Economic Justice
To mark the anniversary of Juneteenth, when enslaved people in Texas finally learned about the Emancipation Proclamation in June of 1865, the House Judiciary Committee held a special hearing on reparations for slavery this week. When asked about the idea of addressing the generational inequalities created by centuries of governmentally sanctioned white supremacy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) responded that America fought a civil war, passed landmark civil rights legislation and elected its first Black President to address the “original sin” of slavery. As far as he is concerned, the sins of the past can be forgotten.
Michael George Haddad
CREDIT CARD DEBT plagues our communities. The average U.S. household carries a balance of $6,929 at the end of the month. And if you miss a payment, interest may jump from 15 percent to more than 20 percent.
Credit cards are part of a predatory industry with a history of racial bias. Many people can afford only the minimum monthly payment, barely making a dent in the principal —just as the system was designed.
About 10 years ago at Circle of Hope, my church in Philadelphia, we began experimenting with “credit card debt annihilation.” Our team’s motto came from Romans 13, where the apostle Paul urged believers to “owe no one anything,” except love.
MONEY IS TO Americans what sex was to Victorian England. We’ll read about others’ exploits, but rarely reveal our own.
In the mid-1980s, I joined the Sojourners base Christian community. I was in my 20s with little disposable cash and a modest college loan. My theological attitude was “love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10)—even thinking about money risked sliding into America’s amorous relationship with capital.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) walks after a ceremonial swearing-in picture in Washington, D.C. Jan. 3, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Virtually from the day she assumed office, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her avowed democratic socialism have been under attack. Much of the condemnation is from the same crowd that so vigorously insists that America is and always has been a “Christian nation.” This is quite ironic, because democratic socialism and the Bible share a strikingly similar vision of what constitutes a fair and just society. Capitalism, however, does not share that vision.
Northfoto / Shutterstock.com
I OPENED MY first savings account at Wells Fargo in Sacramento, Calif., when I was 8 years old. I remember the bronze stagecoach penny bank they gave me to help me practice saving. When I moved to Washington, D.C., I put my money into a D.C.-based bank, soon bought out by Wells Fargo. But it wasn’t the same Wells Fargo I’d grown up with.
In 2012, the Justice Department found Wells Fargo guilty of discriminating against both African-American and Latino borrowers during the subprime mortgage heist. It’s one of the top two banks invested in the Corrections Corporation of America, which is one of the largest for-profit prison companies in the U.S. In 2015, Wells Fargo was the world’s largest bank.
This fall, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, who abruptly resigned in October, was called before a congressional investigative committee to answer accusations that thousands of Wells Fargo employees secretly opened 2 million fraudulent accounts without customers’ permission or knowledge, and were incentivized by the company to do so. Employees opened false banking and credit card accounts, transferred funds, and created phony access codes and email addresses. “The frauds violate federal and state statutes against bank fraud and identity theft,” William K. Black Jr., white-collar criminologist and cofounder of Bank Whistleblowers United, told Sojourners. Customers incurred charges and fines; in some cases, their credit ratings were damaged.
CEO Stumpf accepted “full responsibility for all unethical sales practices in our retail banking business.” (John Steinbeck once called this kind of thing a successful combination of “piracy and puritanism.”)
Wells Fargo claims that it has fired 5,300 people since 2011 related to these practices, but details are vague; the fraud investigators were hired by Wells Fargo. We don’t know how many were fired because they couldn’t fulfill the extortionate sales quotas.
JUST AFTER LUNCH, Eulalia Francisco shows Molly Hemstreet two pieces of white elastic bands, one of them slated for use as waistbands in a batch of woolen children’s pajamas being cut and sewed by the North Carolina-based, worker-owned cooperative Opportunity Threads.
Francisco, who had just two years of formal schooling in her native Guatemala, has noticed the elastic recommended for the sewing job is not the best choice for these pajamas. She recommends another elastic band.
Francisco is “our master sewer,” says Hemstreet, founder of Opportunity Threads, who agrees with Francisco’s suggestion and immediately orders the correct elastic.
After four years together, Francisco and Hemstreet, both worker-owners of Opportunity Threads, have a strong, trust-based working relationship. Hemstreet, an Episcopalian, earns the same wage as the other worker-owners and sees Opportunity Threads as having a spiritual component. “Before I met my husband, I thought deeply about going into cloistered work,” Hemstreet says. “I think of that whole thing of prayer and work, and that’s how I come here every day. We’re not making icons, but we’re doing work, and we do things in a joyful, prayerful way.”
The co-op grew from humble beginnings. After completing degrees in Spanish and Latin American studies at Duke University, Hemstreet moved with her husband, Francisco Risso, back to her hometown of Morganton, N.C., to open a Catholic Worker House. The local chicken plant hires many Latinos, but the work is hard and tedious, the pay not nearly a livable wage. So Hemstreet, with no formal training in business, explored the world of cooperatives, thinking it might be a good path to more meaningful and dignified employment for the Latino community.
The first element that gets blown up by the parable is the motive of the landowner. Sometimes preachers, trying to fill in the gaps in the story, will surmise something like, “So the landowner, needing more laborers to work the vineyard, went back to the marketplace,” but this distorts the parable.
Tinxi / Shutterstock.com
RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED hate crimes are on the rise in the U.S. Anti-Muslim marches are held around the country. Synagogues receive bomb threats.
And yet interreligious collaboration is also on the rise. With the Jubilee Assembly, faith-motivated investors are pooling their tithes, zakah, and offerings for a higher purpose. The coalition takes its name from the ancient concept of “jubilee”—a regular season of mandated communal economic redistribution, justice, and equity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Joshua Brockwell, a member of the Jubilee Assembly organizing team, works at Azzad Asset Management, a Muslim-led investment company. “By collaborating and putting our money where our morals are,” wrote Brockwell, “the Jubilee Assembly provides an opportunity to live out our common values and make an impact in our communities."
Image via Shou/Shutterstock.com
Amos saw that economic exploitation takes many forms. Sometimes it might even appear as a shiny new app. For Amos, “socioeconomic reorganization without compassion is not acceptable.” Nearly 3,000 years later in today’s gig economy, the same must be true for us.
American Pharoah ridden by jockey Victor Espinoza wins the Triple Crown at Belmont on June 6. Photo by Diana Robinson/Flickr.com
After winning the Triple Crown, American Pharoah’s jockey, Victor Espinoza, showed that he doesn’t live in fear of losing his power. And, as opposed to the Egyptian Pharaoh, he showed he has a soft heart for those who are suffering.
Espinoza reportedly earned $80,000 for his victory at the Belmont Stakes and he’s giving it all away. “I won the Triple Crown right now,” he stated, “but I don’t make any money because I’m donating all the money to the City of Hope.” The City of Hope is a cancer research and treatment center. Espinoza also donates his time at the City of Hope, visiting with children struck by cancer. He says, “The kids [are] 6 years old, 10 years old, it’s just heartbreaking.” Why does he do it? “I just saw one kid with the disease and that’s how I changed my life. I changed the way I think. Pretty much I changed everything … the first change I made was in my heart.”