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02-13-2007, 05:41 PM #1
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Pelosi’s Faith and Immigrant Labor Rights
San Francisco Values: Pelosi’s Faith and Immigrant Labor Rights
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com ... sco_v.html
By Kenneth C. Burt
February 12, 2007
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quoted Pope Benedict quoting Saint Augustine to underscore the moral imperative to advance the common good at a Friday night banquet in San Francisco sponsored by the Intituto Laboral De La Raza.
The labor leaders, immigrant activists, and political officials cheered as she stated that raising the minimum wage was only the beginning. According to Pelosi, the House will soon pass a comprehensive immigration reform measure and the Employee Free Choice Act, making it easier for workers to unionize.
Pelosi’s infusion of morality into the fight for social justice flows from her own Italian Catholic upbringing. It also reflects a new interest — and a potential political partnership — with religious leaders seeking to protect their flock.
Only days before Pelosi’s statement in San Francisco, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles made headlines in the Catholic press by advocating a similar idea at an immigrant conference at St. Thomas College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
“We must also respond in the political realm through advocacy in local communities, state legislatures and Congress to ensure that our nation’s immigration laws protect human life and uphold human dignity in the face of changing circumstances,” stated Mahony.
Such a paradigm was central to President Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition when a quarter of the population was either immigrants or the children of immigrants, and the church regularly supported the Democrats’ labor friendly economic policies.
The newer arrivals are receiving help from the faith-filled grandchildren and great grandchildren of earlier immigrants. Among those present at the Latino-oriented banquet was Michael Hardman, a sign painter union official who oversees the Bay Area Catholic Labor Committee. Hardman and other union leaders joined the march on the State Capitol last year in favor of immigrant rights. And next month Bishop Ignatius Wang will celebrate Mass for the labor leaders, providing moral encouragement for their efforts.
Cardinal Mahony has long advocated for comprehensive immigration reform and has assisted various union organizing efforts in Los Angeles. For example, when Justice for Janitors went on strike, he offered Mass for the largely Spanish-speaking strikers. He also worked behind the scenes to help resolve the dispute. Decades earlier as a young priest Mahony marched with Cesar Chavez and, as the bishop of Stockton, he served as a Governor Jerry Brown appointee to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board.
Pelosi symbolically underscored the linkage between faith and social justice at her inaugural ceremonies. She held a celebratory Mass at her old Baltimore parish and asked Stephen A. Privett, a Jesuit father, to provide the invocation at her swearing-in in Washington, D.C.
Some pundits recognized in Rev. Privett’s hometown link as he serves as president of the University of San Francisco. But no one commented on Privett’s own ties to the church’s social justice tradition. He wrote his dissertation on Archbishop Robert Lucy, the head of the Bishop’s Committee for the Spanish-Speaking in the 1940s and 1950s.
Cardinal Mahony and Speaker Pelosi are part of a dynamic effort to reconnect and to strengthen the linkage between labor, immigrants and politicians that proved so helpful to earlier waves of immigrants — Irish, Italian and Latino.
The little known role of Catholic priests and faith communities in empowering Latinos is one of the many insights contained in my forthcoming book, The Search for a Civic Voice: California Latino Politics, to be published in the spring.
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02-13-2007, 06:31 PM #2
Pelosi's democrat congress
How can a group of people who believe that people have the right to do anything that they want to do can support organized religion? Sounds like not only has Pelosi's hotel managers gotten to her but also the Church. But how can a church support drug smugglers, murders, child rapist, thieves, etc. Oh, I forgot we are talking about a church that hid child rapist for years.
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02-13-2007, 07:09 PM #3
In God's Name
Read the book In God's Name by David A. Yallop if you can find it.
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02-13-2007, 07:55 PM #4
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“Intituto Laboral De La Raza,” who? Why do these people insist that they are a race? Why don’t they just say who they really are, "Mexican nationalists."
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02-13-2007, 08:55 PM #5House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quoted Pope Benedict quoting Saint Augustine to underscore the moral imperative to advance the common good at a Friday night banquet in San Francisco sponsored by the Intituto Laboral De La Raza.Unemployment is not working. Deport illegal alien workers now! Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)
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