Category Archives: Economic Justice

ECONOMIC JUSTICE: A tale of two economies

Posted on February 8, 2013 | 5 Comments

beaby Beatrice Parwatikar
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace

This is the tale of two economies: one for the rich and one for those with lower income. It is the best of times for the rich and the worst of times for those with low incomes. When I think of the haves, I am focusing on the top twenty percent income which has eighty percent of the wealth with the top two percent holding most of that wealth.

The five groups of income listed by the U.S. Census are $0 – $25,000 (28.22% of population); $25,000 – $50,000 (26.65 % of population); $50,000 – $75,000 (18.27% of population); $75,000 - $100,000 (10.93% population); and $100,000 or more (15.93%).

In the last six months there have been a few articles written about income disparity. In “How Income Inequality Is Damaging the U.S.” (Forbes 10/02/12), Joseph E. Stiglitz said: “Inequality in America has reached its highest level since before the Depression.” These kinds of headlines usually are found on the back pages of newspapers or in economic journals.

We also had “Occupy Wall Street” that brought a lot of attention to the income disparity.

In reality we have had an economic shift where the rich keep getting richer while the the poor are getting poorer. We have also decreased the size of the middle class.

Another problem that has happened with this reversal of fortune has been that power has also moved to the wealthy. They live isolated lives from the reality of day-to-day living for most of the population of the U.S. They also use their power, with the help of their wealth, to protect themselves from any changes that would allow a more equitable economy for the vast majority of the population. They have their hired foot soldiers, the lobbyists, which they let loose in large numbers to defeat anything that would cause harm to their wealth or their ideology. They have the “Citizens United” ruling in 2010 by our corporate friendly U.S. Supreme Court that gave corporations the right as individuals for free speech. This has allowed unlimited amounts of money to be placed in political and policy PACs to put forth their agenda. The rich own most of the media outlets which also helps them to put forth their agenda.

This is the most protected group in our society at this time. They have their protectors in Congress with the philosophy that every problem can be solved by a tax cut for the wealthy. They have protection by using their power to get people elected who agree with their philosophy. We have watched some in Congress fight vigorously to protect cuts in corporate taxes, inheritance taxes and personal taxes. The top two percent are mainly the CEOs of large corporations, media empires, insurance companies, drug companies, banks and investment companies, giving them a lot of power over the day-to-day life of the rest in society but giving them protection from the hardship others suffer.

We, the rest of society, must come together to form alliances to work to remove some of the power and the wealth of the top two percent. The Occupy Movement had a good points but they were not broad enough in their agenda to fit the vast majority of people. We all remember the statement by Mr. Romney in the presidential campaign about the forty-seven percent of the population: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what … who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims. … These are people who pay no income tax. … and so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

I do not believe this view is only held by Mr. Romney: this is the unspoken view held by the protectors of the top two percent in Congress. This is why we see a lack of protection for this forty-seven percent of the people. These are the families earning under $50,000. It is very sad to me when I hear some people who fall in this forty-seven percent group who are receiving some government assistance complain about others that aren’t deserving of that same assistance because they’re lazy. This is when I know how well the message from the top two percent is working in dividing the people against each other. We have seen people vote against their own best interest because they think that the legislation that will only help the rich and hurt the poor doesn’t include them because they deserve their government assistance. This is the power of media hype.

Those in the $50,000 – $150,000 may have their homes still after the mortgage crisis and may be still holding on to their jobs, but they are wondering about educating their children or what will happen if someone became seriously ill in their family. They may own some stock through their 401k plans but they don’t have any power over the corporations holding their investments.

If the $0 – $150,000 people would ban together to change the society in the U.S., their agenda would more closely fit the needs of most of the population. There needs to be improvement in our educational system, increases in HeadStart to assist children with an early start in their education, early intervention remedial reading assistance, math and science emphasis, relevant vocational training and support of post high school education. A good educational system will help us as a country face the global challenges of today’s economy. It has been said that early intervention in education for those who are struggling would decrease single motherhood, the prison population and it would add productive people to our society.

Affordable housing will not only give housing but it would also help to create jobs. We need to look at doing more for the environment: this would not only create better life for our children but an industry of new jobs with cleaner energy for our society. We can no longer leave vast majorities of our population with sub-level education and expect to compete in a global economy. We can’t continue as great nation when among other developed nations we are one of the lowest in education, one of the worst in health, supporting a large prison population, not turning out the needed science and math people, and trying to continue to support a large military. We need to come together and begin to see our common needs using our political clout to help have our needs met.

We may not have the wealth but we have the clout of our numbers as people to force the upper two percent to hear our demands and we have the voting power to change Congress to listen to our needs. We must have hope for our future and not just think we are without power to make changes.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12)

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Posted in Ambassadors of Peace, Bread for the Journey, Economic Justice, Parwatikar, Politics

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TAKE ACTION: Sign the letter of conscience to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack

Posted on January 22, 2013 | 5 Comments

faq_pic1Interfaith Action of Southwest Florida, in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, has asked Pax Christi USA to help them gather signatures for this letter to be sent to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. In November, the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships lifted up the Fair Food Program as a powerful model for addressing human trafficking here in the U.S. As such, a variety of faith-based groups are using the opportunity to urge the USDA to embrace the model and purchase tomatoes for school lunches and market stabilization through the Fair Food Program. The opening of the letter is below with a link to the entire letter where you can also add your signature and send it in.

On this 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation we remember our nation’s courageous ancestors who denounced slavery, resisted its practices and devoted themselves to creating structures of commerce that upheld the human rights and dignity of all people. Advances that had been unimaginable became possible because of the creativity and perseverance of slaves, abolitionists and key government leaders. The work of freedom takes all of us; and it is ongoing.

Though enormous strides were made, the scourge of slavery has persisted, despite its illegality, in different forms, including in the agricultural fields of the United States today. Since 1997, Florida agriculture itself has seen nine prosecutions of cases of forced labor, involving over 1,200 people.

Modern-day slavery in Florida agriculture cannot be understood in a vacuum. It is not separate from the past, rather its roots extend deep into the state’s history of farmworker poverty and powerlessness…

Click here to read the entire letter and add your signature.

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Posted in Economic Justice, Human Rights, Labor Justice, Take Action

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CHRISTMAS: An incredibly inspiring Christmas ceasefire

Posted on December 21, 2012 | Comments Off

Tony Maglianoby Tony Magliano

As the first Christmas of World War I approached, Pope Benedict XV on Dec. 7, 1914, asked the leaders of all warring governments to agree to an official ceasefire. He begged “that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang.”

Sadly, his plea was ignored by government leaders. But many of the soldiers in the trenches declared their own unofficial truce.

On Christmas Eve of 1914, German troops in Ypres, Belgium put candles around their trenches and sang Christmas carols. When opposing British troops heard the Germans singing, they responded with Christmas caroling of their own.

Artillery throughout the region fell silent.

Then a remarkable scene occurred. German and British soldiers climbed out of their trenches and ventured unarmed into the highly dangerous “No Man’s Land” to exchanged gifts of food and drink, as well as souvenir hats and buttons.

The truce also allowed opposing sides to retrieve their dead and participate in joint services.

A firsthand account of this inspiring Christmas truce was given by Bruce Bairnsfather, who fought with a British machine gun unit. He wrote: “I wouldn’t have missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything. … I spotted a German officer, some sort of lieutenant I should think, and being a bit of a collector, I intimated to him that I had taken a fancy to some of his buttons. … I brought out my wire clippers and, with a few deft snips, removed a couple of his buttons and put them in my pocket. I then gave him two of mine in exchange.”

Reportedly as many as 100,000 British and German troops along much of the Western Front – a line of trenches stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France – stopped fighting and engaged in similar acts of human kindness.

What an incredibly inspiring Christmas story!

But as is often the case, the “leaders” got in the way. High ranking officers ordered all such truces to stop – and to start killing again.

The political, cultural, military, media and economic forces for war have long been extremely powerful. And in recent decades their power has become almost invincible.

Our culture praises warriors. Our entertainment industry inspires a sick delight in war. With patriotic platitudes, politicians send our young men and women off to battle – to kill and be killed. Weapon producing corporations get rich from war and war preparation. Clergy remain mostly silent. And countless people just simply accept all of this evil as normal.

Well thank God not everyone follows the constant drumbeat to war. In fact, some who were once a part of the war-machine are now committed to dismantling it. The organization Veterans for Peace (www.veteransforpeace.org) is an excellent example.

These former warriors, now converts to nonviolence, have a prophetic message to all who support war: “Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are predominantly the innocent.”

The mass murder of war is right out of hell.

But Christmas is a time to think of heaven touching earth; a season to joyfully recall the Prince of Peace coming among us.

It’s a time to climb out of our trenches to grasp the hands of our enemies, and seriously reflect upon the message of angels who call each of us to build peace on earth and good will towards all.

Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. Please contact your diocesan newspaper and request that they carry Tony’s column. Tony is also available to speak at conferences and other events on social justice and peace issues and can be reached at  tmag@zoominternet.net.

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Posted in Bread for the Journey, Economic Justice, Labor Justice, Magliano, Peacemakers

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LABOR JUSTICE: No Christmas joy for sweatshop workers

Posted on December 14, 2012 | Comments Off

Tony Maglianoby Tony Magliano

Because most retail companies put profit above all else, exploited sweatshop workers constantly experience misery – and sometimes even tragedy.

On Nov. 24 over 112 Bangladeshi workers were burned to death, trapped in a locked sweatshop, sewing garments for Wal-Mart, Disney, Sears, Sean Combs/ENYCE, Target, and others.

Feeling pressure from the above retailers to sew clothing at a frantic pace and get it shipped out in time for the Christmas shopping rush, management at the Tazreen garment factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, had been forcing employees for the last three months to work 12 hour shifts, six and seven days a week, for less than 27 cents an hour.

Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, told me that the factory was a death trap.

He said, “The warehouse stacked with clothing was on the ground floor – the very worst place it could be.

“Retailers like Wal-Mart knew the Tazreen factory was a dangerous sweatshop.  The factory had a permit for just a 3-story building, but instead constructed a 9-story factory.  There were no exterior fire escapes or fireproof stairwells.  All the windows were locked shut.  There were just 3 stairways, all of which led down to the ground floor warehouse,” said Kernaghan.

“The minute the fire broke out; the workers were trapped, as the warehouse was engulfed in flames.  On top of this, the supervisors and managers tried to prevent the workers from fleeing by closing the collapsible gates and padlocked them.”

Please show your outrage by signing the online petition. Log onto www.globallabourrights.org and click “Latest Alerts” then “Time for Outrage,” and finally click “Please write the CEOs of Wal-Mart and the other labels and tell them, Never Again!”

Also, please urge your two U.S. senators and representative to cosponsor and actively support the reintroduction of the “Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act,” which according to Kernaghan would provide oppressed workers with legal protections that are as strong as current laws protecting corporate trademarks, copyrights and intellectual property.

“It is time that brutalized workers had the same legal protections as corporations are guaranteed under intellectual property and copyright laws,” said Kernaghan.

Additionally, kindly consider giving a much needed Christmas gift to the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights (www.globallabourrights.org). They are a small, but highly effective team dedicated to the abolition of sweatshops.

Catholic social teaching insists that all workers deserve just wages, medical and disability insurance, safe and decent working conditions, pensions, adequate leisure time, and the right to form unions.

When these labor and human rights are denied, Catholics have a moral responsibility to actively engage in solidarity with oppressed workers.

In his encyclical Laborem Exercens  (“On Human Work”), Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote “There is a need for ever new movements of solidarity of the workers and with the workers. This solidarity must be present whenever it is called for by the social degrading of the subject of work, by exploitation of the workers, and by the growing areas of poverty and even hunger. The Church is firmly committed to this cause, for she considers it her mission, her service, a proof of her fidelity to Christ, so that she can truly be the ‘Church of the poor.’ ”

In recognition that Jesus was born into poverty, it would be Christ-like for us to give time and treasure to oppressed workers this Christmas.

Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. Please contact your diocesan newspaper and request that they carry Tony’s column.

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Posted in Bread for the Journey, Economic Justice, Labor Justice, Magliano, Peacemakers

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ECONOMIC JUSTICE: Debating economic justice at the bishops’ meeting

Posted on November 27, 2012 | 1 Comment

Tony Maglianoby Tony Magliano

Strong, vigorous debates are good and necessary. Without intelligent, open-minded debate from time to time, groups risk becoming narrow-minded, passionless and even wrong.

Bold, respectful debate over serious issues, can bring clear vision and passionate action to the mission of any well-meaning organization. And that is especially true for the Catholic Church.

From its very beginning the church has been debating. In its earliest years, there was a hotly debated issue over whether or not Gentile converts to Christianity needed to observe the Mosaic Law – including male circumcision. Finally, the apostles and other church leaders at the Council of Jerusalem decided that such observance was largely unnecessary.

If those Christian forces pushing for Gentile male circumcision had not been successfully challenged with passionate debate, church membership would have been far less appealing, especially to most Gentile males.

Unfortunately, today the necessary art of debate is largely ignored. It’s as though most people would rather accept an easy, shallow “peace,” instead of engaging in the hard work of deep prayer, serious study and respectful debate which is necessary for the development of genuine unity and true peace.

At their recent meeting (Nov. 12-15) in Baltimore, the U.S. Catholic bishops engaged in a rare event: A heated debate!

The debate was over a proposed document on the economy titled “The Hope of the Gospel in Difficult Economic Times.”

Many of the older bishops who were involved with the highly challenging and prophetic 1986 pastoral letter “Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy” voiced strong opposition to the proposed newer and far weaker document.

They criticized its failure to make a strong connection with 120 years of Catholic social teaching – including “Economic Justice for All” which teaches that “All human beings, therefore, are ends to be served by the institutions that make up the economy, not means to be exploited for more narrowly defined goals.”

Also of concern to many of the more seasoned bishops was that the new document failed to address the root-causes of economic injustice like greed in the lending industry, the government’s refusal to regulate financial institutions, the lack of tax fairness, increased middle class burdens and heartless huge congressional budget cuts to programs aiding the domestic and global poor.

The U.S. bishops engaged in intense debate was actually a positive sign that they were struggling – like all committed believers – to gain a fuller understanding of the will of God.

The global economy is a mess. And countless people are hurting. But even before this Great Recession, 1.4 billion fellow human beings were struggling to survive in extreme poverty, largely because uncontrolled capitalism overwhelmingly serves the rich and breeds selfishness.

The world’s suffering masses need the bishops to take the lead in strongly and prophetically proclaiming a message of economic justice for everyone, especially for the poor!

And then the rest of us, along with the bishops, need to boldly put that message into action.

The bishops’ debate and rejection of a watered-down economic statement is over.

Now is the time for bishops, parishioners, students and all concerned to take the debate to that still highly relevant and powerful document “Economic Justice for All,” which challenges us to accept that“The time has come for a new American experiment – to implement economic rights, to broaden the sharing of economic power and to make economic decisions more accountable to the common good.”

Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. Please contact your diocesan newspaper and request that they carry Tony’s column.

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Posted in Bread for the Journey, Economic Justice, Magliano, Peacemakers

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REFLECTION: The spiritual dimension of work

Posted on September 26, 2012 | 4 Comments

Fr. John Rauschby Fr. John S. Rausch,
Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace

My friend joined a battle that was fought one hundred years ago.  On Paint Creek and later Cabin Creek, West Virginia, coal miners in 1912 went on strike because work conditions nearly resembled slavery.  The violence escalated to such a point that the governor declared martial law and sent in the WV National Guard.  What upsets my friend is the historical presentation of the conflict as being over wages and working hours.

Higher wages was the eleventh of eleven demands of the workers, and shorter hours was ninth of the eleven.  The first demand was the “abolition of the mine guard system.”  The brutality of the mercenaries hired to keep the miners in line extracted severe mental anguish on the worker and his family.  Free-market historians and journalists focus on the common concerns of trade unions: “wages, hours and conditions,” but seldom do they examine critically the patterns, structures and power dynamics of the workplace that speak directly to the human spirit.

Jobs

Candidates for office frequently talk about creating jobs, and the word “job” could be seen as shorthand for personal economic stability.  But, in our free market/capitalist system, you don’t need a job, you need income.  Every slave has a job, but the sons and daughters of the rich don’t need jobs—they need only walk to their mailbox to get their dividend or interest check.

Actually the idea of a “job” came from the specialization of the industrial process when a craft like making a chair was separated into segments with many workers making one part.  This led to enormous productivity through mass production.  Centuries ago, farming was not a job, but a lifestyle, and unique skills like woodworking or silversmithing were considered a craft or a trade more than a job.  Today, the more educated among us are not looking simply for a job, but a career.  And, perhaps that quest for something more is the window into the spiritual, and it introduces how people of faith view work.

Good Jobs, Dirty Jobs 

Somebody needs to take out the garbage, and somebody better clean the commode.  The work that dirties our hands ultimately benefits coworkers and the community, so perhaps the job itself is not the problem, but the way it is structured.  When folks work as a team, the cleanup duty goes much faster and might even become fun.  By day’s end, workers may be tired, but they can feel a sense of satisfaction that they treated customers curiously, or made a good product.  These are dimensions of the spirituality of work.

My point: we can structure work so everyone feels a sense of worth, dignity, belonging and pride in the effort.  Work can be organized either to feed the soul, or diminish the spirit.

Currently, free marketers disparage unions.  The story of the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek Strike of 1912 reminds us that the power of ownership can structure work for near slave conditions.  Workers have a right to form a union because they are social beings and as isolated individuals without power they can suffer abuses to their dignity.

Free marketers frequently denigrate those who are unemployed because they draw government assistance.  Economists differentiate between frictional unemployment, when a worker leaves a job to find a better one, and structural unemployment, when in a deep recession no jobs are available.  We cannot blame the victim because jobs are scarce.  We need to question the system because people’s desire for work feeds their need for self-worth and dignity.

I once organized a group of three women on welfare to start their own house-cleaning cooperative.  After three months of meeting weekly, the Daisy Fresh Cleaning Association received its incorporation papers from the Commonwealth of Virginia and we were ready for work.  In a workers’ cooperative, the workers make their own rules and structure the work.  I remember at our luncheon celebration with Coke and snacks asking the folks what we want to buy first, knowing we had the money for all sorts of cleaning equipment.  First purchase—not brooms or mops—but decals that said “Daisy Fresh Cleaning Association.”   The folks sewed the decals on all their blouses and jackets.  More than wages and hours, the decals said “I might have been on welfare but I am somebody.”  The Daisy Fresh women knew more about the spirituality of work than people on Wall Street or most economists.

Fr. John Rausch, a Glenmary priest, is the director of the Catholic Committee of Appalachia and works against mountaintop removal.  He was the recipient of the Pax Christi USA’s Teacher of Peace Award in 2007.

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Posted in Bread for the Journey, Economic Justice, Labor Justice, Rausch, Reflection, Teach Peace, Teacher of Peace

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LABOR RIGHTS: No school fun for child laborers

Posted on September 2, 2012 | Comments Off

Tony Maglianoby Tony Magliano

It’s that special time of the year again – at least for parents – when kids start heading back to school. And for those who have discovered the joy of learning, school is an adventure!

But sadly, millions of children worldwide do not attend school. And so they will never learn to read or write. They will not acquire computer skills. They will not experience singing in chorus, going on field trips, or playing at recess. Their classrooms will be sweatshops, farm fields and battlefields. Their days will be filled with long, dirty and dangerous work. And the lesson they will learn is that life is cruel and unfair.

According to the U.N.’s International Labour Organization (ILO), there are approximately 215 million child laborers – aged 5-17 – in the world. The ILO defines child labor as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.”

Among all child laborers, approximately 115 million of them work in the worst forms of child labor including slavery – the sale and trafficking of children – debt bondage, child prostitution and the production of child pornography, making and selling of drugs, forced armed conflict, and hazardous work that jeopardizes their physical, mental or moral well-being.

For example, an ILO report “The end of child labour: Millions of voices, one common hope,” states that nearly 1 million children work in small scale mines and quarries. “Children dig and haul ore out of underground mines, dive into rivers and flooded tunnels, and transport heavy materials. They grind rock and mix it with mercury to extract gold. They pound rocks into gravel. They live in areas where soil, water and air may be contaminated with heavy metals. On a daily basis, they risk serious injury, chronic illness and even death.”

Child labor exists largely because so many families are desperately poor. Countless parents throughout the world have no sustainable employment and no land to even grow food. They strive to scratch out some kind of an existence for their family. But their heroic efforts are not enough. Sadly, children must work, and often in terrible conditions at that, in order for the family to survive.

Local governments unable or unwilling to provide assistance, wealthy nations selfishly giving less than 0.9 percent of their annual budget for international poverty-focused assistance, trade policies that often favor rich nations over poor countries, and multinational corporations like Wal-Mart that take unscrupulous advantage of sweatshop workers who make many of their products, are among the reasons millions of parents in the developing world cannot support their families, thus making child labor an unjust necessity.

We can’t let this continue!

Together we can stop all of this selfish injustice.

We can vote for compassionate politicians, and urge sitting legislators to greatly increase international poverty-focused assistance, establish fair trade policies with all poor nations, stop subsidizing corporations like grain commodity companies that then undercut small businesses in the developing world, pass loophole-free legislation severely penalizing corporations that take advantage of sweatshop workers and give tax incentives to those companies that financially help their suppliers provide a living wage and decent working conditions for their employees.

And we can patronize Fair Trade certified companies.

Furthermore, we can visit www.freethechildren.com to learn about kids helping kids.

Let’s tirelessly work for the day when cruel and dangerous children’s work gives way to school work and homework!

Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. Please contact your diocesan newspaper and request that they carry Tony’s column.

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