Faith And The City e.Newsletter
June 14, 2007
Volume 6, Issue 6
Greetings! Faith And The City offers the information below for your review. Use the associated links to learn more about each topic. For information on a wider range of public issues, visit our home page at http://www.faithandthecity.org.
Visit the new Faith And The City weblog – www.interfaithdialogueatlanta.org – and share your comments on the issues below and a range of others.
Faith And The City News
RCCA's Carter interviewed for Rockefeller Institute newsletter
Faith And The City e.Newsletter
June 13, 2007
Ethel Ware Carter, associate director of The Regional Council of Churches of Atlanta, was interviewed recently for the online newsletter of The Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, a publication of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, State University of New York. Carter discusses the RCCA's origins and history, as well as its current goals, programs, and membership. View the Roundtable newsletter online or read a verbatim reprint in PDF format on this website by clicking below.
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Noted advocate for a just minimum wage
Holly Sklar to speak in Atlanta
Faith And The City e. Newsletter
June 13, 2007
Faith And The City will co-host – in cooperation with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta – a presentation by Holly Sklar, author of the study “A Just Minimum Wage / Good for Workers, Business and Our Future.” The event is scheduled for Wednesday, June 27, 7:00- 9:00 pm, UCCA, 911 Cliff Valley Way NE, Atlanta, GA 30329.
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Faith and Politics
Texas parents challenge unconstitutional
Bible class in public schools
American Civil Liberties Union
Press Release
May 16, 2007
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, People For the American Way Foundation, and the law firm of Jenner & Block, LLP filed a federal lawsuit today in the Western District of Texas on behalf of eight parents who say that the Bible course offered in their local high schools violates their religious liberty by promoting particular religious beliefs to children in their community.
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Religious groups reap federal aid for pet projects
By Diana B. Henriques and Andrew W. Lehren
New York Times
May 13, 2007
Religious organizations have long competed for federal contracts to provide social services, and they have tried to influence Congress on matters of moral and social policy - indeed, most major denominations have a presence in Washington to monitor such legislation. But an analysis of federal records shows that some religious organizations are also hiring professional lobbyists to pursue the narrowly tailored individual appropriations known as earmarks.
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Social Environment
TV network debuts in metro Atlanta to connect Americans with the Muslim world
By John Baker Brown Jr.
Faith And The City e.Newsletter
June 14, 2007
Bridges TV will premier in the Atlanta metro area this month with the goal of narrowing the gap between East and West, more specifically between the people of Islamic communities worldwide and those of the United States and Canada. An English language television network that broadcasts around the clock seven days a week, Bridges TV already reaches millions of viewers throughout North America.
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Black culture beyond Hip-Hop
Opinion by Thomas Chatterton Williams
Washington Post
May 28, 2007
The cultural pressure for a middle-class Chinese American to walk, talk and act like a lower-class thug from Chinatown is nil. The same can be said of Jews, or of any other ethnic group. But in black America the folly is so commonplace it fails to attract serious attention. Like neurotics obsessed with amputating their own healthy limbs, middle-class blacks concerned with "keeping it real" are engaging in gratuitously self-destructive and violently masochistic behavior.
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Key points on public opinion and immigration
Public Agenda Alert
May 24, 2007
It may seem contradictory, but surveys suggest the public holds positive and negative views about legal immigration at the same time. For example, six in 10 say immigration is generally a good thing for the nation. Yet surveys show the public divided on whether immigration helps or hurts the economy. Half say there are too many immigrants in the country. Four in 10 Americans say immigrants improve food, music and the arts in the U.S., but pluralities say they negatively affect the economy, taxes and crime.
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Hispanic voters gain new clout with Democrats
By Raymond Hernandez
New York Times
June 10, 2007
WASHINGTON, June 9 - Helped by the fight over immigration, Democratic presidential candidates are courting Hispanic voters like never before, prompted by a string of early primaries in states with sizable Hispanic voting blocs. It has forced candidates to hire outreach consultants, to start Spanish-language Web sites and to campaign vigorously before Hispanic audiences.
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Big disparities in judging of asylum cases
By Julia Preston
New York Times
May 31, 2007
Asylum seekers in the United States face broad disparities in the nation's 54 immigration courts, with the outcome of cases influenced by things like the location of the court and the sex and professional background of judges, a new study has found. In one of the starker examples cited, Colombians had an 88 percent chance of winning asylum from one judge in the Miami immigration court and a 5 percent chance from another judge in the same court.
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Don't we have a constitution, not a king?
Opinion by Marjorie Cohn
AlterNet
June 1, 2007
In 1926, Justice Louis Brandeis explained the constitutional role of the separation of powers. He wrote, "The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy." Eighty years later, noted conservative Grover Norquist, describing the unitary executive theory, echoed Brandeis's sentiment. Norquist said, "you don't have a constitution; you have a king."
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Georgia on my mind
Opinion by James Clingman
Chicago Defender
June 1, 2007
William Mayo has been wrongfully imprisoned in Georgia for 15 years now, having received two life sentences plus 40 years (I guess that was just in case he is reincarnated) for a crime he did not commit, a crime committed by two young men who have since told the courts that William had nothing to do with the crime.
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Day of split outcomes in teenage sex case
By Brenda Goodman
New York Times
June 12, 2007
A judge on Monday ordered the release of a man who is serving a widely criticized 10-year prison sentence without parole for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. But just after the ruling was announced, Georgia's attorney general, Thurbert E. Baker, said he was appealing it, and the prisoner, Genarlow Wilson, remained behind bars.
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Education
History, civics scores improve for fourth-graders
Public Agenda Alert
May 17, 2007
Fourth graders are showing improvements in history and civics tests, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But while history scores improved for eighth- and 12th-graders, civics scores did not.
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Test scores, standards and No Child Left Behind
Public Agenda Alert
June 7, 2007
Test scores have increased and the achievement gap has narrowed since the introduction of the No Child Left Behind law, according to a study released by the
Center on Education Policy. But the center cautioned that they could not conclusively say the law was responsible for the improved scores.
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Squeeze play: How parents and the public look at higher education today
Public Agenda Alert
May 31, 2007
Americans believe that higher education is key to a successful future, and the vast majority also say that costs should not prevent qualified students from attending college, according to Public Agenda's latest survey. But the survey, conducted with the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, also reveals widespread concern that the opportunity to go to college may not be available to all qualified students.
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Economic Disparity
HOPE foreclosure campaign for Metro Atlanta exceeds goal!
May 31, 2007
The public awareness and media campaign to promote the national 888-995-HOPE hotline to homeowners facing foreclosure concluded in April with resounding success! The three-month campaign launched a year-long pilot program to reduce foreclosures in the metro Atlanta area. The original goal of the pilot program was to generate 5,000 calls to the hotline in 2007. We are pleased to report that between January and April, the hotline received more than 6,300 calls and from those calls more than 1,500 homeowners were counseled.
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Events
Guidelines for Posting Events
Faith And The City posts brief event notices that must include a website address for additional information. Events should be concerned with faith, interfaith and public issues. June 21: "In the Light of Love.” Interfaith day of prayer for compassion in immigration reform. Anti-Defamation League, Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, Council on American Islamic Relations-Georgia, Faith Alliance of Metro Atlanta, Faith And The City, MALDEF, Regional Council of Churches of Atlanta, other organizations.
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June 27: “A Just Minimum Wage/Good for Workers, Business and Our Future”. Featuring author Holly Sklar. Faith And The City and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta.
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