Thursday, October 8, 2009


September was a big month in this country. The nation was flooded, it seemed, by venomous shouting matches at town hall meetings about health care reform. So when our Representative Lois Capps held a town hall meeting here in Santa Barbara, I was one of a good number of local clergy who turned up and scattered ourselves through the hall to help keep things as civil as possible. Fortunately there turned out to be little need of us, as the meeting (mostly) went smoothly. I was, however, shocked back to reality when someone handed me a flyer as I was leaving. On the flyer was a picture of a Nazi concentration camp with President Obama’s face superimposed on it. Oh, what crazy days these are!

Soon after that I found myself on a plane to Washington D.C. where I was part of a clergy delegation lobbying Congress (especially the Senate) in support of sweeping reform of our nation’s workers rights laws. We visited with Members and staff of both Houses, and by the time we were done we had managed to personally cover a big chunk of our California Congressional Delegation. My feet still hurt just thinking about it – Capitol Hill is a big place and everything seems to be made of the most unyielding marble – but I digress…

The highlight of the trip was our visit with Rep. Lois Capps. While we were on the Hill focusing primarily on worker’s rights, it proved impossible to separate that discussion from other critical issues, especially healthcare reform. We had a very good conversation with Rep. Capps and we encouraged her not only to continue supporting these key reforms, but to step up and lead on them wherever possible. I gave her the hundreds of postcards that my congregation filled out at our Labor Day service, and she was excited to see so many personal notes. Being a Santa Barbaran herself, she recognized quite a few of the names and made sure that I would take back her greetings as well as assurance of her ongoing support.

After that I flew back to Santa Barbara to celebrate our annual InGathering at church, and then flew right back to the East Coast, to Pittsburg, for the fall meeting of the Interfaith Worker Justice Board of Trustees. Our meeting was designed to coincide with President Obama’s visit, and I hoped against hope that I might be able to meet him in person, but it was not to be. We did, however, get to see Hilda Solis, the Secretary of Labor, Sen. Arlen Specter and Caroline Kennedy, among others, and we did get to see the President speak in person, which was quite an experience.

I was also interviewed, along with Ted Smukler, the Director of Public Policy for Interfaith Worker Justice, by a Pittsburg radio station about the connection between faith and justice work. It was a fun experience, but a little nerve-wracking to speak live to a radio audience without the ability to edit myself in the moment...

All that said, I am glad September is over and life can return to normal (more or less)!

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