Love is a Thread

In the garment of justice, your love is an irreplaceable thread. The Justice Conference is February 24+25 in Portland, Oregon. 

Love Is A Thread from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.
 




The Justice Conference. February 24+25, 2012. Portland, Oregon. Follow them on Twitter: thejusticeconf

We append the following disclaimer on all posts: “Please note that the views expressed by guest bloggers represent their own personal views, and not necessarily those of everyone associated with Loving the Stranger or any institutions with which the blogger may be affiliated.”

Arizona Voters Consider Recall of Russel Pearce

Voters in Arizona will consider the recall of Republican Russell Pearce who has devastated human rights in that state through anti immigrant legislation such as AB 1070. Some bits from emails this morning:

From a youth pastor in Phoenix: "We will be out canvassing again today and reminding folks about the election. It will be our last day for awhile. Students are excited and energized still after all this work! A lady told me yesterday as I spoke at her door that she has been watching students walk up and down her street all year. She said she was thankful for them and proud youth in her community care and are trying to help. With Promise Arizona we have registered now over 14,000 low propensity Latino voters.

Pray that people who try to suppress voters will themselves be suppressed. Pray that everybody who wants to vote is allowed to vote. Pray that people remember the elections and are not confused by all the tricks and lies Pearce has used. He put a fake candidate with a Hispanic surname on the ballot to split the vote. He sent out 20 different mailers claiming he supports public education when he has cut more from K-12 budgets as Senate President and Appropriations Chair than any legislator in history. He is down in the polls but within the margin of error. It's going to be close.  Pray with us."

From the news: "Russell Pearce, the Republican Arizona state senate president whose SB 1070 anti-illegal immigration law continues to inspire similarly strict immigration laws in other states, could lose his seat to a recall Tuesday."

See more news here:  http://multiamerican.scpr.org/2011/11/the-russell-pearce-recall-election-a-referendum-on-arizonas-immigration-politics/

A prayer from the Hebrew Scriptures: 

Psalm 94 (Common English Bible)
1 LORD, avenging God—
avenging God, show yourself!
2 Rise up, judge of the earth!
Pay back the arrogant
exactly what they deserve!
3 How long will the wicked—oh, LORD!—
how long will the wicked win?
4 They spew arrogant words;
all the evildoers are bragging.
5 They crush your own people, LORD!
They abuse your very own possession.
6 They kill widows and immigrants;
they murder orphans,
7 saying all the while,
“The LORD can’t see it;
Jacob’s God doesn’t know
what’s going on!”

8 You ignorant people better learn quickly.
You fools—
when will you get some sense?
9 The one who made the ear,
can’t he hear?
The one who formed the eye,
can’t he see?
10 The one who disciplines nations,
can’t he punish?
The one who teaches humans,
doesn’t he know?
11 The LORD does indeed
know human thoughts,
knows that they are nothing
but a puff of air.

12 The people you discipline, LORD,
are truly happy—
the ones you teach
from your Instruction—
13 giving them relief from troubling times
until a pit is dug for the wicked.
14 The LORD will not reject his people;
he will not abandon
his very own possession.
15 No, but justice will once again
meet up with righteousness,
and all whose heart is right
will follow after.

16 Who will stand up for me
against the wicked?
Who will help me against evildoers?
17 If the LORD hadn’t helped me,
I would live instantly
in total silence.
18 Whenever I feel my foot slipping,
your faithful love steadies me, LORD.
19 When my anxieties multiply,
your comforting calms me down.

20 Can a wicked ruler be your ally;
one who wreaks havoc
by means of the law?
21 The wicked gang up
against the lives of the righteous.
They condemn innocent blood.
22 But the LORD is my fortress;
my God is my rock of refuge.
23 He will repay them
for their wickedness,
completely destroy them
because of their evil.
Yes, the LORD our God
will completely destroy them.



We append the following disclaimer on all posts: “Please note that the views expressed by guest bloggers represent their own personal views, and not necessarily those of everyone associated with Loving the Stranger or any institutions with which the blogger may be affiliated.”

Profits, Slavery and the Law

 A woman came to our job program office and said she risked everything to be there that day. She was not allowed to leave her job in a sewing factory south of downtown. She was given a place to sleep inside the factory. She worked when she was awake.

An ICE officer tells a group of students on a tour of downtown that the neighborhood they are in is notorious because of the immigrants who are forced to work to pay for the services provided to get them to this country when they were brought here with the offer of a job. Law enforcement has few or no tools to change what is going on.

A teen in a church youth group tells one of the leaders that he was offered a job in the United States by another youth in his Costa Rican hometown if he would just go with him north--a trip that included riding on top of trains and being smuggled across multiple international borders. When he arrived in the United States he was given a package of drugs to sell. If you refused, the penalty would be death.

Slavery in the US exists and is fueled by a lack of reasonable laws to protect the vulnerable. What intellectual capital do you bring to help the situation?


Solutions to this will come with reasonable laws and structures that will make slavery less profitable and value people regardless of their origin. What can you do to stand up for the most vulnerable?

HT to Jubilee a nonprofit band for posting the video.

We append the following disclaimer on all posts: “Please note that the views expressed by guest bloggers represent their own personal views, and not necessarily those of everyone associated with Loving the Stranger or any institutions with which the blogger may be affiliated.”

Seeing the One Who Sees

There is something powerful in seeing. In the moment we begin to understand we say, “my eyes were opened,” as if we had been walking around blind before. When the Apostle Paul began to live in the light of Christ, something like scales fell off his eyes and he could see. Last year I took a trip with the Christian Community Development Association board to the Arizona/Mexico border. It felt like a collective eye opening moment. When it came to concern for undocumented immigrants, some of us had never looked before, some of us had our eyes down on other things, and some of us were seeing the situation in a new light. Whatever the case, after our trip together, we all see the issue of immigration differently than we did before.

On the bus ride back from the border we watched the movie, “Crossing Arizona”. There is a scene where a Minuteman rally takes place in a hotel ballroom. As the speaker rants about immigrants taking away jobs and ruining our society, the immigrant hotel workers are cleaning up and serving those in attendance. As the viewers watching the scene we were left asking, “How can they not see that the people serving them are the ones they are railing against?” How can they not see?

How can we not see? How can we not see that thousands of people have died in the desert trying to reach a better life for their families? How can we not see the complexity and hypocrisy of a system that on one hand invites people in and on the other provides no way to come? How can we not see the millions of undocumented neighbors who work and live among us every day contributing to our communities?

Often when we talk about Comprehensive Immigration Reform we say we need a way for people to “come out of the shadows”, a way for people to be seen, to have their presence acknowledged and accounted for. As we drove through the desert I thought of a migrant woman who went out to the desert feeling used by people that didn’t acknowledge her or her contributions. In Genesis, Hagar encountered God in the desert and she gave Him a name, “You are the God who see me,” she called Him. The God who sees. It seems like such an obvious recognition and yet profound when I think of how often we walk through life not seeing what is really going on.

God sees. He sees the poverty and circumstances that prompt immigrants to come here. He sees their fear and courage. He knows the dreams and hopes that motivate them to press on. And He sees our confusion, concerns and questions as we seek to sort through the mess we are in as a nation. He sees our tension between law and compassion, protection and generosity. He is the God who sees.

Next Monday, November 7 at 6pm we are gathering in an attempt to see our immigrant neighbors, to voice our non-immigrant questions and pray together that the God who sees would see us in our good intentions and wrestling and lead us to unity and justice. And we trust that in coming together and seeing one another we, like Hagar, will not only be seen by God but can look and say, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

If you are in the Southern California area join us for the Immigration Prayer Vigil- Monday November 7 at Newsong Church in Irvine- 18842 Teller Ave. We are fasting during the day and breaking the fast with a simple meal at 6pm. The prayer vigil will start at 6:30pm. Hope to see you there!

We append the following disclaimer on all posts: “Please note that the views expressed by guest bloggers represent their own personal views, and not necessarily those of everyone associated with Loving the Stranger or any institutions with which the blogger may be affiliated.”

My DREAM for Change, part 2

My life has most fully been lived on a little street in Fullerton, CA.

This neighborhood means so much to me. It's where I fell in love with my husband. It's where I discovered who I truly am. It's where I have experienced Jesus in the deepest way. It's where I learned to dream BIG dreams for those I love, even if they are not able to dream them for themselves.

My neighborhood is far from "beautiful". There is trash everywhere, gangsters hanging out on the corner, worn down apartments, and I have broken up a fight or two. But it's not this physical place, full of imperfections, that has so deeply impacted me. It's the perfect God I have experienced through my neighbors that is what brings me to a deep place of reflection.

In the countless meals I have shared, walks to Target I have taken, and conversations had at the food trucks, I have come to realize how connected I am to my neighbors. We are not all that different. We all want to be safe, provide for and protect our families. We all want to be valued.

We all want to dream.

As similar and connected as we are. There is a stark difference between me and my neighbors: I have been given the right to dream. In fact, I have almost been forced to dream. I grew up with the idea that I could do anything. I was free and even entitled to follow my dreams, whatever they may be.

My neighbors? Sure they can dream, in theory. They can imagine being doctors, engineers, teachers, artists, musicians, lawyers, politicians...but the reality of their circumstances often crushes those thoughts before they even fully play out in their heads.

When I first moved into my neighborhood I was an idealistic 19 year old. I thought with a little love and imagination this neighborhood could transform. What I have come to realize over the last 7 years is that love and imagination will only take you so far. I pray everyday not to lose my idealism, but I have accepted the reality that transformation takes time. It takes work and it is often times very difficult. When it comes to the reality of my neighborhood, there is just so much we have to overcome. We have systemic poverty, slum lords, a broken education system, and too many kids who don't know how to dream. We have generations of people who can't see past the corner of Garnet and Placentia and the second they do they are quickly reminded that for them, there is no point. Over the years I have also come to realized how deeply connected these issues are with the fact that so many of my neighbors are undocumented. When you don't belong, you have no rights, and you are treated like a second class citizen, what's the point of dreaming? I fear our lack of just Immigration policy is robbing our neighbors of their God given right to dream.

I think, as the Church, we need to acknowledge this as a viable possibility.

We also need to begin repairing the damage we have caused by allowing our big corporations to cause systemic poverty in our neighboring countries, taking advantage of cheap labor, creating a demand for drugs, weapons and prostitution, and allowing years of outdated and unjust laws go unchanged. Too many people want to criminalize the acts of those who came here unlawfully, but I think we need to take responsibility for our role in this mess.

We were so busy asserting our American right to dream for power and prosperity that we forgot about the dreams of our neighbors.

I know that changing our immigration laws will not instantly make everything better. There will always be poverty, corruption and injustice. But for my neighborhood, and countless other Immigrant communities across the nation, we will not see our dreams of transformation fully come to fruition without it. What Comprehensive Immigration Reform would do is restore my neighbor's ability to dream...something we had no business destroying in the first place.

We append the following disclaimer on all posts: “Please note that the views expressed by guest bloggers represent their own personal views, and not necessarily those of everyone associated with Loving the Stranger or any institutions with which the blogger may be affiliated.”

Perry Wastes Opportunity in Presidential Debate

By Steve Arredondo

Rather than articulate a well thought common sense response for supporting in state tuition in Texas for undocumented students, Rick Perry chose the path of inarticulate emotionalism, which has plagued much of the immigration reform debate.  To be sure, immigration is an extremely complex issue that does not readily lend itself to sound bites, however, there are some common sense arguments to be made that should give even the reddest of tea partiers pause (okay not likely but one can hope). After all these are the same people who talk about wanting small government, except for those small exceptions for Social Security and Medicare.

For one, as baby boomers life expectancy increases you will need more high-wage earners to prop up the Social Security program. Undocumented students that qualify for entry into Texas universities would fit the bill as potential high-wage earners.  It makes no sense to take promising students who have the potential to earn high wages and relegate them into the underground economy jobs that pay minimum or subminimum wages.  In the long run such short sighted public policy decreases the tax base which supports the public infrastructure.  Second, the number of Texas undocumented students eligible under the Texas in-state tuition law in fiscal year 2010 was fewer than one percentof all Texas college students. Thus, the argument that undocumented students are taking up space of documented students or would bust the budgets of Texas universities does not hold water.

While these two simple arguments may not be sound bite worthy, they at least more thoughtful and analytical response than simply stating that opponents of in state tuition “have no heart”.  Of greater concern is the lost opportunity to elevate the immigration debate beyond xenophobic rants.


Steve Arredondo is daddy to Rafael II and Emma.  He is also the Supervising Housing Attorney at the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, a non-profit legal service agency in East Los Angeles.  A member of Whittier Area Community Church, Steve serves on the community outreach team.  Steve also serves on the boards of the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance and the Interfaith Food Center of Whittier.

We append the following disclaimer on all posts: “Please note that the views expressed by guest bloggers represent their own personal views, and not necessarily those of everyone associated with Loving the Stranger or any institutions with which the blogger may be affiliated.”

Prayer Vigil November 7

Join the Christian community as One Church with our immigrant brothers and sisters for our second annual fasting and prayer vigil for immigration on November 7. We will share stories of compassion, struggle and transformation to learn what is like to be the stranger and how God's word compels us to listen and be active agents of His love with the immigrant in our midst.

We will be sharing a communal meal to break the fast at 6pm followed by a prayer vigil. More information to come soon! 


We append the following disclaimer on all posts: “Please note that the views expressed by guest bloggers represent their own personal views, and not necessarily those of everyone associated with Loving the Stranger or any institutions with which the blogger may be affiliated.”