September, 20 2022, 08:28am EDT
Faith leaders declare moral emergency: Lack of living wages, voter suppression impact 50M each while congressional inaction pushes over 20M back into poverty
Poor People’s Campaign joins DC congressional briefing, news conference Thursday
WASHINGTON
A diverse group of national, state and local faith leaders whose various traditions make up millions of congregants will join the Poor People's Campaign National Call for Moral Revival on Thursday for an urgent briefing to urge Congress to act before the midterms on critical moral and social issues that directly impact millions of vulnerable neighbors.
Over 50 million people in America of every race work for less than a living wage and are impacted by voter suppression. Millions of children and families have been thrown back into poverty this year by the Senate's refusal to extend the child income tax credit. While recent US Census data show that the number of poor and low-income people dropped by over 20 million in 2021, the policies that brought this relief to tens of millions of families have not been extended.
Thursday's briefing will lift up why Congress must not accept inaction on issues such as voting rights and living wages and why they must act again on these issues, along with reinstatement and expansion of policies that research shows can immediately lift millions of families out of poverty.
"Before they vote, the American people deserve to know - on the record - where their elected officials stand on these great moral issues," said Bishop William J. Barber II, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. "For example, living wages would lift 52 million people out of poverty. The current voter suppression tactics will block some 50 million people from using the voting methods they used in 2020. The expanded Child Tax Credit that Congress approved during the pandemic and then canceled would immediately lift 4 million children out of poverty. Voters deserve to know if candidates want to reinstate these laws or if they support letting people live in poverty, be blocked from voting and children going hungry."
The briefing with Bishop Barber; Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the PPC:NCMR and director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice; Rev. Kazimir Brown, director of religious affairs for the Repairers of the Breach, and Rep. Ro Khanna of California will begin at 9 a.m. ET Thursday, Sept. 22, in Room 2237 of the Rayburn Office Building in Washington, D.C. It will be live streamed here.
A news conference with religious leaders and members of Congress will follow in the same location at 11 a.m. ET.
Joining the briefing will be Rev. Terri Hord Owens, general minister and president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); Bishop Mariann Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., and Bishop Vashti McKenzie, interim president and general secretary of the National Council of Churches.
Faith leaders from African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Zion, Baptist, Catholic, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Episcopal, Lutheran, Orthodox Judaism, Reform Judaism, United Methodist, Unitarian Universalist and more denominations, will join in solidarity.
The news conference, which will include Reps. Barbara Lee (California) and Pramila Jayapal (Washington), will focus on the Third Reconstruction agenda and the work of the PPC:NCMR to engage with 5 million poor and low-income, low-propensity voters before the midterms. Reps. Lee and Jayapal have led on the House resolution titled "Third Reconstruction: Fully Addressing Poverty and Low Wages from the Bottom Up."
Addressing the policy issues in this country means recognizing that while 400 people make an average of $97,000 an hour, over 50 million people make less than $15 an hour; while three people have more money than 50% of all Americans combined, over 4 million people earn a sub-minimum wage of $2.13 an hour; and while billionaires and the wealthy have seen a more than $2 trillion increase in their wealth since the pandemic began, 330,000 people died unnecessarily during COVID from a lack of healthcare.
In addition: the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour hasn't changed in 12 years; 87 million people go without healthcare or are uninsured; 700 people die each day from poverty and inequality and 140 million people are poor or low-income - and that was before COVID.
The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, is building a generationally transformative digital gathering called the Mass Poor People's Assembly and Moral March on Washington, on June 20, 2020. At that assembly, we will demand that both major political parties address the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism by implementing our Moral Agenda.
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Groups Warn Gang Crackdown in El Salvador Has Led to Human Rights Crisis
"Reducing gang violence by replacing it with state violence cannot be a success," said one Amnesty International official.
Mar 27, 2024
Two years after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele declared a "state of exception" that was originally adopted for a 30-day period in response for a spate of apparent gang killings, the government is boasting that its policies have driven down the homicide rate by 70%—but international rights defenders on Wednesday warned the crackdown has plunged the country into a human rights crisis.
Amnesty International said that according to local victims' movements and human rights groups, El Salvador's former murder rate has been replaced by 327 cases of forced disappearances since March 2022, as well as 78,000 arbitrary detentions as police have raided neighborhoods, particularly in low-income areas.
"A total of approximately 102,000 people [are] now deprived of their freedom in the country—a situation of prison overcrowding of approximately 148% percent and at least 235 deaths in state custody," said Amnesty.
Bukele adopted the state of emergency after El Salvador reported its deadliest peak in apparent gang violence in recent history, with gangs blamed for 92 people's deaths over three days in March 2022.
Under the emergency order, authorities have suspended the right to privacy in communications, to be informed of the reason for one's arrest, and to be taken before a judge within 72 hours of an arrest. A report by Human Rights Watch in December 2022 also warned of "torture, or other cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment against people accused of crimes." Officers told people during arrests only that they were following "orders from the president," and in some cases, told people they were being taken to a police station for "questioning" when they were actually under arrest.
"The insistence of Nayib Bukele's government on maintaining the state of emergency, the adoption of disproportionate measures, and the denial, minimization, and concealment of reported serious human rights violations reflect the government's unwillingness to fulfill its duty to respect and promote human rights in the country," Ana Piquer, Amnesty International's Americas director, said Wednesday. "It also demonstrates its inability to design comprehensive long-term measures to address the root causes of violence and criminality without forcing the population to choose between security and freedom."
Amnesty's statement came a day after Justice and Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro said Bukele's government plans to continue its strategy to "eradicate this endemic evil."
"This war against these terrorists will continue," said Villatoro in a televised address.
Despite outcry from domestic and international human rights groups, Bukele won his reelection campaign in a landslide last month. El Faro reported that Bukele's government had violated some election rules including airing ads within three days of the election and campaigning on Election Day. Some poll workers also wore clothes identifying them as supporters of Bukele's Nueva Ideas party, and police allegedly blocked journalists from working near polling locations, prompting accusations of intimidation and harassment by the Association of Journalists of El Salvador.
The Due Process of Law Foundation released a report Tuesday warning that Bukele's government could be guilty of crimes against humanity as it continues its crackdown.
"Well over 76,000 people, including minors, have been detained under the state of exception, accused of having ties to gangs," wrote the group. "Many or most of these detentions appear to be occurring without any reasonable grounds for suspecting that the person may have committed a crime. Mere physical appearance—including having tattoos—seems to be enough to put people at risk of arrest, with young men from poor districts a particular target. Arrests of this nature are in themselves discriminatory, and may well qualify as arbitrary. According to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, under customary
international law, 'The legal basis justifying... detention must be accessible, understandable, nonretroactive, and applied in a consistent and predictable way.'"
Amnesty noted on Wednesday that human rights defenders and dissidents also face "increased risk" under the state of emergency, "as they are criminalized." As Common Dreams reported this week, five water defenders are scheduled to stand trial on April 3 for allegedly killing a military informant, an accusation for which the government has produced no proof.
"In the absence of any kind of evaluation and checks and balances within the country, and with only a timid response from the international community, the false illusion has been created that President Bukele has found the magic formula to solve the very complex problems of violence and criminality in a seemingly simple way. But reducing gang violence by replacing it with state violence cannot be a success," said Piquer. "The authorities in El Salvador must focus the state response on comprehensive policies that respect human rights and seek long-term solutions."
"The international community," she added, "must respond in a robust, articulate and forceful manner, condemning any model of public security that is based on human rights violations."
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"This move is intended to make sure policymakers continue to make bad bets on carbon capture ever working," said one critic.
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CarbonCapture Inc. on Wednesday announced the appointment of Neil Chatterjee to its board of directors—sparking fresh criticism of technology to capture and store carbon dioxide, the former U.S. regulator, and the revolving door between government and industry.
Chatterjee was appointed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Chatterjee served as FERC's chair twice before his term expired in 2021. Prior to joining the commission, he advised U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on energy.
"After greenlighting oil and gas expansion at FERC, Chatterjee is now capitalizing off of attempts to undo those harms," Hannah Story Brown, a senior researcher in climate and governance at the Revolving Door Project, told Common Dreams. "It would have been far less costly to the public interest and the public purse if Chatterjee had helped stanch the flow of carbon pollution into our atmosphere when he was in the position to."
"After greenlighting oil and gas expansion at FERC, Chatterjee is now capitalizing off of attempts to undo those harms."
Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said that "the so-called 'carbon capture' industry relies on billions of dollars in giveaways from the federal government, so it should not be a surprise that a company like this would add a Beltway insider to its board of directors."
CarbonCapture Inc.'s statement on Chatterjee celebrates his "deep ties in Washington and across the industry," saying that "in his time on Capitol Hill and at FERC, he established a reputation as a bipartisan operator who built alliances and cut through red tape."
The company's CEO, Adrian Corless, said that Chatterjee's "deep understanding of the energy landscape in the U.S. and abroad will be incredibly important as we source large amounts of clean energy in the face of grid expansion challenges and bottlenecks."
The firm builds "deeply modular" direct air capture (DAC) machines, which "use solid sorbents that soak up atmospheric CO2 when cooled and release concentrated CO2 when heated," as its website details. "The captured CO2 can then be permanently stored underground or used to make synthetic fuels, low-carbon concrete, carbon black, or other industrial products that require clean CO2."
Stressing the need to "decarbonize the atmosphere as quickly as possible," Chatterjee said Wednesday that "CarbonCapture's groundbreaking, modular direct air capture machines have put our country on the fast track to scale a proven solution at the speed and cost necessary to make a meaningful impact."
Food & Water Watch agrees that the warming world requires swift and sweeping action on planet-heating pollution. Along with advocating for a rapid and just global phaseout of fossil fuels, the group prioritizes "calling foul on fake solutions" to the climate emergency.
"The fossil fuel industries are eager to tout carbon waste sequestration and direct air capture because they bolster the dominance of dirty energy sources like oil and gas," Walsh told Common Dreams. "This is why they are called 'false solutions'—they delay the necessary actions to get off fossil fuels."
Citing an International Energy Agency analyst in an article about the "major hurdles" that remain as DAC ramps up, Yale Environment 360reported last week that "about three-quarters of all globally captured CO2 (which comes mainly from industrial flue stacks) is currently being used for enhanced oil recovery," which involves injecting CO2 into wells to bury it and extract more oil.
As a pair of Walsh's colleagues detailed for Food & Water Watch's website last year, other issues with DAC include the technology's high energy needs, toxic solvents, and risky storage options.
"Carbon capture has a long history of failure in the real world, but these companies have had great success in securing billions in government handouts."
"Carbon capture has a long history of failure in the real world, but these companies have had great success in securing billions in government handouts," Walsh said. In terms of Chatterjee's appointment, he added that "this move is intended to make sure policymakers continue to make bad bets on carbon capture ever working."
As Story Brown pointed out, "Neil Chatterjee's prototypical spin of the revolving door, moving from pro-industry regulator to regulated industry, comes with added irony."
"As a regulator, he positioned himself as preferring market-based 'solutions' over government mandates, subsidies, and regulations," she explained. "But all that skepticism apparently vanished when he joined the carbon capture business, whose only hope of profitability comes from government subsidies like those in the Inflation Reduction Act."
Corless was among those who welcomed what Timecalled a "bonanza for the carbon capture industry" in the 2022 legislation. Shortly before President Joe Biden signed the bill, the CEO said that "it's going to make it easy for us to raise the capital to build the project earlier and to build it faster."
However, it's not just the government that is bankrolling CarbonCapture Inc. and similar ventures, as Story Brown noted.
"Neil Chatterjee hasn't left the lure of market magic behind," she said. "His firm has pre-sold millions in carbon removal credits so that energy-guzzling firms from Amazon to Aramco can greenwash their operations."
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"There is no time to spare in pulling back from this outrageous assertion by the State Department," said Center for American Progress president Patrick Gaspard.
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A longtime Democratic operative and current president of the Center for American Progress issued a scathing statement Tuesday criticizing the Biden administration for accepting the Israeli government's claim that it is adhering to international law with its catastrophic military assault on the Gaza Strip.
"The State Department's shocking assertion that the Netanyahu government is complying with international law in Gaza is a gross disregard of overwhelming evidence and a dangerous precedent in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy," said Patrick Gaspard, who previously served as executive director of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and U.S. ambassador to South Africa under the Obama administration.
"The stakes here are so high that the administration must be transparent and accountable in sharing with the American people all evidence that has led to this determination and the continued sale of offensive weapons to Israel," Gaspard argued, pointing to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's stated goal of imposing a "complete siege" on Gaza at the start of the assault, which is now in its sixth month with no end in sight.
Gaspard said that "every aspect" of Gallant's "edict" has "been on open display to the world," with famine, dehydration, and disease spreading across the enclave as Israel persists in obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid.
The CAP president's statement came after U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters earlier this week that the Biden administration has not found Israel "to be in violation of international humanitarian law, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance."
Miller's remarks followed a letter from Gallant assuring the Biden administration that Israel is complying with international law in its use of American weaponry—a written assurance that was required under a new White House policy.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, Miller clarified that the administration's assessment of Israel's compliance with international law is "ongoing" and has "not reached a definitive conclusion."
But Miller reiterated that "we have not reached the conclusion with respect to Israel that they have violated international humanitarian law."
"There is no time to spare in pulling back from this outrageous assertion by the State Department."
Leading human rights organizations and United Nations experts have concluded that Israel is guilty of grave violations of international humanitarian law—including the crime of genocide—and called for an immediate arms embargo.
Gaspard said Tuesday that "by its own imposed standards," the U.S. "cannot heedlessly deliver offensive weapons as the Israeli government continues to bombard and starve innocents on a mass scale."
"These actions have nothing to do with self-defense; they are clearly intended as collective punishment and are resulting in the complete devastation of Palestinians as a people," Gaspard added. "There is no time to spare in pulling back from this outrageous assertion by the State Department: An Israeli incursion into Rafah promises to bring only more death and devastation to civilians—and will make the administration complicit in one of the worst tramplings of human rights in this century."
Gaspard's statement is just the latest evidence that dissent against the Biden administration's unwavering support for Israel is spreading in establishment circles. Last week, dozens of former U.S. officials signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to consider restricting military aid to Israel, citing its mass killing of Gaza civilians.
On Wednesday, a U.S. State Department official resigned in protest of Biden's Gaza policy, saying in an interview that "trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible."
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