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Gary Huelsmann Awarded Liberty Bell Award May 5th, 2015
Gary Huelsmann with his two daughters, Mariah and Chloe, at the Awards ceremony.
Congratulations are in order for Gary Huelsmann, long-time friend of the Oblates, and Chair of the OMI USA JPIC Committee. The Madison County Bar Association honored him last week by with their annual Liberty Bell Award. The Liberty Bell Award was established more than 40 years ago to acknowledge outstanding community service. Each group presenting the award is free to establish its own criteria. Many groups present it to a layperson, a man or woman who has promoted better understanding of the rule of law, encouraged greater respect for law and the courts, stimulated a sense of civic responsibility, or contributed to good government in the community. It is often presented to an individual lawyer or judge or to an entire community organization.
Gary is the CEO at Caritas Family Solutions, a faith-inspired social services agency devoted to the care and treatment of individuals and families, accessed through a network of regional offices, that is committed to promoting a just and caring community in the southern Illinois region.
Religious Leaders Support Normalization with Cuba May 4th, 2015
Photo credit (see below)
Thirty U.S. religious organizations signed onto a letter to Congress urging an end to the decades-long embargo with Cuba. The Rev. William Antone, U.S. Provincial, signed on for the Missionary Oblates USP. The letter refers to the long-standing ties of many of the faith organizations to religious bodies in Cuba, and cite their call for normalization of relations and an end to the embargo.
Photo credit: Krasivaja at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons
Two Years After Rana Plaza… May 1st, 2015
Two years after the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh, concerns linger. These include the timeliness of major remediation efforts, the establishment of factory health and safety committees, and corporate commitments to a victims’ fund. A coalition of global investors representing $2.5 trillion in assets – including the Missionary Oblates – have sent letters to corporate members of the Bangladesh Accord for Fire and Building Safety (Accord) and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety (Alliance). The letters request that companies disclose their efforts to safeguard the lives of workers in Bangladesh garment factories.
Read the investor letter here…
Oblate JPIC Signs Letter to US Congress Opposing Fast Track Authority for Trade Agreement March 2nd, 2015
On February 17, Missionary Oblates JPIC office joined in an interfaith letter signed by nearly three-dozen faith communities to oppose fast-track authority for the passage of an upcoming international trade agreement by Congress. The letter has been sent to all Members of the US Congress. Fast-Track authority paves the way for Congressional approval of trade agreements such as the looming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with little or no debate, and with no changes possible to the agreement that has been negotiated by the US Trade Representative, largely behind closed doors. This is an undemocratic process, which potentially denies a comprehensive analysis of the impacts of trade agreement provisions on vulnerable communities, workers and the environment, and which does not provide for detailed public hearings, despite the potential for significant public impacts.
Members of the Interfaith Working Group on Trade and Investments who signed the letter write, “Our faith traditions call for community participation in the democratic process because we believe this is the only way to ensure all people have a meaningful opportunity to participate in the creation of good policies. “Fast track” is a broken and undemocratic process because it privileges the views of powerful global corporations in defining the terms of trade agreements, while excluding voices of those adversely impacted. This impedes progress towards a more just world.”
Full text of the letter with signatories (Download PDF)
J.P. Morgan Chase Issues How we do Business Report in Response to Faith-based Shareholders December 19th, 2014
Members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility welcomed today’s release of JP Morgan Chase’s (JPMC) How we do Business Report. The report was, in large part, issued in response to shareholder pressure as a result of the billions of dollars in fines and penalties the company has faced over the past several years.
The report was largely brought about by shareholders pressing for structural changes as a result of the multiple ethical lapses which resulted in billions of dollars in fines and penalties.
Rev. Séamus Finn, of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and Board Chair of ICCR, said, “We welcome the report and look forward to the opportunity to review it in greater detail. The report appropriately acknowledges the lapses in ethical conduct that resulted in significant damage to the company’s reputation and details steps taken to reduce the possibility of such lapses in the future. That their actions have broader, societal repercussions beyond the scope of the company seems also to have been recognized. We are hopeful that management sees the value in this type of self-examination as a bridge to begin to restore trust and confidence between Main Street and Wall Street.”
Read the ICCR press release on the JP Morgan Chase report
