Learn. Pray. Blog.

The news these days is flush with accounts of the proposed sale of Virginia’s post-prohibition monopoly of ABC stores. For generations, the Commonwealth has controlled liquor by the bottle through a state-based network of about 300 stores that do no advertising, rarely display signage, and still wrap bottles in a trademark brown paper bag. Governor Bob McDonnell wants to change that.

My friend Sen. John Chichester used to tell me that Virginia’s hold on ABC stores resulted in the state drinking in both tax and profit. In other words, liquor stores are another example of a well run government program, this time as an actual business. And a very profitable one at that! And those general fund dollars have been put to excellent use over the years, particularly in the area of mental health. Though the irony of liquor sales funding mental health programs is not lost.

While it is not yet clear what cocktail of agreements Gov. McDonnell may serve up at his special session of the General Assembly later this year, what is clear is that he will need to show how privatizing ABC stores will gin up new dollars for transportation, a perennial campaign issue for all rising-star politicians in the state. Suggested windfall numbers are in the hundreds of millions of dollars but no one can agree on how to actually get to those numbers.

And he will also need to show how the benefits of privatization outweigh the broad social costs. If privatization comes to Virginia it will mean many more drink stands than we have right now. An early estimate puts the number as high as 800. And it is unlikely they will be located next to the neighborhood Nordstrom. More likely you’ll find the new stores near the payday lenders. As another friend recently said to me: in your neighborhood they sell “spirits,” in mine, they sell “liquor.”

We speak a great deal about moral budgeting at the Virginia Interfaith Center. We know that budgets speak to our values as a society. The jury is out as to how moral it is to take dollars from alcohol sales and put them toward substance abuse programs. But one thing is clear, many of the moral voices that one would expect to hear from, the ones that tell the rest of us how we should be acting, and what our kids should be praying about and where they should be allowed to do it, sure are quiet about Gov. McDonnell’s ABC privatization ideas. Maybe the buzz from last November hasn’t worn off yet.

This is a guest post by the Rev. Greg West. Greg is pastor of the Puerto de Gracia Hispanic outreach at Grace Harbor United Methodist Church in Suffolk. This article was originally published in the April 2010 issue of the Virginia United Methodist Advocate and is used here with permission from the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Lloyd Bolt (center) "joined the great fiesta in the heavens one year ago," says the Rev. Greg West. Bolt is surrounded by some of his grateful amigos.

“Porque nuestra ciudadanía está en los cielos, de donde también esperamos ardientemente al Salvador, el Señor Jesucristo” — (Filipenses 3:20).

“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. — (Philippians 3:20).

After being appointed to start a church in north Suffolk in 2002, I often drove around praying for the people who might be a part of this new ministry. Some of the first people I saw were Hispanics working in the fields at a nearby tree nursery. I pulled in and introduced myself to some of the supervisors. They were helpful and eager for me to meet the workers. They also shared, “You’ve got to meet Lloyd Bolt. He works with the Hispanics around here.”

Friendships with the amigos happened quickly as they are so appreciative of any “gringo” who speaks some Spanish; and a partnership with Lloyd, a faithful Quaker brother, began.

The majority of our amigos come from Mexico and Guatemala on a government H2B visa, which enables them to work in the United States about nine months of every year. Over the last seven years we have gathered with them for fellowship, worship, teaching both the Scriptures and English. One of our goals in mission at Grace Harbor is to establish long-term relationships with brothers and sisters and churches in Latin America. I didn’t know exactly how this would work, but I knew it was God’s heart.

We have had a faithful team of friends who found it a blessing to share life together with the amigos. Lloyd Bolt often led the way as we connected the amigos with doctors and dentists, fought bedbug infestations, helped when the Hispanics were victims of crime, and met various other needs. Lloyd traveled to some of the cities and pueblos where the workers lived, always receiving a big welcome. He brought video greetings from their husbands, sons, brothers, cousins and friends. These always turned into large gatherings and celebrations. Then Lloyd would film the families in Mexico and play those videos here to a full house.

These were beautiful, moving and sometimes agonizing moments. I watched as fathers saw their newborn children for the first time via video. I saw expressions of love and caring touching the hearts of these men so far from home. I witnessed a broken-hearted wife with children in her arms appealing to her faraway husband to break off the affair. While mission was a strong focus of mine in seminary, I underestimated the power of simple acts of love to accomplish God’s mission in the world.

Our ministry with these hardworking amigos has sometimes brought controversy with people unconnected with Grace Harbor. When people say, “They should have to learn our language,” I reply, “First-generation immigrants to this country rarely master the language — whether they are Italian, Hmong or Latino. However, the second generation has no problem with English.” When people say, “They shouldn’t be here,” or “They are taking our jobs,” I ask them to try to imagine being in their shoes. “If you could move north to Canada and earn in one day what it would take you two weeks to earn in your country if you could even find a job, then would you go to Canada? What if also you saw that your children were hungry because of your inability to earn money, would you travel then, even if it were illegal?”

These are difficult issues, and as followers of Christ we cannot forget the command to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” A passage from the Old Testament that I lift up is:

“The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:34)

One of the greatest joys in being with our amigos is experiencing how the gospel transcends cultures, nationalities and geography! When a young man from Chiapas, Mexico, with dark skin and Mayan features trusts in Jesus to rescue him from his sins, new life comes just as it happens with all who trust in Christ! If we would see the sovereignty of God as well as the systemic injustice in so many of the people movements around the globe, then the church would mobilize to offer them Christ in word and deed.

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This is a guest post by Darren Rippy. Darren is a graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at the College of William & Mary. He is a summer policy fellow at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

Corey Stewart, the Chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, has been making news headlines over the past couple of months. Mr. Stewart became prominent in the national media particularly after Arizona signed the notorious immigration bill SB1070 into law. This is because Mr. Stewart is very outspoken in his desire for Virginia to follow in Arizona’s footsteps and pass nearly identical immigration legislation in the Commonwealth.

The particular legislation for which Mr. Stewart is advocating is called The Virginia Rule of Law Act. The Rule of Law Act would take a similar law that was passed in Prince William County in 2007, add a few new provisions to give it striking resemblance to Arizona’s SB1070, and make the entire Commonwealth of Virginia an unwelcoming place for immigrants, whether legal or illegal, to live. As is evident by the Act’s name, all this would be for the sake of upholding “the rule of law.”

Quotations marks are around “the rule of law” because I wonder what law(s) Mr. Stewart seeks to uphold? The growing consensus is that the current laws that make up our current immigration system are ineffective in promoting legal immigration into the United States. This is especially the case for unskilled immigrants who have no family relations in the US.

Furthermore, as Andrew Wainer discusses in his article “Settler, Immigrant, Alien,” laws change:

But even as fear of immigration grew, legal restrictions against the entry of Europeans were minimal, even for the poor. Ellis Island immigrants were so successful at adhering to U.S. immigration law largely because it barely existed. Of the 12 million immigrants who passed through Ellis Island, only 2 percent were denied entry to the United States. Upon arrival, the vast majority of immigrants — most of them poor and uneducated — spent several hours at Ellis Island before they were legally admitted to America.

The legality threshold for 19th- and 18th-century European immigrants is incomparable to the gauntlet of restrictions facing contemporary immigrants. The immigration bureaucracy has increased so that today’s immigrants—perhaps more educated and skilled than Europeans arriving a century ago—face unprecedented barriers. It can take years for a immigrant with family already in the United States to gain legal entry.

Mr. Wainer specifically demonstrates how laws concerning immigration have radically changed since our country’s beginnings. Often, these changes were a result of the exaggerated perception that the United States was subject to an “invasion” of immigrants of undesirable ethnicity and/or religion. As is common today, nativists during each previous episode of large flows of immigrants were inclined to blame these newcomers for causing an array of social ills. The result is that our immigration laws have become increasingly restrictive.

So, the question remains: Is it really worth passing an (immoral) law in Virginia that will further human suffering for the sole purpose of upholding a set of laws that are not properly functioning?

Yes, America is a country of laws. However, the purpose of these laws is to protect freedom, promote civil rights and equal treatment under the law, and to ensure that justice reigns throughout the land. When a set of laws fail to achieve these ideals, they must be challenged and changed. To uphold laws simply because they exist is short-sighted and can lead to unnecessary suffering or injustice.

In this spirit, I hope Virginians can see through the appeal to uphold “the rule of law,” oppose  The Virginia Rule of Law Act, and continue to urge their elected officials to seek a comprehensive, and just, solution to the challenges facing our very broken immigration system.

Rev. Crystal Sygeel wrote a moving op/ed which was published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on July 23, 2010 about her Native American roots and the current struggle of Virginia’s tribes to get federal recognition.

The only surviving photo I have of my great-great-grandmother, on my mother’s side, hangs in my parents’ house. She was a Native American. In the aging photo she stands next to her white husband on a windy hillside, her long braids slightly lifted in the wind.

Very little has been passed down through the oral history of our family about this woman. I understand that her presence in the family was awkward at best and avoided when possible. Despite this awkwardness she raised several children whose children’s children raise families of their own. However, in comparison to my Euro-American ancestors, her life stories are all but unknown. Amid the wealth of blessings and lessons passed through the generations of my family, I have no way of knowing which gifts can be traced to her.

Read more…

Holladay showed our Blank Street Boys around his neighborhood in downtown Newport News. They shared two days with Holladay and he was willing to sit down over lunch and tell his story.

Holladay from Blank Street on Vimeo.

This is a guest post by Darren Rippy. Darren is a graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at the College of William & Mary. He is a summer policy fellow at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

Virginia’s Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, announced recently that Virginia will be joining eight other states in filing an amicus brief in support of Arizona’s tough immigration law SB1070.

In his statement, Attorney General Cuccinelli discussed his amazement that the federal government has decided to sue Arizona. While discussing the “joint federal-state cooperative immigration enforcement program” that Congress has created over the years, the Attorney General failed to address any of the troubling aspects of Arizona’s new law, such as the potential for racial profiling that SB1070 creates.

Read more…

Linnie in Lynchburg is a mother of two and is currently going through a Chapter 13 bankruptcy after being scammed by a local used car dealer.

Linnie from Blank Street on Vimeo.

This is a guest post by Darren Rippy. Darren is a graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at the College of William & Mary. He is a summer policy fellow at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

Of the 562 federally recognized native tribes, not one is a Virginia tribe. Currently there are six tribes (Chickahominy, Chickahominy Eastern Division, Monacan, Nansemond, Rappahannock, and Upper Mattaponi) in Virginia who are only one legislative step away from finally receiving the federal recognition that is long overdue. A sustained 10-year partnership between the Virginia Council of Churches and the Virginia Indian Tribal Alliance for Life has made this near achievement possible. Unfortunately, the long road traveled may be all for naught if the Senate bill, S1178, granting the tribes federal recognition does not reach the Senate floor for a vote before the August recess. If this recognition does not happen during the current session, it may take another generation to garner the near unanimous support for S1178.

Read more…

Says Viola in Lynchburg. She was interviewed as part of our Blank Street Project. She continued, “regardless of our human condition, we are blessed by almighty God.”

Viola from Blank Street on Vimeo.

Viola lives in low-income housing on a single social security check each month. She qualifies for daily deliveries from Meals on Wheels.  She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 17 years ago. For Christmas, she only asks for postage to send handmade cards to everyone she knows.

The Arizona law has reignited the immigration debate and it has special significance for Virginians now that the law will show up at the General Assembly in the upcoming session. An article in the Catholic Virginian eloquently states the need for reform:

A system that causes families to be ripped apart as undocumented workers are placed in detention centers for civil (not criminal) offenses or deported is broken and in need of reform.

A system in which the number of available visas doesn’t match the demand for labor, especially in the agricultural, construction and service industries, is broken and in need of reform.

A system that compels desperate human beings to risk death to enter our country illegally to perform menial work for less than minimum wage is in need of reform. Let’s face it, they are exploited by employers willing to ignore labor laws in exchange for cheap labor.

A system that results in state and local governments, frustrated by the lack of national legislative action, adopting measures directed toward immigrants is broken and in need of reform.

A system that strips individuals of their human dignity is broken and in need of reform.

This article was submitted by Jimmy Culpeper from Chesapeake. Jimmy sheds light on a very crucial point. Too many people are focused on closing the borders. However, this won’t solve because almost half of illegal immigrants in American entered legally.

We need to fix our broken immigration system, not put a band-aid on the rash. We need to reform our borders AND our visa allocation process so that people can actually have an opportunity to come here legally. We need to reform our detention policies so we’re not breaking apart families. We need to make sure illegal immigrants in America earn their way to citizenship instead of living in the shadows.

Mulhi owns a small business in Franklin VA. He was interviewed as part of our Blank Street Project.

Mulhi (Frank) from Blank Street on Vimeo.

This is a guest post by Darren Rippy. Darren is a graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at the College of William & Mary. He is a summer policy fellow at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

Inscription on the Statue of Liberty

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

‘ With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Read more…

A video from our Blank Street Project:

Frank from Blank Street on Vimeo.

Frank recently lost his job at International Paper when the mill was shut down last fall.

Well we knew it would happen. Despite Gov. Bob McDonnell’s disapproval of Arizona’s un-American & anti-immigrant law, there is a full-fledged campaign to bring this law into our Commonwealth:

Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chair, Corey Stewart, today announced the “Virginia Rule of Law Act” on WINA’s The Schilling Show.

Prince William County is also the place infamous for passing an Arizona-like Anti-Immigrant bill of its own that decimated it’s economy.

Doug Madison, the owner of Mailbox Junction and a Stewart supporter, said he believed the immigration issue was just that: an immigration issue. But a whopping 40 percent loss after the first month of the crackdown left Madison with faltering support for the county leadership and scrambling for ways to compensate.

Read more…

This is a guest post by Darren Rippy. Darren is a graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at the College of William & Mary. He is a summer policy fellow at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

Arizona State Flag

An Explanation of Arizona’s “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act”.

On April 23, 2010, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law Senate Bill 1070, “Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.” On April 30, 2010, Governor Brewer signed into law House Bill 2162, which amends certain sections of Senate Bill 1070. The act becomes effective 90 days after the last day of the legislative session, which will be July 29, 2010.

Below I’ve broken down what the law actually does, section-by-section. This type of legislation will almost certainly show up at the 2011 General Assembly session in Virginia so it’s is important for us to understand what it will mean for us.

SUMMARY, SB 1070 will:

• Make it a state crime to be in the country illegally
• Require immigrants to have proof of their immigration status
• Require police officers to “make a reasonable attempt” to determine the immigration status of a person if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that he or she is an illegal immigrant, unless it would hinder or obstruct an investigation, and race, color and national origin are not to be only factors police officers consider
• Allow lawsuits against local or state government agencies that have policies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws
• Target the hiring of illegal immigrants as day laborers by prohibiting people from stopping a vehicle on a road to offer employment and by prohibiting a person from getting into a stopped vehicle on a street to be hired for work if it impedes traffic

Below is the section-by-section breakdown:

Read more…

Lord God,
We have sinned against you (by allowing others to destroy your creation);
We have done evil in your sight (and now have no idea how to fix the problem).
We are sorry and repent (though it is unlikely we will really deal with our addiction).
Have mercy on us according to your love.
Wash away our wrongdoing and cleanse us from our sin.
(Forgive us).

This is a guest post by Darren Rippy. Darren is a graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at the College of William & Mary. He is a summer policy fellow at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

Arizona’s controversial immigration law has garnered intense scrutiny — and refocused our attention around the issue of immigration reform and illegal immigrants.

Public discourse concerning the law has been fiery and politically divisive. Critics have labeled it as racist, xenophobic, and possibly unconstitutional. As usual, the media has depicted the issue as a strictly red-blue, left-right divide. The result has been the usual conjuring up of loaded images concerning immigration, which is mainly that undocumented persons are here to do America harm and must be kept out.

During an interview on WTOP, Gov. Bob McDonnell voiced skepticism concerning particular aspects of the Arizona law:

I’m concerned about the whole idea of carrying papers and always having to be able to prove your citizenship. That brings up some shades of some other regimes that weren’t necessarily helpful to democracy.

Prominent faith leaders have called into question the morality of Arizona’s new law, and the enforcement-only strategy in general. Cardinal Joseph Mahony, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, asserts,

The tragedy of the law [Arizona’s new law] is its totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources. That is not only false, the premise is nonsense.

Jim Wallis, President and CEO of Sojourners, has called the Arizona law a social and racial sin. He explains in a recent blog post,

We all want to live in a nation of laws, and the immigration system in the U.S. is so broken that it is serving no one well. But enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. And enforcement of this law would force us to violate our Christian conscience, which we simply will not do. It makes it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona.

Read more…

A great article by Saif Khan, an Iraq War veteran, who served as a combat engineer in Mosul, Iraq, as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004–2005. He served in the Virginia Army National Guard for eight years.

As an Iraq War veteran and an immigrant, I’d like you to think about the immigrant troops holding the line in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan. The second soldier to die in Iraq was an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant; he was awarded citizenship posthumously.

…

By creating an accountable, fair and realistic path to citizenship, we could potentially add tens of thousands of new service members, thus providing relief to our men and women in uniform and allowing those who consider the United States their home the opportunity to defend its values abroad.

Our leaders have a solemn duty to honor this history of sacrifice by immigrant servicemen and women and their families.

On this solemn day, we must think about all those who have sacrificed. Elaine in Roanoke over at Blue Virginia has a great blog post about the history of Memorial Day:

Perhaps we all would benefit from following then-President Clinton’s May 2000 resolution asking all Americans to pause for one minute at 3 p.m. on Memorial Day in order to “consider the true meaning of this holiday. Memorial Day represents one day of national awareness and reverence, honoring those Americans who died while defending our Nation and its values.”

We encourage faithful Virginians to take a few minutes at 3:00 P.M. today to pray:

Merciful God, we honor those who have fallen in war and our hearts are with loved ones overseas. We ask for your blessing to bring them home unharmed. May your grace and mercy give rest to those who made it home, but left a piece of themselves elsewhere. Above all, give us courage & wisdom to work for peace & justice so fewer and fewer of our best should have to leave for war. For this we pray, Amen.

How do we, in honor of such sacrifice, build a world that is safer? That has less war and violent conflict? Since September 11, 2001 there have been over 5,000 deployed from the Virginia National Guard alone, plus thousands more who are active duty Army, Navy, Air Force & Marine Corp. How do establish justice and peace in ways that reduce violent conflict to only where it is absolutely necessary?

Valerie Dixon at Sojourners talks about the importance of having a vision for peace and never forgetting peace when we think of war:

We cannot bring the vision to fruition if we do not believe that such is possible.  Rather than acting in faith, we go with what we know.  We know human fear, greed, and will to power.  We know the bluster of ultimatum.  We know the will to vengeance.  We know less of love, generosity, the will to cooperation, and forgiveness.  However, these virtues are not completely unknown.  They are not impossible to live and to expand to the level of international conflict.

I’ll end with words from one of our most celebrated veterans:

“Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Interfaith Center has been a champion on the issue of reforming predatory lending in Virginia for several years. The issue of pay day lending and car-title lending is now getting national attention:

“Our loan is $1.50 per hundred per day, so after 5 days, $7.50,” Berry says. “It would be $107.50 is what they owe back.”

That’s an annual interest rate of 547 percent. A year after taking out the loan, you’d owe more than five times what you originally borrowed.

The predatory lender mentioned in the article above says all that needs to be said:

Berry says he would never take out a payday loan

During the 2010 legislative session, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation to regulate car title lending in Virginia. Although far from ideal, the measure is a significant step forward for low and moderate income consumers. For starters, the bill closes the open-end credit loophole to car title lenders and establishes a new code section for their product. The bill also requires car title lenders to be licensed and regulated by the State Corporation Commission.

Equally important, the legislation sets multiple parameters for individual loan transactions. It establishes a minimum loan term of 120 days, a maximum loan term of one year, and limits loan size to 50 percent of a vehicle’s fair market value. The measure also requires car title loans to be closed-end transactions and mandates repayment in substantially equal monthly installments of principal and interest. Additionally, the bill prohibits refinancing, renewals, or roll-overs. If a borrower defaults, the lender’s only recourse is to repossess the vehicle.

The glaring flaw of Senate Bill 606 is that it continues to allow car title lenders to charge triple-digit annual interest rates, as high as 264 percent. Even this, however, is a marginal step up from the status quo where annual interest rates range from 300 to 360 percent. So, on balance, Senate Bill 606 is a measure of progress for consumers.