Social Justice Tag: Nonviolence

August 2024

Articles from Mercy:

• Critical Considerations: What is Project 2025 all about? (Karen Donahue, RSM)
• Working to stop weapon exports to Haiti (Angie Howard-McParland; Institute Justice Team)
• Beyond Voting: Participating in Elections, part 2 (Rose Marie Tresp, RSM; Institute Justice Team)

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What is Project 2025 all about?

Karen Donahue, RSM

Although it was introduced more than a year ago, Project 2025 has come under heightened scrutiny over the past few weeks. This is due to presidential candidate Donald Trump’s efforts to distance himself from the project (even though many of the persons involved have close ties to the former president and his administration); and vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s authoring the forward to a new book by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the lead organization behind Project 2025. Roberts’s book was scheduled to be published in September 2025, but the publication date has been pushed back until after the elections.

At the heart of Project 2025 is the over 900-page Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, a plan to radically overhaul the U.S. government to bring it in line with conservative values. This document is just the latest in a series of Heritage Foundation mandates going back to Ronald Reagan’s first administration in 1981.

The following resources may be helpful for anyone who wants to learn more about Project 2025 and its impact on just about every aspect of life in the United States and beyond.

Media Matters for America has produced a 67-page guide to Project 2025 that addresses a range of issues, including the project’s ties to Donald Trump, a look at what’s at stake, and brief descriptions of the key players and partner organizations. It also examines the impact of Project 2025’s policy recommendations on a number of issues, including justice and civil rights; labor; the economy; climate; immigration; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and the military. Of special interest in light of our Critical Concerns are the sections on climate (page 28) and immigration (page 33).

Snopes, a major online fact-checking organization, has put out a fact sheet which provides a helpful overview of Project 2025, including a summary of its four major components. Snopes goes on to examine in greater detail some of the project’s proposals, its ties to Donald Trump, and the forces behind Project 2025.

Both Media Matters for America and Snopes noted that they reached out to the Heritage Foundation with questions but did not receive a response.

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Working to stop weapon exports to Haiti

Angie Howard-McParland; Institute Justice Team

In our work on the Critical Concern of nonviolence, the Mercy Justice Team engages a broad spectrum of advocacy and education on everything from nuclear weapons and the Pentagon budget to personal peacemaking and nonviolence language. We are also deeply involved in gun violence prevention, both on a domestic level – as the U.S. surgeon general recently declared firearm violence a public health crisis – and on an international scale, as this emergency is exported throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Our recent work on U.S. exports of small arms and ammunition to Haiti highlights the importance of this work and offers opportunities to get involved.

Our working group – consisting of the Mercy Justice Team, Nuns Against Gun Violence, the Quixote Center, the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth, and the Justice Coalition of Religious – began visioning a project in early spring, as each of these groups has a history or current work in Haiti. The bloodshed and destabilization were rapidly increasing, with armed gangs controlling much of the country’s infrastructure, and food insecurity and extreme poverty reaching record levels. Guns and ammunition are not manufactured in Haiti, but flow into the country primarily from the United States due to a combination of weak gun laws in several states and insufficient oversight of weapons smuggling through the port of Miami. Our hope was to mobilize faith-based organizations and partner groups to participate in a joint action to first learn more about the crisis and then to call on Congress and the Department of Homeland Security to take the necessary actions to stop this flow of arms from the U.S to Haiti and the rest of the region.

The first step consisted of organizing and creating awareness. We were able to secure 35 co-sponsoring organizations – including congregations of women religious, faith-based organizations, and Haitian diaspora partners – to come together as part of this project, hosting a call with these groups at the end of June as we planned our next steps of education and advocacy.

In July, we hosted a webinar with United Nations Haiti expert William O’Neill and staff from the office of Haiti Caucus co-chair Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. With over 500 people registered and more than 300 attending live, it was clear there was interest and enthusiasm to respond to the trafficking of illegal arms from the U.S. to Haiti and to call on the U.S. government to take action. You can watch the recording in English, Spanish, or Haitian Creole.

And now we are moving on to convert this education into action. We are creating the opportunity for participants to contact key members of Congress and the Biden administration on September 25^th and 26^th, either in person with us in Washington, D.C. or with letters, phone calls, and virtual meetings. These dates were chosen to dovetail with the Gun Violence Prevention Summit, taking place September 23–24, to continue creating partnerships between faith-based groups and the larger gun violence prevention movement, as well as to encourage attendance at both events for those able to travel.

For those interested in participating virtually or in-person in Washington D.C., please register here and share with others, encouraging them to support this vital life-saving work. You can also use our recent Mercy action alert asking the White House and Congress to support legislation that can stop the illegal flow of weapons, and read more about the priority bills we are supporting in this coalition here.

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Beyond Voting: Participating in Elections, part 2

Rose Marie Tresp, RSM; Institute Justice Team

In a recent pastoral visit to Trieste, Pope Francis states that “indifference is a cancer of democracy, a non-participation”, so he encourages us “to participate so that democracy may resemble a healed heart. … Let us not be deceived by easy solutions. Let us instead be passionate about the common good. … Democracy is not an empty box; rather, it is linked to the values of the person, fraternity, and integral ecology. … As Catholics, in this context, we cannot be content with a marginal or private faith.”

We can participate in the political process during the election season without being partisan in several important ways.

First, by participating in non-partisan voter registration or turnout processes, which may include educating people on the security of the voting process itself. These are state level laws and processes but national groups such as Vote411 from the League of Women Voters will link to each state’s information. Voter ID laws have changed in many states. Free voter ID information cards in English or Spanish can be obtained through VoteRiders for each state by non-profit, non-partisan organizations. These can also be downloaded. Citizens who need assistance in getting the proper documentation for a voter ID – even financial assistance – can contact the VoteRiders free help webpage.

Another process to get people to the polls, especially those who do not usually vote, is campaigns using postcards, text messaging, or phone banking. Center for Common Ground has a postcard campaign called Reclaim our Vote. This organization also has opportunities to text bank and phone bank.

The Brennan Center includes many articles about elections, including articles about misinformation, gerrymandering, voter suppression, the influence of money, and artificial intelligence.

Poll chaplain is a new role, with training being offered to help provide a calming and moral presence to vulnerable voters, such as the elderly, disabled, youth, and other disenfranchised citizens, since violence is being threatened at the polls in many states during the 2024 elections. If this is something you’re interested in, you can learn more from the Turn Out Sunday site. This will only be offered in the following states: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

There are numerous ways that we can participate in political processes in a non-partisan manner:

• Educate voters by passing out information on voting requirements and/or non-partisan voter guides at churches, food pantries, farmers’ markets, and other venues;
• Support, oppose, or host a community conversation on a ballot measure;
• Write op-eds or letters to the editor on the importance of voting;
• Assist those who need support with voter registration or obtaining voter IDs;
• Drive non-drivers to their voting site; and
• Provide water to voters waiting in line when long waits are anticipated (and as the law permits).

“Politics itself is a preeminent priority. Politics and the political process is something that we must defend. The reason that we must defend politics is because, without it, we cannot hope to achieve justice or peace. Politics is how justice and peace are built in the world. Catholics cannot pursue our conscientious prudential judgements considering the consistent ethic (of life) without a political system that is open to participation.” from A Consistent Ethic of Life, by Steven P. Millies, pages 95, 96

For more information and continued updates go to the Mercy Justice All Things Election 2024 web page.

Please feel free to e-mail justice@sistersofmercy.org for other assistance.

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