This Friday, over a thousand people of faith from across the country will travel to Washington, DC for the 13th Annual National Gathering of Ecumenical Advocacy Days for Global Peace with Justice. Every year, Ecumenical Advocacy Days chooses a different theme and this year’s gathering will focus on mass incarceration. This topic comes at a particularly important time as the Obama Administration continues to expand the inhumane practice of family detention for mothers and children fleeing violence and persecution in Central America and seeking refuge in the United States.
To continue to shed light on family detention, LIRS will be hosting a number of events and workshops during Ecumenical Advocacy Days, including:
- Alternatives to Detention: Success in Our Communities: This workshop will focus in part on community-based alternative to detention programs for immigrants. Sister JoAnn Persch from the Sisters of Mercy in Chicago, a network partner of LIRS, will present on the Sisters’ community-based alternative to detention model.
- Skills Workshop on America’s Immigration Detention System: In this skills workshop, LIRS’s Access to Justice staff will walk participants through America’s vast immigration detention system and offer skills and opportunities to advocate for reduced reliance on detention. Staff will give background information on the detention of adults and families. Presenters will also offer concrete opportunities to get involved, including LIRS’s detention visitation ministry.
- Lobby Day Lunch: Join LIRS for an informal and educational lunch on Capitol Hill during Ecumenical Advocacy Day’s Lobby Day. This gathering will provide an opportunity to learn more about the inhumane practice of family detention and the political and legislative state of play surrounding this issue. Please RSVP in advance here!
If you are attending Ecumenical Advocacy Days, we would love to see you at any or all of these events! We are looking forward to spotlighting family detention, especially at a time when every family detention center is expanding and vulnerable mothers and children are locked up. Momentum to end this inhumane practice is growing, but we need your voice to protect the vulnerable and welcome the newcomer.
Visit LIRS’s Action Center today to tell your member of Congress that family detention must be stopped.
Photo Credit: Jenn Vargas