Missionary Renegade: Groundswell: A Victory for Ravi, but the Fight Continues; Immigration Activists Targeted; and more Groundswell - Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, New York, United States

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Groundswell: A Victory for Ravi, but the Fight Continues; Immigration Activists Targeted; and more Groundswell - Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, New York, United States

Groundswell: A Victory for Ravi, but the Fight Continues; Immigration Activists Targeted; and more

Groundswell - Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, New York, United States

Court Orders Release of Ravi Ragbir As Community Continues to Call for An End to the Targeting of Activists
"I am so thrilled that Ravi will be home with me, as he always should have been. Now the fight is to make sure Ravi can remain here with his family and continue his work to support immigrant rights in the United States." Read more.
Support Ravi Ragbir Justice!

Press Release: Federal Court Orders Release of Detained Immigrant Rights Leader Ravi Ragbir As Community Continues to Call for An End to the Targeting of Activists
New York, NY – A federal court judge today ordered the immediate release of nationally recognized immigrant rights leader Ravi Ragbir. Mr. Ragbir, Executive Director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, was detained on January 11, 2018, at a routine ICE check-in in New York City.
Judge Katherine B. Forrest, who presided over the case, held that ICE violated Mr. Ragbir’s due process rights by his “abrupt and by all counts unnecessary detention.” “Taking such a man, and there are many such men and women like him, and subjecting him to what is rightfully understood as no different or better than penal detention is certainly cruel,” wrote Judge Forrest. “We as a country need and must not act so. The Constitution commands better.”
The New York University School of Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic represents Mr. Ragbir in his lawsuit. Brittany Castle and Jeremy “Cody” Cutting, who presented the case on behalf of Mr. Ragbir with clinic supervisors Alina Das and Jessica Rofé at today’s hearing, stated, “Thousands of our community members live and work in this country with removal orders just like Mr. Ragbir. We are pleased that Judge Forrest recognizes that this slip of paper erases neither their constitutional rights nor their humanity.”
Mr. Ragbir, who received his greencard in 1994, was previously detained by ICE for nearly two years when he was placed in removal proceedings in 2006 for an old wire fraud conviction. He was released from immigration detention in 2008 when ICE determined that he was not a flight risk or danger to the community. Following his release, Mr. Ragbir became a community activist and currently leads a coalition of over 150 faith based groups that advocate for immigrant rights.
“The judge’s decision restores my faith in the power of our institutions to protect the rights of people facing such a cruel and inhumane system,” said Amy Gottlieb, wife of Mr. Ragbir and an immigrant rights advocate with American Friends Service Committee. “I am so thrilled that Ravi will be home with me, as he always should have been. Now the fight is to make sure Ravi can remain here with his family and continue his work to support immigrant rights in the United States.”
In the days since Mr. Ragbir’s detention, a growing number of community organizations and elected officials have questioned ICE’s motives in targeting Mr. Ragbir. Last week, nearly 30 Congressional representatives and nearly 1,800 community organizations and private individuals sent letters to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen condemning the targeting or Mr. Ragbir and other immigrant activists by ICE.
The spectre of political motivations was felt in the courtroom as the parties debated why ICE had taken Mr. Ragbir into custody after previously recognizing his contributions to the community and his pending legal challenges to his removal for so many years. In a statement following the hearing, Das explained, “Detention can never be used to silence dissent. Mr. Ragbir is a husband, father, and community leader who has worked tirelessly to advocate for justice in our immigration system. There was simply no legitimate basis to detain him.”
Mr. Ragbir has a challenge to his underlying conviction pending in federal court in New Jersey and a motion to reopen his removal proceedings before the Board of Immigration Appeals, neither of which have yet been adjudicated. “We have been pursuing justice for fundamental errors in Mr. Ragbir’s criminal and immigration proceedings for several years,” said Rofé. “We will continue to fight for his day in court on these claims as the community calls for an end to the pursuit of Mr. Ragbir’s deportation and the targeting of other activists.”
Mr. Ragir’s legal team and wife traveled to the facility after the hearing and anticipate that he will be released later today.
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COINTELPRO 2.0: Targeting Immigration Activists—There is a Better Way
Out of one side of our mouths, leaders speak of freedom and out of the other side of their mouths, they act in terms of freedom only for some. Read more.

COINTELPRO 2.0: TARGETING IMMIGRATION ACTIVISTS — THERE IS A BETTER WAY by Caitlin Breedlove and Rev. John Vaughn
Cointelpro was a FBI program that conducted surveillance and set the context and framework for the assassination of Black freedom leaders in the 1960s. The purpose was to destabilize the growing social movements that were fighting for Black equality. They were movements that were crossing race, class and gender that challenged our government, businesses and those to adhered to practices that treated Black people as second class citizens to renounce and change such practices. The fact that our government planned and executed such a strategy of infiltration and deception was horrifying to us. Out of one side of our mouths, leaders spoke of freedom and out of the other side of their mouths, they strategized and acted in terms of freedom for only certain segments of the population.
Today, it looks like the Federal government has re-instituted this strategy, this time focused on leaders within the immigration rights movement. One one hand, we speak with pride about being a country built by immigrant labor and ingenuity. On the other hand, we punish and tear apart families because we have criminalized the desire for immigrants of today to live that same dream.
Already this year, two well-known immigrant rights organizers in New York were detained by ICE, both very active in the work of faith-rooted immigrant rights and sanctuary work. One, Jean Montrevil, was deported after decades of living and organizing in the United States. The other, Ravi Ragbir, had been transferred to Florida and then back to New York City due to immense public outcry; he remains in detention. Just last week, Scott Warren of the humanitarian organization No More Deaths in Tucson, Arizona, was arrested and charged with up to 5 years in prison by the Department of Justice. They say he is being charged with “smuggling”: otherwise known to people of faith and moral courage as providing food and water to dehydrated and starving people in the desert. Otherwise known to many of us as being a person of faith, a person of conscience.
Fear, silence, and repression are shaping and driving public policy. As human beings, we do not do our best work when we are afraid. As people of faith and moral courage, our traditions call on us to practice hospitality and show unconditional love. Fear, silence, and repression are not loving actions.
Our calls to action include:
(1) Petition the government to stop targeting immigration activists who are working out of their deepest convictions. Intimidation and fear mongering is not what we want or expect from our government
(2) Broaden our analysis as to why people are seeking to come to the United States: what is causing people to get in rowboats to cross an Ocean, climb under fences, stand in lines at US Embassies throughout the world, and
(3) Summon and engage the American culture of ingenuity and problem-solving, particularly for those of us who come from communities that have made a way out of no way.
As a Country, we have to use our skills and problem-solving to not get mired in a frame and approach that criminalizes those who are seeking a better life for themselves and their families. We must understand, articulate and act in ways that embrace what a just and vibrant society and economy really look like. Creating a new, loving and just approach to immigration is not easy. If it was, it would have already been done. We call on public and private sector leaders to lean into our American “know how” and do figure out a way forward that is not driven by fear or tearing families and communities apart.
It also is not lost on us that the majority of those being targeted are leaders in communities of color who are claiming power and challenging systems to be more just, fair and compassionate. These are leaders who are calling us to our higher selves in a moment of repression, cynicism, and hopelessness for many of us. The core beliefs in both of our faith traditions call us to a shared spiritual imperative of love, hospitality, and courage in the face of injustice. We have to ask: When leaders can be targeted and punished severely in retaliation to their organizing and seeking to be treated fairly, what comes next?
In the meantime, people of faith and moral courage, the call to all of us is the stand against fear-driven policies and actions that target those seeking a better life for themselves and their families. To not do so challenges the very core of what our faith traditions are all about.
To find out how you can help contact one of these groups or another immigration rights organization in your town. New Sanctuary Coalition, Mijente, and No Más Muertes (No More Deaths)
Rev. John Vaughn is Executive Vice President at Auburn and Caitlin Breedlove is Vice President for Movement Leadership

Happy New Year for the Trees
"Tu b’Shevat is the only Jewish holiday that deeply connects us to the environment, to where our food comes from, and to the environment that we live in." Read more.
Tu b’Shevat is the only Jewish holiday that deeply connects us to the environment, to where our food comes from, and to the environment that we live in.
It is an opportunity to reflect on what Jewish tradition teaches us about how we connect to the physical world that we live in and it gives us an opportunity to refresh our commitment to the environmental justice work that is happening in our own country and around the world connected to climate.
As a people, Jews have a history of being nomadic as well as having a homeland. We have lived in many climates and in many different regions around the world over a few thousand years.
These climates and these regions shaped our tradition and who we are as Jews.
Now, we know that we – as human beings – also shape the climates and the lands that we live in.
As we continue to shape our traditions and the climate, I believe that we ought to be guided by the traditions of our ancestors in stewardship, reflection, and connection.
America can feel big and our history can feel long but our actions today and each day have impacts that will be felt in the future.
I first joined the environmental movement in the early 1990’s as a college student in Houston, home to the largest chemical refining complex in North America. I learned that American faith communities were rightly blamed for attitudes toward the earth that were focused on humanity’s role to “subdue” and “dominate.” But as our impact on the environment worsened, faith communities turned around and started to join the growing environmental movement.
Just in the last two decades, American Jews began to participate in, and even help to lead, American environmental movements. As we observe Tu b’Shevat tonight and tomorrow, we should celebrate that inspiring work. And we should recommit, because there is always room to do even more.
This year we have reached out to our friends and partners to learn about how they understand this holiday.
If you haven’t read their earlier Voices pieces, I encourage you to do it now!
From Nigel Savage at Hazon, guides on mindfully reconnecting to the world.
From our friends at Bayit, everything you need to host a Tu b’Shevat seder tonight.
Rabbi Justus Baird is the Dean at Auburn Seminary.

We Support Ravi! Ravi is back home but he still needs support to stop his deportation. We the undersigned, request that ICE extend Ravi Ragbir’s request for prosecutorial discretion. We need Ravi here in New York City. He is our ally, our mentor, our advocate, our friend, our family. He is vital to our community's well-being.

Release Eliseo back to his family. On January 11, 2018, ICE detained the husband of Sanctuary leader Ingrid Encalada Latorre. Eliseo is the breadwinner for his family and has supported Ingrid as she fought her deportation. Nothing new has happened in Eliseo’s life. There was no reason for ICE to target him now.

Latest Episode of Fortification: Spirtiual Sustenance for Movement Leadership
Caitlin Breedlove speaks to adrienne marie brown about the process of getting out of the way to bring her book, Emergent Strategy, into being. Listen now.
Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
The Souls of Poor Folk: Auditing America 50 Years After the Poor People’s Campaign Challenged Systemic Racism, Poverty, the War Economy/Militarism, Ecological Devastation and Our National Morality.
Read the report now.
Guide for Spiritual and Emotional Care During Counter-Actions to White Supremacist Hate Rallies
Learn how chaplains can work side by side with local organizers to care for and keep safe those who showed up at counter-protests and a community picnic to bravely resist the Neo-Nazis' message from our friends Faith Matters Network and Open Table Nashville.
Read the guide now.

Evaluating our Spiritual Relationship to the Land: An Evening with Dallas Goldtooth Feb. 15, 6-8pm ET
There is a problem with the way we relate to the land and to each other. Join us for a conversation at the intersections of environmental justice, feminism, indigenous rights, activism, and ritual. This event is free to attend online or in-person. RSVP Now.

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