Vigil and Fast for Arizona Comes to Clinton, Iowa

“Isaiah 58 – National Solidarity Vigil and Fast for Arizona” Comes to Clinton, Iowa on June 14. Multi-faith effort in Clinton to focus on civil and human rights abuses of new law.

This link will take you to an interview with Mary McCauley BVM about the trial in which the CEO of Agri-Processors, Inc., meatpacking plant in Postville, IA., was acquitted of knowingly having underage workers in the plant.  The charges stem from the immigration raid in May 2008.  Everyone who worked at the plant knew about the under-age workers and the injuries they suffered on the job. Most of them were undocumented workers, struggling to support families in Guatemala.

In the wake of Tuesday’s verdict, the Clinton Franciscan Center for Active Nonviolence and Peacemaking along with the Clinton area Methodist Federation for Social Action are urging citizens locally and nationally to remember the ongoing struggle for comprehensive immigration reform amidst the many other dire situations facing Americans this summer.

They have scheduled a free, public program on the current immigration crisis for Monday, June 14, beginning at 7:00 P.M., at The Canticle, 841-13th Ave. No., Clinton, the home of the Clinton Franciscan Sisters. Directions to the site are on the web. The link is at the bottom of the home page. Special guest on June 14 will be Kent Ferris, Director of Social Action for the Catholic Diocese of Davenport, which provides many services to immigrants in southeast Iowa.

Inspired by the radical approach to immigration taken by the Arizona state legislature, the national Interfaith Immigration Coalition initiated the idea of a rolling “Vigil and Fast for Arizona” to run cross-country throughout June and July, culminating when the Arizona law, SB1070, goes into effect on July 28.  The Vigil will be observed in Clinton on June 14.

“As reasonable people, we cannot remain silent while such discrimination and racism diminishes our shared humanity,” said event planners, citing statements by leaders of Catholic religious congregations in the U.S., American Friends Service Committee,  American Jesuits and Bishop Julius Calvin Trimble, Resident Bishop of the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, one of the major sponsors of the “Isaiah 58 National Solidarity Vigil and Fast for Arizona.”

“The intentional actions to limit basic civil and human rights must be challenged,” he said,  issuing a statement calling for a just and humane approach to immigration reform that must include a path to citizenship, family reunification and protection of workers’ rights.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS, 563-242-7611