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April 2017 Newsletter
 
Important April Dates

Resources
We've added many resources to our website recently, including these films:

The trailer to the Academy Award winning documentary, White Helmets, which highlights the experiences of the volunteer medics who are trying to help the civilians caught up in the Syrian civil war. Watch now.

Two Worlds of Wealth, a TED talk featuring Susie Trieschmann, sharing her story of the founding of Curt’s Cafe. Watch now.
The trailer to Don't Call Me a Saint -- the story of  Dorothy Day, who at the height of the Great Depression, created what would become a worldwide peace and social justice movement, known as the Catholic Worker.  Watch now.
The trailer to The Uncondemned -- the story of a group of young international lawyers and activists who fought to make rape a crime of war, and the Rwandan women who came forward to testify and win justice. Watch now.
The trailer to The Armor of Light, which follows the journey of an Evangelical minister, who is an anti-abortion activist and fixture on the political far right, trying to find the moral strength to preach about the growing toll of gun violence in America breaking with orthodoxy by questioning whether being pro-gun is consistent with being pro-life. Watch now.
People Celebrated This Month
Helen Prejean (April 21st)

"Every human being is worth more than the worst thing they’ve ever done. All life has dignity, guilty life too."

  Joan Chittister OSB  (April 26th)
"I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think that in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that? Because if you don’t want any tax money to go to these things, that’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."
  Coretta Scott King (April 27th)
"Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others."
John Muir (April 27th)
"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, one finds it attached to the rest of the world."
Current Issue
  The Federal Budget
The Federal government is soon going to consider a new budget. The U.S. budget (like any other) is a moral document -- reflecting our values. Higher priorities are funded and lower priorities are not.

For example, Education currently receives about 4% of the total budget. The following receive less than 1%:

Foreign Aid  (.6%)
Maternal Health (.01%)
Nutrition Programs (.003%)
Aid for Orphans & Displaced Children (.0005%)
HIV/AIDS Programs: (.1%)
Malaria & Tuberculosis Treatment (.02%)
Development Assistance (.06%)
International Disaster Assistance (.04%)
Migration & Refugee Assistance (.08%)
The U.N. Millennium Challenge (.02%)
International Peacekeeping (.07%)
Food for Peace (.03%)
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (.1%)

Meanwhile, a 10% increase to Defense and cuts to these programs are being proposed.

For more information, click here.

About Us
Vic & Mary Doucette are members of St. Francis Xavier parish in Wilmette, Illinois, where they have helped coordinate the social justice ministry for the past 10 years. They are JustFaith grads and very active in the community -- volunteering with local organizations as well as doing service work in countries around the world. Vic has spent most of his career working for the church at the parish, diocesan and national levels.

Please send any comments or suggestions to contact@socialjusticeresourcecenter.org.
Thanks!
 contact@socialjusticeresourcecenter.org
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