Just News
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Sunday, August 2, 2020
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We Pray in Solidarity
Dear Jesus,
Our journey through life is long and hard. We cannot make this trip alone; we must walk together on the journey. You promised to send us a helper, your Spirit. Help us to see your Spirit in those you send to journey with us.
In the refugee family, seeking safety from violence, Let us see your Spirit.
In the migrant worker, bringing food to our tables, Let us see your Spirit.
In the asylum-seeker, seeking justice for himself and his family, Let us see your Spirit.
In the unaccompanied child, traveling in a dangerous world, Let us see your Spirit.
Teach us to recognize that as we walk with each other, You are present.
Teach us to welcome not only the strangers in our midst but the gifts they bring as well: the invitation to conversion, communion, and solidarity.
This is the help you have sent: we are not alone. We are together on the journey, and for this we give you thanks. Amen.
From Immigration Through the Lens of Faith
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Solidarity Across Borders Campaign
With migrant communities facing increased marginalization and vulnerability, the need for solidarity has taken on a newfound sense of urgency. The Kino Border Initiative seeks to highlight the solidarity among and with migrants in the time of COVID and inspire us to be more committed advocates.
As COVID-19 cases have surged within detention centers, detainees have been left feeling exponentially more vulnerable. This has created a new level of solidarity among them, including organizing collective hunger strikes to protest their “imprisonment.” Detainees have also self-organized, writing letters to affiliated advocacy groups or individuals to elevate their concerns. In some cases, journalists, groups, family members of detainees, and previous detainees have released video chats and phone calls with detainees to news media outlets to draw attention to the poor conditions and sanitation. This solidarity, first within detention centers and then linked to those outside of detention centers have helped shed light on the issue.
The global pandemic and recent shifts in the asylum-seeking process have hampered schooling for migrant students. However, a variation of classrooms for children in migration has emerged at various Mexican border cities, including the Sidewalk School in Matamoros, Mexico. The school was initially staffed by volunteers from outside the encampment, and after several months, the leadership of the school transitioned to the hands of other asylum-seekers.
In a migrant camp in Matamoros, a group of migrants with medical backgrounds offer their expertise to other asylum seekers. This group of medical professionals manage a small clinic while keeping the virus at bay. As asylum-seekers wait for increasingly long periods of time at the border, there has been an increase in methods of organizing and governance among migrants. A community within the Matamoros camp established a representative democracy in January. Representatives from each country of origin were elected to coordinate efforts in areas of communication, resource distribution, sanitation, and general civil response.
Accompaniment, “walking with” or “being with” vulnerable people and communities, is a way of working and living that is guided by mutuality and listening to the needs of the communities one is working alongside or standing alongside in solidarity. As advocates for more just migration, one of the most powerful things that we can do to stand in solidarity with migrant communities is to bring them back into sight – make them seen and make them heard. We can listen to their stories and take the time to understand their realities, their needs, and their struggles so that we can be better educated, equipped, and strategic in how we support them.
The urgency of persistent action and solidarity has increased as the pandemic rages on and immigrants and asylum seekers continue to be further targeted and marginalized. The Kino Border Initiative, the source of this article, is facilitating the online campaign “Solidarity Across Borders.” This campaign seeks to lift up the testimonies of migrant communities and the additional difficulties they encounter in the face of a pandemic. Throughout the campaign, testimonies will be coupled with calls to action and modes of expressing solidarity with migrant communities that bring about tangible change.
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Sunday, July 19, 2020
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Advocate for a moratorium on Evictions and Rent Relief
Through your generosity, our parish is helping our neighbors who face a looming housing crisis. The issue of affordable housing, always a concern in Austin, is now at the tipping point. After months without work and few job prospects, many of our neighbors face outright eviction when the moratorium ends on July 25.
Contact your elected officials about this urgent crisis. In Austin, the moratorium on eviction proceedings ends on July 25. People will move into unstable housing situations, over-crowded living conditions, or become homeless unless we ask our state and federal Representatives, Senators, and the White House to take action NOW! Visit USA.gov to find their contact information.
Tell Congress commit a portion of our nation’s vast resources to protect low-income renters through direct rental assistance and to protect lo millions of renters from eviction. Learn more at the Housing Plaza on our website.
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Good News for Persons in Need
Our neighbors in need are still very stressed about paying their bills. Many say that St. Austin is the only place that has called them back when they reach out for help. Some have nearly lost all hope until we speak to them. As evictions loom with no relief in sight for many, the future looks incredibly bleak for so many of our neighbors. Amidst these difficult days, we wanted to share some Good News:
- After several weeks apart, a family from another state was reunited with their mentally ill and presumed homeless brother through our contacts at the Homeless Outreach Street Team (HOST)!
- Collaboration between SVDP and Outreach moved a parishioner from an abusive living situation to temporary housing. The parishioner will move into permanent housing this weekend!
- Gabriel Project helped a mom experiencing homelessnes move into temporary housing, and they continue to journey with her towards a permanent home for her and her child.
- SVDP helped a family find the resources to move from owing nearly $3,000 in rent to almost a $0 balance.
- Outreach volunteers donated a computer to a woman so she can continue learning English for her citizenship exam.
- A few sympathy cards were mailed to Outreach guests who lost loved ones recently.
- SVDP helped a neighbor donate their freezer full of food to Micah 6.
- More than 16 neighbors have been helped or received additional help with their Austin Energy bills due to referrals between SVDP, Outreach, and University Presbyterian Church's UPLift Plus 1 program.
- Outreach was able to help an additional 13 households with their June rent due to continued support from UPLift while their rental assistance program is suspended.
Thank you for helping us continue this great work! If you'd like to donate to the Persons in Need collection online, oor by text, Venmo, or check, here's the shortcut to:
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Portrait of a Neighbor in Need
Our world is going through many difficulties and each day is a challenge. Our St. Vincent de Paul Ministry brings us closer to our neighbors’ challenges as we listen and offer support. Sometimes they just need to talk to or pray with someone, and sometimes they also need help with food, rent, bus passes, etc. Here is a powerful story of a neighbor we helped:
There was a beautiful young woman, recently graduated from college, who should have been embarking on a career and start- ing a new life. Unfortunately, she had become depressed and addicted to pharmaceutical drugs, had lost her job and was mired in debt. As she became more financially unstable, she signed up for two payday loans (one of which took her car title as collateral). Struggling to pay her basic bills, she was late in her payday loan payments and was receiving collection calls day and night. Thankfully, she had gone to rehab and was no longer addicted to drugs; but she was overwhelmed with her financial and emotion- al problems. After praying with her and helping with her rent and utilities, we set up a time to work on a budget with her and helped her apply for a St. Vincent de Paul loan program. It was a wonderful day when the Diocese of St. Vincent de Paul paid off her payday loans and set up a loan for her at a credit union. She repaid St. Vincent de Paul in a year and a half and was completely free of debt. She even attended a St. Vincent de Paul financial help course to learn how to handle her money. Shortly after we began working with her, she got a wonderful job and a whole new life. “I am so grateful to St. Vincent de Paul and God for giving me the opportunity to start over,” she said.
Helping our neighbors in need is the mission of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Without our volunteers we could not fulfill this mission, and we always need more! If you are interested, email Huddie Murray.
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Protector of Homes
St. Joseph, protect our home. Pour forth from heaven blessings on our family. Remain in our midst. Help us to live in love and harmony, in peace and joy. May the wholesome fear of God strengthen us that virtue may adorn what we do and our way may lead to heaven.
To you this day I give the key to our dwelling place. Lock out all things that could do us harm. Lock my home and my loved ones with me in the hearts of Jesus and Mary. This I beg of you, that our days may be like your days in the holy home at Nazareth. Amen.
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Sunday, July 12, 2020
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Pope Francis'Prayer to the Holy Family*
Jesus, Mary and Joseph
in you we contemplate
the splendour of true love,
to you we turn with trust.Holy Family of Nazareth,
grant that our families too
may be places of communion and prayer,
authentic schools of the Gospel
and small domestic Churches.Holy Family of Nazareth,
may families never again
experience violence, rejection and division:
may all who have been hurt or scandalized
find ready comfort and healing.Holy Family of Nazareth,
may the approaching Synod of Bishops
make us once more mindful
of the sacredness and inviolability of the family,
and its beauty in God’s plan.Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
graciously hear our prayer.
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Need for Sponsorship for Children Being Released from Detention this Week
St. Austin supports the efforts of the Diocese of Austin in keeping children with their families, and we hope that the release of the children from custody will not involve further family separations. As the release date quickly approaches, a number of nonprofit organizations are working hard to identify sponsors in Texas and Pennsylvania who could sponsor, house, or otherwise support any families in those centers who might not have a sponsor lined up already. Here are some of the immediate needs:
Citing the unrelenting spread of the coronavirus, on June 26 U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee ordered that all children currently held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for more than 20 days must be released by July 17. That’s this Friday. The order applies to all three of the family detention facilities in the United States. Two are located in Texas. Gee's decision could lead to the long-awaited release of entire families. Until now, ICE has been reluctant to release children held in family detention centers.
The Trump administration has offered families a binary choice: Stay together in detention or allow the children to be transferred to a sponsor or family member somewhere in the United States.
- Advocate to release the families and not just the kids.
- Secure quarantine locations relatively near the three detention centers that can potentially host the families
currently being held for at least two weeks. - Identify long-term sponsorship options for families who don't have sponsors already.
- Identify long-term sponsorship options for adults not impacted by this decision who are at detention centers across
the country who are terrified about Covid-19 moving through the centers they're in and work on getting them released. - Short-term quarantine and long-term sponsorship for a group of transgender asylees who are currently in Mexico,
waiting to cross the border/present themselves to ICE/DHS until they have sponsorship lined up. (They'd ideally like to stay together, at least in the near-term -- so they are looking for an option that can house about a dozen people.)
Learn more at: Families Belong Together Hearts and Homes for Refugees, Episcopal Migration Ministries Asylum Sponsorship Project
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