JCA's New Racial Justice Mission Statement

The Racial Justice Leadership Team welcomes people of all faiths, colors, and backgrounds.

The Mission of JCA’s Racial Justice Leadership Team is to promote racial justice by ensuring that Jewish Community Action and the Jewish community combine education with action to address and to undo the social and economic impacts of racism:

JEWISH COMMITMENT:

We do this because a commitment to justice is at the core of Jewish teachings and Jewish life.

We remember that we were slaves in Egypt. This, and our experience through the centuries with devastating anti-Semitism, strengthens our commitment to racial justice.

RACISM AND POWER:

Race is an artificial "social construct," with real consequences.

Racism is the combination of racial prejudice with power.

In the United States, racism shapes not only individual behavior, but institutional policies and practices.

White privilege is the social and economic benefits received by white people because they are white. Since these benefits are embedded in United States culture, white people take them for granted. People of color are harmed because they are excluded from these benefits.

WHITE PRIVILEGE:

Our community needs to understand that most Jews now benefit from white privilege, even though the Jewish community itself is racially diverse.

Historically in the U.S., Jews were not considered white, but Jews of European descent “became white” in the mid-20th century.

As Jews in the United States, we possess a dual identity. For the majority of us whose ancestors were from Europe, we now enjoy the privileges of being white. We are also part of an ethnic minority that has been the victim of hate that leads to anti-Semitism.

RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACTION:

We have a responsibility to learn about and to understand racism and white privilege, as a basis for fighting for racial justice within the Jewish community and in the greater community.

We have a responsibility to understand and to help our partners understand the relationship between anti-Semitism and racism.

We also have a responsibility and a commitment to combat racism through education combined with action.

We build alliances with communities of color when taking action in the broader community.

Undoing racism requires both individual and institutional change.

Promoting racial justice requires conscious, ongoing practice and application.

Roof over your head? Eat out much?

Do you have a roof over your head? Do you like to eat out?

Problem is...people (including some in the Jewish community) have an idea of their family's own immigrant background that's not quite accurate. One common myth: "My people came here legally, so should everyone else." Well, it's not that simple. First of all, immigration law until the 1920s was simpler. People could get in from Europe, including Eastern Europe, where most Jews came from, much more easily, than can people today who come from Mexico and points south. Second, all that changed beginning in the 1920s. Eastern Europeans could no longer get in easily--or at all. So, it's no accident that Jewish emigration to the U.S. dropped dramatically about that time, and that people were stuck in Europe during the '30s and '40s, in spite of their desperation to get out of there and to get in here. Second of all, there are not visas available for people who want to come here to take low-wage jobs. We want restaurants, which need restaurant workers, and we want roofs, which need roofers, and we want gardens, which need landscapers, but we don't want to give the visas to those most willing to do these difficult, dangerous, and exhausting jobs. So I ask all of you who have landscaped property, roofs over your head, and who like to eat in any restaurant, whether you are willing to do without these things?

Show Yourself

Can anyone help me out?

If you know a whole bunch of undocument immigrants who are really excited about their status and think that being discriminated against, harrassed, or on a very good day just completely invisible is an awesome way to live, could you have them call me at the office? The gentleman I was speaking with last night thinks there are hordes of these people roaming the streets (maybe wearing matching outfits like breakdance troupes?) and I just don't believe him.

Also, if you know any unicorns, can you give them the office number too?

Thanks.

Unnatural Disasters

I was in class last night, and our discussion turned to recent news stories about the investigation into health care workers' claims that individual doctors may have euthanized patients waiting to be evacuated from New Orleans hospitals post-Katrina.

My professor asked what we would do if we'd been a doctor in this situation. We also talked about how we might feel if we were a member of one of the patients' families. To me, the whole conversation, what to do with the people left behind, exposed the real tragedy - that people were left behind.

But it's easy to look at how the federal government left so many behind in the wake of a devastating natural disaster. It's more challenging to look at who's being left behind when it's business as usual.

On Feb. 1, 2006, Congress made $40 billion in permanent cuts that mean more people uninsured and underinsured, fewer children receiving child support payments, and new federal welfare policies shutting down much of the state flexibility in welfare to work programs.

How will these cuts affect Minnesotans?

• One in 9 Minnesotans are currently on Medicaid. The budget cuts will increase their copayments and make it legal for providers to deny coverage to those who can not meet the copayments. This will effectively undo legal protections currently in place that make it illegal for pharmacists to deny medications to persons covered by Medicaid.
  

• Many Minnesotan Medicaid beneficiaries, particularly those with disabilities, could lose access to medically-necessary services like therapy, eyeglasses, and hearing aids.

• The cuts in welfare-to-work provisions could force Minnesota to make large cuts in child care subsidies for low-income families not receiving federal cash assistance, undermining our state's long-standing efforts to "make work pay" as part of its welfare reform agenda.

• While the budget agreement does include funding for federal energy assistance programming, those funds are not available until 2007, so there will be no help for Minnesotans this winter. (Source: Minnesota Budget Project)

So here's my question: if you were the family member of one of the one in nine Minnesotans who may do without medication, or if you were the family member of one of the 343,000 Minnesotans without any health coverage at all, how would you feel about the way they've been left behind? Not by a natural disaster but intentionally, by budget cuts that further limit assistance to those who already need it most?

Staff

If you're interested in learning more about how federal budget cuts will impact Minnesotans and what we can still do, join me at a briefing held by Affirmative Options next Tuesday.

Rabbi Allen's Speech from the March for Immigrant Rights

Minneapolis, February 12, 2006

We live in a world that is increasingly fragile. For too many people, the fate of humanity as a whole is of little concern as long as their particular grouping within the family of humanity is viable and protected. I am rabbi Morris Allen and I stand here before you today as a representative of my congregational community, Beth Jacob in Mendota Heights, of the Minnesota Rabbinical Association, and of the larger Jewish community through Jewish community action to tell you that there is no security for any one of us, if those on the margins of society feel threatened and at risk. The ancient rabbi Hillel over 2000 years ago addressed the importance of creating alliances and the necessity for interaction this way.

Im ayn ani li mil li, Uksheani Latzmi mah ani, vim lo acshav, amatia
If I am not for me, who will be?
But if I am only for me, what am I
And if not now, then when?

Judaism teaches the following—You shall know the heart of the stranger for you yourself were strangers in a strange land. At the heart of our story of origin as a people, is the realization that our enslavement in Egypt demanded that we never lose sight of what it means to be marginalized, that we forever identify with those whose fate at any given time is on the margins, whose connection to the society in which they live is trampled upon by those who are willing to ignore or oppress. Our core story demands that working for justice for those who are the stranger in every generation in any society is the fulfillment of the biblical command that is imposed upon us. My parents are first generation Americans, their parents having fled from the political torture and economic privation of the Jew in Europe 90 years ago. In the early part of the 20th century, the huddled masses were the Jewish immigrants the Irish the Italians. They were abused and taken advantage of, they struggled mightily to establish a place for themselves in the land of the free. They lived through the taunts of anti-Semitism and anti Catholicism and worked in the sweatshops where their concerns were ignored. They were no different than the immigrant today whether from Mexico, Somalia, Liberia, Cambodia or any other from whom one seeks to find refuge in America. They were subject to governmental games no different than INS workers today who stage phony OSHA gathering to identify non- documented workers. They were subject to fear and degradation, they were victims of societal indifference and often times societal anger. Immigration has always been a wedge issue for those who try to create fear and insecurity in society and to capitalize on that. Back then, the phrase was "lets keep America American," today it is lets make sure we are not paying for those who come here "illegally." Today in the words of the ancient sage Hillel, we immigrants and children and grandchildren of immigrants say if we are not for ourselves who will be, but if we are only for ourselves what are we. But perhaps most important, if not now then when—when will find see an America where the immigrant is celebrated for their contributions, where the immigrant is seen as the greatest fulfillment that this country has to offer—hope opportunity and freedom. Together, as people of religious traditions all, we can begin to change a society that is indifferent and often times beligerent. Remember the heart of the stranger for we were all once strangers in a strange land. Let us march together and let us stand together shoulder to shoulder to insure that hope, opportunity and freedom are finally realized and accessible for all.

Rabbi Morris Allen
Beth Jacob Congregation