Posted by Jim on July 28, 2020
Para leer este mensaje en español, haga clic aquí.
Dear Family of the Archdiocese of New York,
The Covid-19 pandemic, which has caused disruption across many aspects of our daily lives, is having an especially profound impact on young people, including those in our Catholic schools, whose education is being altered or interrupted.
The pandemic and resulting economic impact have dramatically reduced the number of parents who can afford to make tuition payments for the upcoming school year. Two weeks ago, I shared the sad news that 20 of our schools, already facing soaring deficits, would not be able to re-open this Fall due to steep declines in enrollment. Without assistance to our parents and children from the Federal government, many more of our Catholic schools may have to close permanently. These closures will harm thousands of students from our archdiocese, and across the nation.
Many of our nation’s elected officials of both parties recognize the crisis that is confronting all schools, including Catholic and other non-government schools. Congress is working on another bill to provide relief from the Covid crisis for critical parts of our economy and society such as our schools. Catholic and other non-government schools must be included in that relief.
The time to make your voices heard is now. If Congress does not provide assistance to our schools within the next few weeks before the school year opens, many parents may find themselves unable to meet even our modest tuition costs, and we will be forced to write you again announcing yet more school closures.
Please contact your elected officials – Senator Chuck Schumer at (202) 224-6542 or (212) 486-4430, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand at (202) 224-4451 or (212) 688-6262, and your local Member of Congress (you can find the name and contact info of your Representative here) – and implore them to provide assistance to prevent our Catholic schools from closing permanently.
With gratitude and prayerful best wishes, I am,
Faithfully yours in Christ,
Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan
Archbishop of New York
Posted by Jim on July 27, 2020
Well we made it through the first of its kind National Convention and a new Board has now taken Office. Our new Executive Board are as follows:
President – Danny O’Connell
Vice President.- Sean Pender
Secretary – Jere Cole
Treasurer.- Liam McNabb
Also elected as our National Directors
Director – Ray Lynch
Director – Tim McSweeney
Director – Ed Halligan
Director – Sean O’Dowd
Director – Rick Thompson
Director – Bob Mahrens
With this new National Committee, I hope that we grow our Organization to new Heights
Jim Sullivan
Posted by Jim on July 24, 2020
A-TEAM SCHOLARSHIP
The A-Team Scholarship was set up by the family and friends of Lt. Joseph Cavalieri, FF Christopher Bopp and FF James Bohan in their memory.
Award:
The scholarship will award a freshman entering a private high school in September 2020 $500 dollars each year.
Eligibility:
The scholarship competition is open to any child of an active or retired member of the UFA or UFOA.
Application & Requirements:
The student must submit an essay describing why they want to attend the particular private high school.
Applicants must include their parent’s name, address, phone number and work unit with their essay submission.
All information should be sent to FF Andrew Spadaro, L-170, 1361 Rockaway Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11236, Attn: A-Team Scholarship FDNY.
The student must maintain a C or better average throughout high school.
Deadline:
Postmark deadline to submit essay is August 15, 2020.
Posted by Jim on July 20, 2020
Trevor Ringland touts a ‘competing narrative’ where “families whose loved ones were brutally murdered at Loughinisland” stop questioning collusion because victims’ families and constabulary “both wanted the same outcome” (July 1).How could constabulary arresting the journalists who named alleged killers be the same outcome as arresting the suspected loyalist killers themselves? The legacy crisis exists because families want facts not British fairytale narratives about the murder of their loved ones.Mr Ringland mischaracterises the issue as a dispute between those who think ‘violence outside the law was justified’ and their opponents. He implies families of nationalist victims do not go to British crown courts, ombudsmen or investigatory bodies seeking justice for murdered loved ones, but want some sort of justification for republican armed struggle between 1968-98.He seems unable or unwilling to face the real question at the heart of the crisis.Did violence within British law, mean British troopers, constabulary and loyalist agents were permitted to carry out or collude in murders, which the state legal machinery then justified, or simply would not prosecute the murderers?Mr Ringland cites Loughinisland. The film No Stone Unturned named and filmed suspects and revealed that besides DNA evidence available from the recovered car, weapons and clothing, the wife of one of the suspected loyalist gunmen telephoned and wrote, confessing her role and naming the alleged gunmen.No-one was charged except the filmmakers. Why should these families not suspect collusion or conclude that no prosecutions despite so much evidence, meant the loyalist killers were being protected by crown forces?The legacy backlog worsens, 22 years post Good Friday Agreement, because nationalist victims’ families must fight to get truth from inquest courts (Ballymurphy) ombudsmen (Loughinisland), or historical investigations (Glenanne). It exists because British officials deny and delay the quest for truth with legal roadblocks, apparently hoping, that relatives will be frustrated, die off or give up.Today, instead of truth mechanisms they agreed five years ago at Stormont House, the British plan to create an ‘independent body’ which many fear will be used as a magic wand to make hundreds of cases disappear, by repeating the words “no new compelling evidence and realistic prospect of prosecution”.If Britain did not fear legacy truth why do they go to such lengths to bury it?
MARTIN GALVIN
New York
Posted by Jim on July 19, 2020
Not all rights are apparently created equal.
Jim Loscalzo/CNP/ZumaFor indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones’ newsletters.
Last July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched an advisory panel to help the US practice “a moral foreign policy … grounded in [a] conception of human rights.” Crucially, its mission, Pompeo explained, would include reining in a dangerous proliferation of “new” human rights. “Unalienable rights are by nature universal. Not everything good, or everything granted by a government, can be a universal right,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed explaining the formation of this Commission on Unalienable Rights. “Loose talk of ‘rights’ unmoors us from the principles of liberal democracy.”
It didn’t take long for human rights experts to read between the lines. Pompeo, whose leadership of the State Department has become in many ways an experiment in how quickly he can orient American foreign policy toward his evangelical Christian faith, stocked the commission with academics and diplomats best known for defending religious freedom while opposing reproductive rights and LGBTQ equality.
Pompeo, whose leadership has become in many ways an experiment in how quickly he can orient American foreign policy toward his evangelical Christian faith, stocked the commission with academics and diplomats best known for defending religious freedom.
On Thursday, the commission finally unveiled a draft of its long-anticipated report, finding—surprise, surprise—just what Pompeo suggested in his initial op-ed: not all rights are created equal. Describing a human rights landscape “in crisis,” the report focuses mainly on the Declaration of Independence and Universal Declaration of Human Rights and mostly ignores the binding treaties establishing a framework for international human rights law. The problem, as the commissioners see it, is that a proliferation of new rights include many in competition with one another, which has eroded the international consensus around human rights. The solution, then, is to boost protections of certain rights, particularly religious freedom, while diminishing others.
“As anticipated, the report elevates religious freedom as an unalienable right, while dismissing abortion and same-sex marriages as not rights but instead ‘divisive social and political controversies,’” Jayne Huckerby, director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Duke Law School, tells me. She notes that the report “recognizes that legally there should be no hierarchy between different types of rights,” but “still calls for US foreign policy to de-emphasize economic and social rights compared with civil and political ones.”
In practice, that has already started to happen. With Pompeo leading from Foggy Bottom, the United States has renounced its role as a leader in promoting LGBTQ equality and reproductive rights abroad, most prominently in Trump’s expansion of the so-called global gag rule, which restricts which nongovernmental organizations can receive US aid based on whether they perform any abortion-related activities. US diplomats have teamed up with countries with abominable records on these issues—Saudi Arabia and Brazil among them—to oppose international agreements aimed at preserving those rights. When Trump appeared at the United Nations General Assembly last year, he chose to host an event focused on religious freedom. And, while his administration regularly attempts to cut back on international aid, the president still recently signed an executive order giving $50 million to support international religious freedom.
“This administration practices consistent and continued erasure of LGBTQ people and refuses to acknowledge that access to reproductive health care is essential for survival,” says Molly Bangs, director of reproductive rights advocacy group Equity Forward. “LGBTQ people face threats to their health, safety, and civil rights here at home and around the globe and this report makes zero mention of protecting their rights.”
Since the commission’s formation, Pompeo has been a public cheerleader of its work, taking care to note that the group is not crafting policy, but simply elaborating “the principles through which we can ground America’s commitment to championing human rights in our enduring dedication to unalienable rights and our tradition of constitutional self-government,” as he wrote in the Washington Post this week. For the past several days, he’s been tweeting in anticipation of the release of its draft report, pairing quotes from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King Jr. with the hashtag “UnalienableRights.” Still, his support for the panel has often been nakedly political and, of course, does not exactly honor the legacy of the very individuals he’s held up as symbols of these unalienable rights. Pompeo traveled to Philadelphia on Thursday, ignoring concerns about the safety of himself, his team, and others during the coronavirus pandemic, to give a speech at the National Constitutional Center. In his remarks, he took time to criticize “rioters” for “desecrating monuments to those who fought for unalienable rights” and suggested that the New York Times‘ 1619 Project, which examines the legacy of slavery in the United States, was “a disturbed reading of history” and “a slander on our great people.” Pompeo took time to criticize “rioters” for “desecrating monuments to those who fought for unalienable rights” and suggested that the New York Times‘ 1619 Project, which examines the legacy of slavery in the United States, was “a slander on our great people.”
Rob Berschinski, a former State Department official who is now senior vice president for policy at Human Rights First, said Pompeo’s remarks “loosely clothed a foray into the culture wars under the seal of the US State Department. It should rightfully be seen as a political speech unbecoming of a Secretary of State.”
The speech, though, is just the culmination of a year’s worth of work that, while abstract in its consideration of the historical and philosophical roots of human rights, is intensely political. Across its five public meetings, which Huckerby and her colleagues at Duke Law analyzed in an article for Just Security, “religious freedom was clearly intended to be a core focus of the commission” and was “frequently discussed” by the commissioners, including in the context of when it clashes with the right to have an abortion.
There’s also the simple matter of who Pompeo chose to serve as commissioners, including chair Mary Ann Glendon, a former US ambassador to the Vatican who once said awarding the Pulitzer Prize to the Boston Globe for its coverage of sexual abuse by Catholic priests “would be like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden.” (Pompeo, in his remarks on Thursday, noted that he once worked as Glendon’s research assistant, calling the experience “one of my life’s greatest gifts.”) The commissioners’ selection is also one reason several human rights advocacy organizations, including Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, sued Pompeo in March, alleging that the Commission on Unalienable Rights violates federal law requiring advisory bodies be independent and “fairly balanced among competing points of view.”
“There is reason to believe the Secretary carefully selected the Commission members to yield a pre-determined result: constraining the understanding of ‘unalienable’ human rights to the narrow set of rights allegedly grounded in theories of natural law,” the lawsuit states.
This, though, was of course the point. Just look at the reaction among Pompeo’s core group of supporters, the evangelical right, to see what was expected of this panel when it was announced last year. Back then, Tony Perkins, president of the right-wing Family Research Council, praised the newly-formed panel for “ensuring that the protection of these fundamental rights—the most foundational of which is freedom of religion or belief—is a core element of strategic policy discussions.”