Labor Day Manifesto

Full Employment Now!

Minimum Wage $15

Health Care

Pension

Paid Vacations

Labor Day 2013.

It is fitting that on the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington and on Labor Day we take a moment to remember and reflect. 

We are gaining momentum. 

The "Occupy Movement is still brewing beneath our feet. 

Moral Mondays are part of our cultural fabric.

Food Service Workers demand a minimum wage of $15 per hour.

When I dreamed up this page "The New Internet Union of American Citizens", several years ago, it was on the strength of a working people's manifesto. I called it the "King's Beach Statement", because that is where I wrote that statement. You can read the statement for yourself at the referenced link above, but the long and short of it is summarized in the following statements;

1. Full Employment Now. Jobs and Job Security should be the basic plank of the social contract on which our nation is built. No one need fear loose income, loss of health care, loss of home, loss of ability to pay bills. EVERYONE WORKS. If we can bail the big financial institutions over a weekend because they are too big to fail, so then we can bail the American family when times get tough. In other words, the Unemployment Bureau should be called the Employment Bureau. Unemployment Insurance should be called Employment Insurance. Our task is to set one another at tasks that satisfy and please us and meet the needs of our fellow citizens. Our work must be honored and we must be paid according to the honor in which we hold one another.

2. Minimum Wage at least $15 per hour. Corporate greed has gotten way out of hand. The working people and middle class of this country has taken a very hard hit. Our good paying jobs have been sent overseas, leaving us with jobs primarily in the retail and service sector. Walmart and McDonalds feel as though they can exploit the worker with part-time jobs and circumvent the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). 

3. Universal Single Payer Health Care. We will settle for Obamacare for now, but we should simply extend Medicare to all American Citizens just like Senator Bernie Sanders has suggested.

4. A Moratorium on Foreclosures until all Americans who wish to work are working.

5. Three weeks paid vacation for all after two years at work. Two weeks up until then.

6. Quit picking on gay folks and other minorities. Knock off the racism, sexism and classism. We are all one country. The great American Eagle cannot fly let alone soar unless we're all pulling together.

In the meantime, let's keep up the pressure. 

The Occupy Movement is still percolating underneath our feet.

Moral Mondays are now a regular feature of our retail and food service workers.

Let's consider the occasional one day "General Strike" perhaps on Moral Mondays just to remind everyone that their cup of morning joe may cost a bit more until all of us get a share of the wealth that this country has amassed.

Lets consider a Big General Strike on Black Friday and other big shopping days.

Lets flex the muscle of the American Worker until Corporations begin to get the point. Fair wages and benefit must be built into the fabric of our common life and become the fundamental plank on which we build the social compact. 

By the way this is all happening before our very eyes. Whether spontaneously or with careful planning and organizing, it is all happening before our very eyes.

Keep up the pressure.

Happy Labor Day America.

The American Worker is regaining his/her strength.

Peace to you all,

Paul Bresnahan

Speaking the truth to Power and Money!

Go Down Moses!

In a few more minutes from now, we will baptize Logan and Makenna Franey. Last week, we baptized four youngsters and today we will baptize two more. If I had my way, I’d baptize as many kids and adults as I could get my hands on almost every Sunday of the Christian year. It is especially appropriate to baptize folks on Pentecost as we did last week, on All Saints Sunday in November, on the great Feast Day of the Baptism of our Lord in January, on Easter Eve and on the occasion of a visit from our Bishop.

As Pentecost celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church; a time when the Spirit of God fills our lives and thus the church is born, so now we come to the great feast day of Trinity Sunday. 

On this day we celebrate the great mystery which is in the Name of God. 

In the former instance, Moses was minding the flock of his father in law Jethro, just passing the time of day as it were, when he happened upon a mysterious sight. There before him was a burning bush and yet it was not consumed. It was on fire, yet it didn’t burn up. 

“What’s this?” Moses mused.

God answered from somewhere deep within Moses’ heart. “Take your shoes off Moses. The very land on which you are standing is holy ground. I have seen the sorrow and the suffering of my people in slavery. I want you to go and tell old Pharaoh ‘Let my people go!’”.

Moses reasoned with himself; “What then shall I tell the people? Who are YOU. What is your Name. “Every god has a name. Who then are YOU? 

God said; “I AM. That’s who I AM.”

Moses and God spoke together and began a dialogue which we continue up to this day. It is a dialogue of the inner heart. The "I am" who I am is always in conversation with the "I AM" of who God is. You see, it is a conversation of the inner heart. It is a conversation born out of the discovery of "Being" itself. I discover that I am. If I look deeply enough, I discover that God IS too. 

Yet having established the obvious is not enough. There is something to be done about the fact that God IS and so am I. God and I both have noticed that there is suffering, oppression and injustice. And when God in my inner heart notices such a thing God wants me to do something about it. God wants me to go to Pharaoh and tell him; “Let my people go.”

But, like Moses, who wouldn’t be afraid of going to Pharaoh and telling him to release the foundation stone of his economy? Who wouldn’t be afraid of going to the power holders, and the money holders of any age and telling them, “Let my people go”? Telling the truth to power and to money is a terrifying challenge. Look what happened to Jesus when he spoke to the money holders in the Temple precincts!

When God’s people suffer from the rod of oppression, my heart will not be silent. God’s heart will not be silent. And we must then be on our way to Pharaoh. We may resist doing so out of our fear. Pharaoh will resist complying with the mandate for justice. He will not give up without a fight. Power and money will resist mightily against the call for justice.

But God will make known the way and the truth and the life, there is no possible way to make your way to God if you are the agent of suffering and injustice, and somebody must be willing to say so. 

“Go down Moses; and tell old Pharaoh; ‘Let my people go!’”

That’s why God’s flames burned within the bush where Moses stood without consuming its leaves. This is why God’s flames burned over the heads of the disciples at Pentecost. This is why God’s flames of loving justice burn within our hearts today. It is to catch our attention. It is no magic trick. It is God’s heartache over the suffering of God’s people.

Does your heart not ache with God that so many suffer in the throes of warfare, poverty, unemployment, crime, natural disaster and disease? It is bad enough when we suffer from the caprice of nature. “The thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” (Hamlet 3:1) as the Bard would say cry out to our hearts and our prayers. Yet so much suffering is caused by the print human hands. 

Do you not want to speak up to Pharaoh?  Are you looking for a place to speak your heart or God’s heart? Then follow the money. Speak to power. That will guide you to where God wants you to go. God has seen the suffering of his people. So have you. Look at inner city Philadelphia or Reading and ask yourselves; “What’s this? What is this suffering?”

Why not just give everybody in America a good job with full benefits. Surely if we can bail out banks too big to fail, we can put our own people to work...don’t you think?

Life is a prayer obviously. We’re always speaking to our own hearts and in our own hearts and to the hearts of others. God’s heart is within and among our hearts. Calling us again and again to go to Pharaoh.

My prayer is a conversation with you much like I do every Sunday. No need to bow your heads or close your eyes when you pray, especially when we pray out loud like this, or when we are alive to God and our brothers and sisters. If I were to pray in this moment I might begin to use some of the words of Richard Rohr, a Franciscan who speaks widely in ecumenical circles; a wonderful prayer for Trinity Sunday:

“O God your name is veiled in mystery, yet we dare to call you Father, your Son was begotten before all ages, yet is born among us in time, your Holy Spirit fills the whole creation, yet is poured forth now into our hearts.” ~Richard Rohr

I like that prayer for this day. You have created us. You have redeemed us. You fill us with your gifts of the spirit and fill us with your wisdom. And now you speak to us and say; “I have noticed the suffering of my people. Go to Pharaoh and tell him; ‘Let my people go’”.

When I Baptize Logan and McKenna today, I will ask them as I ask you to seek justice and to respect the dignity of every human being. You and I must go to Pharaoh to make possible the Dream of God in which we can “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.” ~Micah 6:8

This is not just a fanciful dream. It is a fire burning in the bush, and God tells us to take the shoes we’re wearing and remove them because the very ground we’re standing on is holy ground. 

God wants us to see what he sees. He wants us to see the suffering of God’s people. He wants us to go to Pharaoh and tell him “Let my people go!”

On this Memorial Day weekend we remember those who have paid a dear price for our freedom and who had the courage to speak up to the power of an oppressor of another time. We have come to another time in our Nation’s history where more is to be done to bring justice to the poor and to the suffering. It will be a different kind of struggle. It will be a different kind of warfare. So much of the suffering of our people is now from a place that presents itself to us in many disguises.

Seems funny when even Congress notices that Apple and Google pay next to nothing in taxes. The British Parliament is beginning to catch on to the same phenomenon there. You and I pay our taxes. Why not them. Yet, it's all perfectly legal. We voted for our representatives. They voted for the tax code. Mmm! Something fishy is going on in our democracies.

But there is plenty of time for all that. For one thing I do know, someone will go for God and tell old Pharaoh to let my people go. Right now, lets get on with something to gladden our hearts. Lets baptize Logan and Makenna in the Name of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen

Fr Paul

Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The Declaration of Independence

Nothing is more foundational to the Constitution of these United States of America that these truths which we hold as self evident.

For all of our citizens to enjoy the right to life, we shall all have heath care and a good paying job. 

For all of our citizens to be free from enslavement to poverty, we shall all have health care and a good paying job.

For al or our citizens to pursue happiness we shall all have health care and a good paying job.

Notice when we say "ALL" we mean "ALL".
Without regard to orientation, gender, race, class, or creed, or no creed at all.
"ALL" means "ALL"!

Every citizen who wants to work should have a good paying job with full benefits.

• A living wage
• Health Care
• 35-40 hour work week
• 2-4 weeks vacation

And when industry will not provide for these benefits, the public will.

To make provision for these rights, there shall be fair taxation. 

IN NO CASE WILL THE RICH PAY LESS THAN THE POOR, THE WORKING CLASS AND THE MIDDLE CLASS IN PROPORTION TO INCOME.

We are making progress on these goals. We now have health care. We now need jobs.

You rich and your multinational corporations, bring back our jobs to these shores.
You rich, now hear this, you will pay taxes like the rest of us pay.

We the People are sovereign and we will not serve you as slaves to consumerism at Walmart and McDonald's. 

Pony up and pay us like Citizens of these United States of America.

Bring our jobs back home!