar and Dunstan -- that the Church is being invited into the courts of the State and that the Church is actually doing the ruling.

I'm not arguing a return to the court of King Edgar. But I am arguing that even though it isn't part of our tradition as Americans, it is part of our tradition as Christians not to shy away from involvement in affairs of State. Sam Portaro, in his great companion book to Lesser Feasts and Fasts, "Brightest and Best," makes this point better than I:

Read the rest here.

EPPN Alert: Action Needed During Congressional Recess

Here's a note from the Episcopal Public Policy Network about an important lobbying opportunity you can take advantage of without leaving your home town! Read on!

Beginning next week, key congressional committees will begin drafting the 2007 U.S. farm bill. As we highlighted in our Lenten EPPN series, the farm bill affects every American – and most people around the world – in one way or another. US farmers and rural communities. have an important stake in the legislation, as do hungry people in our own country and people living in deadly poverty around the world. To learn more, click here.

Reform of the current U.S. commodity-payment system would allow Congress to invest billions of dollars in farms and rural communities that need it most, and better support programs that fight hunger and poverty at home and around the world.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:
During the week of May 27, when lawmakers are home in their districts for the Memorial Day recess, Episcopalians will be joining with other people of faith to visit their Senators and Representatives and share the message of farm-bill reform. The effort will include bishops, clergy, lay people, community organizers, farmers, and others who want to see a fair and just farm bill.

If you have never set up a meeting with your member of congress, it’s easy to do – here are some simple instructions. Ask others in your congregation to join.

Interested, but nervous you won’t know what to say? Register here, so that we can invite you to a special conference call that will walk through the important information. Even if you can’t make the call, all the information you need to talk about the farm bill in these meetings is here in a short front and back summary.

Together, we can help pass a 2007 farm bill that makes historic strides against hunger and poverty at home and around the world.

Please write and tell us about your visits. The information you gather will give us important insights into the concerns, questions and positions of Members of Congress as the legislative process continues.

You Choose 2008

Our good friend Kim Smith at ONE offers this on the ONE Campaign blog.

As the 2008 presidential campaign is heating up around the country, ONE members are reaching out to candidates on both sides of the political aisle to make sure that fighting extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS in the world's poorest countries is a priority for our next president. We need to show all the candidates that there is a growing and visible number of Americans who care about our issues and who are going to local candidate rallies and forums to speak out!

If you don't live in a state that the candidates are visiting yet there are other ways to get involved – YouTube has is highlighting a different candidate each week as part of their new campaign, "You Choose 08 Spotlight." For the campaign, people can submit videos of themselves asking questions to the candidates.

ONE member Sean Camoni has taken on this challenge and posted videos for multiple candidates, from both political parties, to let them know he wants our next president to be a leader in the fight against extreme poverty around the world. Sean has already sent in videos asking presidential candidates Hunter, Kucinich, McCain, Edwards and Romney questions about their policy on extreme poverty.

Let us know in the comments below (and let ONE know, too) if you send in your own YouTube YouChoose 08 video about global poverty.

Sign Avaaz/Global Call to Action Against Poverty's petition to G8 finance ministers

This Friday, the finance ministers of the world's richest countries meet to plan the G8 summit in Germany. Two years ago, they pledged to double aid to Africa--but despite their promises, aid from the G8 has actually gone down, and 30,000 children every day are still dying preventable deaths.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has signed on to a letter organised by activist website Avaaz.org and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. The letter will be featured in big ads in the Financial Times and German press on Friday morning, so that the finance ministers are reminded of their promises before they meet.

The text of the letter is below. Click here to go to avaaz.org and sign it yourself.

Together you represent the world’s economic powerhouses. We write to ask that when you meet in Potsdam Germany this May, you also strive to represent the millions of people whose lives are blighted by extreme poverty. Poverty can be overcome, in part through more and better aid, and we urge you to make good your longstanding commitments to provide 0.7% of national income in effective aid, and to commit to binding timetables to reach aid targets. We also urge you to implement innovative finance mechanisms as a key source of much needed finance for development.

Aid is not a panacea. The aid that is given must be predictable, untied and coordinated. Harmful conditions can undermine the return on investment and aid will not deliver maximum benefit without reform of world trade rules, more debt cancellation and improved governance in the recipient countries.

But economic history shows us what aid can achieve. Marshall Plan aid from the US kick-started the rebuilding of a Europe shattered by war and delivered real benefits to the US in terms of new markets for its goods. Aid to East Asia helped catalyse the economic miracles that have lifted millions of people out of poverty. Today many African governments are using aid to underwrite growth and provide essential schools, health services and water supplies for their people. The poorest countries in the world need you to honour these aid pledges if they are to meet the Millennium Development Goals and end poverty.

Through their unprecedented support for the international movement against poverty, taxpayers have already given you permission to spend their money saving lives. Please seize that chance tomorrow/today.

Keep your promises to end poverty!

Be the next (or first) Episcopal video star

We've collected some good resources on how to lobby your senators and representatives ... but they're predictably dry and dull. So we figured we'd put your creative talent to work on this.

What we're looking for is a 3-10 minute video that is edgy (even over the edge) and entertaining/hilarious that shows people how to lobby and as a contrast (and here's probably where the funny comes in) how NOT to lobby.

AND THERE'S A PRIZE (that keeps on growing!) So far we have $600 for the winner to either

-donate to an MDG-related organization of their choosing
-put toward an airline ticket for them to travel to the developing world to do MDG work

All entries will be put up on the EGR website and the winner will get their video (with credit given) on the homepage of the EGR website and YouTube group (and we'll spam the Church with emails telling them to watch it) plus we'll play it at diocesan conventions and any other places where we talk about political action for the MDGs.

If you're interested, just email me and I'll send you the "how to lobby" materials we've collected for you to work off of. Deadline for finished product is June 15.

Forward this to anyone you think might be interested. And don't miss this chance to be the next Spike Lee of funny Episcopal short films on lobbying for the MDGs!

Honor Your Mother

Here's the latest from the ONE Campaign -- a great, easy action for Mother's Day:
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Every year, 10 million mothers lose a child under the age of 5 to a completely preventable disease. This Mother's Day, you have an opportunity to give these mothers, and yours, a special gift.

Yesterday morning Congress introduced the U.S. Commitment to Global Child Survival Act. It will provide resources for simple and cost effective tools to save the lives of the 30,000 children who die each day from treatable infections, waterborne illness, malnutrition, and the half a million mothers who die from complications in childbirth.

1. Today, you can honor mothers around the world by sending a letter to your members of Congress asking them to support the Global Child Survival Act.

2. You'll then be taken to a screen where you can send a special ONE Mother's Day greeting to let mothers know you did this in their honor.


Sponsored by Representatives Betty McCollum (D-MN) and Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Gordon Smith (R-OR), the act sets realistic and effective guidelines for child survival programs and quadruples funding for these programs over the next three years.

This bill doesn't just save lives; it empowers mothers to provide for their children so they can safely give their children the gift of life.

Write your member of Congress and encourage them to support the Global Child Survival Act and send a ONE Mother's Day card.

The scale of America's response to this great tragedy has been woefully inadequate, but we have the power to save lives if we take action today on behalf of mothers around the world.

Happy Mother's Day,

Susan McCue, ONE.org