Commentary

THE TRANS-PACIFIC Partnership may be the largest free trade agreement you’ve never heard of. Or if you have heard of the TPP, it’s likely due to media reports about efforts by President Obama to fast-track the agreement through legislative hurdles. Still, details of the agreement and its secret negotiation process are sparse. Were it not for released drafts of the document and sub-chapters made available by the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, it is likely the general public would know little to nothing of the accord.

Building on the foundation of a 2006 economic partnership agreement adopted to encourage trade between Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore, the TPP’s expansion of the agreement grows the number of participant nations to 12, adding Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Vietnam, and the United States. The combined economic force of these nations would dominate global trade, representing roughly $28 trillion—nearly 40 percent—of the world’s gross domestic product.

But the magnitude of this trading pool isn’t what concerns most critics of the TPP. What is more troubling to labor, environmental, and health groups are the powers seemingly granted to multinational corporations by the agreement and the unilateral easing of climate change laws that serve to restrain industrial nations from disproportionate consumption and pollution.

Expanded corporate powers are nothing new for international trade agreements. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) gave rise to a legal quagmire that has allowed Exxon Mobil to challenge Canadian offshore drilling regulations, Dow Chemical to bypass local guidelines to expand pesticide production and waste disposal in Mexico, and Eli Lilly to enforce U.S.-issued drug patents and prices outside the country. Previously, under World Trade Organization treaty guidelines, a corporate entity needed to persuade its host country to challenge the trade laws of another. Corporations could not directly litigate against a sovereign nation or its policies.

DEALING WITH IRAN is complex for many reasons. This is not a made-up country whose borders were dictated by politicians in the last century; it is Persia—the great empire that fought with Greece before the beginning of the Christian era, the Asiatic power that imperial Rome was never totally able to subdue. From that long history emerged a people with a deep sense of proud history and a realization of national sovereignty that helps guide the destiny of the nation and its peoples.

I recall a conversation years ago with then-Iranian President Mohammad Khatami about nuclear power. He was not in favor of creating weapons of mass destruction, but he clearly promoted Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. To deny this right is an affront to national sovereignty, he argued.

After the unfortunate history of the past government, once again Iran is governed by a president and a cabinet that call for peaceful nuclear development and for a new and more open relationship with the West. This is the fact that has emerged into a clear interim agreement between the so-called P5+1—the members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany—and Iran. As reported, the goal of ongoing negotiations is to open the door to a 24/7 inspection of nuclear facilities and other guarantees to ensure that Iran will not make nuclear weapons.

The fact that the new president and his foreign minister are talking with the United Nations, and with Western leaders in particular, gives the world a better check on the nuclear ambitions of Iran than we have on any other nation in the region that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. If in the terrible, and most unlikely, event that a government of Iran should change its position and decide to build a nuclear weapon, the world would know almost immediately because of the security and surveillance that are likely to be part of a permanent agreement. In such an eventuality, it would be possible to reinstitute the former sanctions or even impose more stringent ones.

IN THE PRESIDENTIAL election in Honduras last November, ruling party candidate Juan Orlando Hernández was declared the winner despite serious irregularities documented by international observers. Violence and intimidation marked the campaign period, including the assassination of at least 18 candidates and activists from Libre, the new left-leaning party.

Hernández, past president of the Honduran National Congress, supported the June 2009 coup. His record of operating outside the rule of law includes bold measures to gain control over the congress, judiciary, military, and electoral authority. He helped establish a new military police force in August 2013, deploying thousands of troops to take over police functions. Hernández ran on a campaign promise to put “a soldier on every corner.”

Honduras has been named the “murder capital of the world,” with relentless violence coming from crime, drug cartels, and police corruption. Attacks on human rights defenders and opposition activists have been brutal and have allegedly involved death squads reminiscent of the 1980s. Those working to reverse poverty and injustice receive death threats, priests and lay leaders among them. They are bracing for even greater repression under Hernández’s administration.

The growing militarization of Honduran society, justified as a way of fighting crime, is fueled by U.S. support for the country’s security forces—forces reportedly involved in widespread human rights violations. By denying the repression against social movements, and congratulating the Honduran government for its supposed progress on human rights, the U.S. Embassy has made it possible for rampant impunity to continue.

JUANA TOBAR SAYS she is waiting for a miracle from God. She’s the mother of four wonderful children and a grandmother of two young girls. Her husband, Carlos, a U.S. citizen, calls her the “glue of their family” and his soul mate. Juana has lived in North Carolina for more than 20 years and serves as an usher in her church, but in the coming weeks the Obama administration will be deciding whether or not to deport her back to Guatemala.

Juana’s case is not unusual. According to its own statistics, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deported approximately 400,000 immigrants per year since President Obama took office in 2009. In March, he’s set to reach the dubious marker of 2 million deportations, more than any other president. Many of us who work with immigrant communities are left asking: Why would a president—especially one who enthusiastically supports immigration reform that would give the undocumented a chance to stay in the country and earn citizenship—so aggressively deport the same immigrants who could be legalized through reform?

Our best guess is that when Obama entered office, his administration made a calculation that if they showed they were serious about enforcement, lawmakers would be more likely to come to the table and negotiate. That goodwill never materialized. Now, five years later, ICE is feeling increasing heat from immigrant advocates.

One of the key discrepancies between ICE and its critics is the question of who is being deported. In 2011, the administration issued a memo vowing to focus deportations on “convicted criminals,” a scary label until you realize how DHS defines the term. Immigrants commit crimes at much lower rates than the native born, so there are only so many serious criminals to find and deport. Thus, ICE has come to define “criminal” loosely, covering both violent felons and people who get a traffic ticket. A substantial number of those who are deported don’t count as “criminals” even under that definition. And many are the parents of U.S. citizens. In the first six months of 2011, for example, ICE deported nearly 50,000 parents of U.S. citizens—people like Juana Tobar.

IN 2013, Sojourners commissioned a messaging study to contribute to the creation care movement—the Christian response to climate change. We polled nearly 1,100 people, oversampling for evangelical Christians, since evangelicals can be politically effective when activated on justice issues, as they have been on immigration, HIV/AIDS, and human trafficking.

Our goal was not only to learn evangelicals’ attitudes about climate change, but also to explore which messages are most compelling so we can better communicate on the issue and make an effective difference for God’s creation.

The first thing we learned was that many of the common stereotypes about evangelicals and climate change simply aren’t true. For one thing, the majority of evangelicals we surveyed (60 percent) agree that climate change is happening, and most say that human activity plays a role.

Second, one’s position on climate change is better predicted by political affiliation than by religion but, interestingly, evangelical Republicans are more likely to support action on climate change than non-evangelical Republicans. Young evangelicals are also more receptive to climate change messages than non-evangelical young people. And for those who don’t agree with us on climate change, there is a low level of certainty: Twenty-five percent of evangelicals are in the moveable middle, either “somewhat sure” that climate change isn’t happening or undecided. This means there’s a good chance that they already care, or that their opinion could be changed.

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, before Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, many people were clear on the need to get health care for our brothers and sisters and joined in the push to reform the delivery system for health care in this country. When it was enacted, we were thrilled that those who had such difficulty getting even the most basic care for themselves and their children would finally have some health security.

But the notorious website problems—including the crashes, the inability to access it, the insurance programs that have been canceled, and the smaller-than-expected number of people who have been enrolled—have frustrated, discouraged and sometimes challenged us. This has been complicated by political bombast and in some cases, sadly, vicious character assassinations.

As people of faith, it is important not to be swept up in these problems, but to relentlessly pursue access to health care for the 48 million people who do not have health insurance today. We also need to remember that the ACA is more than a website. Think of the millions of young adults who can now stay on their parents’ insurance and the thousands of small businesses that have received tax credits for providing insurance to their employees.

The new rules that guarantee comprehensive insurance coverage, no barriers to preventive care, no pre-existing condition limits, and no lifetime limits on coverage have already made a huge difference in the lives of many families. The portion of the law that requires insurance companies to spend 80 to 85 percent of premium revenue on actual care rather than profits or dividends to shareholders will do much to make the cost of insurance more reasonable.

I'VE NEVER FELT as powerful and proud of my community as I was while walking down the middle of Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis on a cold evening in November with hundreds of other Native activists and allies. We were marching from the heart of the Minneapolis American Indian community to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome to speak out against the Washington Redsk*ns mascot.

Hundreds of American Indians and allies rallied outside the Metrodome to demand that Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington professional football team, change the team’s name and mascot in spite of Snyder’s dissent. The owner’s unwavering commitment to keeping the Redsk*ns name became evident when earlier this year he stated, “We’ll never change the name. It’s simple. NEVER. You can use caps.”

Standing among supporters and friends, I looked on as the community joined together in drumming, dancing, and singing, with American Indian Movement co-founder Clyde Bellecourt serving as the rally’s emcee. Several local elected leaders addressed the crowd, including U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, co-chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus, and the mayor-elect of Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges, days after winning her election for mayor. The two joined an avalanche of elected leaders calling on Snyder and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to change the team’s name.

More than 20 years prior, another protest had been held at the Metrodome for Super Bowl XXVI, a game between the Washington Redsk*ns and the Buffalo Bills. That protest included Clyde Bellecourt’s brother, Vernon, leading the charge with Sen. Paul Wellstone, a friend and champion of the American Indian community. Two decades later, the conversation has changed and momentum is on our side. Even President Barack Obama joined the cause in saying, “I’ve got to say, if I were the owner of the team and I knew that there was a name of my team—even if it had a storied history—that was offending a sizeable group of people, I’d think about changing it.”

DOMINIC WAS 17 years old when the incident occurred. Dressed and ready to go to church, he walked out of his home in the Bronx just a few minutes ahead of his parents. All of a sudden, undercover police officers came out of nowhere, grabbed him, and threw him to the ground.  As his parents came outside and discovered this scene, fear gripped them as they screamed to the officers, “What are you doing to my son?” “He fits the description. You stay out of this!” the officers replied. His mother pleaded, “Sir, he hasn’t done anything. He has been with us the whole time.”

While legal and political measures are being undertaken by opposing factions for and against the stop, question, and frisk practices of the New York Police Department, the debate rages. The fact remains, no matter what side you are on, considerable damage has already been done to a generation of African Americans and Latinos (particularly youth), not only in New York City but in other cities that have adopted this model of policing.

According to a recent analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union, in 2012 “New Yorkers were stopped by the police 532,911 times. 473,644 were innocent (89 percent).” This means that out of more than half a million who were stopped, only 59,267 people were charged with any sort of illegal activity. In addition, 284,229 (55 percent) were African American and 165,140 were Latino (32 percent), most of them law-abiding citizens who were targeted, stopped, questioned, frisked, and found innocent. What is further troublesome is that not all actions conducted by officers were documented, so the actual number of those impacted negatively is even higher.

I WAS 7 years old when my family first opened our home to foster children. My parents were in their early 40s and already had four children at home. They were somewhat typical for foster parents at that time: married, established, often people of faith. We had a total of 10 children in our home—two of whom were adopted—from 1988 until 1997. Fostering children was a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week commitment and calling. As my mother would say, “God sets the lonely in families—but am I willing to let him set them in mine?”

This is a question that more Christians—particularly the oft-maligned Millennials—are asking themselves. They are examining both the sheer number of children growing up without families and scripture to see what it says about their faith. Taking their cue, and often their names, from James 1:27 (“look after orphans and widows in their distress”), groups in Colorado, Arizona, Oklahoma, Virginia, and most recently the District of Columbia have committed to looking after these modern-day “orphans in their distress.”

According to the Administration for Children and Families, in 2012 there were 400,000 children in foster care nationwide. Of that number, 102,000 were waiting to be adopted. Only 52,000 children were adopted in 2012; at the end of 2011, 15 percent of youth in the system lived in group homes or institutions. What is most troub-ling is the number of youth who “age out” of the system every year without the support of a family. At the end of 2011, 11 percent, or 26,000 youth in the system, aged out. These youth are much more likely to experience homelessness, health problems, unemployment, incarceration, and other trouble later in life.