News

the Web Editors 12-19-2018

“Justice” was on people’s hearts, minds, and search histories this year. The word was named Merriam-Webster’s "Word of the Year" for 2018 after being consulted by users 74 percent more than in 2017.

Andrew Hay, Reuters 12-18-2018

A picture of Jakelin is seen during a protest to demand justice for her, in El Paso, Texas, Dec. 16, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo

U.S. Border Patrol agents who detained a 7-year-old Guatemalan migrant girl who later died in federal custody will not speak with U.S. lawmakers investigating her death, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Monday, citing their union membership.

David F. Potter 12-13-2018

On Thursday, Congress passed bipartisan criminal justice reform. As deliberation over the First Step Act continues — the bill proposing multiple reforms to the criminal justice system and currently in the legislative limelight — the 5-year renewal of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act quietly achieved measurable impact for incarcerated juveniles.

A girl walks near her house destroyed in an air strike carried out by the Saudi-led coalition in Faj Attan village, Sanaa, Yemen Dec. 13, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi

The U.S. Senate delivered a rare double rebuke to President Donald Trump on Saudi Arabia on Thursday, voting to end U.S. military support for the war in Yemen and blame the Saudi crown prince for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The votes were largely symbolic because to become law the resolutions would have to pass the House of Representatives, whose Republican leaders have blocked any legislation intended to rebuke the Saudis.

Andrew J. Wight 12-12-2018

Photo courtesy Andrew J. Wight

At the hectic border crossing between La Guajira department in Colombia and Zulia state in Venezuela, there are a surprising number of kids in school uniforms – niños pendulares, or pendulum kids.

Santi Elijah Holley 12-10-2018

Erin Alexis Randolph / Shutterstock.com

In late September, about 20 men and women sat on folding chairs on the back patio of a large, colonial house in Ohio. The youngest in the group were in their mid-20s; the oldest were in their 70s and 80s. They’d traveled from New York, Nevada, Montana, California, as far as away as Calgary, Canada, to this small city 38 miles northeast of Cincinnati. Many of them wore bright yellow T-shirts with bold red letters that read “JESUS SAVES” or “TRUST JESUS,” and they sat facing a makeshift pulpit, decorated with signs reading “HEAVEN OR HELL?” and “PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD."

More than 1,000 young adults risked arrest Monday in Washington, D.C. by flooding the offices of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). It’s the second time this winter that the Sunrise Movement has taken to the capitol in what Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash referred to as part of a concentrated effort, “[to] build policy support and people power” around a Green New Deal.

Caleb Gayle 12-10-2018

Stacey Abrams speaks as Brian Kemp looks on during a debate in Atlanta. Oct. 23, 2018. John Bazemore/Pool via REUTERS

Souls to the Polls is a time-honored tradition, often led by clergy, to activate and engage congregants to exercise their right to vote that starts long before Election Day. It is a mobilization strategy to make the process of voting easier for their congregants. But sadly, voter suppression efforts targeting minorities in subtle and overt ways continue to make Souls to the Polls a critical service — placing the burden of voter education and empowerment on the backs of churches and other civil society organizations, not the government. 

REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi

A relative of a Houthi delegation member participating in the negotiations in Sweden carries a bag at Sanaa airport, Yemen December 4, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi

Yemen's warring sides agreed to free thousands of prisoners on Thursday, in what a U.N. mediator called a hopeful start to the first peace talks in years to end a war that has pushed millions of people on the verge of starvation. U.N. mediator Martin Griffiths told a news conference in a renovated castle outside Stockholm that just getting the warring sides to the table was an important milestone.

Albin Hillert 12-06-2018

Mayerlis serves 48-year-old Ivan a meal of sarapa – rice and chicken wrapped in a Cachibou leaf. Ivan lived 31 years as a FARC guerilla combatant, before settling in San José de León after the 2016 peace treaty in Colombia. All photos: Albin Hillert/LWF

For the past two years, a group of families of former FARC-guerrilla combatants have settled down to cultivate a piece of land in northwest Colombia. Laying down their weapons following the 2016 peace treaty with the Colombian government, many ex-combatants now face trauma, stigma, and insecurity, and slow progress in the implementation of the treaty makes the situation precarious.

Christina Colón 12-03-2018
Editorial credit: Rachael Warriner / Shutterstock.com.

Washington DC/USA- November 13, 2018:Student activists with the Sunrise Movement occupy Nancy Pelosi's office to demand that she and the Democrats act on climate change. Editorial credit: Rachael Warriner / Shutterstock.com.

A recent U.S. climate assessment made headlines last week for its conclusion that the victims of climate change are no longer some future generation, but us — and we’re feeling the effects now.

Pilar Timpane 12-03-2018

A group of Samuel Oliver-Bruno's supporters. Photo by Pilar Timpane. 

The space of Samuel Oliver-Bruno’s “home” while in sanctuary is filled with signs he thought he’d return from a biometrics appointment at U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) in Morrisville, N.C., scheduled at the immigration control office’s request. His work on construction projects around the basement at the CityWell church in Durham, N.C., seems stalled in time. Painting supplies, clothes, other personal items stilled exactly as he left them, where he was working diligently just days before his life was altered irrevocably. A prayer room he helped to build is silent.

the Web Editors 11-30-2018

People gather at a United Nations aid distribution center in Hodeidah, Yemen. Nov. 13, 2018. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

The United Religions Initiative, The Charter of Compassion, and The Parliament of the World’s Religions released a joint statement yesterday calling for “an immediate cease-fire in the civil war between the Yemen government and the Houthis rebels.”

The letter states that aid workers from religious and humanitarian organizations have been restricted from administering food, water, shelter, and healthcare to 14 million people enduring a deadly famine.

Bekah McNeel 11-28-2018

FILE PHOTO: Border police look on as a group of Central Americans and Cubans hoping to apply for asylum wait at the border on an international bridge between Mexico and the U.S., in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico Oct. 25, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo

While Tijuana and California received most of the remaining asylum seekers in the heavily publicized “caravan,” cities all along the U.S.-Mexico border have seen smaller eruptions in the ongoing immigration disaster. Advocates working in those cities do not, however, say that they are seeing waves of immigrants, floods of asylum seekers, or any other crisis-invoking metaphor. The U.S. is not, they say, being overrun.

Asylum seeker Maria Meza sits with her daughters in her tent in a temporary shelter in Tijuana. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

"The first thing I did was grab my children," said Meza. A photo of her clutching the hands of twin 5-year-old daughters Saira and Cheili, as her 13-year-old daughter Jamie runs alongside, has gone viral and sparked angry reactions from some lawmakers and charities.

Megan Janetsky 11-21-2018

Crowds gather by Moravia's cultural center for FestiAfro 2016. The majority of displaced people in Moravia come from AfroColombian communities that have been victims of violence. Photo courtesy Archivo del Centro de Desarrollo Cultural de Moravia.

“Everywhere in Colombia, the whole process of peace and displacement is not in the jungle; it's not on some tables where politicians sit together; it's really in the cities where these communities have to come back together,” said Albert Kreisel, a German architect working on public development initiatives in Moravia.

Dean Dettloff 11-19-2018

 

Chile Solidarity event at Holy Trinity Church, sponsored by Detroit’s Latin America Task Force with Anita Surma, Detroit-area dancer, and Ismael Duran, local Chilean guitarist and singer. 1979. Image courtesy of Kathleen Schultz. 

“Socialism” is increasingly losing its status as a dirty word in the United States, especially among young people. A Gallup poll from this year reports an increase in positive attitudes toward socialism and a decline in positive attitudes toward capitalism from Americans aged 18-29, consistent with other polling trends from previous years. Though there is no shortage of Christians wringing their hands over the changing political landscape, Christians have also shown up at strikes, campaigned for candidates endorsed by socialists, and joined socialist organizations.

There are many faithful Christians who have worked for radical change in the belly of the world’s wealthiest nation long before the 2016 primaries. Their experience brings lessons and context for today’s budding movements. One of these Christians is Sister Kathleen Schultz, a Roman Catholic sister who served as the National Executive Secretary of Christians for Socialism (CFS) in the U.S. for almost a decade. At 76 years old, she remains a thorn in the side of the powerful.

Donald Trump in the Rose Garden of the White House. June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration plans to set up a side-event promoting fossil fuels at the annual U.N. climate talks next month, repeating a strategy that infuriated global-warming activists during last year's talks, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

As with the 2017 gathering in Bonn, Germany, the administration plans to highlight the benefits of technologies that more efficiently burn fuels including coal, the sources said.

People fill out their ballots at Philomont Fire Station, in Purcellville, Va., Nov. 6, 2018. REUTERS/Al Drago

Donald Trump faced greater restraints on his presidency after Democrats won control of the House of Representatives and pledged to hold the Republicans accountable after a tumultuous two years in the White House.

Layton E. Williams 11-06-2018

Photo courtesy Sam Shields

"My faith informs my agency in the world and we are called to use whatever resources are at our disposable," Shields told Sojourners. "Luke 11: 5-13 is a story of persistence. And when I se injustice in our system or at the least, morally gray positions held by people in power, that is a call to act in the world. As a Christian, Christ calls us to the ministry of reconciliation, and that include the process of voting."