Pax Christi USA has signed onto the “Once and For All” campaign, calling on the Obama Administration to develop a “National Plan of Action for Racial Justice.”
The U.S. Human Rights Network and the Human Rights at Home Campaign launched the Once And For All campaign on March 21, 2013. The campaign is a national call for the Obama Administration to develop a National Plan of Action for Racial Justice. 126 national and local organizations signed an open letter calling on the Administration to adopt this comprehensive plan. Join the call and sign the petition!
The National Plan of Action for Racial Justice is a comprehensive action plan that would be adopted by the federal government and applicable to all levels of government to address persistent contemporary forms of racial discrimination and race disparities in almost every sphere of life. Our current civil rights laws are simply not enough to advance racial equality and human rights for all. They do not address inequalities in access to healthcare and housing, or address the legacies of racism inherent in immigration law, or law enforcement policies that result in excessive incarceration of African Americans and Latinos.
Heaven knows we need a conversation implementing Catholic social teaching about racism. It is also true that in many ways we are incipiently and incrementally sliding into racism today, including, this time, with Hispanics, Muslims, and other minorities added to the still despised Blacks.
I read this article tonight after I read articles on the internet concerning the KeystoneXL pipeline and all the horrors and injustices it is causing. I have been signing appeal after appeal to President Obama not for him to violate the entitlements to the recipients of Social Security, Medicaid, and Veterans’ benifits by lowering the amount paaisd out.
Our Pax Christi group has been praying, studying, and doing action concerning our present use of drone warfare for assasination and other unlevel-playing field action. We need strong support.
Groups, religious and secular, have been working for years now to amend the Constitution so that each person counts enough for us to be called a People’s nation, a Democracy. They are reaching a climax at the moment.
The point I want to make is to recommend that Pax Christi study the issues immediately at hand (much as does Network) and enter the fray. The racial justice project, I would think, needs to be a long-term program, because its problems will still be with us when the crises concerning the others hopefully will have been met this month or this year.