Bishops in their own dioceses have been encouraged to arrange special events to highlight the importance of defending religious freedom. Catholic institutions are encouraged to do the same, especially in cooperation with other Christians, Jews, people of other faiths and all who wish to defend this cherished freedom.

The fourteen days from June 21—the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More—to July 4, Independence Day, are dedicated to this “fortnight for freedom”—a great hymn of prayer for our country.

Please see the USCCB website for more information on organizing a special event in your parish.

The biggest of them, Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase, has $2.1 trillion in assets and more than 239,000 employees. The bank’s recent bad bet that now amounts to $3 trillion, is a clear indication of the need for serious reform.

Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Keith Ellison have introduced a measure to cut too-big-to-fail banks down to size. The SAFE (Safe, Accountable, Fair and Efficient) Banking Act would put in place an important element missing from the financial reform legislation of two years ago: a cap on how big banks can get. The bank lobby defeated all efforts to include a limit on their size.

Now the six largest banks – led by JPMorgan Chase – are collectively larger and more concentrated than they were before they blew up the economy, with the assets they control growing from $6.1 trillion before the collapse to more than $8.5 trillion today, according to Federal Reserve data.

Wall Street lobbyists have successfully delayed and diluted regulations that were supposed to flow from the Wall Street reform bill. And the big banks have ways to push their way around any barriers.

We need a fail-safe. If a bank can’t be too big, then it can’t be too big to fail.

Among the provisions of the Safe Banking Act are that no bank could hold more than 10 percent of all of the insured bank deposits in the country, nor could a bank holding company have non-deposit liabilities greater than 2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

By the standards in the SAFE Banking Act, four existing banks are currently above the size cap—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo—and would have to shrink. This would be a major step in making banking sober—and boring, as it should be—once again.

Click here to tell Congress: Break up the big banks! Pass Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Keith Ellison’s SAFE Banking Act. 

Thanks to the Campaign for America’s Future for the information on this bill. 

]]> http://omiusajpic.org/2012/05/17/tell-congress-end-too-big-to-fail-make-banking-safe/feed/ 0 http://omiusajpic.org/2012/04/20/interfaith-moral-action-on-climate/ http://omiusajpic.org/2012/04/20/interfaith-moral-action-on-climate/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:31:22 +0000 christina http://omiusajpic.org/?p=11301 Interfaith Moral Action on Climate is a broad-based interfaith coalition formed to raise up the need for urgent action on climate change. Believing that the threat posed by Climate Change is a moral issue, IMAC has planned a series of events to coincide with Earth Day. To avoid conflicting with other events planned in Washington DC for Earth Day weekend, and because they will be visiting members of Congress, IMAC has scheduled the group’s activities for Tuesday April 24.  If you are in the area, we encourage you to become involved. The Missionary Oblates JPIC Office is an endorsing organization. Full information is available on the IMAC website.

Download a flyer for the April 24th A Day for the Climate in Washington DC 

Schedule of activities:

Sunrise – 9:15 am Vigil • 8:30 am Interfaith Service with Bill McKibben, Ibrahim Ramey, Indigenous leaders, Luci Murphy Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial

10:30 am “Cry of the Earth: A Service for Healing the Climate” with: Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, Dr. Carroll Baltimore, Sr. Simone Campbell/SSS, Rev. Richard Cizik, Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, Mohawk Clan Mother Louise McDonald, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and others at the NY Ave. Presbyterian Church,1313 New York Ave., NW; Bring some earth from your local community to be healed at the Service

12 noon Multi-faith Procession to the US Capitol

• Upper Senate Park, 200 New Jersey Ave. NW
• Wear religious garb if possible

1 pm Brown bag lunch for yourself and to share

1:30 pm Commissioning Vigil at the Capitol

2 – 4:30 pm Constituent Visits with Ethical Report Cards

• meet with members in the House and Senate (Sign up for this separately on the IMAC website)

4:30 – 6:00 pm Closing, Sharing & Benediction

• Lutheran Church of the Reformation, 212 East Capitol St.
• (behind the Supreme Court)

People of faith and good will around the country who cannot join us on April 24 are urged to have vigils in their local communities.

The bill now goes to the Connecticut House of Representatives, where it is considered to have a high level of support, and then to Governor who has said he would sign it into law.

Other states have passed similar measures; among them are Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey. In California, faith leaders are leading a campaign to gather enough signatures for an initiative to throw out the death penalty by voters on the November ballot.

The Catholic Conference of Connecticut and Religious communities are pleased with the passage of the repeal of the death penalty. The Conference is engaging in a campaign through its website and in advocacy messages in parish bulletins asking parishioners to contact their elected representatives, requesting that they support the bill.

While problems with land grabs abound, SOCFIN Agriculture. Co. is a particularly egregious company. Owned by French billionaire Vincent Bollore, SOCFINAF Group owns and operates plantations of rubber, oil palm and coffee in Indonesia, Cambodia, Kenya, Cameroon, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Liberia. SOCFIN recently has secured 6,500 hectares of farmland for rubber/palm oil production in Sierra Leone.

The Oakland Institute, a California-based think-tank, has detailed a pattern of coercion, lack of consultation, and failure to fairly compensate Sierra Leonean landowners who have been pressured into ceding their land to the corporate giant. Watch this video on SOCFIN’s Sierra Leone’s operations:

In a new land deal brief, Socfin Land Investment in Sierra Leone,  the institute says that “In 2011, Socfin secured 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres) and they are running roughshod over the rights of local landowners.” According to Frederic Mousseau, Oakland Institute’s policy director and author of the brief, “Bolloré Group, ranked among the top 500 companies in the world, and its subsidiaries, have gained a reputation for descending powerfully on developing countries and setting up plantations for palm oil and rubber trees. In Cambodia, Liberia, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone, the group has a reputation for leaving communities disfranchised as they acquire land cheaply through questionable processes and act with little regard for existing owners.”

Bolloré-controlled plantations offer abysmal employment conditions. In Cameroon, workers at SOCAPALM have referred to themselves as “SOCAPALM slaves.” NGOs, human rights groups, and journalists have uncovered “insalubrious” living conditions and “miserable” wages.

In Cambodia, the World Rainforest Movement and the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) have documented human rights abuses and details of coercive land acquisition practices that have led to protests by the ethnic minority Bunong, who have lost their historical land and their livelihoods without fair compensation.

Please subscribe to LAND GRAB, at Food Crisis and the Local Land Grab website, which documents what is happening all over Africa, Asia, Latin America. This problem has mushroomed exponentially in the last three years in the name of development – but  it primarily serves the interest of the company and not the people. The OMI JPIC Office in Washington is actively engaging corporations and other investors on this issue.

Download the brochure (PDF)

The “Invisible Children Kony 2012” video has gone viral. It is an impassioned plea to end the atrocities of Joseph Kony and his Lords Resistance Army (LRA). Invisible Children Campaign “KONY 2012” provides horrifying documentary evidence about the LRA.

Over nearly three decades the LRA has been responsible for unspeakable acts of brutality, including the abduction of children to work as soldiers. untold thousands have been maimed or killed by the LRA and hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced in northern Uganda, Northern Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Kony in 2005, but to date, no one has found him.

This video is a plea to take action to stop the atrocities of Kony and hold the LRA accountable in a court of law. An important issue raised by the video is the need for immediate international support, and protection of these children and their families from these terrible acts of violence. Organizations such as Catholic Relief Services are on the front lines helping the victims of Kony and Lord’s Resistance Army.

Amendment 1818, the Levin Amendment, passed the Senate last night and is a blow against corruption, secrecy, and tax avoidance that aims to end the use and abuse of off-shore tax havens. These tax havens help large corporations and corrupt individuals avoid paying a fair share of taxes to the nations in which they operate. An estimated $160 billion dollars is lost in tax revenue in developing countries due to the use of off-shore tax havens. The Levin amendment gives law enforcement officials tools to stop financial institutions in tax havens from aiding US tax cheats, and help put an end to developing country tax avoidance.

Jubilee USA and the Oblates are founding members of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition. Learn more about tax justice… 

Praying, reflecting and acting for a just economy of WATER:

• 7 weeks for water
• 7 semaines du carême sur l’eau
• Siete semanas para el agua