Standing in Solidarity with friends of Trayvon Martin I was recently invited to the White House for a ceremony to commemorate the life and work of Mexican-American farmworker and civil rights leader, Cesar Chavez. In 1965, Chavez and the United Farmworkers Union began a boycott of table grapes to [...]Read More
John M. Perkins, Justice, and Immigration
Personal Reflections on Injustice, Then and Now I spent most of last week in Jackson, Mississippi, on a retreat with some good friends from the Christian Community Development Association, hosted by the John M. Perkins Foundation. Dr. Perkins, who is now 81 years old, is one of my heroes. Born into [...]Read More
Taking the Long View vs. the Fierce Urgency of Now
Lessons from Arizona Arizona won a significant victory yesterday when Russell Pearce, author of SB1070, lost in a first-ever recall election. It was not without great effort. I’m reflecting today on the lessons of the work and how we traveled from the darkness of SB1070 to the hope we feel [...]Read More
Our Journey Together
CCDA’s days of learning and witness on immigration reform When Kit Danley of Neighborhood Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona, toured the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati with fellow CCDA board member Mary Nelson during the 2009 CCDA conference, she couldn't shake a feeling of [...]Read More
A Beautiful View
Coming home to Vista Hermosa When they were teenagers, Suzanne Broetje and Laura Peréz moved with their families to a valley along the Snake River in southeastern Washington State. Their first experiences of the place couldn’t have been more different. Suzanne’s parents, Cheryl and Ralph [...]Read More
Birmingham Yet?
Sheriff Joe Arpaio is proud of his tent city. On his Web site for reelection as sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, he touts the camp as a cost-effective, “austere but humane” solution to jail overcrowding in a county that aggressively rounds up undocumented immigrants—and that, under SB 1070, [...]Read More
True Advocacy: Beyond the Protest Sign
An Interview with Craig Wong, Executive Director, Grace Urban Ministries, San Francisco Long-time CCDAer, Craig Wong is a Chinese-American, attending a church of mostly middle-class professionals in the Bay Area, and ministering in a neighborhood called "The Mission District," a struggling Latino [...]Read More