Poverty Initiative Walk/Run Fundraiser 2012
On May 12, 2012, Poverty Scholars, Poverty Initiative staff, Union Theological Seminary students, and their families will be participating in the UAE Healthy Kidney 10K in Central Park NYC to support the Poverty Scholars and Fellows Programs into the coming years.
The decision to do an End Poverty 10K run was an opportunity for me to take something that I do everyday and integrate it into my commitment to a movement to end poverty...affirming my belief that the work to end poverty is not just something I have committed to doing, but is a part of who I am.
-Charon Hribar, 2011 Team END POVERTY member
Help Team END POVERTY reach their fundraising goal of $20,000 with a gift of $10, $25, $50 or more: donate
The Poverty Initiative's 2nd Annual Fellows Commissioning & Community Celebration
The Poverty Initiative's 2nd Annual Fellows & Roman Catholic Women's Commissioning & Community Celebration
Friend and family welcome. Reception to follow.
Wednesday, May 16, 6:30-8:30 pm, Social Hall
Justice at Union Theological Seminary: Legacy of Justice, Lens for Action
Justice at Union Theological Seminary: Legacy of Justice, Lens for Action
"As much as we may wish to believe that justice is a function of our institutions, justice always has a countercultural voice—an inherent tension with institutionalized power."
By Thia Reggio
May 8, 2012
Symposium Presentation: Social Movements and Theological Education
On Friday, April 20th, 2012, Poverty Initiative Coordinator, Liz Theoharis, presented at Union's 175th Anniversary Gala Celebration Symposium alongside Dr. Gary Dorrien and Virginia Worden (in absentia). Following is Liz's presentation:
My first real introduction to Union Theological Seminary was the culmination of the “March of the Americas”, a 300 mile march from Washington DC to New York, of poor and homeless families from across the US, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, coming from over a dozen countries, speaking 11 languages (including American Sign Language and several indigenous languages), and representing some of the oldest, largest and most sophisticated social movements from the Western Hemisphere and beyond. I was one of the main organizers of this march that was aimed at gaining attention from people in US and globally to the scourge of poverty and misery and bringing together leaders of social movements who had improved the lives of thousands and even millions in their countries who were suffering from hunger, homelessness, joblessness and poverty to learn from each other.
That march was in October 1999 and Union was one of the only institutions, particularly religious institutions, willing to house, feed, and welcome this rag tag group of 300+ social movement leaders here in New York. That’s where I met folks like Su Pak, Joe Hough, Janet Walton, and my doctoral advisor Brigitte Kahl. Union faculty, staff and students cooked a meal for us, planned a Halloween party for our kids, and offered us place to have strategic dialogues and religious rituals throughout these hallowed halls. My most indelible memories of this space, James Chapel (still now after spending 10 years studying, working, teaching, organizing here at Union), is hearing a poor mother from Paraguay say that what we could do here to help the poor in her country was to build a movement of the poor in the US, hearing a homeless mother from Philadelphia emphasizing that we need to end poverty and asking if we were to just cut poverty in half which of her two children would remain poor, and witnessing hundreds of the world’s poorest people commit themselves to not just improving their lives but the lives of those around them.
Union demonstrated on that day that this institution believed in not just talking the talk but walking the walk; that our religious leaders needed to be on the side of the poor who were organizing and marching and calling for an end to poverty.
PI Attends the El Paso Regional Human Rights Convention
On Saturday, February 18, five hundred people marched from four directions in El Paso, Texas to gather at the Mercado Mayapan in El Paso for the El Paso Regional Human Rights Convention. Among those gathered were hundreds of members of the more than thirty committees of the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso and southern New Mexico, leaders from elsewhere in Texas who have been organizing statewide in Texas, and leaders from organizations outside of Texas that form part of the Human Rights and Home campaign, which is unifying a national movement for human rights. The climactic moment of the El Paso Regional Human Rights Convention was the reading and endorsement of of the El Paso Declaration, a framework document expressing the El Paso region’s aspirations for a human rights movement. The El Paso Declaration was endorsed by leaders across Texas and across the nation as a declaration that guides our commitment to enlarging and unifying the national movement for human rights through further conventions, exchanges, and institutes. Please click here to read the El Paso Declaration.
The El Paso Regional Human Rights Convention was one event during the four-day Organizing Exchange from February 18 to 21, organized as part of the Human Rights at Home campaign, which seeks to unify a national movement for human rights. Twenty-five Poverty Scholars from the northeast region participated in the Organizing Exchange, including members of the Poverty Initiative, DreamActivist Pennsylvania, Juntos, Media Mobilizing Project, National Economic & Social Rights Initiative, One Love Movement, United Workers, and Vermont Workers’ Center. Organizing Exchange participants learned about the strategies and organizing model of the Border Network, visited Border Network’s committees, visited sites of importance in the border crisis, and met together to determine needs and next steps for continuing to unify and expand a national movement for human rights.
Ministry With the Poor reprints "A New and Unsettling Force" as Bible Study for Holy Week
The United Methodist Church's "Ministry With the Poor" website is featuring the Poverty Initiative Bible Study Series: "The Last Week of Jesus Christ and the Last Year of Martin Luther King," reprinted from our book, A New and Unsettling Force: Reigniting Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign:
- Holy Week Bible Study Series: The Last Week of Jesus Christ and the Last Year of Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Holy Week Bible Study 1: Jesus enters Jerusalem on a Donkey / Poor People's Campaign Mule Train
- Holy Week Bible Study 2: Women in the Movement
- Holy Week Bible Study 3: Telling Stories, Making Commitments
- Holy Week Bible Study 4: Radical Resistance
- Holy Week Bible Study 5: Crucifixion / Assassination
Pedagogy of the Poor Book Tour
Follow the Pedagogy of the Poor Book Tour on Tumblr.
Tour dates:
Monday, April 2, 2012
Washington DC: Gallaudet University
Department of Philosophy and Religion
800 Florida Avenue NE
Washington, DC 20002
202-250-2602 (V/VP)
Public Seminar
4-6 p.m.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Erie, PA: Penn State @ Behrend
student leaders gathering, 5 p.m.
campus event, 7:30 p.m.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Cleveland, OH: Organize Ohio and UCAP
3500 Lorain Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44113
12:00-2:00 p.m.
Toledo, OH: Needmor Fund
Needmor Fund Office
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Elkhart, IN: People's History of Elkhart
Roosevelt Center
6:00 pm
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Elkhart, IN: People's History of Elkhart, Elkhart Local Food Alliance
2:00-5:00 pm
Monday, April 16, 2012
South Bend, IN
lunch: Notre Dame Labor Studies/Poverty Studies Programs
dinner: Catholic Worker Houses
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Elkhart, IN: Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Mission and Peace Colloquium
12:30-1:30 p.m.
PI's Liz Theoharis to be Honored at Union's 175th Anniversary Gala Celebration
One hundred and seventy-five years ago, our founders conceptualized a bold venture: a new Seminary in the City of New York, conceived in spiritual and social reform, dedicated to “solid learning, true piety, and enlightened experience,” and “equally open to every denomination.” Thrilling, inspired words for 1836.
Now well into the second decade of the 21st century, Union remains true to its visionary beginnings, while evolving into a lodestar of theological education that its founders would scarcely have imagined possible — or dared to hope for.
With initiative after initiative, the Seminary has long stood on the vanguard of interfaith dialogue, civil rights, social justice, and worship and the arts. We have offered practical, spiritual formation and support to society’s most vulnerable, and theological bedrock to the downtrodden and dispossessed.
On this our 175th anniversary, we honor three stellar individuals whose work exemplifies all that Union stands for: Eboo Patel, Liz Theoharis, and Anna Deavere Smith. Each repairs the world in a unique way. Each shines light in the dark, with equity and compassion. Each inspires us.
We hope they will inspire you, too. Please join us on this very special occasion.
Faith Leaders and Social Movements: Immigration, Human Rights, and how Migrants are Shaking the Church and Generating Social Consciousness
Conversation with Father Alejandro Solalinde of Mexico
Wed. Feb 15, 7pm
Union Theological Seminary
Listen to the audio of this event
ABOUT FATHER SOLALINDE:
Father Solalinde opened the ‘Hermanos en el Camino’ Migrant Shelter in 2007 in southern Mexico as a means to intervene in human rights violations against undocumented Central and South Americans. He opened the shelter right next to a railroad that migrants coming from southern Mexico and Central America “hop” on their way to the Mexico/US border. In this region, an immigrant is worth $1,000 to $5,000 “a head”; this means that immigrants are kidnapped, then held for these high ransoms, which their poor family members are forced to pay if they ever want to see the immigrants again. Amnesty International has said “The danger of rape is of such a magnitude that human traffickers often force women to be given a contraceptive injection before the migrant journey, as a precaution against pregnancy resulting from rape.”
The immigrants passing through Mexico have had absolutely no rights, and Solalinde has led an effort that led to the passage last year of what is popularly known as the “Ley Solalinde”, a that (at least in theory) grants immigrants some human rights for 180 days as they pass through Mexico. As you can imagine, for his work, Solalinde is threatened at every angle, from the political authorities to the religious hierarchy to the gangs.
Read The Story of Padre Alejandro Solalinde
A New and Unsettling Force: Reigniting Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign - a Poverty Initiative original publication is 