December 2017 Newsletter
Economic Facts & Figures
The gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" has continued to widen and the middle class continues to shrink. Consider these facts:
  • Since 2000, there has been 170% increase in the number of millionaires in the world.
  • Over the past 17 years, there has been a 5 time increase of "ultra-high net worth individuals." (those people who possess more than $50 million)
  • The world's richest 1% people own 50.1% of the global household wealth.

Credit Suisse 2017 Global Wealth Report

For ways of making your voice heard regarding policies that impact the poor and vulnerable, click here.
Resources
The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew – Three Women Search for Understanding

By Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver & Priscilla Warner. Weaves the story of three women, their three religions, and their quest to understand one another. Challenges readers to face the tough questions about their own religions. Read more.
For more on Religious Tolerance , click here .
What to Do About Gun Violence

A series of 7 videos featuring presentations at a symposium sponsored by the 7th Circuit Bar Association in Chicago. Topics include:
  • Welcome and Address
  • What is the Nature of Gun Violence? What Do the Data Tell Us?
  • What is the Scope of the Second Amendment?
  • State and Local Regulation of Firearms after Heller — A Local Case Study
  • What Can Be Done to Reduce Gun Deaths by Suicide?
  • Gun Violence: The Public Health Perspective
  • The Challenge to Stem Gun Violence — Education and Social Services Initiatives

For more on Gun Violence , click here .
A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

By Karen Armstrong. Distills the intellectual history of monotheism and traces the history of how people have perceived and experienced God, from the time of Abraham to the present — from classical philosophy and medieval mysticism to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the modern age of skepticism. Read more.
For more on Religious Tolerance, click here .
Chasing Ice
The story of environmental photographer James Balog’s mission to gather evidence of the changing planet called “The Extreme Ice Survey,” by using time-lapse cameras across the Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers. Received the 2014 News and Documentary Emmy award for Outstanding Nature Programming and has screened in more than 172 countries. See the trailer.
For more on the Environment, click here.


Barking to the Choir:
The Power of Radical Kinship
By Greg Boyle. Shares what three decades of working with gang members in Los Angeles has taught about faith, compassion, and the enduring power of kinship. Reveals how com­passion is transforming the lives of gang members and offers a snapshot into the challenges and joys of life on the margins. Invites readers to find kinship with one another and re-convinces them of their own goodness. Read more.
For more Justice resources, click here.
Two Nameless Bodies Washed Up on the Beach. Here Are Their Stories

A TED talk, featuring journalist Anders Fjellberg and photographer Tomm Christiansen who started a search for answers when two bodies wearing identical wetsuits washed ashore in Norway and the Netherlands. What they found and reported is that everybody has a name, everybody has a story and everybody is someone. Watch now.
For more on Refugees , click here.
Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice

By Paul Kivel. Offers a framework around neo-liberalism and interpersonal, institutional, and cultural racism, along with stories of resistance and white solidarity. Provides practical tools and advice on how white people can work as allies for racial justice, engaging the reader through questions, exercises, and suggestions for action, and includes a wealth of information about specific cultural groups such as Muslims, people with mixed heritage, Native Americans, Jews, recent immigrants, Asian Americans, and Latino/as. Read more.
For more on Racism, click here .
Strangers in the Land
By M. Daniel Carroll and the editors of Sojourners magazine, takes the point of view that every Christian is an "undocumented foreigner." Based on the book, Christians at the Border, this study guide provides a daily excerpt, a scripture on the same theme, a provocative question, and a prayer. Every seventh day is arranged for use with a small group, including a story-based group organizing model, worship suggestions, stimulating discussion questions, and action ideas.
For more on Immigration , click here.

Hungry World: What the World Eats

By Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. Profiles 30 families from around the world--including Bosnia, Chad, Egypt, Greenland, Japan, the United States, and France--and offers detailed descriptions of weekly food purchases; photographs of the families at home, at market, and in their communities; and a portrait of each family surrounded by a week's worth of groceries. Featuring photo-essays on international street food, meat markets, fast food, and cookery, this captivating chronicle offers a riveting look at what the world really eats. Read more.
For more on Hunger , click here.



Where Children Sleep
By James Mollison. Presents large-format photographs of children's bedrooms around the world--from the US, Mexico, Brazil, England, Italy, Israel and the West Bank, Kenya, Senegal, Lesotho, Nepal, China and India--alongside portraits of the children themselves. Each pair of photographs is accompanied by an extended caption that tells the story of each child: Kaya in Tokyo, whose proud mother spends $1,000 a month on her dresses; Bilal the Bedouin shepherd boy, who sleeps outdoors with his father's herd of goats; the Nepali girl Indira, who has worked in a granite quarry since she was three; and Ankhohxet, the Kraho boy who sleeps on the floor of a hut deep in the Amazon jungle. Read more.
For more on Housing , click here .
Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman
An award winning documentary narrated by Tom Brokaw, based on the book of the same name. Tells the story of heartland conservation figures such as Justin Knopf, a fifth-generation Kansas farmer revolutionizing industrial scale agriculture to rebuild the fertility, biodiversity and resilience of his soil, and Dusty Crary, a fourth-generation Montana rancher who forged alliances between cattlemen, federal agencies, hunters and environmental groups to protect the Rocky Mountain Front. Watch the trailer.
For more on the Environment , click here.
Myanmar's Enemy Within:
Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim 'Other'
By Frances Wade. Explores how the manipulation of identities by an anxious ruling elite has laid the foundations for mass violence, and how, in Myanmar’s case, some of the most respected and articulate voices for democracy have turned on the Muslim population at a time when the majority of citizens are beginning to experience freedoms unseen for half a century. Read more.
For more on Religious Tolerance , click here .

Love in a Time of Climate Change: Honoring Creation, Establishing Justice
By Sharon Delgrado. The book's premise is that love of God and neighbor in this time of climate change requires us to honor creation and establish justice for our human family, for future generations, and for all creation. Challenges readers to develop a loving response to climate change, which disproportionately harms the poor, threatens future generations, and damages God's creation. Creatively adapts John Wesley's theological method by using scripture, tradition, reason, and experience to explore the themes of creation and justice in the context of the earth's changing climate. By consciously employing these four sources of authority, readers discover a unique way to reflect on planetary warming theologically and to discern a faithful response. Read more.
For more on the Environment , click here .
To the Ends of the Earth
An award winning documentary that follows concerned citizens living at the frontiers of extreme oil and gas extraction, bearing witness to a global crossroads calling for human ingenuity to rebuild society at the end of the fossil fuel era. Watch the trailer.
For more on the Environment , click here .
Peace Works
A short video that features people at schools in Milwaukee sharing what they like about Marquette University's Peace Works program and how it has impacted them. Peace Works is a peace education program for public, parochial and alternative elementary, middle and high schools that focuses on conflict resolution, peer mediation, peace-building, social-emotional learning, and cognitive restructuring.
For more resources on Peace , click here .

Understanding Laudato Si
A 14 part video series, featuring Fr. Daniel P. Horan OFM, that introduces three models to creation that have arisen over the course of Christian history that can be used to set the context for approaching and understanding Pope Francis's teaching in his encyclical letter.
For more on the Environment , click here.
Upwardly Global
Works to eliminate employment barriers for skilled immigrants and refugees, and integrate this population into the professional U.S. workforce. Learn more.
For more on Immigration , click here .
For more on Refugees , click here .
 
Important Dates This Month

December 1st: Anniversary of the Arrest of Rosa Parks & World AIDS Day
December 7th: Anniversary of the Publication of Joy & Hope (Gaudium et Spes)
December 8th: Anniversary of the Closing of the Second Vatican Council
December 10th: Anniversary of the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
December 18th:  International Migrants Day

Individuals Honored This Month
(December 10th)
At its core, war is impoverishment. War’s genesis and ultimate end is in the poverty of our hearts. If we can realize that the world’s liberation begins within those troubled hearts, then we may yet find peace…What good has ever come from the slaughter of the innocents?
 (December 17th)
To change the world we must be good to those who cannot repay us.
(December 18th)
The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion.
(December 27th)
To understand the truth is to do the truth.
(December 27th)
We are collecting the people’s memories because we want to contribute to the
construction of a different country. This path was and continues to be full of risks,
but the construction of the kingdom of God entails risks, and only those who have the strength to confront those risks can be its builders.
Visit Our Website
We've added more links to our Biographies page including: Jane Addams, Craig Kielburger, Susan B Anthony, John Lewis, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Leila Janah. We've also added 35 more anniversaries to our Key Dates page, such as World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (Sept. 1), Native American Heritage Month (November), International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development (Dec. 5) and Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (May).
Since we launched our website 9 months ago, we've had over 4,700 visitors , from 91 countries. In addition, we email our newsletter to over 2,700 contacts around the country
each month.
25 Issues
2,000+ Resources:
Films, Publications, Organizations
Facts & Figures, Prayers, Quotes

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