December 5, 2014

Peace ‘Just reflecting’: Moving from hatred to forgiveness

peace-jolene-hessman Dominican Sisters of Peace Associate Bob Hessman’s daughter, Mel, was murdered in 1989, leaving behind a husband and three small children. Mel’s sister Jude Hessman, an associate candidate, says it took her eight years to forgive Gregg Braun, the man who was convicted of the murder and eventually executed. Gregg was a former elementary student at St. Dominic’s School in Garden City, Kansas. In this reflection, Sister Jolene Geier, OP (Peace) and Bob write about the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation, as well as the need for prison reform in the United States. Read article

December 5, 2014

Sister Pat: ‘We live in a sacred, evolving universe’

Global Sisters Report

“[Thomas] Berry said that each culture has its own ‘great work’ to accomplish. Ours is to reestablish our connection to nature and work toward sustainable lifestyles and systems that reverse the destruction we are currently inflicting on the planet.” Sister Patricia Siemen, OP (Adrian), director of the Center for Earth Jurisprudence at Barry University School of Law, Orlando, Florida, wrote an article, “Journeying into the ‘Great Work’,” in the Dec. 1 edition of the National Catholic Reporter’s Global Sisters Report. Read article

December 5, 2014

‘We have family in Iraq’: Delegation organized

Dominicans in Iraq

“After four months of exile, there are no signs of hope that the situation here in Iraq will be resolved peacefully… The conditions remain the same for those of us in Iraq. Many still are forced to stay in unfinished buildings on construction sites. In one place, a mall has been remodelled to accommodate families, with the hall divided merely with partitions. Although they are better than tents, they resemble dark, damp cages with no ventilation. Most difficult of all is the lack of privacy.” —from the Nov. 24 letter from the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena, Iraq. The U.S. Dominican Justice Promoters have organized a delegation of sisters and friars to visit the Iraqi sisters early next year. They are requesting prayers, Christmas cards, and financial donations.

December 5, 2014

UN Briefing Working to prevent violence against women, minorities

The International Day to End Violence Against Women was celebrated at the United Nations on Nov. 25. Each year, the 16 days following this event are designated as days of activism against gender violence. This year’s theme, “Orange Your Neighborhood,” was given vivid testimony as the Empire State Building was lit in orange in an effort to galvanize public awareness around this all-pervasive issue.

December 5, 2014

Dominican sisters, associates join annual vigil

soa_2014

By Sister Marcelline Koch, OP

Dominican sisters and associates from Adrian, Houston, Peace, Sinsinawa, and Springfield were among the 2,500 who braved the rainstorms Sunday, Nov. 23 in Fort Benning, Georgia, to participate in the solemn funeral procession commemorating those murdered at the hands of School of the Americas/WHINSEC graduates. It was 25 years ago that two women and six Jesuit priests were massacred at the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador. This event became the catalyst for the SOA movement to protest the ongoing militarization of violence, and to remember the victims.

soa_2014_2 Eve Tetaz, an 83-year-old author, veteran peace and justice activist and retired public schoolteacher from Washington, D.C., crossed the line onto Fort Benning, carrying with her a poster of one of the 43 students disappeared in Ayotzinapa, Mexico this September, and the prophetic Isaiah verse, “they shall beat their swords into plowshares.” Longtime SOA Watch activist Nashua Chantal, a 62-year-old human rights defender from Americus, Georgia, carried a ladder to the fence erected to keep anyone from entering the base. This is the third arrest at Fort Benning for Chantal, who previously served a three-month sentence in 2005 and six months in 2013 for crossing the line. For those who have been to the vigil, Chantal always dresses in a “Study War No More” message.

The weekend also included a vigil at the Stewart Detention Center on Saturday morning. Lumpkin is a small town of 1,300, 40 miles from Columbus, and home to a privately run detention center. The for-profit center houses 1,800 immigrant men in questionable conditions which have led to the death of at least one detainee. Stewart is operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, the same group that tried, unsuccessfully, to build a private detention facility in northern Illinois two years ago.

Five other solidarity activists were arrested at the gates of this center. The civil disobedience action followed a procession of about 1,000 of us from Lumpkin to the center. SOA continues to make connections between issues—in this case between U.S. militarization and forced migration resulting in the unjust imprisonment of immigrants.

We were grateful for the opportunity to be there and experience once again the reverence and profundity of the solemn funeral procession and the solidarity with so many others in the struggle for justice.

Sister Marcelline Koch, OP, is Dominican Co-Promoter of Justice for North America.