Promote Voting
Supermarket Legends:
For City of Milwaukee residents, the most comprehensive resource for voter information and the promotion of voting is Supermarket Legends (https://www.legendsvote.org/) Go to the Legends’ “Virtual Garage” https://www.legendsvote.org/new-garage/ for handouts, for sample ballots, for instructions on voter registration, ballot drop-off sites, etc.

Volunteer opportunities:

• Assist at voter registration events such as food pantries, civic events, etc. See the website for volunteer training and contacts.
• Hand out information to potential voters outside selected local businesses like supermarkets. Also, Save the dates of Saturday, October 17 and Sunday, October 18 to distribute early voting flyers at suggested Milwaukee locations, called Blitz Milwaukee Weekend.
• Make phone calls to social service agencies, shelters, clinics, etc., to offer them voter information. To volunteer contact Linea:  linea.sundstrom@gmail.com 
• Use phone calls, email or even snail mail to encourage voting as part of a Relational Voter Program 
• Become a poll worker (this is a paid position). For the City of Milwaukee apply online at https://city.milwaukee.gov/election/Helpmilwaukeevote/Election-Inspector-Application, email the Commission at voterinfo@milwaukee.gov, or call 414-286-3491.

 
Common Ground:
For the entire Southeast Wisconsin area, Common Ground is working to promote voter registration and voting. They are organizing groups to make Voter Turnout Phone Calls and their handout, 3 ways to Vote in Wisconsin is very helpful basic information for all voters. Website: CommonGroundWI.org | Email:            info@commongroundwi.org | Phone: 414-751-0755
 
WISDOM
Pray for Our Elections:
Few national elections have had as much at stake as the upcoming November 2020 election. Our nation stands in crisis, divided in seemingly endless ways, and at a significant crossroad. WISDOM invites you to join our statewide network, and others across the nation, in the Gamaliel Religious Leaders' Causus' 40 Days of Prayer and Reflection on Our Journey to the Polls.

To receive these daily reflections going forward, sign up for the 40 Days of Prayer & Reflection mailing list HERE.   If you do sign up for the mailing list, you will receive the daily common prayer and a reflection from a different faith perspective each day from now through November 3.

The sign-up asks you to indicate your local WISDOM affiliate: MICAH for Milwaukee, SOPHIA for Waukesha Co. Or choose another if you prefer.
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 “A certain way of understanding human life and activity has gone awry, to the serious detriment of the world around us.” ~ Pope Francis, Laudato Sí, 101

In this year of raging fires, floods, drought, heat, pandemic, and more, could anything be more obvious? Inexorably, over generations, an industrial economy built upon the consumption of resources and the dumping of waste to service it has led us to the ecological crisis we now face. Despite calls from popes over the past five decades to face this threat to our survival, and the calls for “ecological conversion,” this message has yet to penetrate down to the core of how this industrial growth economy operates, and to its most basic logic.

In early September, Pope Francis met with a group of French environmental activists and spoke spontaneously about his own ecological conversion, what led him to write his brilliant encyclical, Laudato Sí, On Care for Our Common Home.” [see: Gerard O’Connell, “Pope Francis on the ‘Ecological Conversion’ that Led Him to Laudato Si,” in America, Sept 3, 2020]. As for many of us, he did not start in the place of deep awareness of the crisis or its causes, could not understand what the crisis of the Earth had to do with evangelization. “I underwent a journey of conversion, of conversion of the ecological problem. Before that I didn’t understand anything.” That was in 2007. Between that year and 2015, he traveled a long road from not understanding at all to becoming one of the world’s leading religious voices on the crisis.
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Catholic Coalition for Migrants and Refugees


Changes to CCMR

• Alex Nikolai will be taking over for Mark Peters and sending out updates as he is able (probably not weekly but at least monthly). His goal is to bring more young adults into the group, and appeal to them by including more "social" elements, more local service projects, more collaboration with groups like Voces de la Frontera, and perhaps also a more overtly political focus (endorsing candidates, etc.),  if that is what these new members want. He's also going to attempt to bring in more Latinx Catholics, and Eloisa Gomez has offered to assist in that.
   
• Mark Peters will focus solely on continuing advocacy efforts, with an eye to what we can do after the November election to impact any new legislation at the national level, which could come as early as the first six months of 2021. Mark needs to know who is willing to engage in their own House District (Moore, Steil, Sensenbrenner or Grothman), and will work directly with them to organize other Catholics in those districts. The work of the CCMR  Senate Team will continue, and we welcome new members to join us.

Latest News and Commentary
Lives Will Be Upended: Bishops Respond to Court Decision Allowing An End to Temporary Protected Status for Over 200,000 People

8,800 Unaccompanied Children Expelled Under COVID-19 Policy

Biden Pledges to Undo Trump's Sweeping Immigration Changes - But Can He?

AP: Federal court ensures undocumented immigrants are counted in 2020 census
  Frustrated asylum seekers lit fires this week in protest over lockdowns that worsened cramped and squalid conditions on Lesbos. Now 12,000 migrants are homeless.

America's War on Terror is the True Cause of Europe's Refugee Crisis

It’s all connected!  👉 Militarization + police + immigration

To be part of CCMR, sign up here. Visit the CCMR facebook page here.

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