Voting in 2020
2020 is a big year for elections.  We all know about the presidential election in November.  The April 7 election is also interesting and important.  Milwaukee elects a new Mayor and County Executive.  We all elect a new State Supreme Court Justice.  These public officials make big decisions that affect the people and issues we care about.

You can help to make sure everyone receives information about the candidates and their positions and that they vote.  You can be a Relational Voter Program (RVP) Leader by learning to use WISDOM’s MyRVP app and encouraging others to do so as well.  The My RVP app helps you identify people in your contact list who are least likely to vote.  You can help them become better participants in our democracy by helping them to actually get to the polls and vote.

WISDOM staff can help you get started. RVP leaders will receive regular emails from WISDOM with messages you can share with your RVP contacts.  Messages might be information on the relevant issues, reminders of polling locations and hours, encouragement to actually get out and vote, and more.

Contact WISDOMforJustice@gmail.com for more information or to get started as a RVP leader!

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At our Doorstep
“Our broken system of immigration is a wound on this border community. It is a scandal to the Body of Christ in El Paso.” (Bishop of El Paso Mark Seitz, from his pastoral letter on migration.)
 
Right now at our nation’s doorstep, there are thousands of desperate individuals and families fleeing violence, oppression, and dire poverty, forced to live on the streets and shelters in Mexico along the U.S. border.  
 
To be clear, they are trying to follow the rules and enter the United States through border stations to formally apply for asylum. It used to be that if you presented yourself at the border and passed the initial basic interview-- which most did—you would wait in the U.S. for your day in court.  But now it's different.
 
Under the Trump administration's “Remain in Mexico” policy enacted in 2019, about 55,000 people have been sent back to Mexico to wait for their court date. In addition, thousands of others are in Mexico under the Trump administration’s metering policy, which requires asylum seekers to wait weeks or months before even applying for asylum.  The result? Thousands of people stranded – forced to live on the streets, in encampments, and in shelters on the Mexico side of the border – often for months at a time. 

Read Tim Dewayne's full article where you'll meet the School Sisters of Notre Dame he traveled with, Monse and her children, and see the pictures he took from the street next to the Paso del Norte border crossing in Juarez, Mexico.

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2020: The Meaning of Witness in These Times
From the perspective of faith, we understand a few essential things about what it means to be followers of the young Rabbi from Nazareth as we encounter the world in our day-to-day lives. It’s what we do, not what we have, that matters. Neither is it ritual and rites without content and substance that are the priorities of someone rooted in a gospel faith. It’s how we live, how we bear witness to that actual content of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that gives meaning to why one would call oneself, Christian. Jesus was pretty clear about this. So were the prophets. And Jesus Christ was deeply rooted in the prophetic tradition, denouncing injustice, selfishness, the repressive authorities both political and religious, hypocrisy, exclusion, arrogance, and more.

He preached love and tried to show what that ought to mean in our daily lives through his words, his actions, whom he healed, whom he forgave, whose actions he denounced, who he hung out with.

Read Margaret Swedish's full article here.

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