Be a Cellout! Join in Protesting Blood Mining in Central Africa

On Sunday, August 21st, you heard me speak about a cruel crisis situation that has been ongoing, and virtually ignored, since the mid 1990’s . . . the blood mining of Columbite-tantalite, also called Coltan, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Moore’s Law, described in a 1965 paper from Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, predicted that transistors on a circuit board would double every two years. Now, 50 years since the invention of the circuit, Moore’s Law still holds true. That is one of the reasons we have been blessed (or cursed, depending on the perspective) with the incredible miniaturization of everything from televisions, to computers, iPads to, yes, iPhones/Cell phones. A key ingredient in this technological progress has been Coltan, which, when refined, becomes a heat-resistant powder that can hold an incredibly high electrical charge. Coltan has thus become a key fuel for the engine of technological growth and progress.

Some History: Mass death in the Congo from exploitation began as early as 1885 when King Leopold II of Belgium began ravaging the country of its ivory and rubber, and slaughtered its people, as he is blamed for the deaths of as many as 15 million. The curse of plentiful resources continues to this day, with over 5.4 million Congolese deaths since 1996 linked to armed conflict over mineral wealth.


Our government’s prime interest in the DRC (formerly Zaire) has been to keep the minerals flowing, typically by arming whosoever is in power. According to a report by the World Policy Institute, “The ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) is a prime example of the devastating legacy of U.S. arms sales policy on Africa. The U.S. prolonged the rule of Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Soko by providing more than $300 million in weapons and $100 million in  military training. Mobutu used his U.S.-supplied arsenal to repress his own people and plunder his nation’s  for three decades, until Laurent Kabila’s forces overthrew his brutal regime in 1997. When Kabila took power, the Clinton administration quickly offered military support by developing a plan for new training operations with the armed forces.

Recent regional conflicts, often construed as ‘ethnic’ or ‘tribal’ in reality, revolve around the mineral wealth of DRC. Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda have all at times been in conflicts in the region. Tom Makau, a telecommunications engineer and member of the Institution of Engineers of Kenya, observed that, “In an 18-month period, Rwanda made $250 million as a result of the exploitation of Coltan in the Congo. Although Rwanda and Uganda possess little or no Coltan, during the period of the war in the Congo, their exports escalated exponentially.”

Our Cause: Perhaps the worst result of this mad rush for material wealth is the fact that children have become a critical human resource in the process. Children as young as 8 years old are forced to work in the mines under worse than slave conditions, and just as inhumanely, conscripted into rebel armies and used as fodder in wars.

Literally thousands of children are working from sun up to sun down in mines with nothing but a dollar store flashlight, a chisel and a mallet. They work in mines with absolutely no safety standards, putting their lives at risk every day. Broken bones, sickness and disease are rampant, and one estimate says that up to 2 million lost their lives between 1998 and 2008. In spite of all this, they work for as little as $1.50 a week, when the ore they mine sells for up to $400 a kilogram; and we are the ones who benefit.


They Need Our Help: There is some good news. A “Conflict-Free Smelter” program was started in April of this year, in hopes of bringing a more ethical and moral standard to bear on those companies that rely on Coltan in their manufacturing. Also, Congress has initiated legislation to begin to address the issue of  “blood coltan.” Our charge is to grow awareness of the issue, and drive support for those initiatives that show hope for making a difference:

• Write to your U.S. Senators, and sake them to support the re-introduction of the Congo Conflict Minerals Act, which died in committee in 2009
• Trinity will be running an ongoing awareness campaign to encourage support for companies that take part in the “Conflict-Free Smelter” program, and to potentially boycott companies that, given the opportunity, do not support the ethical use of Coltan
• Educate yourself; an excellent documentary can be found at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/blood-coltan/
• Make Wednesday “Cellout” a weekly practice (turn off your phones from noon to 1pm and 7pm to 8pm, and leave a message as to why ("My phone is off to encourage the use of conflict free Coltan in the electronics industry. Please leave a message.")

In the coming weeks, as the world celebrates the wonderful memorial to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Mall in Washington DC, our call for the reinstitution of the Coltan “Cellout” Protest each Wednesday is particularly poignant. We are new to this fight which some have been engaged in for over a decade, however, it is our charge, as a church with a long and sincere commitment to social justice, to bring this issue to light and force meaningful changes in policy for the benefit of the children, the people and God’s land.

Asking you to Imagine . . . a more just world,

Pastor Otis Moss III

A New Poll Tax for a New Jim Crow

 

As messy as our political democracy is; as uneven, unfair and unjust as our system can be, with the outlandish redistricting, outrageous campaign financing tricks and schemes, and ostentatious spending on lobbying, the fact that the right to vote is continually under attack is particularly egregious.

According to Henrie M. Treadwell, Ph.D., director, Community Voices and Senior Social Scientist at Morehouse School of Medicine, 5.3 million Americans cannot vote because of various state restrictions on ex-felons, over 1 million in the state of Florida alone.

But that is not enough . . .

Since January, six states have passed new laws that require photo IDs to vote: Wisconsin, South Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Kansas and Tennessee, and three more (Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire) are considering proposals. This is yet another solution in search of a problem, Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) says, “Instead of protecting the integrity of our voting system, many of these laws effectively disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters. Voting is integral to the strength of our democracy, and we should be working to increase voting participation, not keeping valid voters from having their voices heard.”

It is estimated that 11% of eligible voters, or over 16 million eligible, have no government-issued IDs. And, as you can imagine, these are primarily seniors, racial minorities, low-income voters and students. While some would argue they are trying to protect the integrity of our voting system, the facts do not support them. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the NY University School of Law:

Indeed, evidence from the microscopically scrutinized 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington State actually reveals just the opposite: though voter fraud does happen, it happens approximately 0.0009% of the time. The similarly closely analyzed 2004 election in Ohio revealed a voter fraud rate of 0.00004%. National Weather Service data shows that Americans are struck and killed by lightning about as often.

Using this data, to prevent 14 people from voting illegally (using the larger estimate of 0.0009%), we are going to prevent 16,000,000 legitimate citizens from voting. Like the Poll Taxes of the old Jim Crow era, these new restrictive voting measures are for the sole purpose of limiting voting rights of specific groups!

Senator Bennet has written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking the U.S. Department of Justice to review these highly restrictive photo identification requirements, and under the Voting Rights Act, the DOJ has significant authority to review these laws before they are implemented. We all need to put pressure on our representatives in Congress to press Attorney General Holder to review these restrictive new laws and vigorously enforce the right to vote for all citizens.

Please write or call your Senators and Congressman or Congresswoman to ask that they too, write our Attorney General and demand reviews of photo ID voting requirements in all states.

To contact your Representative Click Here

To contact your Senator Click Here

Daryle Brown
TUCC Justice Watch Team

It Takes A Village … For Real!

 

How many times have we heard folks say racism in America is becoming “a thing of the past” or at minimum “archaic in today’s dialog?” Well, clearly none of them have been as astute as over 70,000 of us who read, listen, watch and are attuned to the vast number of media outlets available in today’s Cyber-highway of communications.

On May 15th, Satoshi Kanazawa posted a power-storm of ignorance, UNscientific shenanigans, and down-right race-baiting, which hit the media airwaves and was pounced on by many of you who share our intense fury.  Satoshi posted an article discussing his perceived proof that Black women are less physically attractive than woman of any other race. Satoshi is well known to be an antagonist and a flagrant instigator of ignorance and unscientific arguments on social issues that cross the gamut from race, to politics, to economics, to anything and almost everything in between! Shall I say, he didn’t let the expectations flounder in his post that day either! What caught our collective attention was that his post actually got released by one of the most respected scientific online journal sites, read by thousands upon thousands, Psychology Today. Although the post has since been removed from their website, along with references to its history, if you’d like to see a “snapshot” please visit the link below.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/why-black-women-are-less-physically-attractive-tha

Thank God for an amazing action group that gives us not only a forum where we can collaborate and share our feelings, but also provides us a mechanism to respond, reaching large numbers of people in a short period of time. ColorofChange.org is an African American not-for-profit, social action organization whose work has successfully shut down the likes of Andrew Breitbart’s interview on ABC TV, as well as Glenn Beck of FOX TV (whose contract and show are no longer apart of FOX TV’s programming rotations).

On Monday, May 23, ColorofChange.org sent a petition responding to this egregious article, demanding an explanation, and asking what Psychology Today would do to ensure this never happened again. After days of silence, on May 27th, the editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, Kaja Perina, contacted ColorofChange and offered their apology. Please visit the ColorofChange.org web site or Facebook page to see a copy of the response. In essence, what was received was a weak acknowledgement of the racial hysteria raised by the article, connected to their further acknowledgement of a “prompt” removal from their site. Although it states they’ve taken measures to prevent this sort of “racism or prejudice of any sort” from ever happening again on their site, what isn’t said is a verbatim explanation of ‘what’ those measures were.

We should feel proud and affirmed by the swift response and appropriate action by the editor and staff of Psychology Today. After all, the incendiary post was swiftly removed and in a relatively short time an apology was extended. Of course we must recognize that this is but one small victory. The Village needs to wake up, get proactive and remain vigilant, so that we seriously become memorialized for eradicating racism, one of our nation’s most virile social ills.

Yes! It really takes the whole village!

Lynda Holiday Lawrence
TUCC Justice Watch Team

United We Stand . . .

 

 

 

One of the devices used consistently in our corporate culture to maintain lower wages, fewer benefits, and to resist worker organizing, are various differences of class, based on jobs or positions. Like never before, we must work to remove the false divisions between the working class and the professional class, between blue collar and white collar. The reality is that only 2% of Americans earn in excess of $250,000 per year, only 6-7% earn over $100,000, and nearly every working person, regardless of their educational level, is slowly losing any real income growth. The sooner we come to recognize that there is no difference between an office worker, a factory worker, or a Wal-Mart worker, the quicker we can begin to build social and political consensus, and begin to unite based on our common interests.

 

So how do we build this consensus? One way is by standing united on issues that weaken our rights. We must be vigilant in defense of fair representation in the work place, we must support calls for reasonable minimum wages and benefits, we must recognize the inherent, and absurd, lopsided pay scales in the executive suites, as compared to the wages of the housekeepers cleaning those suites.  

 

Critically, as wage earners, we must be prepared to take this fight beyond our borders. If corporations can produce their products where there is no resistance, and exploitation is easier, they will . . . and they do. Outsourcing jobs to foreign workers has eroded job opportunity here in America, regardless of education; from steel mills, to customer support, to engineering services. By partnering globally, with workers throughout the world, we can put real pressure on corporations; workers will no longer be divided, and thus conquered. 

 

You can join this fight right now. 

 

Wal-Mart currently buys cloth from a manufacturer that has threatened the lives of striking workers who dared to request a living wage.  

 

In Bangladesh, the minimum wage for a garment worker is a mere $43 per month, or about 20 cents an hour-- the lowest wage, by far, of any major garment producing country. When Bangladeshi workers staged protests demanding a livable wage, factory owners responded with fabricated criminal charges against three labor leaders from the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity: Kalpona Akter, Babul Akhter, and Aminul Islam. These three organizers spent 30 days in jail, where they were threatened and tortured. They are now free on bail; however, the falsified charges against them remain. If convicted, they face possible life imprisonment or even the death penalty. Wal-Mart is the leading exporter of these garments.

 

As women and men who follow Jesus, we are being engaged to help persuade Wal-Mart to tell their corrupt suppliers to drop all charges against the labor leaders, and to demand that the officers responsible for torturing these individuals be held accountable. We further are requesting that WalMart demand that their suppliers allow labor rights defenders, like the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, to operate freely. 

 

Please Click Here and take action by May 31st!

 

 

Alesia Martin

Trinity UCC Justice Watch Team

It's a Matter of Priorities!

As our governments - local, state and federal - struggle to find ways to bring their budgets into balance, much of the conversation, indeed most of it, has centered on the cuts we must make to our social safety net. That metaphor is powerfully appropriate as I can visualize the very real people that will be falling through that net; to despair, to utter poverty, to exacerbated mental health issues, to a place of where no treatment’s available for health conditions, to no heat/no electricity, to no unemployment benefits, to no food stamps, to no public housing because of a failed drug test, to sleeping outdoors . . . Need I go on?

Meanwhile, what have you heard about cuts to the largest welfare recipients*:

• Bank of America, with $4.4 Billion in profits last year, a $1 Trillion BAILOUT, and $1.9 Billion Tax Refund from the IRS
• General Electric, who has cut 20% of its “American” jobs in the past 9 years, while growing jobs overseas, received a $4.1 Billion Tax Refund, while making $26 Billion in profits over the past 5 years
• Goldman Sachs, made $2.3 Billion in profits, after receiving $800 Billion in BAILOUT money and paid . . . 1.1% in income taxes
• Carnival Cruise Lines generated profits of $16 Billion over the past five years, but paid less than $200 Million in taxes
• Citigroup paid ZERO taxes on $4 Billion in profits, after receiving a $2.5 Trillion BAILOUT

We, as a nation, can afford to care for “the least of these.” The money exists. It is simply a matter of priorities!

Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is shouting loud and clear!

Asking you to Imagine . . . People over Profits!

Rev. Otis Moss III

Senior Pastor, Trinity UCC

*Figures adapted from “Senator Bernie Sanders’ Guide to Corporate Freeloaders”

Welcome to the Trinity United Church of Christ Justice Watch Blog!

Are you looking for a place to get perspectives, and ask questions, about social justice from a Christ-centered point of view? Would you like to hear your voice heard and exchange with others about what Christians are called to do in helping the "least of these?" How can people of faith respond with authority and determination as "agents of change?"

We welcome all questions and comments that are geared towards affirming the role of faith believers to make a difference. Let's talk, argue, and even organize in the name of LOVE, to speak truth to power! We ask that you please speak with compassion and respect, as all words have some significance, even if they are false. We build a better community by speaking with, and not to or about each other. 

Let's celebrate our energy, and our desire to change our condition in the name of Jesus who orders our steps.

Kevin Tyson

Chair-Trinity UCC Justice Watch Team